Caulk, Baby and A Garden Boom

I have a new addiction. Caulking. This morning I was doing a little more work on the bathroom trim and I discovered a tube of white bathroom sealing caulk I'd stocked under the sink. It was all downhill from there! Love squeezing it out like glossy frosting and the tactile precision of smoothing it with my rubber gloved finger. I caulked everything in the room and am now on the prowl for more places in my life that need caulking! Caulk! Its fun!

The baby, Pom is growing wildly. He's trying busily to roll over although I expect he won't be successful for quite a while yet. He is completely intolerant of dirty diapers and will fuss until changed and then bloom in smiles. He loves to be held at my shoulder, surveying the world behind me and watching whatever brother is bobbing behind saying, "Hi Baby! Hi!" Pom also has the most incredibly blue eyes. I think he got my Papa's peepers. I've admired his eyes for as long as I can remember so I'm beyond thrilled to have this tiny sapphire eyed creature mirroring him. So fun! A has given up insisting that they're going to fade to brown every time I mention them. I think we may have three brown eyed boys and blue eyed caboose.

The garden is churning out so many vegetables that I am hard pressed to keep up: zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, swiss chard..etc. etc. With all the new garden space we have this year I might finally be able to let go of having a CSA in the future. We really have so much available using both that its a bit manic. I need to remember the freezer and stock things away for winter. I have been freezing herbs in ziplocs which I also remembered to do last year and love, love, loved. Small victories! All our sweet corn is in now and sitting in a bag on the counter waiting to be shucked so that ought to be my first big project.

I am feeling excited about working on the house and a bit disenchanted with the outdoors (bugs, heat..etc.) and am starting to think fondly of our autumn hikes we start taking on Sunday afternoons once it is cool enough to deter ticks. Other things on the mind: curriculum arranging for this fall (1st grade approaches!!!), plans for roasting haunches of meat in the oven on cool evenings, prepping for Christmas (I will not be blindsided!) and our newly annual Thanksgiving dinner with friends. Summer is still with us right now though as the endless tomato salads do testify. Am hoping to have a dip in the community pool before we're through and this weekend we're headed to the county fair!

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New CSA

We're a good bit of the way through the harvesting season with our new CSA and I have to say that I like it. It is just as handy as I imagined to have our pick-up location down the street, instead of 45 minutes away, and kind of fun to meet neighbors there who also happen to have a share. I didn't count on the community interaction bit, kind of a fun bonus.

I do miss going up to an actual farm. It was a great built-in break that we had going and I feel like we've removed ourselves a little bit from the food-land connection. There was one scheduled members day when our new CSA invited everyone to come up for a picnic and help pull garlic and then go for a dip in the creek. Have to make sure to plan on going next year. I am an organization klutz and through a lot of fumbling we managed to miss it this time around. Am still kicking myself  although this morning I found out there is a special autumn farm festival scheduled for September when we can maybe make up the difference! Hooray!

Since there's such a small actual farm connection to speak of via our CSA this year, I find that I'm seeking out chances to go to drive out to the country for other things: caterpillar hunting, listening to the frogs sing, rural estate sales, buying farm milk, picking up local meat...etc. Kind of fun to mix it up anyhow.

So, the time savings is great, the produce is great, the community connection is fun and over-all I think we made a fine trade. You never quite know when you make this kind of a gamble and switch everything up, but this time it worked out.

The Part of Summer That Tastes Good

We are to the part of summer that begins to taste really good. I picked up our first CSA share this afternoon and walked back to the car with my arms full of more delicious meal prospects. The bounty overfloweth! The lettuce has started to really tumble out of our garden, there are broccoli spears to snip and the tomatoes are blossoming!

I noticed that the Lutheran church on the corner is having a Strawberry Festival this weekend. We may all have to walk down and stuff ourselves with shortcake and meet more neighbors. Somebody pinch me, I can't believe I live here!

It's a good thing summer tastes good. We're gonna need a few large and icy slices of watermelon to ease us through tomorrow's 100 degree temps. I plan to spend the day doing nothing but eating Popsicles, playing in the sprinkler and organizing the basement. You think I'm kidding? I am so deadly serious. This Northern girl does not cope well with extreme heat. I am lettuce. I wilt.

Peonies and Microwaves

Just put a load of laundry out on the clothesline, and I can see it out the window, hanging limply in the sunshine. I have done far too little clothesline using this spring so far. It is finally getting consistently warm and sunny though so I have decided to put my toe over the line, test fate and plan on hanging things out. Seems like the appropriate summer equation, cut the electric bill by giving the dryer a break and then jack it up a little by using the window unit air conditioners. Right? We haven't hit the time of year when you feel the need for blasts of cool air so, so far I haven't turned on a single window unit....but it's early yet. We shall see what we shall see.

The microwave died and I need to figure out what model to buy. So far, after a very small amount of review reading it looks like microwaves aren't terribly easy to rate. Most models get vaguely positive comments and all of them are below five stars. Is this a message from The Great Beyond to give up the radiation machine and live back-to-the-basics like my pal Nutmeg? I'm not sure I'm listening. I am lazy. I forget to thaw out meat for dinner. I heat water for a single cup of tea. I like reheating leftovers without dirtying any pans.

I can hardly believe it is June already. Time for the roses. My peonies are just finishing, the surprise peonies that were here already when we moved in. There were two varieties. A fragrant almost white, barely pink and then a deep lipstick one with gold stamens but no scent. Next year I plan to move them over to the flower beds I'm creating in the middle of the lawn. This will be the first week of our new CSA share. We will walk down the street to pick up our box and meet the folks from the farm. Lookin' forward to it!

The tomato plants have all migrated outdoors at this point, the corn I planted, right in the lawn (I am bonkers!) is coming up and there are lush, potato plants, climbing out of the soil in the two potato bins I made. Now I just need those late bloomer pole beans I put in the ground to get a move on and show their heads. Time to climb boys! Summer is a comin' in!

Dear Farm, Goodbye....

Our dear little farm where we go to pick veggies and fruit is suddenly far away. There are downsides to moving. Its far away and unfortunately in the wrong direction. This year it is has honestly been painful and then more painful trying to get up there to collect our share. I think this may be our last round in the roster.

We need a new CSA! We're in a new place and honestly, the options are suddenly way more diverse and numerous than they were two years ago when I was trying to find our first share. You can't lose with more options. I love the fact that our farm requires us to go up the farm to collect our share and has no delivery, but frankly, as a mother of three with one car its a little insane to have to run up there every week. And although its meant to be enforced time in nature it often becomes harried, manic, "Run run run!!!!" time on a farm where the kids don't get out of the car and I madly throw vegetables into our sack and then dash back behind the wheel and peel out of the drive on my way to go collect A while everyone wails in unison. It could be better.

I love this little magnet on the cooler at the farm. Gotta figure out where to get one.

Local drop off doesn't sound so terrible. It would mean I'd drive .4 miles down the street and pick up a pre-sorted, ready loaded box of goods fresh from our farm. That could be handy. Plus, then I'd have the time to swing by the farmer's market if I wanted and we could always drive up to pick up milk or eggs if we felt rambly and wanted to go for a drive. Right? Maybe there are even good places to drive to over this direction that won't be directly opposite wherever I need to be next. (Do I sound like I'm trying to talk myself into this?)

Sungold cherries...one of my favorite tomatoes in the world.

G, suddenly distressed and immobilized by the fact that he was in tall grass.

So, yes....Farm, its been sweet. Very sweet. We've mosied all over your velvet fields and wandered zig-zags across your dirt lanes, but our time may be over. Time to let our slot go to a another family who will love it well the way we did. Everything, even farms themselves, have their season. I know that's the right thing to do, but somehow I'm still very sad. I loved last summer at the farm and I'm so sad to let it go and step into the new thing, but I know that good surprises are only found by opening your hands and letting go of the old and who knows what great new experiences are waiting for us at a new CSA.Yesterday I put us on the waiting list at this sweet little venture. And now we wait and see....

Ah! The Farm....

Sure feels good to be back at our CSA farm, picking up our share! We kind of blasted through the fields and coolers today, collecting our goods and sort of run/walking back to the car. Just a quick Cheshire grin greeting with the head farmerette was all we had time for...hazards of moving your whole daily routine a couple of hours earlier in the day and sharing a car with a hard-working spouse. This week it has felt like I am forever running around dashing everywhere two minutes late.

But, next week will be more sane, practice makes perfect and pretty soon we'll the new rhythm down and we get a new chance to enjoy the farm every single week, all summer long. I cannot wait to linger, and listen to crickets along the lane, watch the tomatoes swelling on the vine and look up our list of weekly goods on the chalkboard above the vegetable bins. Good times are coming!

This week: tatsoi, butterhead lettuce, fresh strawberries (farm to table to stomach in about an hour and half!), arugula and broccoli raab Mmmmmmm!!!!! Fresh food, how I do love you.