France, not Texas, although Paris, Texas can also be quite a lovely place... or so I've heard. Just spent a wonderful week in Paris with my betrothed "researching" wine, cheese, and fine French cooking. The weather was a bit cold and rainier than we had hoped, but we had a great time regardless. I ate duck three times. Duck is gooood! Don't know why it's not more popular here. Every restaurant there had duck on the menu.

With all that good food and aged grape juice I was easily able to put off most thoughts of the work waiting for me at home. But today I had a chance to look around the farm and refamiliarize myself with The List. Sometimes here you can feel like you're not accomplishing the Important Things, but then you check your list and amazingly you've made decent progress. I think this feeling stems from the huge variety of tasks that fill each day. You find yourself pulled from one thing to the next and inevitably sidetracked when the unexpected (flat tire, bad fuel pump, sick goat, bad hair day) happens. But that's the game we choose to play and we will continue playing.

We had a nasty (unexpected) late freeze while I was gone. Essentially obliterated what were to be my "early" tomatoes. I'd babied those things for over a month in the greenhouse and I was sure with all the 80 degree weather we'd been having that any chance of frost was over. I put them in the ground just before we left fully expecting them to be loaded with flowers when I got back. Apparently I didn't get the right memo. 28 degrees is what we call a Hard Freeze. We'll just have to wait and see what effect this will have on the berries. I told you in an earlier blog that many of them were flowering and you just don't want flower and freeze to be mentioned in the same breath when you're talking about berries... or plums... or peaches... or weddings for that matter...

Which bring me to the last piece of news. My little sister, Gina, just got married. Yesterday, as a matter of fact. That's right... the same day we got back from Paris. That's all I'll say on that particular piece of bad planning. The wedding was here at the farm and despite threats from various weather watchers of snow and light Armageddon for the date, it turned out to be an absolutely perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky and 60 degrees. She rode a Texas Longhorn steer to the altar while the band played The Eyes of Texas. Now that IS a Texas wedding! She married a wonderful young man named Max Goodgame. They're both moving to Tanzania (Africa) in a week for her work with the Young Life organization. We'll miss them both very much and promise to send plenty of high quality insect repellent with every letter.

That's all for now, still recovering from a little thing called "It's 7 hours later where my body was yesterday" or as it's more commonly called... jet lag.

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

Robert Frost said that. And now I must sleep. Goodnight.