Out like a lion??

What a week this has been for weather. This past Tuesday it was 70 degrees here in Lincoln. I had the windows open and if just felt nice.


Then, yesterday was the Lake Fork Auction, and I swear those people are bound for bad weather. I've never seen that auction arrive on a day where that it was fit for man or beast.


Yesterday the temp at noon was bouncing between 38 and 40 degrees and it was pouring down rain.


Not that bad weather stops auction goers though, in the little town with a population of only about 100, there was nearly 2000 yes, two thousand people at this auction. They come from not only all over the state, but all over the United States, every year just to bid and buy.


Here's is an example of what the day was like;



Now then, it may be hard to believe, but that was the best of the day. When I turned in at 11 last night it was pouring down rain still, but when Rich got up at 2 and left for work at 4, there was almost a half a foot of snow on the ground!!

See what I mean:

Our neighbor Bob, apparently anxious for summer and days on the lake brought his boat out of storage this week. Bet he wishes now he'd left it there a bit longer.

However, the odds of March going out like a lion are still questionable. Forecast for Tuesday is back into the 70's. Of course I guess we could get a tornado. That would just about wrap it up for a most bizarre week of weather!!

A new use for the turkey baster -- feeding tomatoes

The first picture I'm showing you today serves as a reminder of what the tomato plants looked like on the 14th of March. I took this picture then, and blogged it the following day.

And the picture below, I took today.



Once the tomatoes are transplanted into the larger containers, their little roots spread out and start to grow beneath the soil. At the same time, their tops begin to grow and spread out as well.

In only 10 days they have tripled in size.

At this stage, they are getting cooler temps, lots of light and good food. In a modified version of feeding the baby with an eyedropper, these little tots get their feedings from a turkey baster!



Rich uses a granulated fertilizer mixed in warm tap water to feed each plant. The turkey baster works perfectly as he doesn't over water them, and with them being so close to the light right now, it is easier to use as well.

Now you may have noticed that the ones he is feeding don't look quite as big as the second picture. If you did, you are quite right. The second picture was of plants in blue cups, the Goliath variety that he loves so well.

The plants in the red cups are a mix of heirloom varieties.



The heirloom varieties, are smaller still, and less robust. It is one reason Rich doesn't care for these old fashioned tomatoes. The plants require much more care to keep them going, and they do not mature as quickly as the newer generations of plants.

Eventually they will catch up, but for right now, they are the runts in the bunch, inspite of the fact they are getting the very same care and conditions as the blue cup bunch.

wind turbines

This is the first wind farm to come to Logan County. The farm is located north of Lincoln about 10 mile and spreads across Logan and Tazwell counties.

I had to run up to San Jose Friday for an interview, and got to see these monsters first hand for the first time.

They are located on the north and south sides of Illinois Route 136, and to the east of 155.

I was about 8 mile from their actual location when they became visible as I drove north on route 121, which runs along side 155.

After I got done in San Jose, I came back to the farm and drove among these towers, taking pictures, these are just a few of my favorites.

These towers stand about 350 foot tall. The box like structure at the top, to put it in persentvie is about the size of two modular homes stacked on top of one another. I got to see one of those first hand the other day as it passed through Lincoln, it was gigantic.

The blades are so large that they are transported to the construction site in huge sections, as are the towers.

There is a second wind farm going to locate in Logan county, to the west of Lincoln. The towers there will be 500 foot tall, and will generate twice the electricity of the ones shown here.

I can't wait to get and and get some pictures of those!

Tomato Update

As I posted earlier the tomato seeds were planted on the 21st of February. Within three days they started sprouting, but Rich didn't want pictures taken until they were all up, so the last update I included pictures from the 28th of February.

Once the plants are all sprouted, the growing process needs to slow down, otherwise we'll have tall spindle plants. To accomplish this, the warm environment goes away, He keeps the temp in the growing room about 65 degrees, and the lights run 15 hours a day.

So, at the end of week two, there wasn't a whole lot of difference in the plants, except for the leaf development.

Once the plants are sprouted and hardy they need to be transplanted into growing pots.

He started on that yesterday. His original intention was to save the best 200 plants, but he ended up wanting to keep 227, and ran out of pots and mix to do them all, so he'll probably finish those up today.



We run this little operation on a shoestring, so what other people see as furniture, we see as growing opportunities.

The plants, once they are transplanted into growing containers are moved into the second spare bedroom. In this room, that is also the racing room where all our NASCAR stuff is, we have a futon with an overhead bunk bed that I traded my sister for a regular full size bed frame for Robert.

We have laid the futon down, removed the cushion, and stood half of an old ping-pong table over it.

The four foot shop lights are then attached to the underside of the overhead bunk bed.



Back in the Pink bedroom, the tiny plants are being moved into solo cups. Rich uses an old soldering iron that we got in a box of junk at an auction, and pokes holes in the bottom of the cuts for drainage.



The cups are then filled with potting mix, and he burrows a whole down the middle. He will pull the seedling plant out of the grow tray, soil included and set it into the cup. After adding a little more soil, and some water, they will go into the racing room.



This year he is color coding to a certain degree. The blue cups shown here are all Goliath tomatoes. Goliath is his favorite variety. They grow extra large fruits, are disease resistant. These tomatoes are just to put it plainly, pretty. The have consistent shape and color, and develop very few blemishes.



Once transplanted, the plants will grow very quickly. Again they will get several hours a day of artificial light, but the temperatures in the room will be maintained at about 65 degrees.

The plants showing in the pictures above are 100 total, Goliath tomato plants.

The other one hundred plus will be a variety of Heirloom tomatoes. I can't remember all the names as I believe there are six varieties he's using. One is Brandywine, very well known, another is Mortgage Buster, and of course we have the plants from the seeds our friend gave us, that we have no clue what variety they are.

Heirloom tomatoes are harder to grow, they are not disease resistant, so require more care in the garden, and they are not a pretty fruit. While they can produce nice large tomatoes that weigh a pound or more each, they are often mishapen, and will have blemishes.

However, they are what the public wants. We had a gal come to the stand last year, and she wanted UGLY tomatoes. She was talking about the old heirloom varieties that she remembered in her youth that were, well, honestly UGLY.

So, you have to sometimes alter your own taste to meet that of the public. As the summer progresses, I'll show you the differences in the fruits, as it is quite noticeable.

A Lesson Learned the Hard Way

Being a “rookie” reporter, and a freelancer at that there are a couple of things I’ve learned already.

First of all being a writer in a small community such as this one, is not going to make me rich!

As a freelancer, I get paid per article, and as the “City Stringer” I get paid a little extra.

My point though is not that I’m poor, but that one needs to realize if this is a path they intend to follow, they must be doing it for the love of the job, and not the bank account.

I do love the job, and I particularly enjoy the “one on one” interviews I do with folks.

The stories on Wally Kautz, Bill Martin, and Paul Gleason were published as part of the papers weekly series called “Personality of the Week”.

The premise behind the series is that we locate folks in the community who are exceptional for what they have done to serve the public.

Wally Kautz was my first POW, and I fell in love with this sweet little old man in just a matter of seconds. I think that a portion of that came from a reminder of my favorite uncle. Wally is a life long bachelor, like my uncle, he lived on the family farm, like my uncle, and he took care of his ill and aging mother until her passing, like my uncle.

Now actually that is where the similarity stops, but it was enough for me.

I spent 2 hours with Wally, and we talked about everything that had ever happened in his life.

He’s above 70 years old, has seen a lot of things, done a lot of things, and I couldn’t put even half of it in the story.

And even though I did leave out a lot of details about the man, the piece ended up being 1800 words, and resulted in a “friendly” battle of wills between my editor and I.

My editor is a good man, an excellent writer, and has an understanding of what a story should be in order to it make a “good read”.

I knew that I had written the piece with my heart, and after a few emails between my editor and myself, I also knew that what I had written was not what he had expected from me.

Begrudgingly I took the electronic scissors to the piece, and effectively cut the heart out of it, and submitted it back to the editor. I more or less told him I wasn’t happy to do it, but if that was what he wanted, that was what I would give him.

He emailed me back and said that my cuts had taken away from the story, and that he was going to let the publisher decide. He sent her I believe three versions of the piece; the original 1800 words, then 1500 words, and the last one of about a thousand.

In the end, the largest piece was the one that got printed, and when he emailed me about it, he said that while we had broken most of the rules of a good reporter, he was not unhappy that it happened that way.

But I learned a lesson; beware of getting emotionally involved with your subjects. Writing with Heart, and writing with your heart are really two different things.

And, even after having said that, with a tweak of a smile on my face, I sit here and write to you, that I am not sorry the Wally story went the direction it did. He’s a sweet little man, and I feel like he deserved to have his life and memories memorialized.

For the Love of Tomatoes!

Okay, I said that I was going to include in this blog a blow per blow on the tomatoe crop, so here goes segment number one.

While I was busy on the 21st, working on getting this blog started, the hubs was working on a project of his own.

The first step is getting the seed trays ready. He fills the trays with potting mix, then he has to get it all dampened down.

The next step is poking little holes in each seed compartment so that he can place the seeds.


And, yes, he plants those tiny little seeds one at a time. Each tray holds somewhere around 150 seeds, and this year he is doing two trays. One tray is entirely Goliath tomatoes, and the other tray is a mix of varieties he wants to experiment with.

Last fall, a friend of ours from the farmers market brought him a newspaper page with a bunch of seeds in it. He said that he didn't really know what they were, but that they were a variety that his family in Kentucky has grown for years and saved the seeds from, and he is hoping that the Hubs will be able to get him a few plants for his own garden.

Once the seeds are planted, then the hubs goes about the business of setting up a safe, warm place for them to grow. This involves the sacrificing on one guest bedroom in our house.

In what we call the "pink bedroom" he sets up a table that he has custom designed using the legs off of an old end table we discarded a couple years ago. The legs make for a place for him to hang the lights over the seed trays.

The hubs does not use grow lights, like some would tell you to do. He says they really aren't necessary, as all the little seeds need is plenty of light, about 15 hours a day, moisture, and warmth.

For the first few days of the germination process, they will rest in their beds with an electric heater in the room, and the lights shining on them brightly.

And the end result will hopefully be nearly 300 little tomato plants!

So, we'll now fast forward to one week later. I took the pictures below on the 28th of February. The first of the little seedlings started sprouting after only three days, but the hubs wouldn't let me take a picture then because they were not all up, and he prides himself in 100% germination.

And what about those seeds the friend gave us? Well the hubs said he was concerned about whether or not they would germinate, so he planted three to a seed pod, and guess what, they too had complete germination! So, He'll end up pulling out two from each little cubby on those.