Dandy.

We are over 70 days into our lockdown here, to keep our high risk people safe. Nobody has gone into a store or even for curbside. We use what we can have delivered (rurally), and have a quarantine process so we don't bring anything into the house. We live in the country so we have had to adjust a bit to get the things we need - particularly the gf/df/non-allergy things for Aidan, but we are doing really well and we are not really feeling anything too different since we already worked from home, homeschooled, and must be hyper-careful to protect Aidan from viruses in the winter. The biggest change has been that we cannot go to the Children's Hospital during this time, and Aidan is in limbo.

The good is that we are getting ourselves prepared for wave 2 and forward, including expanding our gardens to grow more herbs and food, to grow more fruit, and to include other necessities such as more potatoes, grains, oats, seeds. We are stocking up on canning supplies, fermentation supplies, grains, pectin, and other items in case there are shortages some day in the future. We had a cold storage room finished off last fall, and it is perfect for the large 5 gallon buckets of flour and dehydrated foods. I also store all the dried herbs in there so they are cool and dark. It will still double as a perfectly wonderful tornado shelter, too! 

All of this happened when I was starting seeds, so we have just started even more. I also anticipated a bit, and had pre-ordered all of my seeds, soil, fertilizers (kelp, fish meal), etc., back in January. Whew! I also pre-ordered a 7x15' initial greenhouse which we are setting up as a permaculture forest greenhouse, where it will be an enclosed raised bed growing things that like staying hot, and doubling for seed starting in the spring. We were waiting for the spring winds to be done, and will put up the greenhouse this weekend. 

I had planned to have people here in late May to help with planting, learning about medicinal herb growing, endangered native medicinals, and to help kickoff the open source plant walk project. With uncertainty in the future, I am planning on making a series of educational videos including plant walks, planting medicinals, harvesting and drying medicinal herbs, growing native plants, backyard conservation, and more. The open source plant walk project will also kickoff here with infrastructure to start, and pre-populating some items with the initial info on a directory of plants. I have applied for a few small grants to help get this project rolling, and will continue working on it with Brice so it can be shared to the world. I have started working on content and information as well as the wiki, and I think it will be a wonderful tool to be used by all. 

I hope you are all doing well and hanging in there. Here is to health and happy seedlings.