Cantelope

We got our first cantelope out of the garden last night. It smelled divine. Clint and the kids ate some after dinner. Lennon loved it the most. I am waiting on the watermelons, we have about 8 or 9 of them out there now.

The new peeps

Clint's Dad brought 8 new peeps for us last Friday. 2 big white ones, 3 black ones, 3 yellow/red ones. They aren't as friendly as the bigger peeps were/are. We've been trying to handle them every day to get them more friendly. We will see what happens with them. Let's hope there are more hens then roosters in this batch.

Here chick, chick, chick!

Ruddy, Allyson, RL1 and RL2 are doing well. They can fly out of there coop now, we need to trim their wings so they can't. They love exploring the yard now. It is funny to look out the door and see 4 half grown chickens walking along the porch.

Fun news! We are getting 15 more chicks from Clint's Dad this Thursday! I am so excited. I just hope there are more hens then roosters.

What's growing in the garden?

Have you been wondering how everything looks in the garden? We like to check it out daily. I got a chance to take some pictures the other night. Then Clint got out the sprinkler, turd. But I did get some pictures. You might notice some things look a little wet.


Tomato Row-all the red ones had been picked earlier that day to make sauce for dinner.

Our lone pumpkin. Corb loves to check it out everyday.

We have 2 kinds of watermelon. Round and long. This is the biggest one of the 3 round ones. I can't wait to eat the sucker.

Broccoli, how do we love you? We eat it as fast as it comes in. We want to plant more plants next year.

The longest melon in our patch.

The most pathetic corn rows that ever grew. They are about 3 ft tall and trying to make corn. Losers.

One of the million neck pumpkins that we have. I think we might have set up a neck pumpkin road side stand to sell the extra.

Fun pics

I haven't posted any fun pictures of the kids for a little. Not that I've had much time to take any, but I did get 2 really sweet ones the other day. One of Lennon and one of Corby. I added one of Hads from a little while ago so she wasn't left out.

Corby's, it is so rare that I get a really good picture of him. One that I really like. I am loving this one. He has actually been asking me to take his picture. He was showing me the flower that he had picked.

Lennon-you might remember the Hadley at the fence picture. I love this fence. He just started pulling himself up on EVERYTHING a few weeks ago.

Hadley-she was checking out a flower. I liked the look on her face.

How Dewey has grown

Dewey is almost 5 months old. Man has he grown from the little 7 week old 10lb ball of fur that we got when moved into the house. I took some pictures of him with Lennon last night. Dang, for real. I couldn't believe the comaparison:

Lennon and Dewey the day after we got Dewey.
Lennon and Dewey last night.

For today...a series of posts

You are just busting with excitement aren't you? I took a bunch of pictures so I am going to do a individual posts for each picture.

First off..I want to send my apologies out to my watermelon plants. I called them slackers only to fined a softball sized watermelon the next day. Then I found 3 more(1 golfball sized and 2 baseball sized). I also want to say sorry to the cuke plants. I totally forgot to check on you. When I looked yesterday, y'all had about 10 huge cukes. I must learn how to pickle, fast.

To follow up on RL2, he appears to be doing better. I think he realized his efforts were going unsuccesfully. I look forward to his next attempt. I should just name him Shannon. Since I started talking about the chickens I will post their pictures.

This is Ruddy the Rooster. That is Allyson with him cleaning her fanny.

This would be the whole "flock". From L to R-Ruddy, RL1, Allyson and RL2

Here is Miss Allyson.

Lopes, maters and beans

Broccoli and grean beans are still coming in like crazy. I love having the fresh broccoli. We are going to eat some tonight. The kids fight over it. We are going to plant twice as many plants next year.

We have a cantelope!!!! It is big, too! Just needs to ripen and then we can eat it. Lennon will be in heaven. He loves fruit.

We also have about 8 neck pumpkins on the vine ripening. I can see one from the house. I think we will be giving some of these away. I don't know what to do with so many!

Regular pumpkins are starting to come in also. There is one out there the size of a basketball. Clint put a board under it to keep it from rotting.

Tomatoes are fast ripening. I predict a lot of sauce making beginning next week.

Green peppers are plentiful as well. I am going to make some stuffed peppers to freeze. I've also read that you can cut them up and freeze them to use in recipes later. I am going to do that, too.

Corn....ha ha ha ha ha ha...our corn. I must laugh at it. It is about 3 feet tall and trying to make ears of corn. It is so pathetic, it is funny. So funny.

I don't think we will be getting any watermelons this year. The plants look good and have spread out all over but yet, there are no melons to be seen. Maybe they will be late bloomers-or maybe they are just slacker plants.

The Peeps-Well, we have confirmed that we have 3 Roosters and 1 Hen, shouldn't it be the other way around? The hen was named "Allyson" after Allyson. The rooster I decided to keep is named "Ruddy". I chose Ruddy because he has the biggest "comb" and seems the most manly. He wins the mini-cock fights they have. That is a funny thing to watch. Rooster Loser #1 has taken the news well. He said he will go quietly when the time comes. Rooster Loser #2 decided to throw some dramatics. In an attempt for pity he talked Corb into picking him up, then hucking him in the raspberry bushes when he say his Daddy coming(he isn't supposed to handle the peeps unless we are there). Since that, RL2 has been walking funny. Not sure what is going to happen with him yet. Just keeping an eye on him for now.

Blueberries!

Oh yeah, blueberries! I made muffins last night, they were gone after breakfast. The kids loved them. I am really going to have to ask for some more blueberries so I can keep making great stuff. They are delicious! I made a cheese pie this afternoon and we will be putting homemade blueberry pie filling on top. It looks soooo good. I could just eat that for supper.

The sun tea never became. I will have to try again soon.

We worked on the herb garden today. Weeding it and planting some new things. It isn't beautiful yet. Everything needs to grow. It looks like we just stuck some plants in the middle of a desert. It will happen someday though.

We put Dewey in his outside kennel so the Banty's could get some outside time. They went NUTS. They are scratching at everything and eating like crazy. It is fun to watch them.

Sun Tea, No Sun

I finally got a big old sun tea jar. I was so excited to try it out with some of the tea that is growing in my herb garden. Particularly the chocolate mint. I made a sachet with my fresh tea leaves, put it in the jar, put in the water and set the whole thing outside in the sun. Then, the sun went away. I am hoping the sun comes back out so the tea can brew. If not, I guess there will be another sunny day to try it.

I put up more green(purple) beans and broccoli. I don't know if "put up" is the right term. I picked a bunch, blanched them and put them in the freezer. We have a ton of green tomatoes out there. I can't wait for them to ripen so I can make some sauce to freeze and try canning.

Speaking of canning, my canning supplies came! I have a Grannyware canner(boiling not pressure), jar rack, jar tongs, metal funnel, metal masher thing-it looks like a cone that sits on a rack and has a wooden masher thing and of course jars. I want to try everything out.

Blueberries! We traded some of our garmillion raspberries for some blueberries. I have some freezing whole. I plan on making blueberry muffins and a blueberry cheese pie as soon as I can get to the store to get a few things. I love blueberries.

Prep for Lennon's birthday party are in full swing. The outside of the house is looking pretty good. Not too many weeds left. The goody bag supplies are all bought, just need to be put together. Lennon's gifts are bought, invites have been sent, menu is planned. I can't believe he is going to be a year old on Friday. It just can't be happening.

Busy weekend

Where to begin?

Saturday-we went and picked up Lennon's birthday present. A great wooden playset-3 swings, a playhouse, sandbox, slide, see-saw and monkey bars. It still needs to be put together but the kids are having fun playing in the playhouse part. Pictures to come when it is together.

Sunday-We got the our Banty chicks! Picture below. We are going to wait until we can tell what they are to name them. They are so fun to watch and the kids are having a blast with them. One of the chicks caught a bug the other day, it began running around peeping excitedly while the other peeps chased it. Too funny.

Monday-We welcomed a new baby into the family! Clint's brother and his wife had their second child. They didn't find out ahead of time if it was a boy or girl so we were all waiting to see. It was a BOY!, their second. They named him Braiden Michael. I can't wait to meet him.

Tuesday(July 4th!)-We went to a picnic. I made a Raspberry Pie. I asked others how it tasted and they said good. Clint did not taste it because he is sick of raspberry things. The Raspberry Review has been put on hold. We went to see fireworks with my Mom, Dad, Brother and his girlfriend. We got home around midnight but it was worth it.

The Raspberry Pie that went to the picnic.

The Bantys!

Our first green(and purple) bean harvest!

Summer Harvest begins

I know we've had a ton of raspberries, and the strawberries are over. Not that we had any strawberries to write home about after Dad accidently mowed them down just before they were to bloom. But, I think the official summer harvest has begun. We've been eating broccoli out of the garden for a few weeks now. Last week we had an abundance that we blanched and then froze. Today I went out to weed, again. I found a bunch of green tomatoes, a green pepper and I picked a bowl full of green beans! I have a picture of the beans. I'll get that up soon.

We had a lot of rain the beginning of the week. The one river set a new all time record high when it was at it's peak flood stage. It beat out the flood from Hurricane Agnes in the '70's. Around here that is saying a lot because everyone talks about Agnes in reference to flooding. I am sad it peaked overnight and we weren't able to see it. That is something to see and remember. I have some pictures of the flooding as well.

Now for the Raspberry Review:
Raspberry buckle-It was easy to make and tasted alright. Since I am not a fan of raspberries I am going to try it with blueberries. I think that will be delish.

Chocolate Raspberry Heaven-Very good. I could actually eat it and sort of overlook the raspberries. Clint is really enjoying it. I want to make this again minus the raspberries, then I know I will love it.

Bantam Chickens!

On Sunday we are getting 4 Bantam Chicks! I am so excited.

Raspberries

Let's just call the next few weeks my ginormous Raspberry recipe review. We have infinity raspberries. I will be making things with raspberries until I die. My kids are going to turn purple. We will poop little purple seeds.

Today I made jam. The recipe is inside the liquid Sure-jell package. It came out great.

Raspberry Buckle It was very easy to make and it used up more than 2 cups of the raspberries. It is cooking now, how it tastes to be added late. It took longer to get done than the recipe calls for but it does look nice.

Chocolate Raspberry Heaven I used a cake mix instead of making a cake from scratch. It is all just flour and sugar anyway. It was a little more work than the buckle. It looks good so far.

Trees

We got 6 more trees last night. 2 more Apple, 2 Peach and 2 Willow trees. I am very excited. We probably won't be able to plant them until Saturday since they want rain all day today. They are beautiful. The fruit trees already have fruit on them. How freaking cool is that?

We also got some more watermelon plants, to replace the ones that died, along with some cantelope plants. Those will be planted Saturday, too. As well as the decorative pumpkins and cucumbers.

I got a bookshelf for Hadley's room yesterday. It looks like a dollhouse. I can't wait to put it together for her today. She loves books so I know she is going to flip.

I talked to the new sheep guy yesterday. He is further away, near my parents, but he is much nicer and his barn is way nicer. The sheep guy here looks like he is running a sheep puppy mill. The new guy, Wilmer, seemed to actually care about what he was doing. Very nice man. I am going to be giving him a call today to tell him we would like a pair of lambs and find out when we could pick them up. He is even loaning us a cage to haul them in. I can't wait to get them.

My vow to you

My vow to you is that I will make more of an effort into keeping this thing up to date.

We got 2 apple and 2 pear trees that we planted. We found a nest of baby bunnies. I found a bird nest that has 6 babies in it. 2 are huge, 4 are tiny. I can't figure out why, unless some other bird laid it's eggs in the nest.

Our next big project is building the chicken coop. I can't wait for chickens. We will also be getting 2 lambs as soon as we can catch the sheep guy at home. Tough thing right now since he is often out making hay. Speaking of hay, we have a dude coming to make hay for us in our field. He is coming sometime this week. I will take pictures.

The garden is growing like mad. We have to get new watermelon plants. We think all the rain we had killed them off. I would like the get some cantelope plants, too while we are at it. Still have some pumpkin and cucumbers to plant.

Dewey goes to the vet farmer today for a "well baby" check. He will get some shots. I can't wait to see how much he weighs. When we had him there...4 weeks ago I think it was, he weighed 10lbs. He has been growing like a weed.

Poor homeless children

The kids had so much fun playing in the mud after it rained hard last Thursday. I was tempted to join in.
Hadley's feet

Herbs

My Mom, brother, his girlfriend, Hadley and I went to the Herb and Garden Festival at the Landis Valley Farm Museum this weekend. We had such a great time. I got all kinds of edible, good smelling goodies. I think the kids will have a lot of fun smelling and tasting the plants I got.

Lavender-I use in cooking and to make Lavender sugar(sooo good)
Spearmint-Many uses, I am going to make tea with mine and maybe some cookies
Chocolate Mint-Smells divine, can't wait to taste it in some recipies I've found
Lemon Balm-Cooking
Chamomile-Hope to use this for tea
Dill-Many, many cooking uses. Also, hope to try my hand at pickles. I love the way this smells
Thyme-Your run of the mill thyme. Lots of use in cooking
Lavender Thyme-I love lavender so when I saw some lavender thyme I had to get some. Smells good. Can't wait to try it out
Lemon Thyme-Saw some dessert recipes I wanted to try that called for this
Elfin Thyme-might be my favorite. I love the name. How perfect for a fairy/herb garden
Lime Basil-I've been in a lime funk lately so I thought I would give this a whirl
Spicy Globe Basil-Smells so wonderful
Par-Cel-This is a funny little herb(?). It looks just like parsley but it tastes just like celery. It will make a great garnish
Oregano-You've all heard of it. Great for tomato dishes
Patchouli-Smell reminds me of hippies. Great earthy smell. I'll find something to do with it

Non-herbs
Nicotiania-the flowering tobacco plant. Attracts hummingbirds
Elephant Ear-I think they are nifty
Moon Vine-Flowers open in the evening and stay open overnight
Clematis-I got one called "Josephine"
Nasturtium-I was intriged by this one. You can eat the flowers. I got one called "Strawberries and Cream"

I also got a baby stone shroom from some hippies. I think it is cool.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Corby told everyone that would listen about Clint removing the tree stump with his truck. Last night Corby found a rope with a hook at the end of it and decided to move some of his own stumps. Clint found him and started cracking up, then he took pictures. This was after Corby was throwing dirt clumps at the car. When Clint told him to stop Corby told him that "the big one went in there" as he pointed at the open car window. Clint walked away so Corby wouldn't see him laughing.


We made some butter yesterday. It took a long time. Next time I am going to use the blender. It was fun though. We used the buttermilk to make pancakes this morning. It was all gooood.

What?!

We are getting cable(tv and internet) on Friday. We haven't had cable for over a year. I fear I will be over-stimulated if I turn on the TV. Thank goodness there is so much to do outside.

Hadley earns her keep

Yesterday we worked a little bit on Hadley's room. We took down paneling, decided we would take out the flooring after we painted and fixed the outlets. Hadley took charge and made sure we did it all right. We hope to get the spackling done today and maybe even start painting.





Right before a big sneeze. It was dusty.

We also got a good chunk of the garden planted. I would show a picture but there isn't much to see at this time. We still need to plant Potatoes and Rhubarb. Tomatoes and Peppers will wait until after next weekend when the threat of a freeze is next to nil. I am going today to get lettuce and sweet potatoes.

Tiller and a screen door

Today was an uber productive day. This morning we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival. There was a lot of food. We had burgers, fries and free Rita's Ice samples. We also checked out the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art. They were having a Native Plant sale. We did not get anything but it was fun to check out.

After coming home we planned what/where things would go in our garden. Once we decided we went in search of plants. When I have a cold case built I will start my own from seeds, but we are getting started late this year. We found a place called "Smuckers". It is an Amish farm with massive greenhouses. There were so many people there. It was awesome. We got Tomatoes(1 kind for everyday use, 1 kind for making sauce), Seed Potatoes(2 kinds), Green bean seeds (stringless and purple), Pea seeds, Neck Pumpkins, 2 kinds of Watermelon, Celery, Broccoli, Seed Onions, Corn seeds, Carrot seeds, Rhubarb, and Green Peppers. We need to get Sweet Potatoes, Lettuce and Herbs. I'll get my Herbs next week at the Herb Festival.

Bonus: I found this screen door in our barn. The actual screen part needed to be replaced but the door was perfect. Our one door did not have a screen door. This one was a perfect fit(probably went there before). I got some screen at the hardware store yesterday. We repaired it today and hung it. I love it.

We did a lot of yard work today. All of the trees and shrubs need to be trimmed, lots of weeding to be done. Clint is cutting down 3 trees that had massive wicked thorns on them. We didn't want the kids to run into one and loose an eye. Sidenote: I almost said that last sentence in front of One-Eyed-Don. We had to remove one of the stumps where a tree formaly stood. That was a ton of fun. Clint pulled it out with his truck and some rope. For some odd reason the whole process scared Corb. Tree hugging hippy.

Clint finally got to use his tiller today. He was proud. I think his head might bust from the testosterone overload. The kids liked watching him till from the porch. Garden planting will begin tomorrow. Freeze warning for tonight.

More bugs

The pink moth is called a Rosy Maple Moth. It is found in Red and Silver Maples. I decided to check out our Silver Maple to see if I could find a caterpillar to keep in a jar so we could watch it morph into a moth. Instead, I found these gross looking things. They freak me out. They are Wheel Bug Nymphs. I learned that by checking out a very cool site What's that Bug? They are good bugs to have in a garden, they eat pest bugs. But, their bite is rumored to be worse than that of a bee or wasp. Yikes. I made Clint kill them.



I know you've been waiting for it, so have I. I did it. I did a load of wash and hung it on my washline. I put it out almost all the way. I just had to see what it would look like. It was awesome. I can't wait to hang diapers out.

Pretty in Pink

We are loving the farm life. I can't even really express it into words, just loving it. We feel like we can finally breath. I bought eggs from the Amish farm up the ways a bit for 90 cents a dozen. The suckers are huge! We have an organic farm 3 miles away that I got our meat from for this week. They give tours of the farm. Clint and I want to take the kids one day. I also got milk there. It came in , get this, a glass jug. You get a 2 dollar "refund" towards your next purchase of milk for bringing the jug back. I may just have to keep one though.

This Saturday my Mom is coming up so we can check out the farmers market a few miles away. There is also a Cherry Blossom festival in town that we want to go to. We hope to get our garden ready for planting this weekend and maybe work on Hadley's room. It is fugly right now, but we will make it right purty.

I found this moth(?) on our trash can this morning. I never knew a moth could be so pretty. I can't wait for the kids to wake up so I can show them. I wonder what kind it is? I am going to look it up.

Heating

Earlier this week we were informed by the bank that we are getting our mortgage from that we need to install central heat in the farm, preferably before closing(in 4 weeks). We are annoyed by this. The first thing Clint asked them was if the coal stove being the only source of heat was going to be a problem. The guy told Clint no, as long as we can get insurance they don't care. Turns out the dumbass didn't know what he was talking about. Even more annoying, they can't tell us what will be enough heating, just that what we have isn't enough. We got an estimate from our former neighbour who just got his HVAC degree. His estimate is 10-12K dollars. We are still going to get the farm, this is just a huge pain in the ass.

Picture

YAY! Today posting pictures works. Here are 2 shots of the farm. The first is of the barn from the lane. Behind the barn our land goes down to the tree line, and to the left off the picture.

The second picture would be what you can see if you look out of the double sliding doors in the living room. Again, our land goes down to the tree line. There is part of the garden, a shed and way out there is the Amish phone boooth. Sadley, they are taking the little phone booth.

Just 5 weeks until we move to the farm. Corb asks daily "We moving to the farm today?". 4 weeks until we move in with my parents for a week or so, that should be interesting. The electric pump should be going in for the well today up at the farm. Tuesday the radon mitigation system should be going in and April 5th the UV light should be put in the well. I can't get the picture's to work or I would post some pictures of the farm.