Summer Fun at the Farm

Well, fun for us at least!

Later in the week, I got stung in the belly. I had swelling and then bruising, which is odd, but everything resolved itself with time.

Then we painted the kitchen and cleaned downstairs. We settled the girls down for a movie and......CRASH BOOM. This mess took up downstairs, well, the clean up of it, for 3 days, We had A LOT of stuff on that shelf. Luckily we had cleaned and taken out a sturdier shelf from the kitchen just hours before.

Blueberry gobbled her broccoli (from our garden!) by the fistful. Then mine and Lil'Bug's too.

Brewing mint tea concentrate; stock pot full of water, food processored Spearmint leaves, bring to a boil then cover and turn off, let sit for 2-3 hours, then add 1/2 cup of raw turbinado sugar for every 2 gallons. Then I put it in freezer safe pint jars and freeze. It is really strong, so when the time comes I take 1 frozen pint in a pitcher and pour over that cold water to fill...still strong so I serve over a glass full of ice. It is really not at all like "tea" but rather minty ice water. Very refreshing with the added nutritional bonus. I think that the Spearmint vs Peppermint makes the tea. I'm not sure I'd like it with Peppermint. I have not tried chocolate mint or lemon mint.

I dried the remaining mint from that harvest. The dried mint gets stuffed into mason jars with a few grains of rice and used all winter long for hot tea and seasoning. With the next harvest I plan on making mint extracts for cookies.

We are also curing garlic. Once cured they will be braided and hung in the kicthen for winter use.

We finally got a lift rented that 1)reaches our chimney and 2)isn't broken and 3)we could afford. Whoo! Next step, line teh chimney and install wood burning cooking stove that will heat the house and let me bake bread and fry boudin all at the same time with the same heat source. So excited.

I've been making popcicles. The kids gobble them and the good kind with no HFCS are expensive and not much selection at our local grocery. So I've been using frozen juices and better yet pure unsugared fruit purees. Watermelon in a blender= most yummy dripless stainless popcicle EVER. No extra sugar so the kids can eat as much as they want. I had to order more moulds because of the freeze time.

Chickens taking a dirt bath. I know they do this but I'd never seen it before.

And it is tree frog time. Chad caught this one, we let it go later that night but first he had to identify it. Sorry for the crappy focus. 15 or so days before I can replace my lens on the good camera. Trust me, I am X'ing off days on my calendar. Sigh.

This week we also cleaned out our storage room, sorted and culled toys, sorted and culled and folded and better marked kid's clothing, and next up is the laundry sewing room and the winter coat closet. Nesting anyone?

Oh and Blueberry has decided that poop in diaper=bad. Poop on potty=sugar beans. Poop on floor=scowling mama. Good timing kid. I am hoping to make serious progress on the potty training front soon. I am also thinking about selling my Bum Genius cloth diaper stash. A friend gave me a couple snapping Blueberri's and I really like the snaps better as far as laundering goes. The velcro tabs on the BG get yuck and useless after a few years. I could pay someone to replace the tabs I guess, but for the same $$ I could sell my stash and buy new. Using cloth paid for itself by month 4 of Blueberry's life, but I had hoped to get more use from the stash, you know?

What else......I'm not sure! It just has been crazy busy around here!