What a day!

Yesterday was a big day. We are still in the middle of laying all that rock dust on the pastures and orchards. Steve and I spent the day mixing and spreading 1500 pounds of dust. He spread, I weighed, measured and mixed (well, he helped with the mixing as it is a two person job).

The way it works is I measured out the specifics for each dust and each pasture: 9.8 pounds of Iron sulfate, and 13.1 pounds of manganese oxide and 17.4 pounds of copper sulfate and 44 pounds of redmond mineral salt and 47 pounds of azomite--the list goes on and on. Then I put this all on an enormous plastic tarp. When the mix was compete and all piled high on the tarp--hundreds of pounds by the time I am done, Steve and I mixed the goodies by each taking an end to the tarp and walking it towards the other side. As we pulled the tarp along the rock dust mixed itself up by folding into itself and around. We folded it back and forth and up and down about ten times and the dust was mixed, which is much easier in theory than it is on the body. It's heavy pulling that much rock dust along. But we did it and while I made the next batch Steve shoveled and then spread the old batch. Poor guy, I felt for him out there...that is a LOT of work. Just the kind of thing that diesel machines were invented for. But ole' mighty man did it with a smile and even seemed like he was having fun.

After he was done, I sent him to the shower to wash off all that dust and then put him in a warm bath tub full of relaxing essential oils to take the wear and tear out of his back. I wanted a chance to try out this new gadget I just got (for my birthday but it just arrived through customs this week). It's a fancy German oil diffuser for the bathtub that has some German name I can't pronounce or even begin to say so I call it the oil thingy. It is both terribly fragile and terribly expensive.

The oil thingy works by connecting the water from the bathtub to a tube and running it through a fancy glass machine that looks like something straight out of a mad scientist's laboratory. As the water processes through the machine it absorbs micro amounts of the oil by breaks up all the oil into teeny tiny droplets (which thereby allow it to go into your skin WAY better) and it spins the water into an vortex which further allows the healing energy of the oil to penetrate the water. Pretty fancy stuff that has pretty amazing results. My doctor prescribed these baths for me and I have been blown away by these baths (though the prescriptive baths are more complicated than I did for Steve). I have been lusting over this machine for months. And now I have my own...yea for birthdays! Can't wait to try it for myself too.

Anyway, today is the day after and Steve is still sound asleep (a sure sign of how much work that was yesterday) and it is raining which is so perfect for the soil after a rock dust application I would be dancing a jig but I am too tired. Way too tired. Guess the next installment of rock dust is going to happen next week. All we can say is where are the wwoofers when you need them.