Yeehaw!,

Alright so “yeehaw” isn’t a salutation or even a word but it does manage to capture the mood here at Shooting Creek, especially as we ready ourselves for what promises to be very busy summer.

Another colloquialism that leaps to mind is “dang”. As in “Dang, ya’ll managed to keep all these folks ‘round here plied with beer ya’ll made in that tiny brewery?” To this imaginary, yet not unimaginable voice I say “Yessir, you bechya we did and still do!” O.K., sorry to evoke Gomer Pyle and Sarah Palin in just two sentences, but I think you get my point. Now no more daft literary devices, I promise.

Ya’ll remember me mentioning the new hops field right? We plowed three, make that 4 rows that come in around 340’ each in which we planted rhizomes of Nugget, Cascade, and Chinook. Well last I checked they were at least a couple of feet long. This week we’ll be mulching the rows, putting in stakes and stringing them up off the ground.

I’ve even decided to try my hand at growing some of those Cascades and Chinooks on my property. I’m approaching this endeavor with complete kid’s gloves as my record with growing anything doesn’t exactly reflect skill or competence. I think that if I reverse course on my usual routine of taking my subjects out with the weed-wacker, usually because I’m rushing to finish so I can get at that pale ale in the fridge, I should be fine. Or my other bonehead-of –the-year, award winning approach of treating plants like my old drill sergeant treated me back in the day when he’d shower me, not with praise or the water I was craving but with the standard kind of screed reserved by guys in their line of work for guys like me who happened to find themselves directly under their “care” and supervision – “What’s that Anderson? You want water? You better start showing me more son! You break formation again by tippin’ that cantine and I’m gonna shove my boot so far…… I don’t really need to tell, I mean you probably already know where he was going with that, my point being that plants need water just like I did and I’ll stop giving them a hard time for it. Sorry for breaking that promise I made earlier.

I gotta get back to work

More later....