I passed my PCQI final exam – did I tell you?
So now I am the Qualified Individual in charge of Preventative Controls at The Mill.
So much for only a little part time job!
Still, I can leave my paid work around about 2-3pm which means I can get a good four hours farming done before I hang it up for the night.
The Swamp Field is being tilled once more before planting the cover crop.
Yesterday afternoon I turned the hay. It was hot and windy all day yesterday so there is a good chance we can bring it in this afternoon. This is good alfalfa hay so it would be great to get an high protein cut in.
I told John he should start baling the ditches and roadsides but he did not seem interested.
It is still very humid and hot and though the weather apps are pinging out heat warnings with monotonous regularity – I don’t think it is that excessive, it is just our normal summer heat here. As long as the animals have lots of water everyone is happy.
I would rather the heat than the cold any day. Plus The Mill is chilled to 57 degrees because the flour is organic so it is a nice place to be in the summer.
I sowed piles of yellow corn in this field for forage. It will be interesting to see if any of it sets with the plants so far apart.
It is an hot and muggy morning. And almost time to begin the day.
A friend has an organic apple orchard and her apples are beginning to drop – not quite ripe yet but I am going over to see if there are any windfalls the girls and I can collect. Anna has her sister visiting this weekend – plus I have sisters staying in the Airbnb. Sometimes life offers an odd balance. You could call them coincidences I guess – parallels? What is that word.
I will think of it when I am milking and this entry is long published.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Celi
Congrats and have a lovely day too
I will! Thank you
You remind me of the Energizer Bunny of the 80s. Always on the go. 😀
I just figure that life is too short not to always give it a go!
It’s common to see the ditches baled around here: particularly in years when the fields are less productive. I laughed at your comment about the heat. They’re going on about it here, too, but as a good many of us say to one another, there’s a word for such heat in Texas in July. We call it “summer.”
Great! I will tell him other people in the US do that. He thought it was just a weird New Zealand thing
I sent you a comment with a link that might have landed in spam… The point was that the practice is so common, there even are state regulations for the practice: who can do it, under what conditions, and so on.
Huh. Thank you.
A lot of farmers between your town and mine are cutting their ditch or roadside grass and bailing it. He just needs to take a short ride south toward me to see it. Lots of bales along the side of the roads.
I told John – let’s hope he does it next time .
Serendipity might be that word?
Serendipity is a gorgeous word.
Synchronicity? Congrats Mrs VIP at the Mill. You are our VIP at the farmy too. Enjoy your heat, we are freezing here today! Low 4C, high 14C. Miserable wind taking us down to 0C. I too would much rather be hot than cold. Have fun foraging. Laura
Synchronicity. Yes. I think that is the word I was looking for. It is the wind that makes ordinary cold so unlikeable
Well done!
Thank you Mad. I am off to Chicago next weekend – am going to buy some chorizo and bring it home on the train. I miss Europe a lot when I have to go 100 miles to get something like that
That’s a long way to go shopping. You could make your own fresh chorizo – it would probably be better in the bread than the cured variety.
Hmm. I never knew that chorizo could be fresh. That bears looking into
Yes, there’s soft fresh cooking chorizo and the dry cured variety.
Tane looks like a barge just waiting to turn and maneuver all those duck boats into their moorage at the dock!!! Outstanding picture of this silly pig 🙂
That is a really funny image!
You give everything you do 100%.well done for your latest accolade at the mill. You are a marvel.
Now to put the learning to work – I think that’s when my real education will begin.
I remember some of your old posts about the heat, and one of the keys for enduring it, as you wrote, is to NOT say that it’s hot, and to NOT look at the thermometer to see just how hot it it! I still believe in that advice!!! 🙂
And I still absolutely believe that ! Thanks for the reminder!
Haha, mine is to wear a hat or cap or sweat band, anything to keep it from running down my face. If it’s running down my face I instantly feel hotter. Probably all in my head (definitely ON my head!) but that’s the way it is.
“It’s not excessively hot. It’s summer” is going to go down as one of the most sane and sensible Celi sayings of all time. Tell all those weather people, apps and website to take a chill pill and stop being drama queens. It’s just… summer. My ex-northern European funnybone is being tickled a lot just now as the north Queenslanders complain at how ‘cold’ it is (nothing below 5°C/40°F on the coast, down to -9°C/15°F inland). I haven’t worn socks yet this winter, let alone a jacket!
Yes! They are all into the drama of weather!
Congratulations on passing the exam. And didn’t you also get the certificate for teaching English as a foreign language about a year ago? I am a fan of life-long learning myself, whether it’s a new skill, a new craft, a new exercise, or a new recipe.
Yes!
I am determined to stock up on useful learning.
This title is one of your best yet. Is that an expression in New Zealand or is it one of those random things that popped into your head? Love it.
Congratulations on passing the exam. Have a cool day.
Congratulations on passing your exam, success at the mill and blending it into your day-to-day life.Also a fan of lifelong learning, I’ve been preparing for begining study next week… reading articles & books, watching videos by Permaculture teachers-practitioners…a few simple, initial pieces of advice have stuck, the first went something like this… “you won’t achieve what you think you can in 12 months but you will achieve more thsn you think you can in 5 years”… and you need a plan, a design to work from… and then… do it one piece at a time, don’t try to do it all at once.
I see how you’ve applied similar wisdom, underpinning what you have and continue to implement, progress, adapt and accomplish.
Huge congratulations, don’t know how you fit it all in!
Maybe that is why I live in the north country- I can deal with the cold better than hot and humid. I feel I can always put on more clothes but can’t take much more off! I don’t live on a windy prairie though!!
Congratulations on your PCQI! I myself started Food Safety almost a year ago. Ongoing learning process!