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.