Good morning! Feeling pretty good this morning!
Night #3 away from home. BUT Peanut was just gifted these rockin’ crocheted Elsa & Anna hats! She was really happy to show them to Daddy & Lulu over FaceTime a little while ago.
What I learned in October…
#1 Our 4 year old can barter… and she’s good at it. No matter what your feelings are on Halloween candy, you can’t argue that watching a conversation unfold between a “bumble bee” and a “Rubik’s Cube” that starts with “what will two Hershey’s bars get me” isn’t entertaining.
#2 There is truly no limit to a child’s imagination… I was sitting on the floor in the living room one night. Out of nowhere, our 2 year old comes running into the room as fast as she can while screaming at the top of her lungs. She runs up to me and I’m expecting her to “hide” alongside of me. Instead she sticks her hands inside my mouth and cranks my jaw open as if she’s a lion tamer. She then peers in with one eye before yelling inside my mouth “Hello! Is anyone in there?” She waits a second, throws her hands in the air and screams “Oh no! A tiger!” And just like that, she’s running back out of the room screaming.
The kiddos love fresh carrots – except Peanut. She loves to chew fresh carrots. When she’s done chewing, well, I’ll let you figure that out. But even with the rest of the family constantly snacking on a bottomless bowl of carrot sticks in the fridge, we still have a lot of carrots in the garden. According to some gardeners, I could cover them up with leaves and snow while hoping for a mild winter and then I could continue to pull carrots as needed until next spring. Maybe I could, but maybe there will be four feet of snow over the garden just like last year and I’d look like a crazy squirrel digging for nuts in the middle of winter. So, instead of running the risk of looking like a squirrel in January, it’s becoming a bit of a weekend habit to take a grocery bag up to the garden, comeback with it busting at the seams with carrots, and then make a mess in the kitchen.
With so many extra carrots, we’ve been freezing sliced carrots for use later. It’s not hard, it just takes time. The carrots are cleaned, peeled, sliced, blanched for three minutes, cooled, bagged and then frozen. One grocery bag full at a time seems to be the perfect batch size to fill the sink and doesn’t take long for one person to process.
Those of you that plant carrots know you’re supposed to thin the young plants as they grow. We have a hard enough time pulling all the weeds that pop up, it seems counter-intuitive to start going after the stuff we actually want to grow as well. But, there is good reason for it. Big straight carrots need room to grow. If carrots aren’t thinned you get a lot of this…
Despite the occasional “twisted” carrot, we ended up with way more “perfect” carrots.
But in the end, twisted or not, they’ll all taste the same this winter. As far as the mess left in the kitchen…
The chickens eat like queens the next day when we haul everything out to them.
We’ve been stuck in a weather pattern the last couple weeks that has provided some much needed late summer rain. While none of the weather in our area has been severe, some of the late night storms have been full of constant lightning. Not to be outdone, one late afternoon storm put on a show of it’s own.
It’s September 3 – that unofficially means another summer is in the books and the kiddos are falling back into the school routine.
Lulu joined the ranks this year and is attending Pre-K.
Since she’s not yet 5, she’s required to wear a harness on the bus – but even that can’t restrain the constant grin on her face when it comes to school. Even three weeks in, she’s still as excited as day one. So much so, that I woke up at quarter to four this morning to her shaking my shoulder and asking if she had missed the bus.
I’ve already told you about the trees we planted. Turns out one drawback of planting dormant bare root saplings is that you have to have complete faith in the nursery that you’re getting what they say you’re getting. In our case, we ordered five Red Oak trees and received five 3 to 4 foot sticks with a few fragile roots on one end. Not an issue if they all start to grow (which they did), but what if they aren’t Red Oaks?
The first few weeks after planting the trees, the kiddos and I continued to hunt for buds – any sign the trees were going to make it. It took some time, but after awhile each tree started to green up. As we watched the small buds shoot into leaves, I became less concerned if the trees were going to live and more curious about what they actually were.
While two of the trees look like the photo above with typical pointed Red Oak leaves, the other three trees are noticeably different.
While the leaves still look like that of an oak, the rounded lobes aren’t characteristic of a Red Oak, but rather a White Oak. Fortunately, the Arbor Day Foundation is great to work with. They confirmed that some of their White Oaks were mislabeled and inadvertently shipped to us as Red Oaks. We’ll be receiving replacement trees during the next shipping season. So, while we can’t completely take the trees off of our to-do-list quite yet, at least know we won’t have to decide on what trees we’ll be planting in the pasture as future shade trees for the cattle – the White Oaks can be moved out there next spring.
We’ve been watching one of the cell phone companies construct a new tower down the road from us this summer. Lulu has taken the most notice – questioning if the height has changed from the last time she last went past. One night last week, Sissy and I were driving by when we noticed they had set the final pieces into place. So that we’d have something to show Lulu, Sissy snapped a picture of the completed tower.
If you look closely, you’ll notice a small spot at the very top of the tower and another about 80 percent of the way up. As we drove closer we realized those spots were actually two workers finishing up.
(I’m assuming) they were adding the flashing light to the top and one individual was standing on the top of the tower. It was about 75 degrees, and the clear as far as you could see that day. I’d say this guy had a view that trumped any corner office.
Since we haven’t shared much on the garden this year, here’s a quick look…
A fresh head of broccoli
We were curious how the carrots were doing – so we pulled a few.
A table onion – about the size of a tennis ball – drying on the porch.
Green peppers.
Jalapeno peppers.
The first zucchini of the year… moments before the dog stole it.
Peanut’s green beans.
After the strawberries were finished producing, we moved 100 plants to a new bed and tilled under the old bed.
Waiting for tomatoes to turn red…
…but once we have the first one, we’ll be swimming in them.
The beans are starting to fill pods – these will be harvested as dry red beans for chili and stew this fall.
After a couple years of just surviving, the black berries are coming around.
It will soon be time to make pickles.
Despite cutting the raspberries back for a heavy fall harvest, there are still plenty for snacking.
After receiving a tip from a family friend, my wife and I ventured down a dusty road for the first time together in search of a house that was for sale by owner. The potential was there: wood floors buried beneath dated carpet, solid wood pocket doors surrounded by 100 year old trim, and a faded screen door leading to a covered porch complete with a white wooden swing. So, in July of 2011 my wife and I became only the third family to own this 100+ year old two-story farm house and surrounding acreage on a quiet dusty road in rural Iowa. What you’ll find on these pages is the story of what comes next.
