Snacks and I spent the better part of the afternoon at Dowling. He worked on some kind of "construction site" for earth worms while I tended to the disaster that is my tomato space. We seem to have a ravaging case of blight and that, coupled with the cheap tomato cages we used, means things are not looking so good over there.

Nevertheless, we hauled 8 more pounds of tomatoes home.

Today's experiment was trying to dehydrate the cherry tomatoes from the CSA box. I think we're close to 11 hours (they were supposed to take 7-11 hours total) and most are not even close to "leathery". I'm not sure I feel like staying up 'til all hours watching over a few cherry tomatoes, but we'll see.

I thought I was pretty ingenious with dinner tonight--used up lots of CSA veggies! Arugula salad with tomatoes (of course) and a cucumber and chives from the back yard. I did a little improvising with Alice Waters' Curly Kale and Potato soup and threw in the rest of the Anderson Farm hot dogs. Truly delicious! (Though, I admit, I was the only one who ate it.)

Our first tomato harvest!

It's hard to believe that the 16 gangly, tangly tomato plants at Dowling started out as teeny tiny seeds on our window sill just a few months ago.

Snacks is holding the 7 pounds of tomatoes that we picked today. Tomorrow I make SALSA!

Today was a busy but satisfying day of work:

Full breakfast for everyone followed by lots of laundry catch-up after not having a washer for over a week. Got Sissy fitted for ballet slippers for her fall class and then dropped her at Minna's to decorate her Pinkalicious birthday cupcakes for tomorrow. Modified Alice Waters' Ratatouille recipe to use up lots of CSA veggies and some yummy sausage from the Trad Foods warehouse. Cleaned out and organized the upstairs freezer, watered the food plants in the back, and brought the laundry in from the line just in time for the rain to start (it rained only because I had just watered, of course). Picked up the house, threw together quick dinner of leftovers while John gave Snacks a haircut, and got the kids to bed. Made cream cheese, worked on ANOTHER trial version of fresh milk yogurt, soaked oats and pizza crust for tomorrow.

Whew! Feels good.

This week's veggie faces from the CSA box:

Veggie Face by Sissy

Veggie Alien by Snacks

Today's cucumber harvest from the back yard:

We still have more than two months to go with the veggie CSA boxes. Every week we venture over to pick up our box, the kids throw the ball for the drop-site doggie, and we head home so I can figure out how to stuff all of those veggies into my already overflowing refrigerator (I haven't been 100% on keeping up with my plan to have all the previous week's veggies eaten before the new ones arrive...).

This week, this kids talked on their zucchini "phones" all the way home. Then Snacks felt compelled to make a "veggie face" out of some of the contents of the box (notice the red pepper and green bean barrette).

He was delighted to find some unusual looking carrots and a "Siamese twin" yellow squash--something you would never see in a grocery store!

Snacks found our very first tiny baby watermelon in our back yard garden today. We are keeping our fingers crossed that our little chipmunk friends (and we use that term loosely) have no interest in watermelons.

It was a busy day for me in the kitchen again. I had a list that seemed a mile long but only got through about half of it (as usual). I pulled apart the chicken that I cooked last night and separated it into batches for eating quickly and freezing. (The days of eating big pieces of chicken as a main dish are temporarily on hold--must stretch chicken as far as we can!) Then I made chicken stock that filled the whole house with wonderful yummy smells all day. Homemade macaroni and cheese (with bits of chicken), fresh green beans, and rhubarb crisp (from the back yard garden) for dinner.

Basil and other herbs will have to wait to be harvested. Again.

Today the kids and I went in search of some currant bushes at Natura Farms. We were lucky enough to track down the manager and got tons of information and nine awesome berry bushes to plant in our yard--black, red, and white currants; golden raspberries; and gooseberries (at Snacks' request).

For fun we picked a few pick-your-own gooseberries--which Snacks got to sample from the wild at Dodge's "Nature's Playground" camp last week and has declared to be, "better than all the other berries put together!"-- and some black currants.

We had a picnic lunch near the lake where Sissy could watch the horses-- Castle Rock cheese curds, homemade muffins, and fresh-picked gooseberries.

At home tonight we had to dig up what seemed like gazillions of day lilies to make room for the new berry bushes. I wanted them to go to a good home, so I posted them on FreeCycle. Both families who are coming to get them have six-year-olds, which is helping Snacks feel just the tiniest bit better about getting rid of them. He has been trying to replant them almost as fast as I can dig them up.

I am tired. Keeping up with our food is hard work. Trouble is, there's no turning back now. I wouldn't dream of doing anything any differently...except maybe trying to get more sleep.

Last night I was up late in a panic trying to figure out where we are going to get fresh milk come end of summer. We were officially notified last night that our current dairy and egg CSA farmers will be retiring.

Though I can easily get milk through a farmer who is affiliated with the Trad Foods warehouse, I have become very spoiled by the milk we've been getting from Jersey cows--sweeter with a higher fat content than other dairy breeds. After much research, some phone calls, and a flurry of emails, I think I have secured a spot with a farm that at least has Jersey-cross cows. I was thrilled and relieved to find that they are still accepting new customers.

This puts us one step closer to making the decision to get our own laying hens...the only thing holding us back at this point is trying to figure out what we will do with the hens once they are no longer laying. John says we should put them "in the stew pot" as most other folks do (he was inspired by our visit to the Anderson Farm a couple of weeks ago), but I'm not sure I can do that if the kids (and I) have come to know them as pets.

I am getting behind with the veggie CSA box. I pulled out all the veggies that needed to be eaten by tomorrow night so John could figure out what to do with them while I made the spaghetti for dinner tonight. (I decided I can't take the pressure all on my own right now.) We used up some zucchini in muffins and in spaghetti sauce (of course, the children have no idea), and John made a salad with the rest of the lettuce, some dill, steamed beets, and some pickling cucumbers. I still need to make sauerkraut with the red cabbage but I haven't been able to work up to it...or the bread-baking this week, for that matter. (Thankfully, I always make two loaves at a time and had some stashed in the freezer!)

In my own garden, there are so many herbs that I want to harvest and freeze but, somehow, there just aren't enough hours in the day!

Today was the first day since the middle of last week that it was warm enough to eat on the front porch. (Note the mid-summer date!) The kids and I happily returned to enjoying our home-cooked meals and freshly picked berries on the checkered table cloth--it felt like summer again!

I have spent the last couple of days harvesting and preserving some of the herbs from the back yard, and I figured out how to make peppermint tea from the mint in the garden--it is heavenly!

The kids and I worked in the Dowling garden this morning. We dug up all but four of the remaining basil plants to bring home for more full-sun exposure and picked what looks like might be just about the last of the raspberries and black raspberries of the season.

At home this afternoon we repotted the basil, weeded all the gardens, and watered like crazy.

We are certainly getting our fill of fresh berries these days. Every day we are getting them now from Dowling, or our yard (only a few there), the CSA box, or the neighbors. We are berry-stained and loving it!

On the 4th we had red, white, and blue sundaes with Cedar Summit ice cream, strawberries, and black raspberries (we called those "blue")--delicious! There have been strawberry rhubarb crisps, strawberry pie, and just plain berries to eat with our fingers.

I'm on a hunt to find some fall raspberries to plant in the back yard...

Yum!

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.

We ate the last of the CSA veggies tonight (except for a few potatoes that will keep for awhile). Both kids ate kohlrabi raw with salt on it. And--in keeping with the recently discovered miracle of no snacking--both kids ate my spaghetti. With sauce on it. With meat in it. Every bite. (Sissy even had seconds.)

I'm not a big pasta person, but I was especially proud of my spaghetti tonight because I made the sauce from scratch with green garlic and green onions from the CSA box, and oregano and basil from the back yard. It felt so good chopping everything up and throwing it in the pot.

I weeded the strawberry patch out back after the kids went to bed. It was hot and humid, but it felt good to be outside. I love the serenity of summer evenings.

We went to Dowling around noon today and, for the first time, I realized that our garden plot is actually "part shade" instead of "full sun". Great for working in the garden; not so great for growing food. The raspberries, rhubarb, and lettuce from the previous tenant seem to be doing well...guess we'll see how my tomatoes and basil fare.

I finally stuck the little watermelon and cucumber plants in the ground in the yard today. It's so late in the season, I have no idea if they will even mature, but the kids picked them out and I figure it's all part of the experiment this year. I ate three ripe blueberries off my new bushes while I was watering my new plantings. Yum.

Finished up the last of the strawberry rhubarb crisp tonight along with the rest of the leftovers from this weekend. It occurred to me that we virtually have zero food waste these days. I have recently devised a system where I make a list on a sticky note of all of the leftovers so I can keep track of what needs to be eaten.

I bet we used to throw out 75% of our leftovers because they went bad. Now nothing gets thrown out and the tiny percentage of what doesn't get eaten is fed to the worms (along with all the egg shells, banana peels, etc.). I have just discovered that if I don't give the kids snacks, they eat ALL of their meals without complaining--vegetables included--and almost always ask for seconds. It's like a miracle. We used to have to take the trash out every single day because it was full. Now we're down to maybe once a week and that usually has to be taken out because it starts to smell bad before it gets full.

Snacks read the grace tonight at dinner for the very first time. He had to get a little help from his dad, but he did it mostly himself. We were so proud.

School is out in 3 days. My plan for mornings this summer is to get up (the kids are up between 5:45 and 6:15), grab something portable for the kids to eat for breakfast, and walk the dog to Dowling to water and weed before it gets too hot.

Today was a little bit of a practice run when the kids and I stopped at Dowling on the way home from school to water the tomatoes and basil.

We each grabbed two watering cans from the shed, filled them at the water barrels, and the kids watered the marigolds while I watered the food plants. It worked even better than I had hoped!

All of my tomato and basil seedlings are finally in over at Dowling. I ended up having a LOT more room than I thought I would because my neighbor told me I could keep the basil seedlings grouped together...so I filled in with marigolds that I got for 1.99/four-pack from the neighborhood garden store.

I read that marigolds help keep insects away from plants...though I admit I have no idea what kind of insects or what kinds of plants...

Today was full, but wonderful. Perfect sunny weather. The kids had fresh milk and melon for breakfast while John and I had oatmeal and fresh eggs from our new CSA.

John played Go Fish with Snacks, picked more flowers with Sissy, and went to check on his truck, while I started the Weekly Home Blessing, hauled the tomato and basil seedlings outside, baked two loaves of sourdough bread, soaked cashews and almonds for crispy nuts, and made lunch for the kids.

Sissy "peed on the potty" for the first time ever today--a very big deal!

Late this afternoon we all went to Dowling to clean up our garden plot and pull a few weeds before grilling local, organic brats for dinner and finishing up the last of the cream on some more organic strawberries we found at the co-op. Yum!

The kids and I spent the afternoon enjoying the back yard.

They picked dandelions and played in the dirt while I pulled weeds, trimmed and bagged branches, tended the pansies and the strawberries and, finally, got to relax in my favorite lawn chair under the sun umbrella with one of my new cookbooks.

I tried cooking beans in the crock pot all day today (I think it worked!), and I'll try rhubarb in the crock pot tomorrow.

We are still enjoying the lilacs that John cut for me from the yard a few nights ago--there is no better heavenly scent!