One of the items that has kept me busy of late is now behind me. The farming cooperative I belong to, in conjunction with Athens’ Daily Grocery Cooperative, has held a rotating “farmer for a day” and farm tour each month. Sunday was our farm’s turn. To get ready, I had a huge amount of clean-up to do, such as mowing and brush clearing, as well as bed preperation, minor barn work, and other odds and ends. Sunday morning came and we had a dozen or so volunteers for the “farmer for a day” portion of the event. We herded chickens to a fresh pasture, planted many fall seedlings, stretched a shadecloth skin on the second greenhouse, and cleaned up and made some structural improvements to the barn. Several weeks’ worth of work got done in two hours with all that help. Then we had a pleasant lunch by the river and held the tour, adding some more people along the way. The weather was perfect, and it was great to have the help and the wonderful feedback from those attending.
[Listening to: Studio Hair Gel - Barcelona - Robot Trouble ]

Found at Defective Yeti: Q: How many bloggers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two – one to change it while the other apologizes for the recent lack of illumination and explains that they’ve been really busy lately. Yeah… so it’s been a while since I’ve written here. Long enough that a lot of things have happened in the meantime. I’ll try to get to tham all here, along with some nice sites I’ve found. I’m, um, really busy at the moment, though, so I’ll just point to yet another article mentioning the farm in the local paper. This one is on the joys of wild sumac.
[Listening to: Chihuahua - Sugarcubes - Stick Around for Joy]

My alma mater has long had as one of its claims to fame owning an entire mountian. Not that the general students could do much on it – it is patrolled by guards with automatic weapons. Now I see on CNN that the school will soon own an entire town. Don’t go visit, though – it looks like the guards will be there, too.
[Listening to: Go You Chicken Fat Go - [Robert Preston](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22Robert Preston%22)]

I held the first night of auditions last night for The Cold Sassy Players’ upcoming production of Our Town in Commerce. The show runs the first week of October.Like my other directing work for this theater, I’ll be paid for my efforts. Exactly enough, in fact, to fund a two-week vacation to New Mexico in late October. Two years to the day after our wedding, we’ll finally get to go on a honeymoon! M has groused about the lack of announced activities for the weekend we will all be back in Socorro. It’s 49’ers weekend, the closest thing to a homecoming that our nerd school has. I haven’t spoke with the alumni office, but I can name some of the activities: Riding block of ice down the big hill on the golf course, (not) throwing darts at the cue ball at The Capitol Bar, biking along the arroyos (maybe all the way to the Coyote Moon in Lemitar (roses are red, violets are blue, I’m going to Lemitar so … ), eating wicky-soaked fruit late at night in Box Canyon, driving to Pie Town (with stops at the VLA and the Eagle Guest Ranch for ginormous steaks), walking through the Bosque del Apache, stopping by the Owl Bar for green chile cheeseburgers, having stacked Enchiladas del Mar at El Sombrero, eating at la Pacadita several times, having coffee at Martha’s Black Dog, playing Wiz War over a plate of fries and gravy at El Camino, looking for pottery sherds on the hills south of town, and enjoying the company of all of those I know that are also visiting or live there still. Should be a full two weeks, and I know I’ve forgotten to list plenty.
[Listening to: Where’s Me Gold - [Trenchcoat Club](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22Trenchcoat Club%22) - Edsel ]

I finally got around to finding a copy of this season’s Northeast Georgia Living Magazine. One of the cover stories is called “Home on the Free Range” and talks about the new organic labelling requirements from the USDA. The author talks about how some farmers are choosing to not get official certification and instead let the customers “certify” the product by getting to know the farmers and their practices and deciding for themselves whether the product is one they wish to buy. He has a few quotes from one such pair of local farmers, Chris and Eric Wagoner of Boann’s Banks. [Listening to: old home filler-up an’ keep on trucking cafe - [C.W. McCall](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22C.W. McCall%22) - Greatest Hits ]

The local paper has a big article today on local vegetable farms, and focuses heavily on our farm and the Locally Grown cooperative we belong to. [Listening to: ADDING UP NUMBERS - KOMPRESSOR]

High in the mountains of northern British Columbia is a lake the Tahltan people call Skyfish. It exists still as it has existed always – guarded by strong forests, water so clear you can see the fish strike. It is a world of biodiversity and tranquility. A world with clean air, abundant food, and fresh water. Skyfish is a world to which everyone should have the right. But most of us live in another world - a place where consumption and excess exists beside poverty and pollution. We exist in a schizophrenic society, in a time when we can no longer afford to be unawarse of the consequences of pollution and globalization, or of the values of our current economic system - when the effects of one nation’s lifestyle can have an impact on all others. Now, more than ever, we live in a time when our thoughts and actions really matter. The Skyfish Project is an arena for thoughts and action. A forum for examining and questioning the world we live in, and the world we are creating. To talk about the way we live our lives, and the way we’d like to live. If we want to move towards a better, balanced way of living, we must first identify a new vision of the future. The Skyfish Project is a place to connect on ideas and issues. It’s a place to learn from others, and share what you know. It’s an invitation to question the world you live in; and a challenge to take action and responsibility for the way you live your life. Welcome to the Skyfish Project.

[Listening to: tennessee waltz - [patsy cline](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22patsy cline%22)]

The Senate Agriculture Committee yesterday made a bad wildfire bill even worse by further expanding the excuses for gutting environmental protections for commercial logging in National Forests. The Senate is expected to vote on wildfire legislation, based on the Bush Administration’s ill-named “Healthy Forests Legislation,” in September. Rather than increasing funding and resources to protect communities from wildfires, or preserving the right of the public to have say in the management of their National Forests, the Committee simply made it easier for timber corporations to log old-growth trees and make a profit off of tax-payer lands. Among the damaging provisions the committee added to the bill (HR 1904) was language to expand the areas where destructive logging can take place without environmental review or oversight. Under the committee-passed bill, timber companies could receive taxpayer subsidies to log anywhere in National Forests hit by an ice storm. A May 14, 2003 General Accounting Office report showed that two out of every three acres of federal lands logged in the past two years were outside of the “wildland-urban interface” – the area where communities and forest areas intersect. But scientific studies have shown that the best way to protect communities is to thin small trees and brush from immediately around homes and buildings – not by logging large, fire resistant trees deep in National Forests miles away from where people live. Studies have also shown that 85 percent of the land surrounding communities most at risk of fire is state, private or tribal land – not federal land. But money under this bill is directed almost exclusively to federal land. Along with adding ice storms to the list of reasons to roll back environmental review and interfere with the independent judiciary, the committee-passed bill also added municipal watersheds to the areas exempted from environmental safeguards. This expansion means that many more logging projects far from communities will be exempted from important environmental reviews. More information about industrial logging under the guise of fuels reduction can be found in this PDF document from the American Lands Alliance. [Listening to: boogie on the beach - [red elvises](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22red elvises%22) - ]

Being deprived of my blog right now would be akin to suffering extensive brain-damage. Huge swaths of acquired knowledge would simply vanish. Just as my TiVo frees me from having to watch boring television by watching it for me, my blog frees me up from having to remember the minutae of my life, storing it for me in handy and contextual form.

Cory Doctorow articulates his blog (and mine) in his article “My Blog, My Outboard Brain” It’s over a year old, but still very true. [Listening to: Someday I Suppose - [The Mighty Mighty Bosstones](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22The Mighty Mighty Bosstones%22) - Don’t Know How to Party ]

We were able to recover most everything off my bad drive, so I’m back in business. Only thing that I know are lost are all my installed fonts, but those can be found again as I need them. The farm photos are back, too. I’ve been able to pre-load several days’ worth, so they should be there when you want to look at them. If you missed last week’s, you can always see them at the photolog main page. Or, I could just link them for you: Tomatillos Squash Blossom Ragweed Hen in Grass Cherry Tomatoes Zucchini [Listening to: Welcome Back (Kotter Theme) - [John Sebastian](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22John Sebastian%22) - Sounds Of The Seventies - 1976 ]