Spring is here, quarantine is upon us, the birds are singing… *record scratch* Quarantine is upon us?! Yeah, with Beth’s teaching and Toph’s learning on hold, we’re all buckled down from some old fashioned home schooling. We were pretty well stocked up at home so there wasn’t a lot of panic felt, but that didn’t prevent us from padding our pantry stats. The good news is, though we couldn’t find a single square of toilet paper on the shelves, Beth had shopped Sam’s a month ago and we were already stocked up. It pays to be ahead I guess. Even if we weren’t stocked, we have a Filipino here who grew up cleaning a tush without paper, so I guess the tutelage would swing back in our direction for some eastern style potty training.

In prepper news, our garden sprouts are finally popping up. We opted not to go in the direction of CSA (community supported agriculture) this year. We end up wasting a bit and, while we love supporting local farmers, I think there is a lot of value in growing the majority of your own food. That has become abundantly clear as of late. In all, we’re blessed and prepared for a lot.

So, in English as a second language and learning to read goes, we renamed some of our herbs. We don’t do spoon fed reading any more. Mr. Toph has to at least make an attempt to read something before we step in with some strategies to help figure things out. While we were labeling our sticks, Cilantro had to written down. In order to know what it was, he had to read it first. He has a really bad habit of just picking out random letters and belting out some new vocabulary. Cilantro’s transformation has become a family favorite. Chichonchi. So now we’re all really looking forward to mexican night this summer and enjoying some of our very own chichonchi.

Another experiment in growing, this year, is chamomile. Beth and I have really been enjoying the Mystic Monk Peaceful Tea mix. I thought, maybe I’d try my hand and growing some chamomile this year and opted to start the seeds in a bag rather than direct sow, and it worked out great. The trick is you have to gently transfer them to soil the moment the seeds open. I left half the bag to keep going and they didn’t fair nearly as well as those that were transferred right away. I’m really looking forward to drying some orange peel and these flower heads in the summer!

Some of the bad news: the hive lid blew off the hive with some of this cold and wicked wind we have been having. Unfortunately that spelled the end to our last surviving hive. I was able to pull out 3 jars of honey. I think we’re going to take a bee brake. While getting the stocks situated for our home bound hiatus, the state of the amount of honey we have became very apparent. We have a TON of honey… I guess we’ll be good to take a year or even two off. I doubt I’ll make it two years before I start things back up again.

And timing turned out just right for some fermenting. I started to lacto ferment some sour kraut. It turned out so good! I forgot how good homemade kraut is. We have also really been enjoying sourdough pizza every Sunday, and I’ve really gotten down the method. Beth raves about how good it is every Sunday and she’s always sure that this Sunday’s is the best yet.

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Everyone is doing well. Roscoe can’t hear a damn thing any more but that kind of works out well since noise puts him on edge anyways. Charlie is Charlie. He’s definitely a lot of fun and he’s quite the goofball.

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