lately

Well, I can't get any pictures to load! I haven't posted in a while, the summer feels so busy, but in a good way! So, what have we been up to lately?

The garden- Our black hollyhock finally bloomed! Kylan started it from seed 2 summers ago, it's 'his' hollyhock, and we were both so excited, I'll post a picture once I can. It's really more dark purple, but it's so pretty! Harvested lots of zucchini, cucumbers, cabbage, garlic, onion, lettuce, chard, peas, bean, strawberries, blackberries. We harvested our first little batch of corn. Our winter squash is doing great!! We planted sugar pie pumpkins, spaghetti squash and kuri (sp?) squash. Lots of green tomatoes, but still impatiently waiting:)

The chickens- Well Sukey ended up being a rooster:( I wish we could have kept him, but Geoff dropped him off at a small farm this morning. So we have 4 hens, their coop and yard is built, but needs some finishing work, I'll post pictures later.

The Kids- Kylan got his own room. Basically. Its a small 7' by 9' room that was their playroom. He loves it and spends a lot of time in there although he still sleeps with us, which is fine, but when he's ready he has his own little space:) Evie would be doing great if he would just quit falling and bumping his head!

In the kitchen-I've been cooking like crazy! I did a 10 day juice fast last month, I was hoping to do it longer, but after a few unexpected expenses came up our budget it super tight. When ever we are this short on money I go into a cooking cooking frenzy. I just want to have plenty of food made so we won't spend money out!! So I've been baking our bread, making tortillas, homemade granola, black bean veggie burgers...I've had no problem using up all our zucchini...souffles, egg bakes, grated in sauces, grated in bean tacos, blackberry zucchini muffins, chocolate chip zucchini muffins... with cucumbers I make 'quick pickles' and yogurt cucumber dip. I made my first batch of kimchi, coleslaw, sauerkraut, cabbage pockets. Yay for garden veggies.
We also have been picking lots of blackberries...we picked 6lbs this morning in our yard! yay for free wild food, now I just need to learn how to mushroom hunt!

Canning- I made melon marmalade a couple weeks ago with...crazy good! I used cantaloupe , oranges, and lemons. Today, it was sooo cool in the morning all I wanted to do is can and bake, so I made blackberry jam and tropical marmalade (pineapple, orange, lemon). That's all I've canned so far, but my stash of empty canning jars is motivating me to take advantage of these cooler days and fill 'em up!

Crafts- Yeah, not so much these days. I'm trying to knit a baby blanket here and there. Want to do more!


This is a lot of text with no pictures. Other news, I've been thinking a lot about planning Kylans first year of home school kindergarten, I plan on starting next month. More about that later...

Beautiful blessings to you all! Enjoy the day!

berry season

Ahhhh, berry season, my favorite! I'm just waiting for the wild blackberries around our property to ripen...yum! We recently went berry picking with a playgroup at Swanton Berry Farm . If you are ever on the coast north of Santa Cruz, please go there. I didn't get pictures of there farm stand, but we go there often. Its a sweet set-up. Lots of homemade treats and coffee, tables, chairs, couches, wooden toys, old school wooden games and books. Outside of the farm stand they usually have some kind of play area with hay bales set up. The staff is great and I recently bought 3 jam flats of berries for cheap:) Organic of coarse! We LOVE it there.

We had never picked there before, but we picked strawberries and olallieberries. It was so beautiful, a perfect cool coastal farm. The boys had so much fun! Sorry the pictures arn't too great. It seems that if I take less then 500 pictures of the same thing I don't get great ones:)

serious berry picker

strawberry fields

now that's how to plant strawberries!

Bugs keep eating mine, I think we will have to make some raised rows and transplant ours!

I do wish I could find a blueberry farm around here:( No wonder they cost so much!

I made a small batch of strawberry jam last week. I have been freezing them as I get them, so I'm hoping to get them all canned up in the next week or so:)

Happy berrying!

catch-up with ketchup

My first try at making ketchup!

I have gotten so little done in the past couple weeks, I had a catch-up day:) Besides all the normal household things I needed to catch-up on today, I also had some good kitchen time baking and making ketchup!

I think the ketchup turned out great, It taste a little more vinegary then I would like, but the recipe said to wait 2 weeks before eating so maybe it will balance out. Made with beefsteak tomatoes from our garden. I used a recipe from the book Art of Preserving, modified a little of coarse:)

(I really need to take a photography class and get a good camera!)

canning

Pickles! My first shot at canning them:) I only got a total of 6 jars (gave 2 away), but I am happy I got some canned. It's hard to get enough cucumbers ripe at the same time!

Not that pretty, but here is my lil canning stash this year:) I still need to can my frozen tomatoes!

Early morning floor snack...


The power was out for 32 hours this week and I was getting ready to can everything I have frozen. I started with strawberry jam and strawberries in sauce. When I had almost finished them up the lights went back on:) My frozen tomatoes luckily were not very defrosted, so I can procrastinate them a bit more. The strawberry jam turned out great:)

This year I canned apple butter, vanilla pear butter, pear sauce, mixed berry jam, strawberry jam, berries in juice, and pickles.

I hope to make ketchup, tomato sauce, and maybe another batch of apple butter:)
Yum!

A berry disaster

Well, I'd like to have a picture of a bunch of beautiful jars of canned blackberry jam. But I don't. After many picking sesions of wild blacberries, I had a good freezer stock. I thawed them all out to make blackberry jam. I did something wrong and ruined the WHOLE BATCH! So sad! But I do have this cute picture of Kylan, who clearly enjoyed cleaning out the bags of berries:) There is always next year...