The last several days have been filled with gratifying work.
Wednesday was all about strawberries...picking, washing and hulling, baking, freezing, and, of course, eating strawberries. It was fun listening to the kids--as they stuffed themselves full--saying, "I picked this one! Mommy picked this one!"
I was up late working to get as many berries as I could into the freezer while they were still just-picked fresh.
Yesterday Sissy and I picked small handfuls of the first red raspberries and black raspberries at our Dowling garden and ate them right up. We watered and weeded the tomatoes and basil and marigolds.
It was CSA veggie pick-up day and the usual race to get all the veggies in the fridge and figure out what needed to be eaten first (the strawberries, of course!) I made red beans with coconut rice and pastured bacon for dinner and threw together a romaine salad with fennel, garlic scape, green onion, and John's homemade vinaigrette. Sissy begged for her own salad and ate every bite!
This morning we went to Dowling to dig out the unhappy basil (not enough sun!) and stake the tomatoes. We scored a few more raspberries and decided tomatoes cages would work better than stakes, which meant we would have to purchase 16 of them, so Snacks and John ventured off in the Big Rig this afternoon in search of some.
We worked quite a bit in the yard--mowing, weeding, moving plants around, mulching...it was heavenly to see things come together that we've been "meaning to do" for a long time. The kids filled a kiddie pool and splashed around for hours. John and I used the water to water our trees after the kids went to bed.
Dinner tonight was homemade quiche with whole wheat and spelt crust, Sweetland eggs, pastured cheese and bacon, chard and garlic from the CSA box, and chives from the back yard (I made a "plain" version for the kids, but Sissy asked for ours!) Dessert was a homemade strawberry pie. Delicious.
To use up the LAST of the strawberries, I assembled two strawberry rhubarb crisps for the freezer.
I'm exhausted, but life is good.
