This post should really be one of those that they have in the comics section when the cartoonist is on vacation and the child writes the comic strip for him/her. Those are always pretty cute but they are usually done in a chicken scratch font. This is as close as I can come to that…italics. Also, if that were the case, Dave would be writing this post and it would be carefully edited and constructed with no flourish at the end of each sentence and there would be no quibbling about the exact size or weight of any measurements since it would be scientifically produced in an excel file with a bar chart to compare the statistics of this year vs. last year, etc., etc.,… snore. It would be the most understated and modest of reads that you might just as well go to a scientific magazine to look up the size of Saturn’s moons. 

That is not to say that Dave is not a comedic genius with apt skills at entertaining. But, he would blog or ‘draw’ in a slightly different way than I have done here, which, in the end, makes this truly my blog.

So, I’m playing hooky from the farm – as well as my day job – right now. Although I have not yet mentioned here anything about one of my other passions, most of my dear readers know that I am also crazy about everything in the knitting world. I somehow managed to sneak away to a knitting conference in nearby Indianapolis, Indiana. (Not so nearby as I thought, since I-70 had constant construction between STL and IND, the 4 hour drive took 5.5 hours at a crawl of 45mph! Color me exasperated by the time I arrived at 10pm last night!)

Coincidentally, it was this the very same block of time last year that I was scheduled to go to Germany on a knitting adventure with my friend from Baltimore, Abby Rammelkamp, until that trip went awry. 

Well, it was one year ago today that Dave started having horrible pain and was admitted to the hospital with an acute case of kidney stones. Poor guy, it was not much fun! So I forfeited the knitting trip to Germany and stayed home to help get him well. I think Abby may have forgiven me by now but Dave was glad to have me be here for both him and the farm chores.

He and I have both had this on our minds as I scampered out of town late yesterday afternoon to attend another knitting conference. Although it was not 105 degrees (or whatever the temps were last year at this date) and we are not approaching the single day record harvest last year of over 100 pounds of produce, (thanks to friends Joan and Joyce who helped me bring in that harvest on that very hot day!) Dave was pleased to report that he harvested the first 4 pounds of the pickling cucumbers today and he sent me this pic.

I’m sitting in a very nice hotel room in Indy at the end of a long day of knitting classes in the hotel conference rooms. I have to say that although I was surrounded by wonderful fellow knitters today (while continuing to explore my Master Hand Knitting program) I couldn’t help but look out the window every so often to see what the weather was doing outside. This was probably the first day I have spent entirely indoors for a very long time! And, one of the first days I have without any pics to show for it. I guess I should have taken some knitting pictures! Since I am here for two more days, perhaps I’ll manage that tomorrow.

Thanks Dave for sending the harvest update!
Shout out to our son, Peter! Happy Birthday! XOXO from MOM!

As the weather starts to cooperate with some sunny, warm weather -finally!- we are starting to see things turn around in the fields. We actually turned on the sprinklers the last couple of days in order to water! Dave had to buy another sprinkler head since we do seem to wear them out after the aggressive watering of the last two years. It seems the ones that fail will still spout water but they quit oscillating and tend to have other leaking issues that new rubber gaskets don’t seem to fix. So Dave added one, upgraded, ‘turbo’ sprinkler to the mix today. We also decided to re-install some of our soaker hoses from 2012 in the blueberries beds.

Here are the Roma Tomato plants just laden with fruit and waiting to ripen!

I picked blueberries again yesterday and would say that only one variety still has much to offer for the summer crop but I’m not surprised since we are coming up on a month of harvesting and have had reasonable results on such young plants. We lifted all the nets and mowed the perimeters yesterday and I weeded one of the five sections as well. We think our netting seems to be doing the trick, but I observed a bird yesterday as he was trying desperately to find a way into the netted areas.

First, he scouted from above by landing on all of the  5 foot tall posts which the netting is resting on. He seemed to be ‘casing’ the joint! Then he hopped down to the ground level and looked for a way in from that vantage point. I watched as he methodically hopped around the perimeter of one bed and even went back to a couple of possible spots to see if he could gain entrance under the net. In a man vs. bird moment, I wondered who would win but alas I found that he managed a way in! I guess I didn’t do the best job of re-securing the netting after I had picked? Of course I charged out to the patch in attack mode but the problem lies more in the getting ‘out’ than the getting ‘in’ since he started to panic at my arrival and flew at the sides of the netting. He struggled and got entangled from time to time since the netting is really easy to get caught up on. (I’ve stopped wearing clothes with exposed buttons when I’m out there for this same reason and am reminded of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and ole Mr. McGregor, every time I do get caught on a button.)  So, with my help, the bird eventually escaped but not without a good lesson on the consequences of trying to get into my blueberry patch! He was not the only curiosity seeker tho. I found this lovely dragon fly inside the net as well.

While I’m on the subject of insects, (before talking of pizza making!) the Cicada Killer Wasps, Sphecius speciosus, have also returned. I had never heard of these flying insects until we experienced them here the last two years. The idea that they kill Cicadas is interesting…a part of the cycle of nature…but with a name that has ‘wasp’ in the title, we were a bit put off at first. In the end, there is little downside of the presence of these insects to us since the cicadas do more damage to our trees than the wasps do to our fields.

These very large wasps burrow into loose soil (our plowed fields) and deposit their larvae in the burrows. They provide food for their larvae to eat as they develop, by stinging (the females have the stinger – the males lack one – wouldn’t ya know!) and paralyzing cicadas which they then take, as captives, down into their burrow as a food source for their larvae to feed on.  Here is a pic of this transaction.

We are not particularly harmed by these wasps but they are a bit unnerving due to their size. Dave just came in from the field in the late afternoon and said they were not currently active but they were abundant during the heat of the day.  Here is a pic from the internet showing some scale.

Hope you didn’t read this right before dinner!

Ah, dinner….

We are delighted to be preparing our favorite ‘summer’ pizza tonight for the first time since last year. (Our ‘winter’ or ‘off season’ pizza uses our home canned tomato sauce for the base instead of the fresh cherries.) The key ingredient for the summer pizza is our fresh, roasted, cherry tomatoes. We find the home grown kind to provide the best flavor. The pizza we make with our cherries is not original to me so I will share it here. We have tinkered with the recipe over the last two years and I would encourage you to do the same. For instance, I use my own version of pizza dough and prefer it to the one given. We will often add a stray topping or two but I would recommend trying the basic recipe first, before getting too inventive.

Here is the link to the recipe. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roman-Style-Pizza-with-Roasted-Cherry-Tomatoes-365180

And here are some photos showing how simple it is to make. You cannot really ‘ruin’ home made pizza and once you get the hang of it, you will find it is practically easier (and always better!) than ordering it when out. If you are so inclined, you should certainly try putting the base on the outdoor grill for a change up, but we like it in the oven as well. Home grown ingredients make it all the more special but just about anyone with a back yard can plant cherry tomatoes and basil!

First you make your dough and set it aside to rise. I make mine in my Cuisinart and let it sit on my bread board under a glass bowl to rise. Your dough doesn’t require a timer….it can be made in the morning and sit all day or mixed together a bit later. I like to let it rise at least two hours, but the current thought is the longer is better. While the dough is rising, you can roast your cherry tomatoes. I put them in a very hot oven with just a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper. They look like this when done. Unctuous!

Then I roll out the dough and put it on one of our circular pizza pans. Rolling out the pizza dough doesn’t require any skills, oils or cornmeal on the bottom. I roll my dough and put it directly on the pan and it never sticks.

Okay, so then, I smear the surface of the dough with a really nice olive oil. Use a special one if you want some added flavor but it is not necessary. Then, add fresh, minced garlic! In my opinion, use plenty and spread it generously on top of the oil!

Then, layer your fresh, grated, Parmesan cheese, then the roasted tomatoes (including any juice from roasting) and top, lightly with some more cheese. I’ve used many varieties, including feta, mozzarella, etc.

This is best left alone without too many other ingredients so that the crust can bake and not be too heavy, but don’t let me stop you from experimenting. I slide this pie into a very hot, 500 degree oven (hotter if you have the capability) on the bottom most rack and cook it for 10 minutes or a bit more. After it comes out of the oven, I have at the ready some of our basil leaves to sprinkle on top.
Serve with generous amounts of extra, grated Parmesan cheese and of course lots of fresh ground pepper!

The weather this summer continues to be a polar opposite from last year. We started this week with some heat and humidity but we ended up with temps that were extraordinarily cool for a Saint Louis style July. While our bodies were more comfortable, our heat loving plants were slower to ripen and thrive. Most folks aren’t complaining and neither are we, but we are just a bit surprised. Even the Japanese Beetles, a scourge in these parts in recent years, haven’t been as bad, (in my opinion not b/c of the cool temps this year but b/c the ravaging heat last year kept their reproductive cycle to a minimum) although I caught them eating voraciously in my blueberry patch this week! Look closely and you can see the nasty critters and the damage they do to the leaves!

So it was with much fanfare that the arrival of the first tomatoes of the season was a major highlight in our agricultural lives so far this year.

That is due in part to the fact that we had not eaten any fresh tomatoes since our supply ran out last fall. This dearth of our tomato consumption was rather self inflicted after being introduced last year to a significant book entitled,  Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit – by Barry Estabrook.

After reading this book, the thought of buying and eating any commercially grown tomatoes again was just too much of a negative concept. I will not go into details, but know that if you read this, you also might be hesitant to purchase any tomatoes in the future that are not locally grown in season. So buyer -or reader – beware! But, we were lucky enough to have filled our pantry and freezer with jars and jars and bags and bags of a variety of tomato products from the 2012 season from our own fields. We ate heartily all last summer using tomatoes at every meal. We had BLTs for breakfast, tomato salads at lunch, and used a myriad of  tomatoes for dinners – roasted in pizzas, pastas, sauces and the like. We used tomatoes to make ketchup, tomato sauce, pasta sauce, and pizza sauce. We canned them and froze them and then ate them all winter long.

This last week we opened our last jar of pasta sauce from the 2012 season and married it with some of our veggies from this current harvest for a delightful dinner. How pathetic is it to picture the last, emptied jar!?!

But the mild, rainy weather this season has us off to a slow start for our tomatoes which means they are therefore all the more dear to us! We are ready for some tomato growing temps!

After a winter of enjoying our fresh tomato and pasta sauces, I started to experiment again with making my own pasta. As a child, I watched my mother make her own noodles which she did by hand so I emulated that process recently and think I found some satisfaction in this. I used a recipe book from my library, Beard on Pasta, by no other than James Beard and I mixed up a simple pasta dough for a family dinner. I then rolled it and cut it by hand even tho I have been in possession of a Marcato Atlas 150 for the last 25 years!

Here are my noodles drying a bit while waiting to be boiled up!

I do think I’ll pull out my hand cranked Marcato Atlas in the winter months to come when opening some sauce.

I have since purchased a pasta drying rack so that I can hang the fresh pasta to dry. Before I had this, I improvised by hanging noodles on wooden spoons suspended between glass pitchers. I know I took a pic of this balancing act but have not been able to find it to post here.

Not to focus too much on the starch area, but in contrast to last year’s harvest, we have begun to enjoy the potato harvest already.

As reported earlier, we planted Yukon Gold and Pontiac Red potato starts this year and have enjoyed just a few of the Yukons so far. Dave likes to cook a few for a real man’s breakfast which he serves with a touch of Pickapeppa alongside toast with strawberry jam. Go figure!

You saw the tag line for the Seven Oaks Farm Granola, so I’m sure you are curious about that. I’ve been making my home made granola for years. I guess you could say that people started to get attached to it since I’ve been giving it as a gift for the last 30 plus years and it is pretty tasty. In addition to stirring up some granola, I often send along some of my homemade mustard. Not everyone thinks to make mustard, but it is relatively easy and it just makes a perfect pairing with some bread, cheese and turkey. Here are jars of the granola and mustard, waiting to be sent off.

I can’t help but end the day with the view of the thriving petunia pots on the terrace, framing the allee!  As the sun goes down on another day at the farm, they seem to say, Adieu! And so do I.

We had a great weekend to work outdoors. The weather was unusually mild and best of all, it was dry enough to work in the fields. I was thinking about this today as I was weeding. Why is it that we now call ourselves farmers vs. gardeners which used to be our tag? The best thing that I can come up with is that we are now using heavy equipment to work our two vegetable fields, measuring 35′ X 75′, (not to mention the size of the orchard or the berry patches!) whereas the garden at our old house was at most a very productive 10′ by 30′.

The weather conditions restrict the tractor use unlike the same conditions a home gardener would face. So, case in point, my friend Joan recently sent me pics of the lovely cucumbers she had already picked from her home garden. They were gorgeous! We, however, were unable to get into our fields to plow and till the soil due to all the rain, so our cukes are well behind hers. We have blossoms and fruit set on but we are a couple of weeks short of picking that item and many others as well that fell into that same category. But, the last couple of days of dry weather has really helped our crops. There may be a point in time when we might install a smaller, kitchen garden for this contingency and other items that are not plow-able such as asparagus, rhubarb, etc., but for now, there is no time for this installation since it would be one more area to weed!

Back to the farmer vs. gardener analysis, we don’t fit into the farm operation category either when it comes to weeds. We are not using herbicide controls (or pesticides) of any kinds and it shows. We are basically sod busters who cleared the grass from large plots and plowed, tilled and planted. We have to constantly weed these areas since the grass and other unwelcome greenery is sometimes stronger than our plants! Kate calls the weeds ‘water hijackers’ and she is right. They take water and nutrients from the soil but some plants are not as weed friendly as others. Real farmers are not weeding with a hoe and trowel every day…but we are when we can!

Plants with surface roots tend to not do well when faced with invasive weeds and strawberries fall into this category. So this weekend we worked on the recommended ‘strawberry renovation’ process that is done directly after the harvest ends. This was not because the patch was overly weedy, but because the runners on the berries will choke out the patch unless you mow it down and remove some of the growth. So, our reading on this subject recommended mowing the patch with the mower at its highest blade level and collecting, if possible, all the clippings to discard to ward off disease, which we did. After spending the last season carefully tip toeing thru my dear strawberry patch, it was nearly traumatic to watch Dave push the hand mower thru it yesterday!

But, we know the patch will be better for it next year. So after mowing it down, making sure to leave the crown of the plants in tact, we will then re-create ‘aisles’ by taking our tiller thru and removing bunches of plants. If there are any readers who would like some free strawberry starts, this would be the time to show up at our door and start digging! I’m sooo serious! Strawberries are the easiest plants to grow if you have a sunny spot that is well drained, you cannot miss!

Other weeding this weekend was in the pepper, melon and cuke patches. They now look pretty good!

We have peppers of all sorts to pick including the hot, red jalapenos that I use in the Sriacha sauce.

The eggplants are now fruiting as well.

I also picked nearly another pound of blueberries yesterday and made netting repairs. I do so feel like a fisherman (woman) when I do this since the nets are expensive and yet take a bruising with the elements. The wind this past year whipped them around and stressed the nets but I also think when a bird finds an access point inside the netting – but is trapped and can’t find a way to get out – they peck at the net in such a way to create a hole. When I make repairs, I “sew” the net back together to prevent future intruders thru the holes. I actually use a heavy gauge thread (buttonhole thread) and one of my large eyed needles to make the repair in the field. I tried to take a couple of pics of this but it was difficult to get the focus on the netting since it is so small. Since you can’t see it, imagine me standing in the field in ungodly temps, with chiggers attacking my poor, old body, sewing up the netting seams! At one point yesterday, my needle dropped from the stitching thread and disappeared into the ground! The term “a needle in a haystack” was never more crystallized than at that moment! I wonder what my Hand Knitting Masters’ Program would think about my handiwork?!? (More on this subject this winter when I have time to knit again!)

Best of all was last night’s dinner which will reappear on the menu as a left over tonight. I made a pizza using the last jar of tomato sauce from the 2012 harvest, but included our current harvest of green peppers, cherry tomatoes and basil. Yum!

While eating some leftover pizza for tonight’s dinner, we will add our fresh green beans and a lettuce salad from our garden.  One last thought….as I write about the events of our day/s here at the farm, I’m reminded that my father started writing his own version of a blog. He called it “Tales of Long Ago” and wrote about many episodes of his life, growing up on the family farm in Lexington, Missouri. He wrote them using his computer skills and ‘published’ them by printing and mailing them to his grandchildren. Each edition was a delightful chapter and peek into his life as a younger man. I hope my dad would appreciate my mission here to communicate with family and friends what is currently happening at Seven Oaks Farm and know that he would have enjoyed the read!

We had another day of gorgeous weather at Seven Oaks today. I ran around to job sites today while Dave made the necessary improvements here on the farm. He started out with gentle weeding and then did some mowing before changing the tractor implement in order to switch to plowing. He also harvested vegetables which we were lucky enough to eat for dinner! I make it sound more romantic than it is, perhaps, but that is because some of my last posts have been rather graphic!

So, let me back up a bit before I get into the dinner hour which was quite exciting. Back to me….I arrived at my first job site around 7am and had a nice conference with the carpenters there. It was a relatively quiet morning since many people are tagging on a vacation day to the 4th of July and so the roads were free of rush hour.

There was a bit of a scramble with changes to the construction plan on one job but that was all resolved by about 10am. That was when I arrived home and saw that Williams-Sonoma was advertizing an extra 20% off their sale prices on items in their store only. I had been lusting over a Le Creuset brand Dutch oven in the perfect color for my kitchen, ‘Ocean’, but had been stopped by the price tag. Well, they had a slightly scratched one reduced by 50% and then with today’s added 20% reduction and my 10% trade discount, this was too good to be true!  Come to Papa!

So, the day continued, yada, yada, yada, until dinner time when I decided to pull out all the stops. Sometimes you just have to evaluate the players and figure out what role they will play. Here were my list of players tonight: green and yellow summer squash, two types of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, green scallions, and green peppers. Dave had picked up .33 lbs of boneless pork loin from the butcher, Bob, this afternoon.

I relied on a simple summer squash recipe from my brother. It involves sauteing sliced squash and onion with some olive oil and some added spices. I added a pat of butter since we were splurging on all fronts!

We have enjoyed this simple squash sautee for the last couple of years but I was able to enhance it this year by the addition of  our dried thyme from last year’s harvest. I keep meaning to put all those leaves in a spice jar!

The pork recipe is something from Hoosier-ville, Indiana. They have a wonderful treat called “Chicken Fried Steak” which is actually a pork loin wedge that is flattened, breaded and then fried and ultimately served on a bun like a hamburger.  The history of it comes from Wienner Schnitzel which is a German way of preparing pork. For more info, this is a fine link on The History of Schnitzel. http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Schnitzel/

It is well received with mustard and if you order it in a restaurant it would look like this:

It is to die for when done correctly.  We don’t eat much meat any more but but when my dear husband, brought home two thin slices of a boneless pork loin chop today as I reported above I decided to make my own version of these. I smacked them with a ‘trudge’ which looks like this. One side is flat and the other is pocked. I used the flat side to make 2 really thin pieces of pork. They were almost see thru so they cook almost instantly.

Then I dipped each piece in egg, and breaded them with panko (a Japanese version of bread crumbs) which looked like this. A heavy hand with the pepper grinder is all they needed.

Here are the pieces frying in the pan!

When finished, we had a lovely dinner that looked like this! No need for a bun!

We just got home from a lovely dinner hosted by Ben and Sue Schwartz where they featured our blueberries in three of the dishes they served tonight. The food was delicious and the berries were used in such a creative way; I will take note of their recipes for the future use of our fruit!

The dinner salad was spinach, toasted hazelnuts, blueberries and feta cheese with a light vinaigrette. I’m not sure if there was anything else? It was lovely.

Then, they served a savory blueberry sauce for the grilled salmon that was just incredibly tasty and a very creative use of the berries. I will have to get this recipe from Sue and see if I can post it if anyone is interested. YUM!

As a finale, they served a most wonderful blueberry pie. Sue had seen a section in the NYTimes the previous day which was all about pies and had followed some suggestions for using cornstarch as the pie thickener and also leaving half of the berries whole and uncooked. It was really a great pie, so I will have to remember that as well to try in the future. Thanks, Ben and Sue for hosting us and making such great use of our produce!

What a contrast in weather between this year and last! We were in a record heat wave and drought at this point last year and now are experiencing record flooding and unusually cool temps! Although we are relieved of the job of frantic watering and moving hoses around, we are now overwhelmed with rain. When we look back at harvest numbers from last year, we are behind on almost all fronts except for the berries.

That said, we have been able to keep up on the consumption end of things. We have been picking a couple of peppers and squash each day and can manage to turn them into a veggie dish for dinner with ease. The lettuces and scallions are under control as well and we enjoy getting to use them nightly.  Today was the first green bean and tomato harvest which was modest but there is a promise of lots more to come! Dave is always focused on the traditional harvest dates for certain crops, so it is with great fan fare that he can say he was able to harvest the first ripe tomatoes today.

With the threat of so much produce clogging our current freezer space, we bought a new upright freezer yesterday and were able to haul it home from the local Sears store.

I started looking for one of these freezers a couple of months ago and found out that they are not as popular an item as they once were for American families. One of my appliance salesmen said he had not sold one in over 15 years! Wow! I grew up with one in the basement of my parent’s house since they would buy half of a butchered cow each year and have it freezer wrapped to feed the family with convenience. My dad and brother were also trout fishermen, so the freezer would hold their seasonal catch as well.

We are delighted to have an upright (vs. chest) freezer now but we had some obstacles to overcome. Thank goodness it fit into Dave’s new pick up truck! Although his BMW was lovely, it wasn’t the perfect ride for a farmer like Dave! Notice the license plates!

This freezer weighed 240lbs and Dave and I were not quite up to the challenge of getting it into the basement ourselves. I called upon our resident deer hunter, Andy, who is one of my favorite carpenters. He brought a friend along at the end of the work day and they were able to transport this big box down to the basement for us. Of course they wanted no $ but we shared a beer, some laughs and plied them with fresh picked blueberries and some strawberry jam. Dave managed to sneak some $ into their trucks before they left.

There isn’t an electric receptacle in the basement exactly where we would like to plug in the freezer, so our electrician, Rich Wood, will make a house call next week. Of course, we will need to add this unit to the generator so that if we lose power, we do not lose our produce!

It is exciting to be able to load this unit up with our summer crops for our winter months of enjoyment. Happy Fourth of July!

I relish my childhood memories with both sets of grandparents. We had wonderful family visits to Lexington, Missouri (paternal) and Freelandville, Indiana, (maternal) family farms. I can, and will, share many joyous stories about my memories of both of those times, but I had a big jolt in the last couple of days as I realized that I had been attacked and was suffering from Chiggers! Actually, our visiting helpmate – daughter Kate – found that she had been attacked as well! UGH!

So, I distinctly remember my maternal grandfather, Irvin Telligman, – “Grand Daddy” – coming in from a day at the farm and going directly into the basement where he would take a shower and change into clean overalls to make sure he had gotten rid of any ‘Chiggers’. The shower in the basement was the only one in the house. It was not a separate room but rather just a corner of the basement that had a concrete formed basin with a drain in the floor and exposed plumbing that allowed one the luxury of rinsing off the dirt of the farm. The walls and floor were just rough concrete. (Benefit…non-slip surface!!!) We were lucky that there was a plastic shower ‘curtain’ to pull for privacy even tho it didn’t really reach from side to side which was worrisome for me at the time. As children, we only took showers down there with the supervision of our mother but that usually meant a joint occupation of the space. Of course, I spent an inordinate amount of time worrying that there was a window  in the upper wall of the space that broached this ‘privacy’ but I realize now that had their not been one, the only light source would have been a naked light bulb nearby but outside of the shower.

None of my worries were more than a child’s imagination. Altho there was a bathroom in the main floor of the house with a tub, IT was only used for the function of the toilet and the sink. I also remember that one didn’t flush the toilet willy-nilly, but waited until there was a reason more than just a little pee to pull the trip lever!  So the basement shower was the only one we used. It was an unheated space since there was no enclosure and therefore one did not linger long. When “done” with the showering part (which we did quickly in order not to waste any water!) we would scatter to the ‘coal room’ about 20 feet away. It provided us with just a bit of privacy despite the joint occupancy with our mother. It was called the “coal” room since it was where the old coal furnace for the house was located and we had a bit of warmth there as we hurriedly dried off and put our clothes on.

It was in the coal room that I first encountered the idea of chiggers. Grand Daddy knew when he came in from a day at the farm (he was the town blacksmith and so spent half his day in both jobs) he needed to rid himself of the dreaded, itchy, Chiggers. As I remember, if he had any evidence of Chiggers he would douse the spots with rubbing alcohol that sat on a shelf there and we would be doused as well if we had ventured up the the farm with him.  The concept has not changed since then. Chiggers still exist and I have proof! I did not have any last year so I’m wondering if they are out in force this year due to the rainy conditions. I think the only way to prevent them from biting is to shower off immediately after being out in the field unless one wants to be covered in DEET every time you venture outside. The rubbing alcohol is the cure-all only after the bite since it helps eliminate the chigger and dry up the skin invasion. Wanna see something gross? Go to the Wikipage and look at what Chiggers are all about!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombiculidae

The other pest we are dealing with are the Japanese Beetles. Ugh! Luckily, this is not something that affects our bodies but the damage they do to our plants is terribly destructive. We are doing the best we can with buckets of soapy water which means when we find them on our plants, we knock them into a waiting container and figure that is one less to deal with. Arg!

The persistent, wet weather is keeping the harvest of some items to a minimum but has enhanced the harvest of others vegetables. I’d say our harvest this year is starting to reel from the effects of the rain as well as the cooler weather. The contrast between this year and last is remarkable! Recently, we have been picking lettuces, peppers, scallions, and summer squash for our dinners. Other items such as radishes, peas, spinach and bok choy are done for the summer but will be re-planted as fall crops. Here is a pic of  a recent dinner.

OMG! The baby barn swallows are off and flying around! I have continued to check on their status in the last couple of days and at times had found only three chicks in the nest so I knew one of them was trying his wings. I just ventured out to peek at them again and found there was only one chick in the nest! He looks so lonely!

I went inside to get my camera and walked around to the far door so as not to scare them off and the nest was EMPTY! It was similar to the feeling I had when my children left for college. I knew they were capable of taking flight and experiencing the world on their own, but oh, my babies were suddenly gone! Wouldn’t you know, this is what they left behind! Kids! Le Sigh…

In other news…we keep trying to improve on the blueberry patch. We had our nets draped over tall wooden stakes in order to keep the net off the fruit. If you let the net touch the fruit, when you pull it away, you pull off fruit as well as leaves which isn’t good.

We had the sides of the net secured with large rocks every few feet to keep the net in place around the bottom. Well, this wasn’t working as well as we thought since we would often go out and see the east side of the net flapping in the wind (it typically blows west to east so this was expected) and therefore open to invasion. Drag. The rocks were also not ideal since we had to move them each time we mowed around the beds. So we came up with this idea to hold the nets in place and yet allow us to be able to lift them with ease to mow or have access. I had some extra cup hangers in the closet and decided to employ them in the wooden stakes as follows: We used a small awl and hammer to start a hole at the bottom of the stake.

Then we screwed in a cup holder and left it in an upside down position and attached the net.

We hope this works. I think we have been beating the birds on the blueberry front. We have picked over eight pounds with many more to go!

We are greedily freezing them to eat all winter long. I think Joan Moore coined the phrase perfectly…I have ‘Little Red Hen’ syndrome! I’m sure you all remember the children’s story of Little Red Hen. If not, you can find it here: http://www.storybus.org/stories_and_activities/the_little_red_hen/story. There is just so much work that goes into our crops that we are really going to focus on feeding ourselves with the product before thinking about selling it.

I know I’ve said it before, but there is always something to do on the farm even tho it is too wet from the rain to do what is needed. Yesterday, in addition to all the blueberry picking and net adjustments, I weeded the front, south landscape bed and added more Preen before mulching. This afternoon Dave worked on making and installing his cucumber trellises. We were big fans of the sweet pickles we made from our cucumbers and zucchinis last year but we ran out of them months ago and Dave has been missing them on his lunch time sandwiches. We hope to have a bumper crop this year for even more pickle making. Here is what he worked on this afternoon.

Dave also asked me to thin the okra! I was more than happy to help since I would not want more okra than our dear Joyce can eat. She grew up in Oklahoma (or as we like to say, Okrahoma!) and loves fried Okra but we basically grow it for her plus the added benefit of some afternoon shade that its tall stalks provide for other plants. You see twin plants here but I thinned them to one every 12 inches. Still….lots of Okra!

We picked lovely peppers and yellow squash which we will have for dinner tonight as well as lettuce, onions and radishes for our salad.

The eggplants are looking very healthy as well so we will have get ready for that battle in the future months. We have nearly wiped out that which we froze last year so I guess that means we won the war???

The only negative thing to add to the day was that the Japanese Beetles are back! Arg! We felt they were fewer in number last year due to the heat and the drought so not sure what to expect this year but they look to be attacking their favorite areas: the orchard, roses and grape leaves. We have found them just about everywhere and hope to employ our favorite technique of brushing them into a container of soapy water.

Here is what we are currently reading! Dave got a 2 year subscription for his birthday…thanks Lisa and Lee!