June Farmers

 

June is a busy month for farmers, even on a small scale.  The garden is in full swing and the kids are all doing their parts to help. 

Brother M made a tunnel through our buckwheat cover crop before pulling it all down and laying it out to decompose. 

Baby A had his first sour cherry picking experience.  He was pretty disappointed about the flavor.  He loved harvesting strawberries, raspberries, and especially blueberries and popping them in his mouth.

The high tunnel is turning into a squash jungle. Summer squash are coming in by the bushel every other day. The winter squash is filling every available inch.  Actually, a lot more since this picture was taken.  It's hard to walk in there now. 

The zinnia border is a delight. I love seeing it out my kitchen window every day. 

Big sister A has planned a series of volleyball nights for one of her children and youth goals.  Daddy is helping with coaching and set-up. 

He loves playing with balls on the trampoline. 

Despite my steps STILL not being finished.  The front flower and herb borders are also a daily delight for me. 

The freezer had a melt down and I had a canning spree trying to make everything shelf stable that couldn't fit into our other freezer. 

Brother S loves making our easy guacamole.  Mash avocados and add our tomatillo salsa until it tastes good.

Raspberry eater.

Tired after a fun day playing with Kirche (our friends' German Shepherd) and harvesting bamboo for a project.

Slowly hauling all the rocks out of my pathway so that I can finish it.  Some of them are huge. 

Lots of canning, baking, and dehydrating happening to preserve our harvests. 

This is 8 lbs of rhubarb that I used for juice and fruit leather. 

Homegrown salads.  Each new crop gives me ideas of fun ways to mix up the flavors. 

Mama muscovy hatched 4 ducklings and we gave them to our neighbors. We are looking forward to her next hatching. 

Brother M is breeding some rabbits to enter in the Meat Pen category at the county fair. We are also going to sell some rabbits at the fair this year. 

One artichoke is all I have to show for this year.  

Raspberry shortcake with whole wheat biscuits and yogurt.

These are some nice sized squash.  We have had a lot of big boats lately.  It is hard to keep up with and find them all on a daily basis. 

Batch #1 of Stinging nettle dried and ready for powdering. 

One of the kids favorite chores is continuously harvesting the zinnias.  The more we pick the bushier and more flowers the plants get.  

I built two new rabbit tractors for the orchard.  The orchard is one place where it makes sense for us to let the rabbits graze and deposit their manure -- since we hope to have permaculture plantings throughout that area (eventually). It takes a long time to cover that much space with plantings and beds. These bunnies were potential carriers of snuffles so we wanted to separate them from the herd either way. So far they have shown no signs of having it! That is great and means that we can breed them.