Where did the second half of June go?

To the sound of Max and Ruby in the background, I'm going to try the monumental feat of getting this scrapbook up to date! Terah and Alida are enthusiastic participants in our library's Summer Reading Program, especially because it got us to the library to stock up on books (and some Max and Ruby DVD's). With it being about 90 degrees outside today, popcorn and a movie is a fun way to spend part of an Ivy playdate this afternoon. And, as it is after 2 in the afternoon now, it's about the time when Kali's absence is more felt here at home. It's about the time she might be up, done breakfast and duck chores and would come asking what's happening today. :) Instead it is probably about her bedtime (I've discovered that facebook messenger tells me when she was last active online so I can attest to the fact that she continues to be a night owl even on the other side of the world). In her daytime hours she is having lots of new experiences and is learning to be a barista in the Coffee for Peace coffee shop. We'll be eager to hear many more of her stories directly from her maybe over some fancy cups of coffee! As much as we miss her, we are also doing ok here. Knowing that she is doing well there, staying healthy and surrounded by caring people makes the distance between us and her so much easier. And, as expected, it feels like the weeks are just flying by so I also don't want this time for her to go faster than she wishes. I can't seem to keep up with the days OR the many things growing and changing around here!

Without Kali here as the recently minted popcorn seed tester, a new one is coming up in the ranks. Terah was very proud to mostly pop all the cobs of hers recently to test for seed.

And she had some great seed candidates!

I'm gonna be all over the place in this post, but I'll try to knit things together a bit. So while on the "corn theme," I must admit that I'm a little proud of the field I'm calling "my" corn patch! This is a complete misnomer as Jason did the hard work of prepping all the corn holes, but I did do all the planting myself and it came up really well. There are two patches and we are doing a new management style for the paths (using our battery mower). We just took the crates off and I weeded the hills the other day. The one patch looks great and the other is a bit tattered since it was planted alongside wheat that the chickens were having a wonderful time jumping up and pulling the seed heads down (often landing on corn on their way back down). We should still get a nice crop of flour corn. And all of the girls' popcorn patches look great. All were happy for the side dressing of compost we gave them recently. We think we have outwitted the chipmunks with planting the corn inside and then planting out robust little plants. Fingers crossed it keeps working! 

Let's continue on the garden theme for now, as there is a lot to share in that realm. It's the time of year with such dramatic growth, especially when we are getting good rains. The most recent update is that we pulled about 5 bushels of high quality garlic yesterday. It was odd to do it without Kali and Jason, but my parents filled in for them and we had a great crew despite missing those two! While our onions are really struggling to thrive this year, we should have an abundance of lovely garlic all winter.

Historically, I have had the tendency to easily see (and point out) all the things not thriving or growing well here. I'm trying to be intentional about also celebrating the plants that are responding with amazing vigor to our attempts to provide them a favorable home. The delicata patch is growing outside the bounds of its patch already!

I just picked the first handful of cucumbers today and the vines are loaded and look really healthy. Now if only we hadn't weeded out dill the one year we had so much of it, we'd be ready to make pickles!

While the onions look pitiful, we have a lovely patch of shallots nearing harvest time. 

Peas! I love them SO much! We have one bag of hull peas and one bag of sugar snaps in the freezer to save until Kali returns so she doesn't miss them entirely this year. It's the first time we had enough sugar snaps to freeze for many years. Those seasons are coming to an end, and I'm not ready!

I haven't kept up with drying things this spring - didn't dry any teas yet. BUT we can't skip oregano! So I dried round after round and we have two lovely jars of oregano in the pantry. I hope we never have to go without home dried oregano. It's so much more flavorful!

We have had a bad slug year (or a good year for the slugs) and many little plants have struggled to get started. For some reason, the PA dutch squash did fabulous! It was painful to thin out many beautiful plants. We took each hill down to 4 plants and it's about time to pull out half of the remaining ones. 

Our potato and dried bean patch was my focus for a number of days recently. Jason did the second hay cutting in the early mornings and then I took on the job of raking the hay and mulching (sometimes working at it while he was away doing Sassafras Enterprises construction work). We wanted to mulch the cucurbits and then the potato/dry bean patch. I admit that I even called my parents down to see the root patch where I mulched "all by myself." It felt like a monumental farm project for me to do by myself and felt good to have the energy to do it. I normally like to do a job all at once and be done with it, but I'm learning that I can actually enjoy some things more if they are spaced out and they also then don't feel so daunting. This was definitely the case here. I sure did feel a sense of satisfaction when the amount of hay we had exactly completed the mulching we wanted to do. Now I do wish our potatoes looked healthier but...

There are many farm jobs that Jason could tout doing "all by himself." The most recent big one was harvesting a new variety of wheat, which he's pretty excited about. He was doing that right up until the sun went down. Next up will be threshing and winnowing it (not to mention trying making bread with it!). 

So much more could be said about all of that, but let's shift the focus ever so slightly to FRUIT! We are in the thick of berry season... And are looking forward to other fruits down the road. We have a lot of apples on our trees this year. And so far we haven't seen the squirrels taking their daily treks to and from the tree with unripe fruit in their mouths. Will we get any? Time will tell!

What we've been enjoying from our home lately includes black currants, red currants, black raspberries, red raspberries, goumi, mulberries, gooseberries and yesterday I ate the first wineberry. I'm so glad that berry picking is something that the girls have more stamina for than some tasks. We've had some helpers! We had enough currants this year to try juice. It's potent!! And I was surprised to like the black currant juice more than the red. Both required a fair amount of honey! We are trying to tuck away some of the fruits to enjoy with Kali when she returns home. That said, we aren't feeling too sorry for her as she is enjoying many delicious looking fruits where she is! She's clearly not suffering in any way in the food realm!!

We are getting several quarts of domesticated black raspberries every other day! Amazing!!

As if we don't have enough fruit to keep up with at home, we also went and picked some sour cherries at a friend's place. I had seen the offer on Facebook, mentioned it to Jason and then said that I really thought we shouldn't add anything. So we were gonna pass up this amazingly wonderful opportunity to get a fruit Jason loves! Then another friend emailed asking if I had seen the post and noting she'd be in that tree if she lived geographically closer. My resolve weakened. We went! Mom and Dad joined and then Mom made a double crusted sour cherry pie. We didn't regret our decision.

And now it is blueberry season next door. And it's a bumper crop year! We've gone over a handful of times, often meeting friends there, and come back with a bucket full of blue treasures. We picked SO MANY last year, so I still have some in the freezer. For that reason, we are trying to exercise some restraint...

There's so much color in the world at this time of year! The foods and flowers are just making splashes of color all around us. Throughout the last number of months as I've walked around the land here that we call home, the phrase "let the land heal you" fills my mind often. There are so many ways that this is happening, but one is definitely the gift of beauty. Sometimes it's the flowers in Nora's garden. At other times I take in the clouds on the mountain or the moon rising or a rainbow after a storm. 

Before I close, I'll do a quick laundry list of some other happenings with pictures to accompany them. Each one could be a post all on its own!!

We savored some playdates with baby Luca before he took off with his parents for their summer trip. Just looking at photos to put here had me pining for some snuggles! We enjoyed some "just Luca" time at our house, which was a fun new thing, and then also enjoyed an evening by the fire with all three of them. As you can see, he already loves books!

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Alida joined Jason for a day trip to Allegheny Mountain Institute for his annual chicken workshop. It meant leaving around 6 a.m. and arriving home after 10 p.m. but she was in great spirits upon their return. I imagine that could be an annual thing they enjoy doing together. And they get to enjoy a pretty scenic drive doing! Jason noted that it's always one of the highlights of his year.

The girls joined me for one of my Friday town errands trip the other week. I think the total number of stops might have crested 20. They did great AND I did better having them along. They made the whole day more fun. We did all the normal egg and cheese deliveries and picking up pig scraps. But we also fit in a trip to the library, some thrift store shopping and an italian ice cool off. I love how enjoyable spending time with them is (much of the time)!

And, I also don't mind when they go away for a few days and have fun elsewhere, leaving me and Jason to have fun by ourselves! They hitched a ride to PA last weekend to get to be part of TWO cousin birthday parties. It was chock full of social times, pool times and less sleep. They came home in good spirits and then did a hard crash. I think now (on the other side of the crash), we are all quite sure it was worth it. Jason didn't work away from home while they were gone so we enjoyed spending most of all that time working and playing together here on the farm. It was a very restorative time for me, and I think it's safe to say for him too!

We are now coming to the end of another really full week, especially for Jason. Juggling farm and home, family and outside work is no small feat (I'm somewhat familiar with the juggling act!), and he's got a lot of balls in the air right now. I am grateful that at his one job he gets to enjoy lunch by the river and at the other job he gets to check on the frogs in the tiny pond he has restored/fixed up.

Well, if you have made it all the way to the end of this post (likely that is only my mom!), congratulations! Many more thoughts, emotions, and stories lay behind many of these images and the brief overview of some aspects of life. I didn't even mention our disastrous roof project, but there's no way I'm ending on that note! So I submit this sliver for the scrapbook. :) 

P.s. While much in life has changed, some things have not: