For now, I will be writing mostly about making a year-round vegetable garden at our new place. I've got a small hoop house started and planted a cover crop of clover in that area last autumn. The clover is re-growing now, suppressing the weeds that would be there instead. The lawn is mostly weedy but we mostly tamed it down last autumn, too. Next, I'll be getting a few loads of composted cow poo from a farmer friend and making layered beds of newspaper, straw and the compost. There will be flowers too. Im hoping I can get bees this year and ducks next year. Cayuga ducks. They are a regional heritage breed. Schatzi like duck eggs.

The transformation of the yard into food and beauty is only part of our multi-year effort to restore this house from the nastiness it became while being mis-used by the people who were playing at making bio-diesel. So far, I haven't been able to muster anything more than disgust and contempt for them.

Ths past weekend while I was at my new, part-time weekends-only job this past weekend, Schatzi worked miracles in our kitchen. It took him Saturday and Sunday but got the kitchen stove and oven working by re-connecting the gas line to the house and wiring the electricity into the ovens. This is a huge milestone for me, well, for both of us. Since we moved in seven months ago, I've been cooking with a single-burner camping rig and small, old Black & Decker toaster over. The new cooking stove is an amazing treasure. I bought it for $500 from a baker friend of ours. It's a Viking Professional dual fuel (ovens are electric, stove hobs/burners are gas), 6-burner w/griddle, two stove work of cooking art! Five hundred dollars is a gift! The new cost was ~$8,500-10,000+. And it came with an overhead warming oven, too. One stove is convection the other is smaller and it convection. It's just gorgeous. If I can't learn to make great pies, savory and sweet, with this thing I'm a pie-making lost cause.

About my new part-time weekend job. It came just in the nick of time. My first experience in a job with tips. And the first time in a long, long time that I've been paid minimum wage. If the tips work out as promised it will be worth it, if they are less, this is just an exercise in employment. Which is not without merit at this point.

Almost as exciting as the Viking getting hooked up, our Rocky Ford Musk melon seeds have begun to sprout, as have the San Marzano tomatoes. Both of these surprised me. The melon seeds are from the 2011 season as are the San Marzanos so that might account for their viability. Lots of other things are sprouting too. And some things are not.