As the snow melts, creatures are becoming more active. Birds are gathering hay for nesting (I cleaned out all the birdhouses in February), skunks have wakened from the dormant state and are wandering around the farm (I can smell them), and the fisher cats are prowling around the barn at night looking for prey. The dogs have been barking for hours every night, keeping the barnyard animals safe from predators. This morning, I noticed fisher cat tracks around the entire poultry area. Everyone is safe and healthy.
It’s Spring planting time, and last weekend was spent creating our transplant stock in anticipation of hoop house planing over the next 2 months. Although I directly seed many of the vegetables into raised beds, the heat loving plants are germinated indoors. This year that includes
Cucumbers - 12 large pots
Peppers - 24 small pots
Broccoli - 12 small pots
Eggplant - 12 small pots
Zucchini - 4 large pots
Kabocha Pumpkin/Squash- 5 large pots
This weekend, I’ll finish planting the spring greens - 3 different kinds of spinach and 5 different kinds of lettuce.
The Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is nearly ready to approve our cider making application as a bonded cider winery. I’ve made 8 different kinds of hard ciders as test batches for personal consumption and once licensed, we can ramp up production. We’ll have 6000 pounds of apples each season in the next few years. I’ve been designing a premium beverage - Halamka’s India Pale Ale with Apple - HIPAA. It builds strong bodies twelve ways and protects your privacy!
I’m off to Dubai on Saturday night to give a keynote and Kathy will be running the farm until Tuesday. I really hope the fast melting snow does not become a fast melting flood in my absence.
I love ready your farm posts. Thanks!
ReplyDelete"Halamka’s India Pale Ale with Apple - HIPAA" very good! This needs a lot of attention for sure. I keep harping on the fact that it's the $180 billion dollar a year business of selling personal data that's adding to the "privacy" issues, that and the fact that half the time Gov can't model or see the full big picture of what's going on out there, as too many folks are tied up in "virtual worlds" versus the "real world" and confuse the two all the time. Some of those virtual values creep over into the real world and confuse folks even more. It's scary so a no-nonsense approach without scaring everyone that the big "Al" is out to get them is refreshing.
ReplyDeleteI keep saying we need a index of all who sell data so we know who they are as repacking our personal data is growing and there's no way for consumers sometimes to go back and fix the flawed data that's out there, very frustrating and so you as a consumer get stuck living with flawed data. We need some transparency for sure so people know what's going on and once again will have some trust out there as there is good stuff too by all means.
If we have some transparency and the trust that there's some "real" security being rolled out, things might change a bit, but folks are not going to give permission knowingly to some data that another outfit could hurt them with a risk assessment score, i.e insurers. We can't stop it but we could sure use some honesty on what's going on with the back ends of a lot of apps out there:) Myself I don't like being on a list of folks who take blood thinners that sold all over, and the information is all false, so I am stuck with it and can't remove it as my data has been repackaged and can't find the origin.
http://www.youcaring.com/other/help-preserve-our-privacy-/258776
I'm not too far from you, but the melting roof run off is making a lot of mud for my chickens! And I love the new HIPAA...
ReplyDeleteDr. Halmalka, you crack me up. I'll buy a six pack of your HIPAA any day. :) Safe travels.
ReplyDelete