We're really not meant to try to hold all the troubles of the world in our little monkey brains. That story about the little kid throwing starfish back into the sea holds an important lesson in it.

I have a friend with 20-odd acres who wants to get some blight-resistant chestnuts to help with the effort to bring back the American Chestnut. But the cost is more than they can comfortably lay out. I have the money and no place to plant trees... so I'm going to contribute to their Chestnut fund. Or rent a Chestnut-sized piece of their property, or something. It all works out.

Funny you should mention chestnuts... 15 years ago my mom started talking about chestnuts and planting chestnuts up on the 60 acres we call "the farm" where they would do much better than on the half of the 10 sun-baked acres of rocky dirt that I've staked my claim to. She even came over to Seattle and made the Kid and me go with her to a cemetery outside Olympia where there is a magnificent old survivor of the blight.

I opposed the idea, not because I thought it was a bad idea in and of itself, but because it would have become yet another Momian Fiasco™ in which she didn't do any of the actual work herself, would yell at everyone about how they were doing it wrong, and would cut every possible corner thereby ensuring the failure of the project. It sounds harsh, but that was how everything went with her.

So now, even though the estate is not all resolved, I keep thinking about what could be done up there. One idea is heirloom cider apples, though the US cider market has unfortunately opted to favor ciders with all the nuance of Mike's Hard Lemonade and growing apples just to let them rot doesn't appeal to me. But every now and then I think "You know, chestnuts would do well there..."

@emery Yeah, it's a lifelong issue. But it's exacerbated now by spending 25 years biding time in whatever the hell my field was and now having this stuff dumped into my life with the expectation that I'll do something with it.

I have gotten a bit more realistic about the peppers. Not the growing them part, but the growing them *this year* part. Instead I'll work on getting the raised beds with wicking reservoirs built in the fall so they'll be ready to go next spring.

@emery I don't think so. I take it that's you picking and pickling a peck of peppers?

Remember my chili parlor idea? A key part of that is not just having the parlor but also having the chili powder for sale. Among other things it's about name recognition. Sure, I can go to the Mexican market and buy dried chilis to make it with (and I have and it is good) but if it's primarily made with locally-grown ingredients then it can be sold at the farmer's markets and that might be the perfect entry point.

I've also become friendly with the guys who bought the place with the oldest liquor license in town — a dive with good food that they are treading lightly with so as not to rub off too much of the accumulated patina. If I can just get them to taste the chili...

So yeah. I'm calling it a hobby farm and that would be fine but if it also helps me leverage my Dreams of Empire into existence (and fills the big hole where my tech-adjacent income used to be) then that would be really cool. If nothing else, it's keeping me from hanging out on the street corners with my hoodlum friends with a hand-rolled cigarette behind my ear.