Gone & Away!(for a little while)

You may have noticed an absence of microgreens the last week and I am indeed away from the farm for awhile this winter, but I will return! (as will the tasty microgreens and the colorful everlasting bouquets!!)
I'm taking advantage of the quiet time on the farm in winter and down hanging with my parents and family for the festive holiday season, as well as working up a storm! The job where I worked before being a full-time farmer was serendipitously short-staffed and I was looking for some needed wintertime income so here I am getting to spend the holidays with family for the first time in four years, down in (thankfully) more rainy than sunny California!
But, I'll be back at the end of January and the microgreens will return in February!!
I've gotta get back to start seeding all the flowers and veg for next year and prepping all the seeds I saved as well.
My wonderful neighbors are looking after the hens and the cabin so all is well while I'm away. I'm also hoping for there to be some real snow by the time I get back so I can spend some time snowshoeing and xc skiing, so here's hoping you all have a wonderfully snowy Christmas and New Years!!!

All the cats and kittens are on an adventure with me down to California-land. Oliver seems to think the carriers are cozy enough!

We made the decision on the road to stop in a hotel for the night. One that said they were pet-friendly but they technically meant dog-friendly, but the person at the desk (a cat lover themselves!) said to *cough* sneak them in *cough*. So that we did! Luckily they didn't discover the window until the morning we left and that the person put us in a quiet corner that faced into an empty field. Naughty kitties!

​One of the first welcomes you get to Cali is a nice view of Mt Shasta!
And the welcome to the North Bay includes some of the greenest, rolling hills around.

The cats have settled into their temporary home pretty well! Hella is the most bummed that she can't go outside (this outside is not a quiet field and forest but a busy city street with many cars, dogs, bicycles, delivery trucks, and people everywhere!) Too much for a Country Cat to deal with. I may treat her to an adventure in the backyard with a harness if she is patient!

The cat trees, cat pillows, cat blankets, litter boxes and lots of toys were all brought down to help keep them comfortable as they get used to their holiday home. There may not be snow but there are backyard squirrels, birds, and neighbor cats to watch all day long!

Before leaving I was treated to a taste of Montana winters. Hopefully when I reutrn it will look a lot like this too!

The best part about being down here is getting to visit some of my very oldest friends! The Redwoods!! Especially when it's rainy, the creeks are overflowing, and the mosses get to shine

I hike during a deluge of rain meant a lot of the creek crossing were impassable on the trail, so I found fallen Bay Trees or Redwoods to scramble to and shimmy across. The uphill side of this crossing is where that little stream of water is running down and the trail goes right through the middle of that torrent!

Another flooded creek crossing (there were three total on this trail) where I couldn't quite tell it those branches were washed down or someone had put them there in much lower water so they didn't have to get their feet wet. Either way their presence meant the water was gouging out the trail into a pit about thigh deep (I tested it with a stick) so I found a fallen log upriver to use instead.

Water pouring out of a dead Bay Tree root, the twisty lichen and moss covered shapes of the Valley Oaks (who drop their leaves), the Live Oaks (who don't drop their spiky hard leaves), and the Tanbark Oaks (who keep their broad, flat, tough leaves all yearlong) mix with the twisty reddish Madrone trees and Manzanita/Chaparral scrub to help make some magical landscapes and shapes. Outcrops of green serpentine rocks made it easy to add steps to trails that were built long ago.

Just some of the seeds that I get to look forward to threshing and bagging when I return. Hopefully, I'll be able to do some extra work down here and design the labels for their packets as well as order some of the seeds I'll need for next year that I can't save. Like those long season flowers that won't seed before the winter comes or hybrids that take special breeding situations to get them that same color or shape again. Tha's one nice thing about having all the farm admin stuff on the computer - it goes wherever I go!

Where to find it all?

The Microgreens will be back in February!
Look for them at the Amish Farm to Market Store in Libby