Mail box accident

At 7:30am Sunday morning someone woke us up knocking incessantly at the door. Over and over. The dogs were going nuts. We go to the door, Rog in boxers and me in red cat pajama bottoms. There were two deputies at our door to tell us that someone had fallen asleep while driving and hit our mailbox. Really hard. The mailbox and the mail were all over the road. The 4x4 post it was on snapped in half. The woman then corrected to the right, directly in a huge bean field. She drove pretty far into the field too. She was kind enough to call the cops instead of just driving off. She has insurance, so we should hopefully get reimbursed for the new mailbox we had to get.







Then Roger left the mailbox inside while I was shopping and Roger was outside. Jax then ate part of the brand new mailbox and the screwdriver.


In farm news, we harvested the black beans. They're just like regular beans, but you leave them in the pod until they dry. They turn black when they dry. Then you split the pods and pick out the beans.


We also got a pumpkin! It's a bit early, but the vine rotted, so I had to pull it. Not sure what to do with a pumpkin. I've tried making pumpkin bread with real pumpkin before, but it was all stringy.

Jax, the new dog

He may seem excited about something... but it's just how he is. All the time.

We're back!

We're back from vacation and our garden has exploded! Notice in the pics below that the tomato plant is taller than Roger.








The yellow squash in the picture is actually yellow zucchini. We are drowning in zucchini. The people who watched our chickens while we were gone took five, and we still have lots when we came back. I tried a new recipe for zucchini, that is basically fried zucchini cakes. It was really good. Here's the recipe:

1 large grated zucchini
1 cup bread crumbs
half cup Parmesan cheese
1 egg
chopped garlic
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp pepper
form into patties and fry in olive oil



We had lots of very large turnips. Unfortunately, we didn't know that turnips like cold weather. The turnips are very very bitter. Any advice for super bitter turnips is welcome.

Blue eggs and strawberries

Blue egg! We're getting about 4 eggs a day now. This is our first blue egg! Hopefully more will come quickly!

Our strawberry plants are putting out huge amounts of runners! I dug up a bunch and potted them. I had no idea how wild these would go. The runners are these long tentacles that produce other baby plants. Some of the runners made babies that made runners and other babies. One of the pics below is a double runner... a baby making a baby. The other pic is my giant bowl of runners. We'll try to keep the plants alive until the spring and replant them in another bed.



And lastly, just for fun, a couple of pics of Roger and I at the 'Taste of Bloomington' is which a food festival here in town. All the restaurants in town set up booths and sell $2 dishes. So you can go to like, 5 booths over the course of the evening and taste a bunch of food. We ate a lot.

New poll to the right ---->

The risk of pressure canning... Please comment below. Have you ever used one? Weights or gauge? Have you ever had something blow up? Have any great recipes to share? Pros and cons of canning vs. freezing?

storms

Huge storms blew through last weekend. We had a couple tornadoes in the area. I went outside to watch it blow in, and saw the rotating cloud and ran back inside to get the camera.

strawberries

We planted a large strawberry patch early spring and it has begin to give us strawberries! They are so so good. The plants are sending out tons of 'runners', which are thin vines that make new plants. We're going to pot the new baby plants after their roots get established so we can double our patch. If we had thought this through, we would have just started with a much large patch and spaced the plants really far apart. But we didn't, so there's a bit more work involved. Also: greens, spinach, and romaine lettuce.


Foster Dog Dash has gone back to the shelter. He was way too much of a puppy for us. I took him to the dog park every day after work and he ran and swam and tired out every other dog at the park and still managed to come back to the house and go wild. Dia was so fed up. They did manage to cuddle for about two seconds, so I snapped a picture. I hope Dash gets a home with a jogger or something.

Foster Dog Dash

New foster dog... a few days ago I got an email from the shelter that said they had taken in 25 cats in 2.5 hours last Monday and the rest of the week wasn't much better... they were saying if they couldn't get animals moved out they were going to have to start euthanizing just for space reasons. So of course I go in and get a dog... Foster Dog Dash.




Dash is 5 months old and a cattle dog / russel terrier mix. He's a wild ball of energy. He's been at the shelter for 2 of his 5 months, and they were worried he was missing his critical socialization window.

He's not completely house trained. He bothers the cats. He has WICKED gas. It's okay, we like him. Hopefully he'll get a home soon. With someone who jogs or something, because he will not stop running through the house.

odds and ends

Apologies for not posting recently. I'll try to catch you up to speed.

First, all the plants are out. Here are small tomato plants and a garlic plant. The garlic is planted in the fall and roots through the winter and continues to grow through mid summer. So these guys have a few months left to go. But it is nice to start the season with something already in the ground! As far as tomatoes go, we have several varieties... two yellow cherries, a roma, a 'big pink', something striped, and a purple I think. I actually can't really remember, when I bought them I didn't label them, so we'll just be surprised!


Also, in case you were interested, this is how we started seeds inside. Roger has a huge setup of florescent bulbs (industrial plant growing kind) that we lower over the plants and slowly raise as the plants grow. If the bulbs are too far from the seeds when they start they will bolt and get really thin and fall over.


Also, an update on our favorite neighbor, Neighbor Bill. Neighbor Bill is so awesome. He watches our place like a hawk and tells us everything that happened while we were gone. 'A chicken hawk was eyeing your chickens', 'I saw a woodchuck in your field', 'someone turned around in your driveway'... He invited us to go camping with him and his buddy... they go fishing a lot, and I guess they go to this place that's an hour away and fish all day and then 'camp'. And when he says 'camp', it turns out it means make dinner over a fire, then sleep in the car. We think it will be fun and we're going to try to go with them. We will be using a tent. Here is Neighbor Bill and his buddy grilling pork chops:



Also, I cut my hair. I donated it to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program
Beautiful Lengths I have a sister who is a cancer survivor, and it was important to me that my hair go to a place that makes wigs for adult women. Here is a kind-of picture of my new hair, plus me harvesting rhubarb. Yes, that is a rhubarb plant. The huge kind. In this picture it looks kind of boyish, but I think it works for me.

And lastly, here is a picture of my dear friend and coworker Sarah, holding a chicken for the first time.

Max catches a mole

Foster Dog Max really likes to dig and smell things. He likes to smell things and then 'point' at the source of the smell. Today he would not leave this one spot he was pointing at, and then suddenly shoved his face into the ground AND CAME OUT WITH A MOLE.


In other less interesting news, our rhubarb plants are finished growing. We have a variety of rhubarb that is mostly green. This is normal, it doesn't get totally red when it's ripe. I made a pie, and it was amazing. Pie recipe:

1 and 1/3 cup sugar
6 tablespoons flour
4 cubs chopped rhubarb

mix sugar and flour, put a heap on the bottom of a 9 in pie crust, then heap rhubarb, then cover with the rest of the sugar mix. Put a pie crust over the top. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, then 350 at 45 minutes. We put a pizza pan on the bottom rack to catches spilling juices.