Winter Work

After the holidays are over, both Shain and I start working on our respective piles. 

My pile consists of a year's worth of invoices, receipts and other paperwork necessary to put together our 2007 taxes.  It's dull, it's complicated, it's enough to drive me crazy at times, and it's all mine.  You see, if I had my choice between the "his" and "hers" piles, I'm quite happy to take on the taxes.  There is no way I want to accept the responsibility of searching seed catalogs and then choosing which varieties we will plant this coming season.  That job would stress me out.  But not Shain!  He devours seed catalogs like I do a piece of double-chocolate cheese cake. 

Here we are now in February and I have successfully whittled down my pile to a meager 12 pages or so.  I look forward to dropping them off to my tax man.  We are seeing the results of Shain's labor on a regular basis in the form of large boxes.  It's like Christmas all over again.

A few weeks ago, we had another work day on the farm.  Our goal was to clear out greenhouse #4, former home to the wonderful tomatoes we grew last year.  Pulling out all those dead plants was a dusty and moldy job, but we got it done.  (I don't know who that group of masked bandit workers were, but they did good work and are welcome here anytime.)

According to Shain, "We've never been this far ahead" with the farm work before.  In years past, we were still pulling dead plants from the greenhouses into Spring.  This year, we have (and I use the word we quite loosely here) already spread a nice thick layer of compost in greenhouses #1 & #2.  And it's a good thing too, because with all this snow and wind, we haven't been able to do much else outside besides shovel, plow, shovel, whine, and shovel some more (and this time I really do mean the word we).