Netzingers -- Explicit coquina que est optima medicina.

Super simple instant cornbread:

Ingredients:

2 cups self-rising cornmeal (I used White Lilly Brand)

2 cups vegetable stock

1 teaspoon ground psyllium husk

1/8 teaspoon olive oil

Method:

Cream the psyllium with the stock and olive oil with an immersion blender.  Fold in the corn meal, stir only enough to form a coarse batter.  Remove the paddle from a bread machine.  Grease bread machine pan with canola spray oil and pour in the batter.  Set tobake only mode and set time to 45 minutes.  This gave a nice flaky top with a lightly browned bottom using our Panasonic SD-YD250.

I came home today frustrated from a hard day at work and decided to clear out the hickory tree behind the house.  After all, I figured, there was still plenty of light left, and I had thoroughly mapped out the cut.  This was to be the "practice tree" to prepare for taking out the bigger broken trees in front of the house.

 The cabling went fine, and the wedge cut - where I had gotten stuck on previous jobs- was really clean.  I was able to lean the tree over nicely with the winch and we were fairly confident that it would fall away from the house.

 Then I made the mistake of angling the toppling cut.  When the tree started to go, it skidded on the stump and fell down on the opposite side of the stump from me.  Thankfully, the tree did not come down straight at me, but it did pivot and fall toward me.  Diana started yelling and I looked up and saw it coming and ran, but it came down fast - close enough for the branches to sweep me off my feet and send me tumbling. 

I bounced up and immediately started yelling "I'm all right, I'm all right," and Diana was next to me, trembling with tears.  Amazingly, all I came away with was a couple of scratches on my forehead from the hardhat headband, a twig stuck behind my ear like a carpenter carrying a pencil, and a mystery tear in my pants.  

The chainsaw bar guide was crunched, but the engine was running, so I picked it up and switched it off.  These darn hickory trees have a habit of crunching up the bars.  Even the small tree was far heavier and far harder than I had realized.  

I felt nothing until I was getting ready to go back into the house.  The day's work was done.  I summed up the experience in three words: "Thank You Jesus."  

A lesson was learned.  I would never again pick up a chainsaw in anger.

Amazingly, someone is surprised by the fact that when you let animals roam around out, they tend to pick up diseases.  This may come as a shock to a history professor, but anyone who lives in a rural region can tell you that animal farms are hotbeds of micro-organisms.  Free-range animals let out to roam on the very farm where they are produced, next to the feed sheds, ponds, and sewage lagoons that are essential parts of any modern operation.

Furthermore, the idea that free-range meat production is made lucridous by the simple fact that the animal may have a different fence to look at for some part of the day, if at all.  Adding the stress of being herded back and forth to confinement with the increased risk of disease makes free range the more cruel option.

We'vr been banging away day and night to get our perennial crops planted before the spring rains stop.  Yesterday, I dug homes for a Chojuro Asian pear tree and three Nanking cherry bushes.

The overall quality of plants from Stark, Shumway, Vernon Barnes, and Gardens Alive.  Vendors I wouldn't buy from again are Walnut Ridge and Burgess (aka DirectGardening.com).  The plants from Stark have been exceptionally healthy and vigorous.  Also, the blueberries from Wayside are blooming on their first spring in the ground.  The jury is still out on Summerstone.

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch for Sunday and Monday night.  Let's all hope it's not the same thing that happened two years ago, when a late season frost devastated fruit crops and trimmed farmer's incomes.  God knows that's the last thing hungry rural folks need in these hard times.

 So get out that plastic sheeting and feed sacks and start covering those tender shoots.  If you have any tender plants such as squash or tomato outside, drag them back indoors if your can.  Frost protection methods are discussed in this article.

There is nothing like the sound of rain falling after you have planted 60 feet of millet.  I love the softness of the Ozark spring, that rises up out of the damp ground to meet the warming rays of the sunrise, turning into sheets of rain and curtains of fog in the coolest times of the night.

The redbud are blooming and the little green leaves are up and out all over.  Daylillies are going strong and the leaves are poking out of our new pear trees out on the front lawn.

 There are still thousands of cubic yards of debris piled up around Salem from the ice storm.  Lots of folks are grumbling about the surcharges on their electric bills, but I for one think the NAEC workers are nothing short of heroic.  It all seems so long ago, when the historic storm plunged us back into the cold and darkness, yet the sun shines in new places and the woodpeckers are ecstatic in their newfound bounties.

Yesterday we planted five persimmon trees behind our house.  The new row of trees neatly finished up where the two native persimmons stand.  We did that in between the downpour and the sleeting rain.  Today,  we planted two dewerry in between a couple of shrubs out front.  The dewberries, and persimmons, and a few more items, came from Vernon Barnes (931-668-8576).  Barnes is a family-run business with great customer service and wonderful plants.

We also planted common sage (one out by the drive, one near the garage) and Egyptian multiplying onions  out back in the hazelnut bed.  These were in the garage window and put on a lot of healthy roots over the winter.

Out in the south plot, over by our side street, I planted two rows of Proso millet (R. H. Shumway's). I am eager about getting some grains in the ground, especially drought-tolerant ones like millet, sorghum, and millet.  If the folks in Mali can live on millet, it is worth a shot here in Arkansas. We had mulched the back plot for overwintering, and it really helped in getting the ground ready for cultivation and planting.  Underneath the pine needles and thatch, the ground was moist and rich, with the remaining weeds too weak to seriously hang onto their roots.  I had only reckoned on getting one row done, but it was easy enough to do two.

These helpful tips arrived in my email this morning from Wayside Gardens.  These were too good not to pass along in these days of global warming and Victory Gardens.