The sale last weekend was super ! Nobody made a fortune, but everyone sold something. Morale is greatly improved all around. It isn't just the money - it's the satisfaction of using our talents, and being rewarded when someone found them valuable . ! Some folks just came to look. I really believe there were some who envied our lifestyle. You could see it in their eyes. I think most thought it charming to visit, but could never find it appealing as a daily life. Every seed unfolds best in the environment of greatest affinity. Life has lots of different business to tend to, and needs us all to do it. Tonight I think the barn is glad for a regular farm weekend. I know Jake is ! You can tell by the way he heaves down to a recline and snorts a burro sigh. We're savoring the stillness of our loft too. In the woods cricket and frog band make soft music.

Haven't had time or leftover energy to write for awhile. Mr. Johnson was telling it true. Planting is a workout ! Especially for us novices. Sun-up to sun-down is perpetual motion. The rewards of accumulating vigor are beginning to show now. At first we could only flop in collapse at night and pray we could move in the mornng. We're still tired at night, but sleep like babes. It's a good wholesome tired. I'm sure no aerobics class has more benefits, and certainly not as great a result. The body is unprotestingly ready for a completely relaxed sleep. The mind is untangled - free of treadmill recitations. Spirit has an open expressway to course to cell, bone, and nerve. Sun-warmed soil and the good seed yielding is the way the Creator meant things to be. Glorious is the sower's work ! There's grandeur all around us we too often fail to see. Tonight we are receiving a benediction of gentle, whispering rain. Seeds will respond.

We've watched the seed sprout and grow. We've studied gathering clouds for portent of flooding rain - which happily did not happen But many fast-moving thunderstorms prospered the crop. Weekend craft sales waxed and waned like the moon. We've closed them out for now. After the harvesting in about six weeks, we will open a barter shop here for local people. Products and services swapped according to need. Such exchange has gone on for some time among neighbors, but today there is more dependence on it, and a central place for transaction is needed. Next weekend there will be a barn-painting party to get our home weatherized for winter. We have already tacked a heavy tarpaulin across the North Wall. That's the most vulnerable to winter storms, and barn walls are very leaky. Bit by bit we are painting a mural on it with whatever scenes and images have special meaning for us. Mario, Warren , and Laura Lee are the best artists. Whatever we decide on - they sketch in and we fill in the paint areas. It's good we're doing this while we can have the barn doors open. It gets quite pungent in here till the paint dries. Jake has filed several complaints. But he'll like the grassy, flowered meadow scene this winter. He got all tangled up in a hammock in the middle of the night last week. You'd have thought for sure space visitors had landed, with all the strange noises and carryin' on that rocked the barn. We have a home, and we're happy. We're a family. And that includes Jake.