This has been an amazing growing season for peas. They love cool, wet weather in the summer and will keep producing until the weather gets above 80 for a few days.

I have frozen over 45 cups of peas. Unfortunately, I do not yet have a full-sized freezer, so I can't freeze any more. We are eating and giving away as many peas as we can! We have been eating them fresh from the garden nearly every day for over a month. I just might turn green.

Here is the story of my largest pea harvest in a day.




It took about an hour to harvest these peas.




Here I am shelling the peas. This took about two hours.




Here is the result after I shelled them. (The bin in the back is the empty pea pods.)




Then I boiled them for about two minutes per batch. I guess this took about 45 minutes, as I had to rinse them in cold water afterwords.




I dried the peas before bagging them. This is so they don't stick together. ( I have since bought a salad spinner for this purpose.)




End result: around 20 cups of peas this evening!


I do not understand how Tops can charge only $1 for a pound of shelled frozen peas. This is a lot of work! Don't get me wrong, though, I am happy to have enough home-grown peas to eat all winter long.

I realize I haven't posted for a long time, but I figure now is as good a time as ever.

So many updates. The nursing school thing sucked. So I ended up quitting school, even though I had good grades and was more than halfway through. The life in the city, not for me. I found a good man, got married last October and we started an organic farm in Holland, NY this year.

I really, really like this lifestyle. I like working outside. I love watching my vegetables grow. I love Mark and I love being married. It wasn't something I dreamed about or really planned on, but it's way better than I would have thought.

We live in the barn on Mark's family's land. I like almost everything about living in a barn, except that we don't have a bathroom. I hate getting splashed when I use the outhouse, and I miss taking showers so much more than I ever thought I would; sponge baths just do not compare.

We just started to sell our produce at the Holland farmer's market, two weeks ago. So far we have sold radishes (they sell like crazy!), escarole, kale, collards, swiss chard, and arugula. This week, we've got tons of peas, so it's going to be our first big week.

I hope all my friends out there are doing great! I haven't looked at the sight for years I think. I was just inspired because Mark ordered a digital camera last night. And I thought, hey, I should get back in to blogging because then I'll at least have a use for the camera!

no jacket today.

everyone's in a good mood.

it's friday. it's sunnny. it's warm. there is an abundance of smiles going around in buffalo this afternoon. enjoy!

i'm outisde on the porch drinking a beer with (e:bridgette), and a couple other friends, next door to pano's if you happen to be in the neighborhood...

this feels so good.

my lack of a jacket gives me so much extra ability to MOVE. i have so much energy. i'm loving spring. i feel like a plant getting energy from the sun.

goin' back outside to get some more...

love!

i had a seriously bad day. so many things went wrong, and i was having a hard time getting out of feeling bad.

so i decided to make a list of ten things that were good about today. and they had to be today specific (like, i couldn't say that i am healthy, because i am healthy every day.) it actually took me a while to come up with the list, but i stuck with it. and i do feel much better now.

here it is:

1. we got a whisk broom. we haven't had one for about a week. me without a whisk broom is like (e:paul) without a computer.

2. carlos, the UPS guy, who is one of the few people in buffalo who know my last name (peace) drove by when i was waiting for the bus, gave me the peace sign and shouted out PEACE!

3. i had this intuition that i would see someone i know while on mass transit today, and i did end up seeing two people i know. (actually three, if you count carlos, but i don't really know him...)

4. i had people to talk to. i talked to my nursing friend matt while in class and had conversations with three of my roommates when i got home.

5. i read the article in buffalo rising about our coop. i thought it was a nice article, and i was impressed with the quality of the articles in the magazine in general. (i don't know how to add a link, but if i did, i would add one here of that article.)

6. i learned something i have wondered about often. ever since i saw trainspotting, i wondered about the fascination with heroin. i saw people in the movie shoot up and immediately lie down. it didn't look that fun, but i always wondered why they lie down like that. it turns out (as i learned in pharmacology today) that it's because heroin makes your blood pressure drop a ton if you're standing, so you're likely to pass out. (your blood pressure doesn't change nearly as much if you're lying down.)

7. i chose to walk to the subway instead of taking the bus this afternoon, and i enjoyed the walk.

8. there was an absolutely amazing sunset this evening. there were clouds low in the sky and due to the sun tinting on the ub shuttle, it literally looked like those clouds were an ocean. i have never seen anything like that before. words can't suffice.

9. the weather was much warmer today.

10. i got my jeans back. i know i don't get excited about possessions, BUT for the past two months, i have only had two pairs of pants i can wear. now i have three. that is much better. (to avoid having my double x chromosomes taken away by admitting that i only have two pairs of pants, i want to say that i have many more pairs of leggings and pants that go underneath the two pairs of pants i have been wearing.)

i want to record this because i think it is the most positive i will ever feel about my pharmacology class.

i just took my second exam this evening. i got an 86, which is a b. i got 80% on first exam, which is a b-, which literally meant that i was failing out of school because i need to get at least a b in every one of the classes i'm taking this semester in order to start nursing school in may.

right now, i have an 87.04% in the class (i got full credit on each of the five quizzes i took), and a b+ is an 87% (and a b is only 81%). so i'm excited that right now i have this buffer that allows me to relax a little bit.

in fact, this is the last "real" exam i have before spring break. i have a statistics exam next tuesday, but i'm really good at math, so i don't even think of statistics as a class, it's more like fun and using a part of my brain i don't often get to use anymore.

and i'm actually excited about the next class we have in my pharmacology class. we're going to study drug abuse. i already read this chapter in the book, because i have a personal interest in this topic... most of what we've learned in pharmacology i don't care for. i would enjoy an "Herbs 302" class, or (as i realized the first day i took this class), i would very much enjoy a "THC 302" class.

for now, all is good in the school department.
happy-relax.

road trip

march 14-19

destination: warmth, relaxation, happiness

i'm so excited!

i fucking hate UB. [/

if anyone is thinking about going to school there, i would strongly advise you to go somewhere else instead. it is the worst school. every single class i'm taking there has over 200 students and no teachers who care about the classes.

and it isn't that cheap either. they stick you with about a million dollars of fees and other hidden costs--way more than any other school i've seen.

plus since it's so big, NO ONE takes any personal responsiblity for anything. i've never met such unhelpful people as those in the student response center (where you go to pay your bills.)

hmm. i just walked outside and they are killing a large tree three houses down from where i live. it wasn't even destroyed in the october storm.

when i was watching this, i called the weatherman and he used the word tranquil to describe the day. he said tranquil more than once.

i don't understand all this destruction in buffalo. first i lived next door to the atwater house (next to panos) and they tore that building down. now it's just a blocked off ugly gravel area. then this poor tree, who just stays there peacefully all the time and gives us oxygen and beauty and stability.

i guess we just need to accept what is and love it all...

literally, i was just appreciating oxygen this morning. my roommate and i had been discussing the high percentage of oxygen that we get from the plankton in the ocean, so i drew a cartoon of someone swimming appreciating all of that.

we have a lot of construction material trash that we need to take away from our house. does anyone know where we can drop that off? and when (what days, hours) we could do so?

thanks!

yes, i've decided that i must skip class tonight.

1. i've already started to paint my face.

2. i'm about 80% finished with the boone's farms (ah, the memories...) that i recently bought.

3. it's MARDI GRAS!!! i went to college in new orleans, it's supposed to be a holiday!


top mardi gras memories:

1995: mardi gras morning. woke up around 9:30, ellen chapman was visiting me. we started drinking around 9:45 and by 10:15, i was wasted. we were eating my roommate's roses and doing shots of whatever we had, which probably included jack daniels, taaka vodka (mixes easy, just add people!) and i seem to remember some of that minty stuff, oh, bailey's. my mom or dad (yes, i was too drunk to remember which one) called at 10:30. i was so drunk i couldn't talk, except that i do remember explaining that it was mardi gras. which probably doesn't really help calm a parent's mind, especially because they had never experienced it.

1994: getting really, really, really drunk in the bar across the street from campus (that i used to always get drunk in). all i remember was twirling around with some guy when the song "come on eileen" was playing. i also kissed some guy who had really bad breath for some beads.
the worst thing i did was mistake my friend greg for my friend kiki. greg is a blonde jewish guy with long hair. kiki is a short black girl. my drunk goggles only told me "friend" and i coudn't tell who was who.

ahh.

gotta finish this boones.