First

How did this happen?

Spring has whizzed past...

...and summer threatens to  disappear just as quickly.

Slow down.  Savor.

  

Happy July!

Non-news

Here's a change; a post about what we are not doing this summer....

There will officially be no vegetable garden at our house this year! I was all excited back in March and April with my dog-eared gardening catalogs; then in May something happened. I completely lost interest. Totally. I told Steve that I was calling the whole thing off and he didn't bat an eyelash. Yes, I will miss fresh potatoes in the fall, and a winter's supply of squash and peppers, but I'll deal. Downtown Smalltown's farmer's market started a couple weeks ago and this past Friday I purchased some new potatoes, green onions and kohlrabi for a pittance. Easy, and no daily weed-pulling routine. I think we'll be juuuuust fine.

Apple Picking Time?

I'm sure glad we spent several hours yesterday meandering through the woods enjoying fall colors, because, evidently, we have now moved on to winter.

I spent most of the morning picking our Prairie Spy apples, which are a late variety. They don't taste good until after a frost, so this is usually around the time we pick them anyway, but just with less, um, snow.

Whilst I was picking, the boys got into making this guy-







The apples look fantastic this year and taste sooooo much like fall. If only it were....

In The Trenches

We did it! We got the garden planted on Saturday! We ran out of room for all the things we wanted, though, so Steve ended up expanding the garden by about half. I'm really happy about that. We are now farmers of green beans, peas, peppers both hot and sweet, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, celery, carrots and radishes, 3 types of squash, lettuces and spinach. And for the boys, pumpkins in both mini and maxi size. Oh, and Potatoes! How could I forget about the potatoes?

Here's me leaning on my trusty shovel just after finishing the potato trenches. Makes it look like I did all the work, right? Steve deserves most of the credit on this one. he did the real digging and I just came through and cleaned up a bit. Look at how nice and straight those rows are!

Now we just sit back and wait for all the veggie goodness. And maybe pull a weed or two...

Garden 2009

We are so incredibly late in getting our garden planted. It has just been such a crummy spring that I felt no motivation whatsoever to get out there and till the soil or put in a seed. Finally, though, I got my act together and turned over a shovelful of soil or two.

Then I had Charlie do the rest.



Oh alright, Ben and Will helped out, too. And Steve made a pass with the ancient tiller to finish it up.

We are finally ready to put in plants and seeds and see what takes. I have been talking to a lot of people the past few days who were industrious and had gardens in 3 weeks ago and guess what? Not a seed is coming up. In fact, many of those seeds rotted in the ground-too cold. The plants are not growing-no sun. Sooooo...I am feeling less like I have been lazy and apathetic these past few weeks. I now am proclaiming my superior intuitive gardening abilities which warned me to wait, wait to plant those peppers and tomatoes.

Yes, I am so smart.

Stay tuned for my post on intuitive housekeeping where I proclaim dust to be healthy for you and doing the wash to be passe!

Apple Picking

We have just one apple tree on our land and it is the favored tree of all the kids in the summer. If we can't find one or two of the kids during a get-together, chances are they are in the apple tree. It is easy to climb, has perfect perches to sit in and, oh yeah, it is an instant snack source. Anytime cousins are over, apples are picked and munched whether they are ready to eat or not.

These particular apples taste best after the frosts begin up here. We've never confirmed the variety, but we think they taste most like Fireside or Prairie Spy. I've been told that Fireside apples stay crisp when baked (and therefore are not a good baking apple) but our apples bake up wonderfully so perhaps they are not at all a Fireside variety. I like the idea of them being Prairie Spy apples. Maybe I'll take one to a nearby orchard to see if they can help me nail it down.

Whatever the variety may be, this year's harvest was fantastic! We always get a lot of apples, but the past couple years we have had problems with blemishes and bugs. This year the apples are huge, virtually blemish free, and so tasty! They really are beautiful apples.

It was a perfect day for picking yesterday. A little crisp, but plenty of sunshine.

And the resident monkeys were quite obliging when it came to handing down those "tippy-top" apples.

We enjoyed a little bit of the harvest last night, baked into a fresh apple pie. Yumm! We still have 4 big crates of apples to enjoy, and we plan to make some dried apple rings, maybe some apple sauce or apple butter, and of course just eat them fresh. It will be nice to not have to buy apples for a good, long while. Although I am always tempted to pick up some Honey Golds or Honey Crisp. Two of my favorites this time of year. What's your favorite variety of apple?

Natura Farms Field Trip

We spent the afternoon at a nearby organic farm with some families from a local home school group. This trip was pure fun and it was wonderful to find a new place to pick berries and buy produce. The owner, Paul, was a joy to meet as well and had a really engaging personality.

We started out the afternoon with Paul setting the kids loose in the raspberry fields and giving them 10 minutes to pick and eat as many berries as possible. "A little dessert after lunch" he said. The kids (um, and adults) had a blast and there were a few different varieties to try including a white raspberry.. Oh Yum! After our time was up, Ben commented that he felt like Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only the pig-out was on berries!

Here is our fearless tour leader, Paul Otten, owner of Natura Farms. What a nice, interesting man!

After berry picking, the kids were led to various parts of the farm where they got a little talk about the different veggies planted there. Each child was allowed to pick for themselves a couple of everything they learned about. They filled their bags with peppers, eggplants, celery (an heirloom variety. Not the stuff in the stores), herbs, flowers, chard and apples. Ben even won a pumpkin in the "name the herb quiz." He was the first to identify oregano by smelling it and tasting a little. That's my boy!

Here we are in the apple orchard. I remembered to have someone take a picture of us together for once! And in case you haven't noticed already, yes, we are all wearing wool sweaters today. Sheesh.

When Paul set us free in the orchard, he asked that no one climb the trees to pick apples. "It's not that I have anything against children climbing trees, quite the contrary. It's just the falling out that I don't like to see" So, what does William do when we get near the first trees? He just can't help himself. See a tree, climb it. Luckily he did not fall out.

Charlie in the orchard.

At home with all their "samples" from the day.

I paid $3.00 per child to go on this field trip. Hmmmm. I think between the education, the "dessert" and the produce, we certainly got more than our fair share for the money!
Of course I couldn't resist buying some additional things I needed while we were there, like a watermelon (OK didn't need it, but come on!), some sketti squash and onions. We're looking forward to stopping in there again sometime in the next couple weeks if we can. I think we'll be needing another watermelon before the season is said and done.....

Final Tomato And Pepper Harvest

Steve and I spent the past weekend working on garden stuff. All that is left out there now are squash and carrots.

While I spent my time focusing on making tomato salsa, Steve made salsa verde from his crop of tomatillos. He also pickled some jalepenos, and made a wicked hot sauce from roasted cayenne peppers. It. Is. So. Hot.

And we were not alone in the garden. I have been wondering all season when I would run into one of these Yellow Garden Spiders. She was really large and quite something to watch. Steve spent about 15 minutes discussing String Theory with her. Way over my head.

Then it was time to feast upon an unfortunate fly.

And So It Begins.....

The tomatoes are beginning to ripen. I see some delicious gazpacho in my immediate future. Along with salsa, bruschetta, pasta sauce, tomato soup, tomato and cheese sandwiches, tomato muffins (just kidding) and some plain old-fashioned "canning" as MIL would say-just pop em' in your mouth and enjoy!

Darth Tator -OR- How We Spent Our Weekend

This past weekend was again a busy one for us, as we careen ever closer to the end of what northerners call "Summer".

On Saturday, Steve and I got out to the garden in the evening and dug up our potatoes!It is always fun to do this because it's so much like a treasure hunt! Well, OK maybe not really, but you do feel pretty rich thinking about all those tasty hot baked spuds you'll be havin' all winter! Fresh garden potatoes really taste so wonderful! Well, we ended up with 100 pounds of potatoes this year!!! The most prolific were the Yukon Golds. Some of those single potatoes could be a meal in themselves.


We let them sit out in the garage on newspapers to cure for a day, and now they are stored safely in the basement. We won't wash them until we're ready to use them as they will keep better this way.


There are always a few that get stabbed by the pitch-fork or sliced by the shovel so we had to use those up right away. I made spicy oven fries. An old stand-by recipe of mine since BC times. The verdict? As expected, they were completely tasty!

If potatoes aren't your thing, maybe you'll more enjoy what we did with the rest of our weekend.

On Sunday we spent the larger part of the day at the Science Museum seeing the Stars Wars exhibit and going to the Omnitheater. We reserved our tickets for this day sometime back before the snow melted so there has been a lot of anticipation.

It was really neat to see some of the costumes from the movies and the models of ships. Incredible details! Here's Luke's Landspeeder hovercraft.

And there was even a real "hovercraft" for the boys to try out. Ben thought it was cool.

Luke's X-Wing fighter. Ooooh! Is it really flying in outer space?

Of course we met up with all of our favorite characters. Charlie loves the droids and even gave R2-D2 a kiss through the glass. He calls him R-Tootie-2.

I thought the Tuscan Raider garb was pretty impressive. So did Ben, evidently. He's takin' a few cautious steps back here..

Use the force young William. From this glass case free me you should.

Charlie pretends to be Darth Vader just about every day. Sometimes he is nice, other times not so much. He was a little nervous to meet him.


Steve sizes up Darth's helmet. Can he resist the Dark Side?

There you have it, our fun Darth Tator weekend. Hope you had a good one, too!

May The Farm Be With You...Always

By Request-A Ridiculously Simple Green Bean Recipe

Most of the time we are a family who enjoys our vegetables in a very undressed state. That is to say, lightly steamed, maybe salted. Usually nothing more. We like to taste the vegetable. However, when garlic enters the equation, the vegetable must step aside, and simply becomes a transport system. Tonight with dinner we will be enjoying the tasty treat that is Garlic Green Beans.

GARLIC GREEN BEANS
1 lb. fresh green beans 1-2 oz. olive oil 4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced 1/4 t salt 1/8 t. pepper Steam green beans, leave whole. Saute garlic in olive oil. Add salt and pepper. Pour over beans and toss. Makes 4 servings.

Green Beans, Anyone?

I wonder what kind of vegetable I should serve with dinner tonight. Hmmm...if only I had some fresh produce lying around........

Organic Gardening

I have been spending the day handpicking these guys from my cucumbers and squash:



I've also put out yellow bowls of soapy water in hopes of trapping them. They are attracted to the yellow flowers on the plants and the idea is that they will be attracted to the yellow bowls instead, fall into the soapy water and drown. Thanks Nora, for that timely tip. I hope it works!

Tomorrow I will concentrate on handpicking these guys from my potatoes:


For the love of Riley, not my potatoes!! Go nosh some lettuce already! I have more than enough!

Ladybugs supposedly like to eat the eggs and/or larvae of the potato bug but I can't seem to spy a single one of them anywhere near my garden. What gives? House on fire? Children at home?

Well, at least they are attractive bugs. The stripes are quite complimentary to one another, which one would not expect. Certainly they will serve a decorative purpose once all the greenery has been gnawed away.

What's New...

In the Garden?

Broccoli! We are in the midst of a harvest right now and I have to say it is sooo tasty! Even the stalks are tender and sweet. I only wish it didn't take so much space to grow!

Bell Peppers! Looking big and delicious, but I can't be fooled. We'll wait until these babies are bright red!

Lettuce as far as the eye can see! Oh, Lordy, we are stuffed full of salads around here!

Hey, here is a bad lettuce joke for you...

A man goes to the Doctor with a piece of lettuce hanging out of his ear.

"That looks nasty," says the doctor.
"Nasty?!?" replies the man, "this is just the tip of the iceberg."


Cabbage! Very impressive. Quite pretty to look at, but really, is all the leafage truly necessary? Hubby is excited to make Blaukraut with this. Tasty.


Potatoes are flowering! That means a harvest is not too far off! Can't wait!


Vermin! A pocket gopher has been tunneling in the beans. Gitcher gun, Pa!


In The Flower Beds?

Wild raspberries! We'll have to battle with the birds to get our share!

Lilies. Enough Said.



At The Pond?

The grasses are really tall this year. Ditch lilies are blooming now, too.

Plenty of Milkweed around the pond. Now if we could only find some caterpillars munching here...Wait! What do we have here? This guy looks like he is ready to pupate. We'll check in again tomorrow and see what we find!