Community Supported Agriculture

One thing we are trying this year is community supported agriculture. We had several friends do it last year, and it sounded like something we wanted to try. A lot of the local ones filled up early, but we got a space with one, Hilltop Farm in Willow Spring. I wanted to try it it for a several reasons:

• We're supporting a local family farm (check)
• We'd eat more vegetables (check, in a big way)
• Maggie would grow up knowing that her food comes from a farm, not a grocery store (95% of her food comes from Mommie right now, but Hilltop has open houses and work days, so maybe next year we can take her there).

So far we've gotten a lot of lettuce, spring onions, and strawberries, along with some broccolli, assorted greens, and we're starting to get a more diverse mix of veggies.

Backyard Renovation

Since we moved to this house 2 years ago, we had wanted to have some landscaping work done. We finally got around to it, in a big way! We had it done by Chris Myrick at Green Art Inc., and he was really great to work with if you ever need a landscaper. The main work was to build a retaining wall in order to give us more flat parts of our yard, and to rebuild our patio, which was hard to maintain and not kid friendly. They also regraded and added drainage, since we had lots of problems this past rainy year. Here are a few pictures:
Before:


Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3 (not much progress on Day 4 due to Rain):

Final product (Day 6 of work)!


















We love our back yard, Pretzel loves having her yard back, and we know Maggie will love it when she's old enough to.

Catching Up

Well, it's been over five months since a post, so I think I have some catching up to do. I'll post a few things in the next few days, including pictures of our new back yard and some thoughts about church I promised in December.
Of course the biggest thing in my life right now is my daughter, and I'll put some pictures and videos of her up on her blog http://mcdowellfamilyblog.blogspot.com/.
But this blog is mine, so I just want to say that I thought that a baby would be something you just love because she's yours or you have to or there was some chemical force that made you love this thing that just laid around and pooped and cried. I wanted to be a Dad, but thought the first few months would just be something you muddled through. Now, I found out, that I love my daughter more than I could have ever imagined. She is sweet, and smart, and funny, and all around wonderful. Part of me wants to keep her a little baby for ever, but most of me is excited to see what kind of adult this magical little person grows into. More to come, I promise!