day 3058: school assembly and stone soup!

day 3058: school assembly and stone soup!

friday school assembly is one of the many neat things about odin’s school. first thing in the morning, the kids all gather together in the gym and each grade take a turns performing a little play or song they’ve learned in front of the other grades and many parents who are able to attend.

it’s a simple and clever way to get the kids to gain confidence in performing in front of a crowd which is a skill that will serve them well over the years.

on this particular day, odin’s teacher was also happy to announce they harvested 835 potatoes from their school plot. they gave the big ones to Jim The Cook and made themselves stone soup from the rest.

They believe this is Completely Normal and The Way It Is Everywhere.

still running! and a milestone after 62 weeks.

i ran 8 miles today and 44 for the week which is an all time weekly high after 62 weeks of running ( and i’ve covered 1,782 miles since starting up again )! at some point i suppose i can probably relax a bit and lose the now very irrational fear that if i miss a day or two i’ll fall off the running wagon and it’ll take me another seven years to get back on again.

today’s runner’s high enjoyed that much more while listening to nusrat fateh ali khan & eddie vedder – face of love.

day 3052: preparing seed garlic for a slightly smaller, small mountain of garlic.

day 3052: preparing seed garlic for a slightly smaller, small mountain of garlic. I.

regular readers might recall we’ve been planting and harvesting a small mountain of garlic for several years now. we usually plant around 200 cloves around this time of year in our lovely cropp crop.

it turns out that 200 head of garlic is, well, way too much for a family of three even after you factor in giving away loads of it to friends and family and what we need for seed every year. so this year, we’re scaling back and “only” planting 80 cloves in our home garden.

as always, odin is a super helper and thoroughly getting his hands dirty preparing the garlic and planting the seed.

day 3052: preparing seed garlic for a slightly smaller, small mountain of garlic. II.

experts will tell you the middle of november is way too late to plant garlic, but we’ve never had any problems because we always seem to get lucky with an unseasonably warm streak of weather. this year was no exception, right when we thought we might be too late, we got a nice warm streak of weather with predictions of gentle rain.

perfect ( excepting for what the trend might portend in terms of global warming )!

we haven’t got any breeeaaaad!

we haven't got any breeeaaaad!

some folks from organic valley went to the east coast after hurricane sandy and took a bunch of cheese and all the bread from the cafe on their way out town to make hundreds of grilled cheese sandwiches. of course, temporarily not having any bread was a very small sacrifice ( and all the more so for me since i try to lead a pretty much mostly gluten free lifestyle ).

every time i passed the sign in the cafe, i couldn’t help but hear neil from “the young ones” exclaim “we haven’t got anyyyy breaaaaad”. weird how your brain works. it’s been nearly 25 years since i first saw the episode and i still imitate neil if i’m out of cash ( or bread ) and almost nobody gets the reference.