I should be really tired right now, because yesterday was a very busy and stressful day, and last night Sena threw up (she thinks she ate too much cantaloupe), and I was up with her so I did not sleep well. But, to the contrary, I am feeling elated. It’s just such a beautiful day outside, and everything looks so pretty. The sky is blue, and it’s only warm enough to be pleasant. When I was out inspecting the field and setting up irrigation this morning, I was taken by surprise by how red the apples on one of our trees looked against the blue sky, and how green everything in the background. Sometimes a little scene like that, which I pass by a hundred times a day, will look particularly fresh, and will take my breath away for one instant, as if I were seeing it for the first time. This “first-time sight” is a great gift, and it brings with it a certain lightness, and gratitude for being here to experience this awesome natural world that we are part of.

Here are some pictures from around the farm.

Olive is three-and-a-half month now

 Our young orchard. Ed's been working hard on it lately.

Winter squashes are doing incredibly well this year. They grew so much, some took over our stone wall, where I found these three hidden.

Tall spindle apples - not well known here, but very popular in Europe. Ed, Sena and I saw lots of them in the Netherlands when we we biking through in 2003.

Grain corn and beans will be part of our sustenance during the winter. Lettuces in the foreground.

Trellised Roma tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and husk cherries on the left-center, salad greens on the right

Red peppers are amazing roasted. Been doing a lot of that lately.

Our bountiful peach tree

Wood stacked for the winter

 Laundry drying in the sun.

 Peace

We are in fruit frenzy right now. Everything is coming in all at once. We harvested hundreds of pounds of watermelon, and there are lots more to go. Peaches are ripening quickly. Asian pears and apples are also coming. We have husk cherries, a surprisingly good new fruit we planted for the first time this year. We are inundated by delicious fruits, and still, vegetables! Snack time is not a problem. Just grab a fruit, off the tree, off the counter, wherever.

Finding a way to store and preserve everything before it goes bad is a challenge. I know of no way to preserve watermelon, so they’ll just be distributed to the CSA, and we'll eat our fill. 

I've been reading Einstein's biography before I fall asleep, and rekindling my love of physics. Good stuff.

These are some pictures from the past couple of weeks:

 

I'm done with pickles

Made salsa verde with these tomatillos and jalapeno, plus garlic and cilantro

Sena and Aiyana were commissioned by my sister to hatch our some chicks. My sister's trying to increase her hen flock, so Sena and Aiyana put some eggs under their broody hen Cutiepie and she hatched out 3 chicks.

A cicada the girls found

Peace

What my typical week looks like at this time of the year

CSA days: Mondays and Thursdays

6:15        Wake up

6:30        Have coffee

6:45        Get pails and other things ready for milking

7:30        Milk Opal

8:00        Cool and store milk. Clean up milking pails. Eat breakfast.

8:30        Go outside to start harvesting / preparing vegetables for the CSA. I often work with one or both kids.

11:30     Cook for lunch, unless Sena does, in which case I just continue working outside.

12:00     Eat lunch as a family

12:30     Finish preparing vegetables for sale. Set up the sale/display area.

3:00       CSA begins. Help customers, keep display area restocked, keep everything running.

5-ish      Grab a quick bite (by this time I usually feel like I am ready to pass out from hunger).

5:30       Leave the CSA with Ed or the kids to go and put Olive in her pen for the night, give the cows water and treats (chard, kale, carrots, cucumbers or whatever other seconds we have around, plus some grain for Opal). Close the greenhouse. If Ed does this, then I stay at the CSA.

7:00      CSA ends. We close the sales area and start cleaning / putting away stuff.

8:15      Eat. Do tick check on Sena and Aiyana. Put them to bed.

9:00      Crash into bed and read if I have any energy left.

9:15      Done.

Non-CSA days: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays

6:15        Wake up

6:30        Coffee

6:45        Get treats for Opal and supplies ready for milking

7:30        Milk Opal

8:00        Cool and store milk. Eat breakfast.

8:30        Clean kitchen. Talk to Sena and Aiyana about their plans for the day, and any chores they have.

9:00       Farm work. Computer work – crop data; CSA planning and emails; Once in a while I drive the kids to activities or playdates.

11:00     Cook

12:00     Eat Lunch

12:30     Farm work. Cook / food preservation. Some combination of the following: Talk about outstanding farm issues with Ed. Drive kids to activities or playdates.

5-ish       Dinner

5:30        Put Olive in her pen for the night, bring water and treats to the cows. Close the greenhouse. Sometimes if Ed is at karate with Sena and Aiayana, I take a little time to write in my blog, sit with the cows, or just sit on the porch and look at the field and the trees. Just to be alone, in silence.

6:00        Clean up after dinner.

7:00        Family tick check. Read or do something relaxing with the kids.

8:15        Put Sena and Aiyana to bed.

8:30        Read in bed

9:30        Out.

Sunday is our “family day”, which means that we try to just be together and do fun/relaxing things as a family. There’s still cooking, and some farm work, but we really try to keep that in check so that it does not take over the whole day.

This is a typical week for me at this time of the year. Ed, Sena or Aiyana’s week would not look the same, as we all have our individual, different  tasks. Also, things would look quite different at another time of year, like in the winter, when homeschooling becomes a big time commitment, and the CSA is not operating.

As you see, I don’t get out much. I spend less than one hour per week in the car, and I like it that way. I have plenty to entertain myself with right here. Ten years ago, my week looked very different. Ten years from now, who knows?

Peace

The work outside is slowing down, as it does every year at this time. There is still plenty to do, but the pace seems more workable. We are done with most of the fall planting, and in another month we’ll be getting into winter crops, mostly hardy greens.

We got over 3 inches of rain this week, which relieved us of many hours of waterin

The fall crops are looking great, except for some broccoli and cabbages which were invaded by flea beetles when still young. Tomatoes are still producing a lot right now, but the leaf mold fungus is advancing and we expect to have a shorter overall production season this year. I’m not happy about it, but neither am I as upset as I thought I would be. I think it’s because I feel like we’ve been taught a valuable lesson through this problem. We have some ideas as to how to try and avoid the fungus in future years, such as planting resistant varieties and increase night-time venting of the greenhouse.

The melons and fall cucurbits look amazing. This may be the best harvest we’ve ever had, assuming nothing goes wrong between now and then.

This month of August has been so cool, that we started fall spinach weeks earlier than usual. It’s coming along nicely, and hopefully we’ll have spinach for the CSA in early fall. Spinach is a very popular but temperature-fussy crop, so anything we can do to have it longer at the CSA is good.

I’ve had my first Asian pears this past week. The trees we planted last year are producing a little, and I am very impressed with the taste of the fruit. I was not too sure what to expect from Asian pears. I’ve had them from the store in the past and found them kind of bland, but ours taste much richer and sweeter. The trees won’t come to full production for another couple of years, but we’ll still have some fruit to enjoy before then.

The vet came to dehorn Olive this week. It went very well, as well as could be expected I guess, but still it was traumatic for Opal and Olive, who had to be separated, and poor Olive had her horns cauterized. It made me sad to look at her with two big burn marks where her horns were. I think we made the right decision to have her dehorned, given that she could hurt herself, the other cows or us with the horns if they grew, but I always wonder. Anyway, she seems back to normal now.

I’m almost done making pickles. I canned 14 quarts, which we’ll have for the winter. I still want to ferment some for eating right now. My first batch came out very well, and we already finished them. The dilly beans came out ok, not great. A little too vinegary for my taste. I might have opened them too early so I’ll give them a couple more weeks for the taste to develop.

Still have a lot of work ahead for putting up food for the winter: tomato sauce, sun-dried cherry tomatoes, apple chips, apple sauce, roasted red peppers, pickled jalapenos, and weekly cheese, still have to be made. It’s a lot but hopefully with decreasing work-load outside, I can devote more time to food preservation.

I’ve been thinking about homeschooling too. I want to devote more time before we start again this year to come up with a plan and with resource materials. I already asked Sena and Aiyana for their input as far as topics of study and they were eager to let me know. History was, as expected, top of the list, but grammar was also in there and languages were in strong demand too. I have my own plans, so I need to work on putting it all together into some sort of daily schedule and material list we can follow.

I'm loving these cool, fall-like days. I’m sorry for the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, who would like more heat, but for myself, and the cows, this is just lovely.

Peace

Bo-staff Practice

Last Friday we officially bought the Willington property I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. After the closing, the four of us went there to celebrate in a small way. We stood in the middle of the 7 acre field that is most of the property and for a while watched and listened to a hawk calling from the top of a tall tree. I thought that it was a nice welcome to this new piece of land. I was also very happy to see that there are many lilacs forming a borderline between the house and the field. They must smell heavenly in the spring. There is also one big barn and several sheds on the property, all in need of repair.

On Saturday afternoon we spent some time practicing bo-staff as a family. Ed got hit in the head with a loud "donk". It wasn't bad but it gave us all a good laugh. I practiced too and amazingly did not injure myself. Mostly I sat down and ejoyed some cold milk and dark chocolate. Sena and Aiyana practiced their karate forms and spun their bo-staffs up in the air at scary speeds, with much more skill and grace than Ed or I.Here they are:

Peace

a massive tree in front of our house, a professional photographer in our CSA, and girls who love gymnastics - here's what you get: