A twelve cc veterinary syringe with the end cut off seems to substitute fairly for a half-inch soil blocker, if you don’t mind that it only makes one at a time.  We started about two hundred peppers and tomatoes this evening, and the small plug size means we can germinate on the table in the hall, more reliably warm than the greenhouse even with the heater on.

The hens in the coupe at the monastery are tearing into those winter cow pies.  Scratching birds are nature’s answer to trash pickup.  Tonight we hitched up the coupe and moved it to the large garden, where many cowpies, dropped here when the cows were brought up during the sub-zero weather, are waiting to be spread.