Farm Fresh: Rainy Days and Exotic Insects

Monday's harvest: 

I gave away several boxes of tomatoes and cucumbers this week, but I still had plenty.  I did another full load of tomatoes in the dehydrator and canned some of Miss L's candy aka. sweet pickle spears. She opens these jars herself and can eat them all in a day. 

Speaking of kids and jars of things they love -- this is a funny one.  I had to document it.  They love these baked beans. Every time the lunch options don't appeal, voila I find a jar of baked beans open on the counter.  It makes me happy.  I need to go back and look at my canning log for which recipe book these came from.  I most definitely am going to be making them again!

We had rain almost every day this week because of tropical storm Isaias. The only downed tree was from last week though. It fell near our driveway and hubby spent the last two Saturdays getting it chopped and chipped.  

Brother M is an early bird. He came into my room one morning around 8am looking like this.  He had been outside getting his animal chores done.

We picked peaches at our local orchard on Friday. More than half of the 30+ pounds are already gone. Walking around a hot orchard with masks was not very fun, but better than no peaches. 

When I was a kid someone told me that praying mantises were almost extinct and it was illegal to kill them.  I wonder if that was true...  It is most certainly not true around our farm.  I have seen more praying mantises this summer than in my whole life put together -- at least 4-5 every day. All sizes.  The kids informed me that the XL ones are the females and these smaller ones are the males. I would say that they like the high tunnel, but they seem to be everywhere. 
We have a number of runaway bunnies currently.  I am not sure whether miss L is secretly helping them escape or they are just getting smarter.  At least 3 are currently roaming the yard.  Including this one who escaped shortly after this picture was taken:

His story is that I thought he was a girl and left him in the mama and sisters' cage, but I was wrong. Hopefully I got him out of there fast enough.  And since all the other cages were full, we decided to test out a very primitive rabbit tractor in a cat cage.  He seemed to be enjoying it... until the door was left open.