The only thing I want to add to Anna's post about building the ford with cinder blocks would be a close up of one of the fence posts that we hammered in next to some of the blocks. These posts got sunk into the ground several feet, which is what anchors the whole structure and prevents any shifting of the blocks. If I had to build another one tomorrow I would use the slightly chipped discounted bricks as I'm sure now that you would get the same effect.

Here is a short video clip of a leaf crossing the ford just because it can. I think this leaf is proof that Autumn has established a firm foot hold back in the woods here.

I made the mistake of telling a friend this morning that I was going to be killing chickens today, forgetting that she was a vegetarian.  So, fair warning --- vegetarians, you'd better move along.

First signs of fall on the Clinch Mountain (and space to protect the weak of stomach.)

Today was my third lesson in chicken slaughter, and Mark's second.  We were both amazed by how our feelings have changed over the last few months, from "ew, yuck!" to "this makes sense and I'm ready to do it."  Chickens have become livestock to us --- animals which you take good care of but don't name for the obvious reason.

Today, I slit three chickens' throats, dipped one chicken in boiling water to loosen its feathers, cut off one chicken's feet, watched as our friends threw them all in the automatic plucking machine, and (the hard part) disemboweled and cleaned three chickens.  There was blood --- an unbelievably bright red pooled in the wheelbarrow where we let the chickens hang for a few minutes and bleed dry before beginning to process them.  But the only part that really freaked me out was the second throat I cut which I don't think I did the best job on.  (And the dead chicken smell which lingered on me until I took a hot bath when I got home.)

Mark's going to post a video summing up the chicken processing operation this weekend, so I won't go into the details here.  I was shocked, however, by the reactions to chicken killing videos I'd seen posted on YouTube --- a good half of the entries used a lot of profanity to tell the video-maker that they should die like the chicken did.  Is our society really so cut off from the food chain that we're willing to buy a chicken sandwich from McDonalds but aren't willing to even consider where the meat came from?

(The chickens pictured above are all still alive and kicking, by the way, in our tractor.)

Our chicken innovations have also included a homemade chicken waterer.

Yesterday was a very educational afternoon for me. It was the second time this year that I got to see first hand how a chicken goes from happy clucking to all plucked out in a matter of minutes. I had my trusty video camera going part of the time and managed to capture several of the steps in this rather detailed process.

I've decided to share two of those steps with you in this short video clip.

I really enjoy a good chicken dinner, and I already feel more connected to my personal link of the food chain thanks to this experience. I owe a debt of gratitude to our friends for sharing their clever set up and operation with us. I was especially impressed with the powerful chicken plucker they built which is featured in the video clip above.

We have talked about taking the rest of the chicken footage and putting together an instructional video for those who need to know more. Stayed tuned for more information on that.

The chicken pictured is one of our Plymouth Rock cousins, and she was not harmed during the making of this post and will most likely live out a life of leisure here on the farm with a few of her egg laying sisters.

Our chicken innovations have also included a homemade chicken waterer.

I started to write a lengthy manifesto about how even back-to-the-landers and other crunchy types get sucked into the consumerist trap.  I wrote about how Mark and I valiantly strive to steer clear of the consumerist world by dumping the TV, living in a trailer, and so on and so forth...and I could see every reader quickly clicking on an ad just to get away from the endless drivel.
So let's stick to specifics, why don't we?  You've probably seen raised bed kits promising you the ease of uncompacted soil which requires no tilling, prevents the spread of crabgrass and other rooting weeds, and protects the fertility of your garden for only $50, $200, or even $800.  This is one of my pet peeves since I can personally attest that you too can have the delight of raised beds for the all time low price of...drumroll please...$0!!! 

The first step in building a new raised bed is to break up the soil.  I'm getting ready to plant garlic in an area where I'd had potatoes this year, so after I dug the potatoes I ran the chicken tractor across the new ground for a week or two.  The chicken poop will fertilize the soil, providing phosphate which my soil is a little low on and which garlic loves. 



Once the chickens have been moved on to their new location, I start to dig the aisles, mounding the dirt up onto the area where I want the bed to be.  I dig the very top layer of soil only since this is the good stuff full of organic matter.  Don't put clay in your raised bed!  The whole point is to get a double helping of top soil.



In my garden, I try to to keep beds running in perfect rows, but this bed will be at an angle to the other beds since it would otherwise bisect one of Lucy's paths.  I've learned the hard way that it's a lot easier to plan your beds around where the dog runs than to try to train the dog to run somewhere else!

The first year, my raised beds ended up too close together.  The more space you have in the aisles, the happier you'll be when it comes time to mow weeds.  The picture below shows my measuring system --- both the bed and the aisle should be as wide as the handle of the shovel is long.  (It's always handy to use your tools as measuring implements rather than running inside for a tape measurer.)

The picture to the left shows the completely dug bed.  Notice that I've dug a bit of an aisle on all sides, even the sides which will butt up against lawn or other new beds.  Aisles prevent rooting weeds from wandering up onto the edge of your bed.  Whenever I got lazy at the edge of previous beds and let them run straight into the surrounding "yard", I was sorry!





I added a light sprinkling of wood ashes to my dirt next since garlic likes neutral soil and my soil is slightly acidic.  Wood ashes will also add a bit more phosphate, which is a plus.






Now it's time to rake your bed.  Pull the rake through the soil repeatedly, breaking up any clods of dirt and pulling out roots.  The more you rake, the fewer weeds you'll have coming up in your new bed --- rake as long as you can stand it!








The fully raked bed has all of the roots and debris removed and has the soil broken up into relatively fine particles. 





Next, I use the hoe to dig trenches into the bed.  These can be very shallow if you're planting something like carrots, and can even be ignored altogether when broadcasting lettuce or greens seeds over the whole bed. 









I use a trowel to dig a little deeper to plant each garlic bulb.  This is the same technique you might use to plant bulbs in your yard without digging up the grass. 







Notice that I never stand on the bed and always keep my weight on the aisles.  One of the major benefits of raised beds is that the soil doesn't become compacted because you never walk on it.





Once all the garlic bulbs are planted, I use my hoe to drag soil back in to close up each trench.  Then I tamp down the soil gently with the back of the hoe as seen below.





Here is the finished garlic bed, made and planted in an hour or two at no expense.  I will add compost and mulch as needed, but won't till up this bed again so the soil microorganisms will build up to high levels. 




The bed to the right is a two year old bed which I just pulled old corn stalks out of.  I'll rake it and mulch it well for the winter, then in the spring it'll be ready to rake and plant.

So there you have it --- a free raised bed made with simple hand tools!  I hope you'll give it a try.

A mile or two up the road and down a steep driveway live some of our favorite neighbors.  The farm is home to two couples, a movie star, and sometimes other folks who stay variable amounts of time in this intentional community, this farm land trust.  Due in part to our proximity and common ideals, but also because Mark's aunt and my parents moved in similar circles twenty or thirty years ago, they've taken us under their wing and often include us in their community events.

Our neighbor's lemon tree, which he told us is currently loaded down with 91 lemons.  We hope our tree will reach this stature someday!

Today Mark and I played hookie in order to help the movie star harvest his sweet potatoes, setting me off on a mental tangent about community.  I asked him today what it was like to live on the farm, and he first told me it was "a pain in the ass" --- he is after all a movie star and thrives on making people laugh.

More seriously, though, he compared the intentional community to a marriage or business venture.  When two or more people work closely together in enforced proximity, he explained, they each have to compromise a little.  Living in a community helps you grow and become a more interesting person.

In the two years Mark and I have lived on the farm, we've started to put down roots, to build our own community.  Yesterday, I traded my unwanted potatoes (which turned out to be Kinnebecs --- I was confused about which variety we like and which we dislike) to my co-worker for a mass of winesap apples.  Today, we collected some honey from the movie star in exchange for helping with his bees a few months ago, and some Yukon Gold potatoes (the kind we actually like) in exchange for helping with his sweet potato harvest. 

In the farm world, it seems like communities are built on trades --- trades of labor, produce, or advice.  And despite the delicious tang of those winesap apples, it's not so much about what you get as about what you give.

I would like to thank everyone who entered our free raffle for 50 Daffodil bulbs. 

The lucky winner is Holly Dukes. I shot a 15 second video of the drawing you can see here.

We still have some bulbs left and are willing to part with them while supplies last. You can get 20 shipped to you for 15 dollars, or for the more value minded out there we are offering 40 for 25 dollars. Go to our Native Plant website for more information.

Daffodil bulbs multiply very nicey when given the right conditions, and they keep popping up every year. They are deer and rodent resistant because all parts of the plant contain alkaloid chemicals that are very bitter and can be toxic if eaten.

Make sure to check back later in the week for another contest involving strawberry starts.

Today's experiment in simplicity was cooking an old rooster.  The neighbor of our chicken-slaughtering buddies asked them if they'd be willing to kill and dress two of his old roosters for him, but when the neighbor came back and saw what the dressed chickens looked like --- all legs and no breast --- he said no thanks and left the roosters behind.  Mark and I are always up for a challenge, so we took one home to cook.

I did some extensive web searching last night, looking for some advice on how to cook old roosters.  Besides "Coq au vin", which looked like it'd take me hours of hard work to prepare, there didn't seem to be many choices except hints to cook it slow and long.  So I decided to make up my own chicken stew, basically pretending I was making chicken stock and then throwing in some extra veggies at the end. 

At 8:30 am, I put the whole rooster in a pot of water with a few chopped onions and garlic and some parsley and thyme out of the garden.  (I've found that parsley can be substitued for celery to good effect in nearly all recipes and is much easier to grow!)  Then I slowly simmered the budding stew for about eight hours. 

By then, the meat was falling off the bones and I was able to strain out the solids and then remove the hard bits easily.  I threw all of the meat back into the juices, added carrots, potatoes, and sweet potatoes and simmered about half an hour until they were soft.  Then I turned off the heat and threw in some frozen corn and peas from this summer.  A bit of salt and pepper and the stew was done!  A delicious meal for eight out of free ingredients --- our girls wish we weren't quite so empowered.

Our chicken innovations have also included a homemade chicken waterer.

I first subscribed to Sirius satellite radio a little over 3 years ago and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I was doing a fair amount of traveling at the time and it filled an empty place I was having from the deletion of television from my entertainment diet.

In addition to commercial free music Sirius has a nice selection of talk radio choices that allow the listener to participate in national discusions that sometimes involve callers from other countries. In my opinion the problem with these stations is the high level of commercials in between your entertainment.

The real end of my love affair with satellite radio was when we got high speed DSL internet back in the spring. It took me a couple of months to discover the magic of cyber radio, but once I did I was listening to the little Sirius box less and less until one day I decided it just was not worth 13 bucks a month. What really pushed me over the edge was when a friend told me about PublicRadioFan.com. This site takes most of the guess work out of choosing between the many different shows. What I find especially convenient about this method of delivery is the multiple time zone choices.

The real hero of my low budget entertainment world is the good people at Netflix. We spend 14 dollars and some change each month for the 2 movies unlimited option which usually works out to about 2 or 3 films per week. What I like most about their service is the easy to use website and impressive selection of titles.  They have a new on demand feature that lets you watch movies instantly over the internet. It works pretty good, but it only works with Windows XP or Vista and then you are required to use the Explorer web browser. I've heard they are working on a Mac option, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Everybody knows how cheap your local library is, except when you rack up excessive late fees.

The last few weeks have had everybody wondering about the future of our economy. Common sense says that hard times will require a good deal of sacrifice. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to predict that one of the first areas most folks will feel the squeeze is in higher fuel costs. This post will be an attempt to share with you what I've learned about building your own electric powered vehicle.

I'm sure everybody has seen those futuristic looking hybrid cars on the road, and I'm also sure that only a small percentage of you have the extra cash to spend 40 thousand dollars in an effort to save a few dollars at the pump. There is a lot of information on the internet these day about home made electric transports, and a good place to begin is EV Album.com. Here you can find an easy to navigate collection of projects including electric powered bikes, motorcycles, cars, and trucks. There's even a guy who managed to get a small tractor working with a golf cart motor.

The cheapest way to get moving with electric power is to convert one of your pedal powered bikes. There are some nifty kits available that use a small motor that attaches directly to the hub of your bike wheel. These packages start at around 300 dollars and can go up to a thousand and more depending on battery size and motor power. I've heard of several people adapting starter motors to power a bike chain, and if you're lucky you might be able to get a bike motorized for less than 50 bucks this way, but be prepared to walk home a few times before you get it perfected.

The next step up in electric mobility would be converting a motorcycle. The average low end cost seems to be about 1500 dollars with some people managing a bit under that and most going several thousand over. You can expect to get somewhere between a 10 and 50 mile range on each charge depending on road conditions and how good your batteries are.  

The holy grail of electric locomotion would be the elecrtic car/truck. Once you find the right car to convert and take out its gas powered engine you should be prepared to spend at least 10 thousand dollars and 100 or more man hours to get something reliable. The maximum range people seem to be reporting is around 50 miles, which will most likely improve as battery technology gets better. At the time of this writting the most popular vehicle for this type of conversion is the Chevy S-10 truck.

I considered what it would take to replace our old Isuzu farm truck's engine with an electric motor. Once I priced the motor, batteries, motor controller, battery charger, and other various items I concluded that it would be easier and cheaper to just buy a used golf cart. We found one on Craigs list a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at its performance crossing our creek and dealing with the muddy conditions here. Of course it doesn't have the same power as the four wheel drive truck, but it's a breeze to get unstuck if you have someone pushing from behind, and sometimes it just feels better to get by with less.

It seems that over the last three days, rainy cool weather has made the leaves start to turn and fall.  I couldn't resist snapping a few gratuitous nature shots as I walked Lucy this morning.

I've always loved the cup-shaped spiderwebs which show up at this time of year at the edges of fields, especially when they fill with dew and turn into sparkling white nets in the grass.

I also caught a dew-covered katydid perched on a brilliant sassafras leaf.  Although friends nearby had a frost last week, we never dropped below 33 F, and the crickets and katydids started calling again when the nights warmed up.

In one of my all-time favorite books --- Taran Wanderer --- our hero stumbles upon a family which provides for its members by stringing up a big net across a river and then collecting whatever the river provides every day.  The image really struck my fancy when I first read the book in middle school, and now as the leaves begin to catch in clotted masses along the edges of the ford I'm inspired to try my hand at the same thing.

Last night, I captured enough leaves by hand to fill five 5-gallon buckets, then spread them across the tops of my empty garden beds.  Last year, I covered a few beds in this manner and they produced the richest soil which resulted in beautiful onions.  I only covered a few beds, though, because I had to carry the wet leaves by hand a quarter of a mile from the ford to the house.  This year I resolved to collect more.  So after I scooped up the leaves which were already stuck to the ford, I strung up an old seine we had in the barn and left it overnight to steep in creek water.

When I went back to check on my net this afternoon, it was bulging with its heavy load of leaves.  A tiny watersnake was resting in one of the net's folds, but I wasn't fast enough to catch it on film.  Once the snake safely slipped away into the center hole of an old cinderblock, I gathered the seine closed and lifted it into the golf cart, then zipped home to spread the leaves on my garden.  A few crawdads crawled out of the mulch and I fed them to our ever-appreciative chickens.

I really wanted to include a quote from Taran Wanderer here, but unfortunately I read the first part of the series to Mark's cousin when she was in grade school and she liked it so much that she stole the whole compilation from me.  So you'll just have to go look up the book for yourself....  And, if you'd rather read facts about using leaves as mulch, check out You Bet Your Garden's page on the subject.

This week's question comes from Laura in Cincinnati Ohio.

I wanted to ask you if you have a generator for your deep freeze?  I got to thinking about this after the storm a few weeks ago.  A lot of people in the tri-state area here would have lost their harvest without one.

I have had the same concern since I started seriously freezing food last year. A couple of months ago I started doing some research on how much a generator would cost us and what type we should get.

We settled on a Champion 3000 watt generator from Home Depot.com. It sells for 349 dollars plus 40 bucks for shipping. I tried calling the local Home Depot store to see if I could order it and pick it up there. The woman informed me that they only carry Coleman generators in the store and online items had to be shipped to your house. We placed the order 10 days ago and if everything goes as scheduled it should show up sometime next week. Once it's here we will fully test it and post a review to let everyone know how it performed.

It is possible to make your own generator from an old lawn mower engine and a car or truck alternator. I found this site that provides some advanced tips on such a project. I considered giving it a try a few years back and decided it would cost just a bit more money to buy a new one.

I was thrilled by the number of you who dropped your name in the hat for last week's daffodil giveway!  Mark thought I should add a note before this week's giveaway, though --- just in case you're worried, we don't sell your contact information, and actually don't use it for anything except for emailing you if you're the winner.

With that out of the way, let's move on to this week's giveway --- strawberry sets!  Email me your name, email address, general location, and how you heard about this giveaway by Friday night and we'll put your name in the hat.  The lucky winner will be announced on Saturday, and on Monday we'll mail you 50 strawberry sets, enough to start a wonderful home strawberry operation.  Unfortunately, we can't send plants out of the U.S. (though I've been reading the stats about the people who visit our site and am excited to see so many international visitors.  Now I know where Moldova is! )

I won't know for sure the proportions I have of each variety until I dig them, but I'll include Honeoye Strawberries (the absolutely most delicious strawberry you'll ever taste), Jewel Strawberries (my CSA customers told me this was the most delicious strawberry they'd ever tasted, but that's only because I kept the Honeoyes for myself), and a few Ozark Beauty Strawberries.  Honeoye are early June strawberries, Jewel are later but still spring-bearing, and Ozark Beauties are ever-bearing.  The picture of the berries above is stolen off the internet because my strawberries very seldom even made it into the house.  (Poor Mark needs to learn to wake up earlier if he wants to get any strawberries....)

Although many people plant strawberries in the spring, fall planting has definite advantages as long as you get the plants out before your frost and give them a little care during the winter.  If they get well established this winter, you can eat the strawberries next spring rather than having to go through a heart-wrenching season of picking off blooms so that your strawberries will grow roots rather than set a few berries and then keel over.  Read more about planting fall strawberries...

One of the many reasons I could never move away from the farm is that I can be misanthropic at times and need absolute peoplelessness around me.  This has been one of those weeks, so today when Mark went over to help the neighbors harvest the rest of the potatoes, I stayed home and finished off Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale (which is one of the best books I've read in months, though I'm not sure if it would appeal to men.)

Having savored the last page, read every word of the acknowledgements, and pored over the author's biography, I had to give up and re-enter the real world.  Luckily, there's always something that needs to be done on the farm.  I still haven't finished planting all of my garlic, so I built and planted two more beds, then harvested the first peanuts I've ever grown in my life.

For those of you who don't know, the nuts on peanuts start aboveground as flowers, then burrow their way down into the dirt to develop into underground fruits.  Despite what some folks think, if your soil is soft enough there's no need to mound dirt up around them --- I did no mounding and my peanut plants produced very well.  Now I have to be patient and wait a few days for the nuts to dry since newly harvested peanuts have a mild toxin in the nuts.  Assuming the flavor is good, I'll be adding peanuts to my usual crop roster --- they were effortless to grow, survived relatively severe deer nibbling, and were a breeze to harvest.  Stay tuned in a few days for news of my first attempt to make peanut butter!

I've been wanting to write a post about what we've learned from a summer experimenting with CSAs, but the taboo against speaking honestly about money has held me back.  Every time I start the post, I realize I need to go check on the chickens, or sweep the floor, or wash my hair.  :-) 

So let's get the money out of the way --- we've made $533 this year on our CSA and eggs, which is vastly less than the $3,260 we've spent on the farm this year.  (Though, that last number is not really a valid comparison since it includes everything from chicken feed and seeds to fence materials and the generator we just bought.  Gotta keep more detailed records next year.)  We would have made more, but two of our three customers spent several months out of town.

What have we learned? 

1. CSAs are cost-efficient when you have one nearby customer, become a pain in the butt when you have 2-5 CSA customers scattered across the region, and presumably become cost effective again at a certain number above that (though we never tried to get that high.)
2. Our rural customers are not interested in paying a lump sum up front to be a member of a CSA.  But they are willing to pay $25 a week to get a basket of whatever goodies are in season.  They understand that the basket will be bigger some weeks than others.
   

3. It's a waste of time and energy to ask your customers what they like and dislike.  Chances are, the things they "dislike" will actually be eaten quite readily if you give them some useful cooking hints and minutes-old produce.  That said, on our very small scale it's good to ask them the next week what they liked the most from last week's basket.

What will we do next year?  We'll stick to our one nearby customer --- having an extra $100 every month makes everything nicer and is really no more work than gardening for ourselves.  Mark wants to try out a cash crop next year (maybe pumpkins or sweet potatoes) to bring in a bit more "egg money" instead.

It's almost been a year since I first discovered Foamhenge, and I look forward to the day when I can return. It's a good low budget day trip if you live semi-close to Lexington, Virginia. The admission price is zero and it's just a mile north of Natural Bridge Park with a very pleasing view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the back drop.



Foamhenge has been around since 2004 when Mark Cline partnered with the people at Natural Bridge Park to bring his vision to life. Out of all the stonehenge replicas in this country Foamhenge is rumored to be the most accurate when compared to the condition of the modern day original in England.  RoadsideAmerica.com reports that Mr Cline even went so far as to fact check his measurements and design with the man who gives tours at the original stonehenge.

We have already decided to add next year's Renaissance festival at Foamhenge to our social calender. It's going to be mid September and the admission price will be 5 dollars. Enchantment Faire is the name it's going by and it looks like a lot of medieval fun complete with maypoles, human chess, and one thing I'm really looking forward to seeing close up...a trebuchet. You may even be given the opportunity to learn the secrets of casting a Gypsy love spell if you are able to capture the attention of Madam Zuza, but I urge caution when dealing with Mystics you've just meet.

The stock market is making everybody nervous these days, and what's most unsettling for me is the multi level explanations that are being offered up on the radio and web.  I wished I had paid more attention in Mrs Lane's Economics class back in high school. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is a bit fuzzy on all the details of last week's stock market crash.

Not too many people out there are using the "crash" word to describe last week's events, but Nouriel Roubini is. He points out that the combined equity loss of last week equals the equity loss of the two day 1929 crash. He is also well known for predicting our current collapse within financial circles...but he was off by two years. He was predicting this to happen back in 2006, and when it didn't his credibility suffered, but now everyone is paying attention to what he has to say. I like his views on using some of the bailout money for infrastructure building in an effort to create jobs, and his new blog is my new first stop when I want to get up to date information on the economy that's not sugar coated.

I woke at dawn yesterday to a rooster...duet?!?

That's right --- one of our white cochin "pullets" isn't quite a pullet.  Actually, I wasn't shocked --- two days before, I'd noticed that one of the "pullets" was significantly bigger than "her" sisters.  The young rooster is already growing a much bigger comb than his siblings.  And yesterday morning he started to crow in a choppy little squawk, mimicking the adult rooster in the next tractor over.

Guess that means our weekend plans will be a bit bloody....

After giving away, saucing, and drying two thirds of our traded apples, I've been pondering making cider out of the rest.  Mark suggested seeing what the juicer would do with them, but I creased my brow and denied its utility for all I was worth.  "We'll have to cut them up and it'll take hours!" I moaned, thinking of the cider press a friend has offered to lend us.

But, in the end, Mark's reasoning prevailed.  He reminded me that another friend had tried out a similar press recently and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.  Add to that the fact that the presses weigh a ton (not quite literally), and it suddenly looked more interesting to try home juicing.

Despite what other folks will tell you, there's no need to cut out bad spots, cores, or stems before making cider.  Just cut your apples up enough that they'll fit in the juicer (quarters in our case), mash them in, and cider will come pouring out the other end.  Wait a little bit and skim off the foam and your cider is ready to drink.  (Don't fall for the government's line that you risk dying a horrible death if you drink unpasteurized cider --- cooking the cider makes it taste like apple juice and my stomach at least can handle a few germs in the pursuit of good flavor.) 

The end result --- both of us were right.  It took me about 45 minutes to turn a fourth of a bushel of apples into a little less than half a gallon of juice, but that's probably about the same amount of time (or less) than it would have taken to use the press.  I still had time to crack out a bunch of raw Chinese chestnuts to make pesto for supper (a pesto that Mark and I agreed tasted much better than pesto made with walnuts!)  Even though the garden has slowed down, it looks like we'll be busy squirreling away apples and chestnuts from friends for another few weeks yet.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction and its recently released sequel Darth Bane: Rule of Two are adventures into the very depths of the dark side of the force that will give the reader a fresh new perspective on the age old battle between good and evil. The evolution of Darth Bane from hard working cortosis miner to Sith Lord unfolds in a way that gives you some true empathy towards our anti-hero's path of trechery and deception. I actually found myself cheering for the dark side as our hero/anti-hero struggles to understand the true potential of this awesome power.


The story is set in a time three thousand years before Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. A period of time when the Sith numbers are many and the rule of two is somehow lost to the ages. A rule that allows only one Sith Lord to exist at a time with one apprentice. One to embody the power, the other to crave it. It's pure Star Wars excitement as you get to see the Sith Army deal with a genuine misfit and troublemaker within their ranks. Drew Karpyshyn has a real talent for weaving intergalactic characters together in a way that feels natural and intoxicating at the same time.

The sequel begins the story of Darth Bane's new apprentice, a spunky 10 year old girl who has had some tough breaks in her short life. This is the character that gives the series its balance and provides a fantastic perspective on the dark side from a female point of view.  I would guess if George Lucas made this story into a movie as it is the people at the ratings board would have to give it an R rating just for the brilliant manner in which the dark side gets depicted and glorified. I wonder if my own personal allegience to the Jedi order would be as strong if I had experienced this story when I was nine years old instead of the first Star Wars movie back in 1978?

This is my first book review, and the above links will take you to an Amazon.com page if you're interested in buying a new or used copy of this story. Amazon is a solid company that has never given me any trouble when I've ordered from them. We get a small percent of your purchase as one of their new affliates, so thanks in advance if you choose to support us in that way.

We have a hen that was nearly killed by the other hens and our rooster a couple of months back. Anna was able to separate her, and we nursed her back to health. She usually gets let out during the day after she lays her egg because she is all cooped up by herself and we figure she can use the company.

Today we thought she was ready to go back in the main tractor and decided to switch her out with the rooster who has been increasingly aggressive lately. It took about 2 minutes for the group to recognize and remember the new hen before they began attacking her. We got her out of there before any major damage could be done and decided she would be okay roaming around with the rooster.

It took the rooster about 20 minutes before he decided that our free range hen needed to be eliminated. He started chasing her across the garden and cornered her by the collapsed old house. He then started attacking with a vengeance. We quickly returned her to the lone coop for an afternoon of recooperation.

I think we've decided to delete the rooster from our flock. He causes more trouble than he's worth, and we can always find another one when we get ready to incubate some more eggs. In the meantime we'll let him roam around and enjoy his last few days of freedom before his judgment day.

Take a look at Mark's post below and then tell me what you think.  So far, I agree with Mark that we should eat the aggressive rooster --- when he tore the inch in diameter gash out of the back of our lone hen's head a few months ago, I just about whacked him then and there.  But then we'd be roosterless! 

So, time for a poll!