Category Archives: home grown produce

Life, huh?

Yesterday was quite a day around here.

Bike ride in to town early in the morning – nice, cool weather. Coffee, catch up on the 2.5 pages of local news in the Merc. Ride back home to shoot film (er, pixels) of ‘Liv harvesting tomatoes… we’ll get those up soon. Joanne and ‘Liv carving, burning and adding color to Chloe’s (‘Liv’s sister) birthday present – nicely researched, selected and applied to wood by ‘Liv and Joanne. I headed off to lunch with a friend / former co-worker that I met 14 years ago next month; he’s 39 now (he was such a gnarly puppy when we met), married with two children, busy career… sorting through life’s challenges and priorities, as we all do.

And so it was with great fear and trepidation that we took Delilah to meet her oncologist @ 1:45 yesterday afternoon. Wonderful place, all bright’n’shiny, very professional in appearance and operation… it was as professional and nice as a facility for humans – perhaps more.

Initial exam of Dee by a vet’s assistant, followed by our 1st meeting with the Vet. We found her oncologist to be warm, friendly and open. We confirmed Dee’s medical history (she had read her files from Kirkwood Animal Hospital and spoken with Dr. Ueno) and she gave us the basics on Dee’s situation: The biopsy revealed Dee’s cancer to be a slow-growth variety – if it hadn’t already spread to another place and they were able to remove the cancerous area, Dee would have a 90% chance of complete recovery / no further cancer. To determine the extent of her situation, Dee needed to have a chest xray… so, off they went.

Dee was returned to us in 5 minutes. Great news! Treatment options for the existing cancer are radiation and surgery, but with the location of Dee’s cancer, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to get all of the cancer with surgery and radiation is 16 days of daily visits and a pretty miserable recovery.

Or amputation of the leg.

The doc tells us that cats do remarkably well with 3 legs; we’re encouraged by this and through our relationship with Claire (Mike and Mimi’s pack member), we know 3 legs are better than no legs… and no pack member. We ask about the recovery period – how painful, how long? Dee stays in the hospital 1-2 days after surgery so they can monitor her pain around-the-clock and from there, she’ll need to adjust and find her way. How soon should we have it done? The next couple of weeks or seriously risk spreading of the cancer.

So there we are. We’ll make arrangements early in the week and begin the process of everyone moving forward.

Challenges and priorities, we’ve all got ’em and have to deal with them, yeah?

As always, thanks for visiting, be well and don’t forget to write when you get work 🙂

hal
btw – no small btw, either – we say thanks to each of you for your heartfelt inquiries and good wishes for Dee, they are much appreciated.

Are you a Campbell Farmer.com?

At about the same period of time we’ve gotten deeper in to home canning (50+ cases of jams / jellies / liqueurs), there has been an increasing awareness of the benefits of consumers growing / eating locally grown foods. Lots of “green” reasons (carbon footprint, likely more environmentally friendly), “tomatoes taste like the tomatoes we ate as kids”, and last, when done properly under good conditions, it seems to be more cost-effective.

As we were dealing with getting rid of our excess fruit production a few years ago we began exchanging more of our goodies with friends and neighbors. While they didn’t have any fruit we needed (we have a pretty good variety), we did like getting some of their excess vegetable production. We got beans, squash, a few tomatoes and this year, our first lettuce from Laurel.

When my eyes began to widen a bit more on the subject (homegrown veggies / fruit), I wondered out loud if there wasn’t some form of neighborhood / community exchange for the stuff we were all growing. (We’ve attended the Campbell Farmer’s Market since ’92 or ’93… don’t remember when it began – it was on Thursdays back then, iirc.) The idea won’t leave my head, so a couple of days ago, I registered the domain CampbellFarmer.com with the intent of establishing an exchange / board for local folks to get in touch and share with one another, completely non-commercial. My plans / schedule aren’t fully formed yet, so I’ll let you know when I have some things rolling along.

Thanks for visiting, be well and write when you get work.
hal