On the plus side, we did make a conscious decision last week NOT to plant our first tomatoes last Tuesday.  The asparagus will grow back in a week, but those tender young tomato plants would not have.  While we hope to plant them out as early as possible — so we can start harvesting earlier — we are trying to resist being fooled by the springlike days until it seems like the threat of serious frost is behind us.  We are shooting for March 21 as the plant out date, which would still be three days earlier than last year.  But on sunny, warm afternoons like today, it can be hard to fight the planting urge...
 
 

LULU IS EVERYWHERE Visitors to Terra Firma are familiar with Lulu, the wrench-chewing bulldog whose mug graces our homepage.  You may not remember her, but your kids probably do.  Lulu’s fame for her crazy habits is beginning to take on a life of its own — she’s developing a fan club and she doesn’t even know it. In our loan renewal meeting yesterday, our bank manager pulled out a picture her husband had taken of Lulu in the back of my truck, holding her trademark wrench.  The first thing she said was “You can look at it, but you can’t have it”.  I assured her that we had plenty of pictures of Lulu’s strange obsessions. I often take Lulu with me on errands, but when I go to slightly more urban areas, I worry that we are going to cause an accident.  All around me, people are honking and pointing, laughing at the bulldog with the wrench in her mouth.  When I arrive at some of my regular destinations (the autoparts store, the steel dealer), no one even says “Hi” to me.  They rush past me to “ooh” and “ah” over Lulu.  If I’m in a hurry, I have to leave her at home, because it always takes twice as long to do the shopping otherwise. It’s not just the wrench.  Lulu has a profound hatred of white plastic buckets, which she knocks down (full or empty) and pushes into walls, barking angrily the whole time.  She also has an innate desire to boss around aluminum irrigation pipes (30 ft. long!), lifting them at one end with her strong neck and throwing them a few feet, then running to the other end and repeating.  In five minutes, she can move a pipe twenty feet.   These two tendencies combined make her an absolute hazard when I am planting.  See, I keep all my seeds in white plastic buckets.  And as I plant the fields, I have to move the pipes out of the way.  Between her knocking over buckets of seed and pushing pipes back into places I have just moved them out of, Lulu makes it impossible to get any planting done.  So I leave her in my truck with her wrench to sulk, since it’s so obvious that I am “playing” with “her toys” and not letting her participate. After a particularly energetic fight with a bucket or pipe, Lulu will head to the nearest mud puddle (conveniently located all around the farm) and literally dive into it.  When her entire belly and legs are covered with mud, she dunks her head — without closing her eyes.  Then she raises her head up and angrily tries to shake the mud out of her eyes.  But the pipe distracts her again, and she tears off to fight anew, a raging mudball.  It was this behavior that earned her the nickname “Monster”.

Those who know her watch their picnic food carefully.  In the background, the forgotten sister dog, Magic,  who considers herself the "real" farm dog ~Valerie

 The CSA packing crew doesn’t always appreciate Lulu, either.  She seems to think that hand trucks and pallet jacks are evil attackers that she must protect us from.  

In particular, she tries to bite their wheels — while they are moving.  around or sort tomatoes.  And the metal legs that we rest our tomato sorting tables upon are just small versions of the irrigation pipes.  She drags them around with her mouth, and can easily knock over a table full of produce.  It’s funny… unless you’re really busy trying to move pallets. Lulu doesn’t know it, but it’s a good thing for her she’s the boss’ dog...

IN YOUR BOXES
 The teenage lettuce in your boxes today is a nice surprise for us, and we hope for you, too.  It has grown back from a field that we mowed in early January.  This is the same lettuce we would put in your salad mix, but we have no other salad greens to mix it with.  It’s been a while since we’ve put straight lettuce in the box, so we figured it would be a welcome addition.  Our new salad mix is still a few weeks away, and in the meantime, these baby heads should provide a colorful, tasty base for your favorite salad dressing.

 If you are getting tired of broccoli and cauliflower, fear not.  The cauliflower is almost finished (I will personally miss it) and there is just one small planting of broccoli remaining.  All in all, I find these vegetables to be among the most versatile and nutritious around, and they always amaze me with their ability to thrive during the wintertime under conditions that other vegetables simply can’t handle — rain, frost, heat waves, etc.

 The Terra Firma carrot patch is empty (prematurely), so we have hooked up with our friends at Riverdog who have a rather large late winter planting.  These should be just about the sweetest carrots of the year, and we hope you enjoy them. 

 My sources in the bookkeeping department have advised me that some subscribers may have forgotten that February only had 28 days, and thus still haven’t mailed their March payments.  We would definitely appreciate getting those checks as soon as possible. 
 That’s all for now, 

Thanks,            Pablito