Hoop House Build

Yesterday, while Arthur was in DC, I volunteered on a hoop house build. What is that you may ask? It is like a green house but is made out of metal and plastic and is used to extend the growing season. They are becoming more popular in Michigan because they allow a farmer to grow year round (without heating) and extend the growing season on either side. This means more greens in the farmers market year round (local lettuce in the winter, yum) and winter CSAs (community supported agriculture). But they are expensive, ~$10,000 plus labor, and most banks are not willing to lend to small farmers. To step in and fill this gap SELMA cafe (the local community breakfast where we volunteer at and have written about before) uses the proceeds from the breakfast to give loans to local farmers. A farmer can apply to the program, and if they are accepted they get a loan for a new hoop house and a crew of volunteers to help put it up. Jeff and Lisa organize the whole thing, so no skills are needed, and they provide wonderful food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So yesterday I spent 12 hours out at Sunseed Farm right outside of Ann Arbor. The day started off raining and knee deep in mud. Our bo0ts were coated with an inch of mud that wouldn't budge, it felt like you were walking around with 10 pound weights on each foot. But by lunch the sun was out, it was 80 degrees, and the mud was still there! 40 of us spent the day mucking around to get the hoop house built. By 7:00 we had everything done other than pulling the plastic, which would have to wait until the next day. We ended the day with a BBQ under a tree in the middle of the farm. Tried and muddy, what could be better!

Here is a video taken yesterday, check out that mud! And yes that is me sitting on the back of the tractor, I was using the tractor as a ladder to attached poles to the top of the hoop house and the tractor needed to be moved every few minutes, so no, I am not sun tanning!

Check out some pictures from the day.
This is how the day started!














10:00 am: Starting to put up the braces

1:00 pm: putting up the end walls















7:00 pm: All braces are attached, trenches dug, ready for plastic!














This is what it will look like when it is done, they built this one last August


















This is some of the greens growing in their first hoop house

Garden part II

It has been about a month since we planted half of the garden. We are past the risk of frost (hopefully) so it was time to plant the second half. We went back to the farmers market and bought a few more starts from Frog Hollar Farms and planted the rest of our garden. We now have three types of heirloom tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, squash, eggplant, and zucchini. To celebrate we had our first lettuce out of the garden! Now all we need is lots of sun!

Choosing our starts


















Look how much everything has grown














Our garden planted!

Why I Hate TV

Well there are too many reasons to list here but my number one reason, advertisements! They are offensive, they make you feel bad about yourself, and then tell you to make yourself feel better you need to buy their crap. So most of the time we watch shows off of DVDs where there are no commercials. As always commercials find a way into everything and now they are on DVDs too. Clorox ran two adds back to back on the Mad Men DVD, both instilled the resolve to never purchase Clorox in me. The one that really got me is below:
Yes it was on before Mad Men, so put in context it made sense. But really, you are trying to convince me to buy Clorox so my husband can cheat on me and then hide it? That is reason enough to never buy it! Maybe they are trying to appeal to men, but for some reason I don't think that is their main market.

This trend of distasteful ads seems to be catching on. Sprint ran an add earlier this year about a wife that found out that he was cheating on her from a text message on his phone... now would you buy that phone?

CAMPING!

Arthur finished school for the year last week. To celebrate, his program takes everyone camping for a few days. 80 of us packed up our cars and headed south until we hit hills. Four hours later we were in Southern Ohio in Hocking Hills State Park. We spent two nights there, enjoying good company, going on awesome hikes, hearing spring peepers, and sitting around the campfire. We had perfect weather, 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky for three days, summer came early this year! It was the perfect way to start the summer off.

Here are some pictures from our trip

ERB Camping 2010

"panoply of protesters"? What's the big deal?

So Saturday we went to see Obama speak. It was a great speech about listening to both sides of a debate and civility, trying to get away from sensationalist press.

But if you read about it in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/politics/02obama.html?scp=1&sq=obama%20michigan&st=cse), you might have thought that we had to dodge the Tea party protesters just to get in the stadium. The New York Times article, referring to a "panoply of protesters shouting outside, many of them carrying signs decrying Mr. Obama as a 'socialist,'" made it seem like the liberals were inside the stadium, and the violent right-wingers were outside. NOT THE CASE!

Of the maybe 12 people protesting outside, 10 of them had signs protesting abortion, and 2 of them were Tea party folks protesting taxes.

The two Tea party protesters. What's the big deal?

In fact, if you read the Annarbor.com article about it (http://www.annarbor.com/news/government/hundreds-rally-for-immigration-rights-outside-of-university-of-michigan-commencement/), you'd learn that the real protesting outside was for immigration reform - just like the protests happening all over the country on Saturday morning.

The idea of protesters name-calling Obama a "socialist" outside the stadium might be a good story that fits the national narrative, but in Ann Arbor on Saturday, it just wasn't the case.

Obama comes to town

Obama was here this morning! That's right, the University of Michigan's commencement speaker was a good one this year.

So this morning Courtney and I braved the rain and the tea party protesters (just kidding - there were 2 of them), got through the airport-level security, and saw a pretty darn good non-political speech by the president. You can read about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/01/us/AP-US-Obama.html?_r=1&ref=global-home.

Rumor had it that he was also going to go to Zingerman's and the farmer's market, but it doesn't sound like that happened. Still, it was pretty cool to have the President in our town.

Watch out Riley!

To start off our day of doing it all we started to plant our garden! We met our friends Paul and Val at the Farmers Market to buy some starts. We made it home with two types of lettuce, onions, cilantro, kale, and rosemary. Since winter doesn't want to leave Michigan yet we were only able to plant the lettuce, kale, and rosemary. The rest will have to stay inside and in a month we will go back to the farmers market and buy some more starts, such as my favorite; tomatoes! It was fun digging in the dirt and we will have to keep our fingers crossed that something lives.