Harvest...Genesis 8:22

Brrrrr.

The mornings and evenings are starting to get chilly.

I enjoyed my sweater all day today.

I think it is safe to say that summer is over.

I'll miss it

I won't miss riding in my van with no air conditioning in 110 degree heat...but otherwise, I'll miss summer.

I canned some tomatoes on Sunday and I have a few more to put in the dehydrator. 

I don't think there will be many more this year as the frost has already nipped part of our valley.

Last week a patient brought me some gifts.  

Aren't they cute? Too bad they aren't toddler friendly. I'll have to find a place for them other than the dining room table where Goldilocks likes to play.

I do like pumpkins. They are pretty and practical. I found this one tonight.  

I'll enjoy its prettiness for a few weeks then I'll throw it in the oven and bake it. I bake my pumpkins whole.  I just take out the top rack in my oven and poke a few pumpkins with a fork a couple of times. I bake them at 350 for an hour or so until tender. When they are cool enough to handle I cut off the top and scoop out the seeds (season & bake for a treat) then cut and scoop the flesh. I use it right then or freeze for pumpkin soup any time of the year. Yummy and easy. My kind of baking. November 1 I'll start looking for them at a deep discount and spend a day baking pumpkins.

It is really not practical to keep a huge pumpkin on my table, though, so I was excited to see a picture on a local facebook site of a canning ring pumpkin. Cute. Fun. Easy. Cheap (free!). Toddler friendly.

After raiding my canning lid and ring drawer, I collected a few dozen rings.  I specifically looked for ones that were dented or a bit rusty. I chose to just use the golden colored ones and left the silver and white for another time.

A bit of scrap ribbon from the craft box and some cinnamon sticks from the cupboard and the pumpkins were complete.  G and Goldilocks LOVED helping gather up the rings and threading them on the ribbon.

The photos don't do them justice. I really like them and I'm thrilled at how easy and practical they are.  When the season is over they'll go right back in the drawer until next canning season...or until we make apple sauce in a few weeks.  The wonderful thing is that I won't care a bit if I have to take a pumpkin apart to use the rings and then put it back together a week later.  They were that quick and easy to do!

A strong wind...Job 8:2

I'm in the middle of overseeing an SAT practice session for M, so I have a few minutes and a few pictures to blog!

We've had beautiful weather the past few days. The boys and Sacagawea have enjoyed relaxing in their hammocks. Three hammocks. One hammock stand. Sometimes they have hung up all 3 at the same time, but usually it is just one or two at a time.

Yesterday I was outside soaking up some sunshine and talking to S when a huge gust of wind whipped through our yard. Someone's hammock, which wasn't connected to the stand, got caught up in the wind. I thought it was pretty cool. S didn't. He might have thought it was cool if it had been J's or Sacagawea's, but it wasn't.

Fortunately The Man was at home, otherwise S would have had to wait for another gust of wind to loosen his hammock from the tree.

That tree definitely isn't strong enough to climb.This tree is strong enough, and S and J decided they wanted a tree house.

Originally, I heard that Sacagawea wouldn't be allowed, but since I saw her carrying boards up the hill yesterday while J & S nailed, I think she has struck a deal. I heard that even G and Baby S were up there yesterday with The Man, so I'm pretty sure it is safe.

We (not me) tilled the entire garden area (~150' x 150') a few weeks ago. So far we've planted potatoes, peas (actually planted a few weeks prior), onions, spinach, radishes, and turnips. Strawberry plants were put in yesterday.

We tried planting strawberries a few years ago, but something ate all the plants. The day The Man and boys tilled the garden, the Dog eradicated about a dozen moles from the garden area. We also just purchased one of these to try to get rid of more of the bigger rodents quickly. Hopefully it will be worth it and we'll get more than a dozen potatoes this year!

G and Sacagawea helped me plant some seeds and we have lots of baby seedlings soaking up sun during the day. We'll continue to have frosts through the beginning of next month so we'll be doing the daily seedling transport for a few more weeks.
Don't you just love his giraffe hat? It was made/given to him last winter by a friend and he adores it!

Here is a "just because" picture I took a few weeks ago. Have a great day!

Seventh month...Leviticus 23:39

I came to make this post and realized I had a few unpublished posts waiting to be "touched up" before I posted them. Obviously that didn't happen, so I published them tonight as-is. Check the previous posts if you want to see what little I had time to write about the past few months.

7 month stats for Baby S...13 1/4 pounds and 25 inches long. Please don't be too hard on this mom of six who neglected to do 6 month stats. Baby S really gets around now with her rolling, scooting, and even some up-on-the-knees crawling. She started eating solid food on Sacagawea's birthday, April 12.

G is talking! He's says "Mama" and "Dad-DEE" and all sorts of other lovely words. He actually has a very broad vocabulary, but it is hard for most people to understand him because he tends to leave off the beginning consonant sounds. I even have him on video calling his baby sister "Eew-ie." That should be worth something someday!

Sacagawea turned 9 years old and three days later M turned 17. Seventeen? Yes. Wow. I'm starting to think I'm getting old. Seventeen. We were in the store yesterday and I heard a song on the loudspeaker. "That's an old song," I told him. "I remember it from when I was a kid."

"So," he replied, "are you saying you're old?" Ummmm...

We're all working to get an actual garden in this year. Lots of seedlings are started and the garden area is tilled.

Going to go to bed now...I've got to sleep while the babies are sleeping!

Two are better than one...Ecclesiastes 4:9

Warning: If you are of the camp that believes certain animals are more important than food for a family, just click away from this post. Thank you.

For those of you that have not had the pleasure of meeting a California ground squirrel, you haven't missed much! They are pests. Extreme pests! Just imagine that they are like their cousins, the rats, with bushier tails. They dig under the building foundations and try to destroy whatever else they can. We have to tread carefully out in the field to avoid the burrows.

The Dog usually takes care of the ground squirrels around our property, however he doesn't have ready access to our fenced garden area. The squirrels were "taking care" of our garden this spring until we started keeping a live trap on the compost pile within the fenced garden area. About 2-3 times a day the Dog alerts us to a squirrel in the trap. The trap is moved to an open area and opened, then the Dog does the rest.

This morning the Dog started barking so the boys went to move the trap. There was not one, but two squirrels in the trap. This has happened before, but it is a very rare occurrence. The Dog had to have some help dispatching of those two.

Later in the afternoon the Dog started barking again. This time I needed a picture!
Yes, the Dog is drooling. There were another two!
The second is hard to see in the shadow of the door, but there are two in that trap. It turned into an interesting object lesson for the kids. If you are going to do something that will get you into trouble, it doesn't necessarily help to do it with a friend...well, it may help the predator!

Hail...Exodus 9:18

Our very first harvest of the summer crop of zucchini! If blossoms are any indication, we'll have plenty to share!

We are very thankful for this little squash since Monday night we had a hail storm. Other than a few tomato cages that got knocked over, our garden fared pretty well. Just a few miles from us, some gardens were destroyed by golf ball-sized hail.

Fruit...Leviticus 19:25

Tuesday evening I made 3 batches of blueberry jam. Wednesday morning I made 3 more batches. In the afternoon I made 2 additional and final batches. All the Sure-Jell is gone and we've used an obscene amount of sugar this summer. We just emptied the last of the 3rd 25lb. bag of the summer into the sugar container. Let's see...75 lbs. / 7+ people. Ick. And the year is barely half over.

There are 89 jars of jam (blueberry and apricot) in the cupboard. I used miscellaneous hand-me-down jars for the blueberry jam. I'm not sure some of them were actual "canning" jars, but the lids and rings fit. Since I use the inversion method for jams, I wasn't worried about breakage. There are several 10oz. jars and some really cute short pint jars. Hopefully they will provide the kids with their weekly PB&J fix this winter.

We still have 20+ lbs. of blueberries in the refrigerator, so those will probably be frozen for eating this winter.

I know we'll be doing sugar-free applesauce from culls this fall, but I don't know what else is on the list for fruit preservation.

Our garden is coming along. We may get some zucchini to eat this week. It was reported to me that something has been eating the tops off the cucumbers. Another planting of black beans went into the garden this week. It is a bit late to guarantee a crop, but if the frost holds off, it will be worth it.

Eat the herb of the field...Genesis 3:18

A few days ago I mentioned that J took some interesting items to the church potluck last weekend. Can anyone identify these weeds specimens from our garden?

The first is purslane and the second is lambsquarters. They are definitely an aquired taste, in my opinion. Lambsquarters would make a pretty decent spinach substitute, and my internet research shows that some people actually prefer it to spinach. I think everyone at potluck at least gave them a try. It didn't hurt that those were the only things remotely resembling salad that showed up last week...and there was plenty of salad dressing. Ranch dressing covers a multitude of peculiar tastes! There was even a hint that there might be more wild edibles that show up to future potlucks!

Here are some of the other things growing in our garden that everyone should recognize...

Zucchini just starting to blossom:

Peppers:
(Sorry, M just informed me I should have rotated that photo. Oops! I think I need glasses, but that's a whole 'nother post!)

And an actual tomato:
I picked what I think was the last of our sugar snap peas last night. It was getting dark, so I'm not sure I got them all. I was astonished that they were still tender. We have had temperatures near or over 100 for about a week.

This morning when I got up it was 67 outside and 78 inside. I opened a few more windows and a few minutes later the temp outside was 69 and 76 inside! When I noticed the inside temp had crept back up to 77, I shut the house completely down. All the windows and shades were closed and I made sure the lights were off unless absolutely necessary. By mid-afternoon the outside thermometer said 102, but it was only 82 inside. We've opened up the house again now that it has cooled off for the evening.

Hot...Exodus 16:21

Preserving report:
More blueberries went in the freezer today. I bagged up 26 more quarts!

Weather:
Hot.

Kids:
Mowing the lawn (S & J), riding bikes, and packing for a week at camp (M). M, S, & J also are working on keeping the unwanted weeds out of the garden.

Me:
Pregnant. Hot. Tired.

I haven't yet turned on the air conditioner this summer, but we did bring home one of our "on permanent loan to the church" fans last weekend. It is blowing on me right now. Usually we open up all the doors and windows when it starts to cool off in the evening, but it was still too hot when we left for a church business meeting this evening. We didn't return home until after 9 pm and it was like an oven in the house. It is cooling off nicely and I may be able to sleep comfortably tonight. Good night!

Fruit...Genesis 1:11

The apricots are gone! I made 3 more batches of jam (27 c.--some in pints, some in 8 oz. jars) and froze one more quart. We picked up lots and lots of blueberries this afternoon. So far 30 qts. have gone in the freezer and a lot in our tummies for supper. Since I was too busy bagging them up for freezing, I didn't get any pictures tonight. You'll have to travel back a few years and see these pictures. They look about the same!

Our garden is doing reasonably well, considering we were still getting frosts the end of May and beginning of June. You will NOT believe what J harvested from the garden to take to potluck yesterday at church...oh, I need to go to bed now. We'll save that exciting revelation for another blog post. I'm afraid I'll run out of blog-worthy material before this July marathon is over!

Reap the harvest...Leviticus 19:9

Just a few pictures of our gardening and preserving update for the year...

I originally planted 3 rows of green beans. They didn't come up (old seeds?) so I replanted one of the rows. We got several pickings off of that. Not enough to freeze, but enough for us to enjoy them for several meals.

I picked 2 Anaheim chilies. Hey, better than nothing!

The cucumbers had a problem so we didn't get anything edible. However, we were blessed by the bountiful gardens of friends. We didn't go cucumberless this summer.

After our frost last week I picked off the eggplants from the two plants. I fried up a casserole dish full of breaded eggplant. We all enjoyed it immensely.
Before the frost we...ahem...The Man and the kids built a wall from some old bales of hay around our row of tomato plants. We'd picked a few small cherry tomatoes, but we had a bunch of green tomatoes of various varieties we wished to try to save.

We've been covering up the tomatoes with a tarp every night and uncovering them almost every day (oops). They are slooooowly ripening up.
I had been hoping to have enough tomatoes to can this year. Some church members who had a better-producing garden offered their surplus. About 6:00 a.m. the morning of the raccoon, about 40 lbs. of tomatoes appeared on our front porch.
I was able to can 7 quarts and 5 pints, with plenty left over for eating. I can't remember the last time I canned tomatoes. It had been at least 6 or 7 years.
Last week I was also able to dry some pears that another church member gave to us. We dried and canned apricots earlier in the summer when The Man's mom was here to help.
We also put a few quarts of apricots in the freezer. The Man and kids went out blackberry picking a few times this summer. Most of those are in the freezer.

That will probably be it for produce...unless we go apple picking. We need to put up some applesauce to last S through the winter.

There were plenty of volunteer and kid-planted sunflowers around the garden this year.

I planted some "flower garden in a box" seeds out by the well house this year. They still look pretty although the frost has killed off the zinnias.

The way of the serpent...Proverbs 30:19

We've started putting in the garden. It is still a few weeks before our last frost date, but I couldn't wait. We only planted a few rows of peas and a row of my seeding plants. Two plants each of two kinds of tomatoes and two kinds of peppers went in a row surrounded by old bales of hay. We put some old windows and shower doors up resting on the bales of hay. We open the windows and doors during the day and close them at night. That should keep things safe if we have a light frost between now and June 1.

Our friend pictured above has been hanging out in the garden. He (or she? I'm not checking) will take care of any mice, moles, or even ground squirrels that decide to devour our garden. He even has a few other friends that we've seen around the garden. They are a bit smaller, but this gopher snake was about 6 feet long.

The seed should sprout and grow...Mark 4:27

A few weeks ago I started my annual seed starting extravaganza. No seed cataloges this year. Last fall I hit the clearance sale at Walmart. All of their 10 cent seed packets were on sale for 2 cents each. I felt sorry for the cashier who had to scan each and every one of the seed packets. At that price, I let the kids pick out anything they wanted. We used some for our botany projects and the rest I sealed in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Of course, I had to buy a few more packets this spring, and then there is the collection I have stashed away from all the years when my eyes were bigger than our garden space. I do have some packets that are marked for 1995 (that was the year of the ground hog).

Our botany book had the plans for a light hut to grow some herbs. They did so well that I made a few bigger ones for our seeds this spring.

All you need is a big box, aluminum foil, plastic lid, light socket, bulb, the dirt, seeds, and somewhere to put them.(That is M sitting there behind the box dutifully doing his schoolwork.)

I love using those clamshell packages to start seeds. We mostly save the ones from our strawberries. It doesn't matter what they are from, as long as they have drainage holes in them. We save all one type to make storage easier in the off-season. The lids keep the soil from drying out and protect the seedlings if I happen to be starting some outdoors. I simply open them up when the plants reach the top.

I lined the bottom holes with a piece of newspaper to kept the dirt in, but still allow for water to pass through.

Here are two of the boxes in the utility room. The one on the right contains two old cookie sheets with 6 clamshells on each tray. One tray has 6 different kinds of tomato plants and the other has various pepper plants and eggplants. The box on the left is various herbs I'm starting for the window sills.
Inside the tomato hut...Beefsteak tomatoes...The plants seem more robust than when I try to start them just from natural sunlight. They don't get too leggy reaching for the light since the light is all around them, even bouncing off the foil on the sides. These are reaching slightly toward the light, so I just added the foil "door" to give more light on the front side. The directions do say to do this, I just hadn't done it yet.

I'm about ready to snip off the excess plants and probably within the next week or so I'll replant the tomatoes we wish to keep in individual spaces.

J actually didn't get his high pull headgear yesterday. He was supposed to get it a few weeks back but the office called me the night before to tell me that it hadn't arrived. We re-scheduled for yesterday. Yesterday when we got there they told us it STILL hadn't arrived. It seems he's getting some highly-specialized type that happens to be back ordered. The orthodontist went ahead and put the brackets on his back teeth and adjusted everything so as soon as the headgear arrives we can go in and get that fitted.

The purpose of this part of his ortho treatment is to move his top jaw back. If we didn't do it now, he would probably have to have surgery to fix the problems. We do want to avoid that if we can! The ortho office was relieved to hear that we homeschool. They said they can expect much better compliance with homeschoolers as many kids don't want to wear their headgear in public/to school.

Seek, and you will find...Matt. 7:7

We’ve had an adventuresome time at the fair this week. Several fair-goers who are seeking a relationship with God have stopped by our booth to pick up some materials.

In the booth right next to ours is a very nice lady who is selling personalized VeggieTales books and CDs. CDs. CDs that play over…and over…and over…all…day…long. It could be a lot worse; that I will admit. The lady also sells personalized Barney CDs. Really, though, would you like to hear Larry sing: "Oh, where is my hairbrush? Oh where is my hairbrush? Oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where oh, where ... is my hairbrush?" about 250 times a day? Maybe it’s payback for my childhood renditions of “99 Bottles.”

I would like to tell Larry exactly what he can do with his hairbrush when he finds it...or at least give him another so he doesn’t have to share with the Peach. The Hairbrush Song

Since The Man didn’t have to go to work today, he is staffing the booth so I don’t need to be there. I’ll get to catch up on all the stuff that didn’t get done this week and prepare for the weekend.

I did get to venture out into the garden this morning. These are my kinds of tomatoes and cucumbers…and they don’t have names.

The young ones…grow up with corn…Job 39:4

Knee-high by the 4th of July? It depends on whose knee. A’s, yes.

By the way, those weeds interspersed with the corn plants are there on purpose. I read a great book from our library a few weeks ago. Weeds: Guardians of the Soil (get your copy here) encourages its readers to leave the weeds alone. According to this book, certain weeds can actually help the plants be stronger and healthier. That sounds good to me. We’ve been accidentally following this method for many years, but now we can do so without the guilt.

We hope you are having/had a wonderful 4th of July. We had a church picnic here at lunchtime. Of course our lawnmower picked last week to be obstinate after M had half the lawn mowed. It is now resting in a mechanic's shop over the holiday. This morning The Man got out the old mower to try to even out the weeds. S finally was given the chance to fulfill his lifelong dream of mowing the lawn. He even let A in on the action.

Some parts got mowed more than once, and others didn't get mowed at all. Of course M & J thought they were having too much fun. S was gracious enough to allow them to try out the contraption.

Tonight we’re going up to the city to watch the fireworks. They aren’t scheduled to start until 10 p.m. so all the kids and The Man are napping…except for the one that just got up for a drink of water, and the one that used the bathroom, and the one who is turning pages in his bed...

...A time to plant...Eccl. 3:2

I finally got some of my seedling tomatoes in the ground today. The first batch of seeds I'd planted withered before we made it to the June 1 "safe to plant" date. I also planted a second row of hot pepper seedlings. I probably have enough to plant another 2 or 3 rows, but well...maybe we'll dissect the seedlings and look at them under the microscope.

So far in our garden we have:
onions--left over from last year
peas--planted early, but just now putting out a good crop
lettuce--used very old seed, but it seems to be coming along nicely
green beans, corn, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, and sunflowers are all showing their stuff

We also have 3 rows of volunteer mystery tomato plants that were given to us. As long as they produce something before the first freeze in September or October it will be an improvement over last year's crop.