Last year about this time, we posted a recipe we found for a Complete Organic Fertilizer (COF) that we used on our veggie garden. The vegitables turned out quite nicely -- I'm especially pleased with the large number of fingerling potatoes we managed to get -- so I'm willing to call the fertilizer a success. The real test will be this year, when we plant in the same spot. If the fertilizer is actually keeping the soil balanced and fortified, we should have at least as successful a crop of veggies this year as last.

• 16 parts seed meal (we use cottonseed meal)
• 1 part gypsum
• 1 part agricultural lime
• 4 parts bone meal
• 4 parts kelp meal

It's important to measure this by volume, not by weight. The gypsum and ag lime end up being a lot more dense than the seed meal and kelp meal. I use a wide-mouth quart jar, but most anything would do, so long as its the same measure for all of it.

We bought enough of these ingredients last year that we only needed to buy more bonemeal this year ($75 shipped to my house for 60 lbs., from amazon.com no less!). The thing that takes up the most space are the 2 bags of cottonseed meal sitting in the feed room of our barn. Everything else has managed to fit inside 4 tall PVC buckets, and one batch measured out with a quart jar will also fit neatly into a PVC bucket. Espoma is a good source for small doses of each of these ingredients -- enough to make only a bucket-full, or a single application for most home gardens.

We adapted this recipe from the excellent book Gardening When It Counts , by Steve Solomon. His recipe is more flexible, and can be adapted to a lot of different situations. We use these ingredients because they were what we could find in the area -- and a notable omission from the list is dolomitic lime, made from ground dolomitic limestone, which we couldn't find by anything smaller than the dumptruck load from a nearby rock quarry. The same for the bone meal -- I'm a vegitarian, and would rather have not used the bone meal, but we needed a source of potassium for the recipe, and wouldn't have had a place for 800 pounds of rock phosphate here on the farm. At least, no place that wouldn't have been more of an ecological nightmare than using a commercial petro-fertilizer.

You may want to use a dust mask, especially while mixing this. Gypsum and lime are the primary ingredients in concrete, and if you breathe enough of it in, it will end up accreting in your lungs.

I'll start by draping myself in the flag:

Cops are OK sometimes. I've seen both sides of the coin. Being a living teenager in a place where there were too many cops with too little do, I've been needlessly harassed by the police when I wasn't doing anything wrong. I've also been the same teenager who lived through a bad-at-times divorce who was pretty happy that the police were there when they were keeping me and my family secure. This being said, I can't say that I could really be happier about Obama's new choice as drug czar (or, if you will, "tsar"), Gil Kerlikowske. Dear Mr. Kerlikowski: If you ever come across this post, please know that I really mean what I'm saying here, and that I'm really writing it for you. Sir (and that doesn't come easily), I think that your record is nothing less than humane, and has earned my respect. I've grown up thinking that cops are largely superfluous, and a drain on society; that the war on drugs has been a cancer, and prevents normal healthy people from living lives free from tyranny (in this country and others); that marijuana is, all told, better for you than a lot of bad shit out there, alcohol included; that the ideals that America holds the dearest support all of these ideas. I also know that any given police department, bound by oath or law, is still just a bunch of guys, and is given to any of the various human shortcomings that any of us are, not least of which includes following laws when we feel like it, rather than when a democracy demands it. The fact that you've had the courage to lead a police department through a popular (and sane) change in drug enforcement law -- one that puts the lives of good people before ideology, and even the public pocketbook that bankrolls enforcement over an unreasonable demand to keep the weirdos in line -- renews my faith in America. I hope that you'll have the chance to be part of a new era in American life. Thank you.

Those pesky horses broke through a weak spot in the pasture fence and then broke through another weak spot in the orchard fence. The result: fresh mounds of poop on the East side of the orchard. Very few trees were harmed, and we refrained from harming horses, too. Argh. Two fences to repair A.S.A.P.

Some deer damage, too, but not nearly as bad as it could be.

So, today, while I wasn't working I was reading a few things about the economy, and how decisions are being made: somehow the politicians are mostly optimists these days, and the population are pessimists. I'm trying to decide which one I am, deep down.

Today marks the first day when I actually thought that Barbara Boxer had made a bad decision -- apparently she amended the stimulus bill with some $50B in highway spending, which I personally think we have plenty of already, thankyouvermuch. Meanwhile, the NYTimes is running a good retrospective on how Japan overcame similar difficulties during the '80s and '90s. The bottom line: don't spend so much on roads and bridges, spend more on health care, education, and other jobs that will stick around after the economy rights itself. Squirrled away in there was also praise for the new green energy initiatives of the Obama presidency (here's a hint: wind energy is going to be better for more people, will fix more problems, and will generate more sustained manufacturing jobs than paving entire states.) So, though I liked Barbara Boxer's early work (the "fuck off Mr. Bush" years), I'm not so into her since she went commersh.

Still, Democrats come out as the pessemists in this week's wrnagle over public works spending. Republicans are actually trying to cut spending, thinking that the same old neo-classical/post-Keynesian mantra of "lower taxes" will get us out of this one at least as well as it got us in. "Let them eat cake" was pretty dumb too, guys.

Meanwhile, in another bastion of liberal heartthrob, the New Yorker, they're running an article about how well Yankee pessimists are doing these days. Though I got a kick out of this (especially over the Alaskan lady with a bear-claw necklace), the irony that that it was all soaked in wasn't astringent enough to outweigh my feeling of just how much the sky is falling. Shit, people -- we've got to start rethinking how our economy runs, because running it the old way made it catch fire!

So, am I a pessimist or an optimist? I think that, in the end, our best inheritance from the Kennedy era may be expensive boondoggle R&D projects -- NASA, science investment, etc. -- that we won't start to see the benefits of until decades down the road, and the pill. If we're going to be able to make it out from under the debt that we're about to incur, and then the doldrums that will come once the dividends of that spending crest and ebb, we're going to need to be smarter about where we live, how we grow our food, how robustly we've planned our economic activity.

I think, deep down, what really excites me is the new clean slate for planning all of this stuff. We can't rely on the tried and true establishment in economics, finance, government, or infrastructure any more, so what can we come up with to full the gap that won't suffer from the same short-comings? I'm an optimist, I guess, in that I see opportunity for new growth when things go wrong. And I think, all told, we can make it out from under this, but it's going to be tough, and we can't let our pride and beliefs get in the way.

And, hey, maybe if we end up in a World Made by Hand, we'll all be able to buy pot without fear of the law.

I have two tests this week and one quiz. That blows. I have to get Cs to pass and keep my financial aid, that rules. I have to ace everything, no room for failure, to be admitted into the accelerated program at a local private college. That's a great deal of pressure.

But I got my first quiz back in medical terminology and through some extremely screwy math and grade inflation I got, (drum roll, please) a 103. And a perfect score on an open book take home test in Developmental Psychology. I know, I know, life is hard for me (open book take home test?), but if anyone has ever taken all those memorization-heavy horrible sciences (you know who you are: chemistry, biology), you'll understand my pain in medical terminology and anatomy and physiology. I really feel for the women (men are pretty scarce in my environ) who have three kids and jobs and things. Rote memorization sucks your life away and dulls your senses.

For all that, school's going pretty well. And it may not look it, but this post is actually a celebration of my quiz score. 103, woo!

And, if you're looking to avoid studying, yet still feel like you're doing something that's sort of relevant to your field (read: my field) then check out these excellent home birth stories and let me know if you found them as fascinating as I did. OR these techniques for changing fetal position for optimal birthiness (That's a technical term that means the essence of birth. Excuse me a little medical terminology humor a la shitose: the suffix -ose meaning full of and the word root shit meaning shit. No shit, it's in my notes, alas it did not make the flash card cut).

Last night we worked for over two hours (my parent's longer) to get our 33-year old horse back on his feet. He had fallen some time before evening barn chores, when my dad found him in the field. His front legs worked fine, but he simply could not hoist himself up on his back legs. After several tries, the vet injected him with steroids and we gave it another go. We dragged him onto a sheet of plywood hitched to the tractor and dragged him onto flatter ground in the concrete paddock off the barn. With one lead rope knotted in his tail, the other attached to his halter, and two strong people pushing from behind we again tried to right him. To no avail. He wasn't responding to pricks in his hind legs, whether from the cold or from a clot or from some unexplained paralysis. He was still responding to scratches in all the usual itchy spots: his forehead, under his chin, around the halter. And, as was his wont, he still kept up a healthy flatulent beat. After considering a block and tackle, but not having a close enough beam, we decided to put him down. He was shivering, he couldn't get up. The vet went to get the lethal dose of barbiturates and returned. It was then that Nijmi decided to launch his last heroic effort. (Bill stood by holding the enormous syringes while the rest of us pulled and yelled.) He really wanted to live, and we really wanted him to. But he just couldn't get his hind legs under him. The vet started a direct line into (what vein?) some vein in his neck, and gave him two injections. I don't think he died peacefully, he was maybe angry, or afraid, or affronted that we had given up on him. He's out in the paddock now, covered with a tarp. We're going to bury him tomorrow. It's perhaps the worst thing to see a horse rendered helpless. He, even in his old age, was so enormous, so powerful, but not enough to get up. We just wanted him to get up, make it into the barn, shelter, warmth. Nijmi died much better than our last horse, but in much the same way. It is the most helpless feeling to watch them struggle so to regain their footing. A horse that cannot stand is a horse that cannot live. It's exhausting to watch him struggle and struggle to stand. The drugs have this odd spasmodic effect. Occasionally he breathed, his nostrils would flare, and his legs would kick, for at least ten minutes after he was gone. The first time, I actually thought he had survived, that he would come back from it all. But it was a postmortem drug-induced reflex. I am tired of all this winter death. After the bleak winters of the past several years, I am starting to understand people who are grateful when they and their friends survive it.

One of the best things I think ever came out of the internet is the web comic Leisuretown.

I remember reading this 10 years ago, excitedly checking the site every month or so for new content, watching each strip peel down my screen for a half-hour over a pitiful 28k modem. I would laugh hard -- painfully hard sometimes -- at these strips. They were fresh and funny, very offensive, and managed to hit my 17-year-old (at the time) mark like few things have before or since.

In particular I remember spending hours reading these one winter in the basement of my grandparent's house, where years earlier I had read the same Richard Scarry Busytown books that the strip is named for. During dinner that night, I was still boiling over with laughter, but wasn't able to tell anyone about the 90-page treatise on e-commerce that I had read earlier. Though that particular strip is about as cynical as it gets, even then it was as realistic a description of the tech world of the '90s as I've ever read, and the FART phenomenon he describes is not only shockingly honest, it's prescient.

The strip ended 3 years ago with a final glut of content, but it's still certainly worth a read for anyone who isn't familiar.

As we here on the farm recover from a late-2008 server crash, and a New-Year's-Eve overconsumption, we'd like to say "Happy New Year" to any and all who read this blog. As I've said before here, this (as well as most every other blog) is mostly a glorified holiday newsletter. As such, readers (you) probably have a more intimate view into our lives here on the farm than most people. Thanks for reading this blog. Here's to looking forward to a new year, another crop of apples and garden veggies, and the Obama Presidency.