Last week we were reminded how vulnerable our food supply is as we had an outbreak of Salmonella and eggs from two Iowa farms were blamed for the source. This led to a half billion eggs being recalled. We raise certified organic eggs on a very small scale and we hand wash all of them. The first thing I thought of when I heard about the number of eggs recalled was how would you like to have to wash all them eggs by hand? The problem is they still haven’t …

You know how the Chinese have a name for every year. Well I have decided that this year should be called the year of Murphy’s Law. If you are not familiar with Murphy’s Law it says that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong and then at the most inopportune time. That seems to sum up the vegetable season so far. I had a friend at church come up to me today and say, “I have a tomato question for you”? I said “You obviously have not seen …

Well this last week I learned that life mirrors farming, you never know what it is going to throw at you. If some of you look for my newsletter each week I’m sure you noticed that there was not one last week. That is because we were on our way back from Dallas, Texas. This unexpected turn of events actually started the first of July when we sent blood work to Dr. Rea at the Environmental Health Center in Dallas. This is the clinic that finally gave us answers to …

Hey, this week’s chat will be the old good news, bad news theme. One good thing about a very wet year is many times you get the rain needed to get fall vegetables going. That was the case this week for us. We got a couple of rains last week that replenished our soil moisture and it got dry enough to get some ground ready so I sent others to market on Saturday and plowed up a new field and worked it down for planting. We got it planted with …

If you have been checking for a new posting it has been a couple of weeks since we have been up to my sister-in-laws to help out with care for her mother. There was some spraying next door to her house which prevented my wife from going up there. She had to have help to get in the house today and we are not sure how long she will be able to make it in here, so if this newsletter seems to come to an abrupt stop you will know …