Erica Taranto

CONGRATULATIONS, Paul, et al!
Am I the first to congratulate you on reaching your goal of $42,500? I think Cassie's latest daily-ish email must have pushed it over the edge ($42,777 last I checked at 8:52pm PST). Looking forward to seeing it all completed!

We are also homeschoolers with a 4.5 year old and a 2.5 year old. We are just beginning more "formal" school stuff - "letter of the week", workbooks which our daughter seems to enjoy!, bi-lingual storytime at the library each week, etc. We have chickens and are currently developing hugelbeds on our 1/2 acre. Our daughter loves to go outside and dig with her Daddy! She also chose "feed chickens" as one of her chores for this week, so she is definitely learning and getting involved with farming, animal husbandry, etc. There are many homeschooling groups and resources in our area, but we haven't gotten too involved yet. We want to be sure that whatever we choose is a good fit for our kids and our entire family. I love the idea of the homeschool curriculum consignment shop! I think I will be looking into that more!

Hi David (and Cassie)!

I am also interested in recipes...especially for dandelion greens since that is what we have most of in our yard currently. I know dandelions are very persistent, but living in a neighborhood where most of our neighbors' yards are dandelion free, and before we really knew what we were doing, we (SHOCK and HORROR!!) used weed and feed, I was wondering if you've ever come across a good way to encourage dandelion growth?!?!? They probably need little to no help, but if we were to try, what could we do to help them populate our yard again?

Also, what are the most drought tolerant greens you've come across? We live in Eastern WA which is basically a desert. Having grown up in CT where we definitely didn't irrigate, I am still learning about how to live out here, and now learning more and more about permaculture, we are working on not having to irrigate here too!

Thanks!
Erica