Today is Saturday, December 1. Since Wednesday we have accumulated 3.91 inches of rain and the system arriving here later this evening may add an equal amount before it leaves. Nice to see this at this time of the year. The trees and vines need it now.
I’ve got a warm fire going and going to share pictures of the gardens and farming activities.
We get all kinds of weather. This first picture was taken on March 17th, 2012.

Just three days later it had turned warm and Riley came for a visit. She helped plant seeds in the greenhouse, check the compost temperatures, check out the worm-bin, and also the new top bar hive I had just gotten.

On March 29, the sun was in the watery element of pisces and the descending moon in front of the earth element of taurus. It seemed the absolute perfect day to apply the Biodynamic preparation 500 as a chance of a very light rain shower was predicted in the late evening. I have been applying it to the soils here at Abbondanza since 2007. In this next photo a WWOOF helper from Croatia learns while assisting in the hour long stirring.
April 3rd. Garlic beginning to shoot up.April 8,
Betty at work pruning in her Blue Faerie Way vineyard.

This next group of images were taken on April 9th. The first give a glimpse of the 199 one gallon pots each with a one month old tomato plant. Back on March 7th I had planted 200 seeds comprising 16 different types ( Aside from Turtle Island http://www.turtletreeseed.org/aboutus.html my two main seed choices are Peaceful Valley http://www.groworganic.com/ and increasingly becoming my favorite Baker Creek http://rareseeds.com/ Their recent catalog is a must!)
This next image was nettles that had a fantastic germination rate and were waiting to be transplanted. We use nettles for teas for us and our plants. The tomatoes love nettle tea sprayed as a folier. A book I recommend is Grasp the Nettle, making Biodynamic farming & gardening work. by Peter Proctor with Gillian Cole.