Try explaining trading zebra for truffle farm interest to your tax man...

We went to get our taxes done last night. It was my first year having a "farm loss" and the ever-patient CPA was quite confused as I explained that I traded 1.5 zebras for my mother's interest in the truffle farm. I am fairly certain it was his first farm expense statement combing both zebras and truffles in the same return. Then again, I'm sure it was his first return with either a zebra or a truffle involved. We did the trade so as not to have so many of our investments intertwined now that I'm married, and have a baby and all that good stuff that has happened since the trees arrived.

In other news, a friend in Texas was kind enough to send me a link to THIS GREAT ARTICLE by Peter Alsop on truffle farming in the U.S. It came out this weekend on Salon.com. I had never heard of the magazine before, but the article is extremely well-written so go check it out.

Invasion!

I know, I know...It's been a while. Too long really. What can I say? We've been busy. First I got married, then we realized when you're married you live together so we moved the hubby up to the farm, then we travelled, and now he's gone to Europe for two months. Add to that the arrival of my brother and nephew, complications involved there, and running a truffle farm starts to seem a bit trivial.

Good news is that things have settled down for a while and the first sign of spring, in the form of grazing sheep, is here!
Yes, those little blobs in the distance beind the farm are sheep. It's open grazing territory out here so they just kind of roam around in the spring helping with yardwork. Fortunately the sheephearders put up a little fence to block them from invading the farm. Here's another view of them:
They've been around for a few days and it is kind of nice sitting out watching them.

In other news, I found my first sign of fungus on the farm while I was out laying drip line the other week:
See it at the bottom? A dried mushroom. Nope, not the valuable kind. Hopefully it's a sign of fungus to come!!! Oooh, and look at that lovely drip line. Such nice work...