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Archive for April 2010

fuel your farm with sunflowers.

a local television station recently came to organic valley/cropp cooperative to get a closer looks at our on-farm sustainability initiative that is testing the use of sunflowers as a source of on-farm fuel. the occasion for the visit was a week long elsbett conversion workshop where three organic valley fleet trucks and three [...]

day 2120: odin earns his first bike.

it all started with a book – “henry and beezus”. in the classic beverly cleary book, which we read the book to odin over the winter, henry huggins has one misadventure after another while attempting to raise money for the bike of his dreams. after finishing the book, odin decided that he [...]

the eric update – day 2119: zen and the art of bicycle maintenance.

in preparation for the snowdeal rummage and bake sale that odin had orgnaized to pay for the remaining portion of a fancy new bike he’s been saving up for, we found we had to change the innertube on one of the tires on his very first bike so we could fetch a premium [...]

on the relative dorkiness of color coding notes

who knows how or when it started, but i’m a color-coder note taker.
blue and black are “primary text” colors and are used relatively interchangeably, switching occasionally to help break up a page. e.g. on a full page of notes a blue to black transition might indicate a switch in topic. green typically [...]

the eric update – day 2114: miniature golf in the dells!

two thousand one hundred and fourteen days.
how is it possible that it’s taken us that long to play a round of miniature golf?
oh well, we had a great time passing some time with 18 holes at the self proclaimed, largest pirate cove in the usa while waiting for odin’s cousin to [...]

the eric update – day 2109: in praise of slow games.

we have slow food, slow money and even a nascent slow media movement.
maybe it’s time for a “slow games” movement!
because there’s really nothing more fun than sitting for an hour with odin making a game of “finger soccer” with a found marble and some goals made from fir twigs.

the eric update – day 2107: odin demonstrates his crafty signage skills

upon returning from a trip to stay with his grandparents in the upper peninsula of michigan, odin coulnd’t wait to show us the wonderfully crafty signs he made with them based on an idea they saw in family fun magazine. pretty nifty! i like them so much i’m wondering if i can get [...]

born from the blood of hyacinth.

according to greek mythology, hyacinth was a divine hero who was killed while throwing discus with apollo.
apollo was so fond of hyacinth that he did not allow hades to take him to the underworld, but instead made the plant hyacinth from his spilled blood.

the eric update – day 2101: odin’s magically mysterious wishing egg.

we asked odin what he was hoping the easter bunny would bring in his easter basket and we said in a hushed tone that the bunny would bring a magical wishing egg.
we hadn’t heard of the wishing egg tradition, but odin was adament that sometimes the easter bunny leaves a very special [...]