The big one: Ditting!

A funny thing happened on the way to Borders the other day.. I saw this, and needed to own it!

Next to the Europiccola to show scale.. 

That right there is my new temporary coffee grinder. It's a Ditting model KR1203. It's a bean grinder designed to operate in a retail shop like a Starbucks or similar, that goes through 25-60lbs of beans a day. It weights *88* pounds. It makes my Faema MPN look like a play toy. I got it for a song, and figured I could sell it for a few bucks more than I paid for it. It's quite an animal, I have to say.. it grinds a cup of beas in literally seconds and spits it out the bottom chute with no mess and no fuss.. it's a bag fill design with a single chute exit, so there's no doser to mess with. A real joy to play with. I'll be sad to see it go.. but Craigslist is calling me already. Rats! Here's a couple more pics I took of it.. just so I can remember her fondly.

Standard 20lb propane tank for comparison..

Standard 54lb Boxer dog for comparison.. oh, and my Faema bean grinder as well. 

Standard 38.4lb child for comparison..

Fatalii's up and garlic too

My new Fatalii seeds sprouted the other day, but I'm a bit of a slacker in getting the pics up and posted. I put six in the propagator, but so far only two have come up, and one of 'em had a bit of a problem getting it's seed coat off.. and she's a bit deformed right now as a result. In either case, here they are:

Yeah, you can't really even see 'em there. Right in front of that label, it's just barely out of the soil. But, it's alive! And here's that garlic:

Elephant type

German 'hardneck' type

So yep, looks like that Organic Elephant garlic from the store even made it over the winter, in addition to the German White from the garlic guy in New Hartford.

I just got the propagators emptied out of the Hot Cherry and Jalapenos as well, and now all the ones i'm going to be keeping for sure are in the 4 pack seed trays now and looking REALLY good.. I'll get some pics of that up in a bit. The green Bell peppers are just starting to pop up too, and I only need two of those for the salsa experiment I'm doing.. the Brussels Sprouts are planted in the propagator as of yesterday, and we'll keep an eye on them for an appearance next week as well.

The raised beds look about the same, snow covering wise, even though one has the hoop house on top of it.. but yesterday when I poked a finger in the soil there, the one with the hoop on it seems to be all freed up already, whereas the open bed has a layer of ice or frozen soil still in some places just under the dirt surface. Curious.. maybe that hoop house thing is working after all.