Our New Family Member

We have added a kitten to our family! Springtime (summertime?) is also Kitten Season, when there are many, many kittens looking to be adopted and brought into new homes. Older cats are also always to be considered, but for our household with a young boisterous dog and a grumpy old-man dog, a kitten that would be adaptable seemed the best choice.

So, now we have Sebastian. It has taken him a few weeks to acclimate, but he seems to have decided on a course of action.

The first week we kept him restricted to the bathroom until he and the dogs became acquainted (which made for very interesting shower time, as he is a super talkative kitty and seems to think he owns all towels). Week 2 he was allowed to a few more rooms in the house, and enjoyed seeing how high he could jump. The answer: about as high as a corgi. He quickly found hiding spots under beds and couches, but was rather unpleasantly surprised to learn that Mia (the younger corgi) could  wriggle into those places as well. The area under our couch became very thumpy in the mornings. I'm not sure if I want to know what they were up to or not. Sebastian started to take the dogs toys out of the toy box and hide them under the couch, trying to stir things up with the dogs. The joke was on him though, because that is the same thing that Mia does with them. I guess she thought he was helping her?

Eventually Sebastian figured out how to climb his way up to our bed, where Mia sleeps next to me. He also wanted to sleep next to me (seriously, my husband also sleeps up there, does he emit some kind of odor repugnant to animals or what?). Mia and Sebastian spent an entire week fighting over the sleeping-next-to-Mommy space, each of them trying to creep closer and closer to my face. It was great fun waking up in the middle of the night to have a corgi sharing my pillow. Eventually Sebastian gave up, settling for sleeping on Mia's butt. But not before peeing on the bed next to my face. At 5 am in the morning.

Sebastian has also discovered a love of computers (is this normal? I have never had a cat that is so into prancing across keyboards before). Whenever I am on the computer, he has to come "help" me type by dancing across the keyboard and somehow always pressing the keys that make the touchpad stop working. Every. Single. Time.

For the most part though, Sebastian and Mia are partners in play. They play chase and hide-and-seek and other games that they have made up together. This morning, Mia was laying down and Sebastian crawled onto her back and bit her ear to let her know that he was ready to play. Bailey joins in sometimes, but is happy to have more time to sleep. It's always interesting to watch Mia and Sebastian interact (especially now that they have worked out the whole bedtime thing and I have my pillow to myself again).

First Day of Spring

As we move from winter into spring today, the sky celebrates with us by dropping the first snowflakes of spring on the ground. The corgis are quite excited by this, as they love snow.

Bailey thinking deep thoughts as he watches the snowflakes

Yesterday was almost sixty degrees, much closer to our normal spring weather. The goat kids were quite excited to be outside and zoomed around, showing off for their moms. The mothers were rather unimpressed, having seen the antics of their kids before, and rather more interested in finding any greens that were sprouting. Below are some of my favorite pictures from yesterday's fun in the sun:

Springs for feet

Zooming around mom

Karate kid

How high can I jump?

And now for the adorable pictures:

Voltron - he's a sweetheart

Quinn and Graupel - snowstorm babies

Our angora girls

Spring Preview

Based on a True Story...

Voice-over Guy: After surviving the week of below-freezing temperatures and single-digit wind chills, the weather has finally taken a turn towards a temporary thaw.  With it has come rain and mud.  Lots and lots of mud.

This is a paraphrasing of a conversation that happened in our home last night. 

Hubby: What is this brown stuff all over our kitchen floor?

Me: Dirt.

Hubby: Why is there dirt all over the floor?

Me: (Really, really wanting to be snarky and say that someone came in and dropped dirt all over the floor.) *Sigh* It's muddy outside. Everyone is bringing in mud on their feet. When it dries, it becomes dirt. 

Hubby: Oh. 

After-note: We have lived in this house for eight years now. We have mud season EVERY YEAR. I did not think this was a big surprise to anyone, but hey, I was wrong. 

Also, my daughter is currently obsessed with life hack videos on You Tube. After an article I read a few years ago, I stopped reading/watching any of those, because as far as I could tell they were just common sense. Among other things, the article had to do with.... cleaning up mud off the kitchen floor. Their recommendation: wait until it dried so you could sweep it up rather than trying to mop up the wet stuff. Um, thanks?

If I could also get the humans in my family to leave their shoes in the shoe area (which is before the kitchen), it would also help this problem. Hence the whole "mud room" thing. I don't think there is much hope as far as the corgis are concerned. Their low rider status just attracts mud like a magnet. Every other year I get the bright idea to towel them off as they come in and then run out of clean towels as the stack of dirty towels piles up by the door. Eventually I give up and they make nice little mud patterns with their stomachs on the kitchen floor. Maybe I should have told my husband that the brown stuff was corgi art. 

Basic Tutorial: Upcycled Dog Toys!

Today's post is going to cover some basics for using leftover fabric and rags to make upcycled dog toys.  If you are like me, always saving all those leftover bits from your sewing projects for that "later" that never comes, then this project may be one for you! If you don't have a dog, you probably know someone who does, and chances are they will be super excited to have a Christmas gift for their favorite pooch.

For this project, you will need:

• Basic sewing skills
• A sewing machine (you can hand-sew, but it will take longer)
• Thread, scissors
• A rag bag of assorted fabrics, or a bag of scrap fabrics (or both!)

Depending on how much fabric and what kind you have, there are several ways you can go. Get creative! I have made two toy animals to get you started with ideas: a snake and a frog. 

THE SNAKE

• It's best to use a strong fabric for the outside shell of the animals (old jeans, khakis, etc.).  I used part of an old pant leg for this one, simply cutting it to the length that I wanted and then making it square up into a rectangle. 

• At that point I cut out bits of fleece for exterior decoration: eyes, tongue, spots, and spikes. If you decide to do spikes, just make sure that they are facing towards the inside for when you sew the sides together. I like fleece for this part because you do not have to worry about it fraying at the edges. 

• After finishing the decorations, fold the snake in half, right sides together, and pin. Sew the long end together.

• After sewing the long end together, open the end up, and fold so that the tongue is centered (still with right sides together). Sew that end shut.

• Note: I double-stitched since this is going to be a dog toy.
• Turn the snake inside out and stuff with scrap fabric or rags. You can use stuffing if you want, but my dogs actually eat stuffing. Or, leave it empty.

• Once the snake is stuffed, sew the opening shut. You can use the machine or hand-stitch.
• Your toy is done!

THE FROG

• Again, use a strong fabric for the outside shell of the animal (old jeans, khakis, etc.).  I used old khakis leftover from another project for this one, cutting it into oval shapes.
• I used fleece to make a stomach and eyes for my frog. Cut out similar designs, or your own. Pin them into place on the front of the frog and stitch. 
• The arms and legs will also be made from old fabric.  Find long, thin strips of fabric, about 8" long. You will need 3 per arm/leg (12 total). They do not need to match.

• Put 3 strips together and tie a knot at the end. Braid until you get to the other end, and tie another knot. Do this for the remaining strips until you have 4 arms/legs.
• Pin the arms and legs to the front of the frog, facing the inside. To make sewing easier, the outer knot can be outside the stitching area. Baste into place. 
• Place the backside of the frog onto the front, right sides together. Pin into place. 

• Stitch both sides together, leaving about 4" for turning the frog right side out. Turn right side out.
• Stuff the frog with scrap fabric or stuffing, or leave empty. Stitch the opening shut. 
• Your toy is done!

Cherries!

Last weekend we made cherry jam. We had several pounds of cherries to work with. I am not exactly sure how many. We had originally picked sixteen pounds of cherries (to give you an idea of quantity - this completely filled our fruit drawer), but several pounds were eaten before we got to the jam-making stage. We like our cherries!

This year I finally broke down and purchased a food mill. So many people kept telling me that I should get one. We had borrowed one before, and it was great and saved lots of time, but I never really thought I needed one until I was staring down pounds and pounds of cherries and blueberries (we had also picked 11 pounds of blueberries on our outing - those I made into freezer jam for convenience).

My daughter, who has had a keen interest in cooking shows for several years, jumped all over the food mill. I think the only thing that I was allowed to do with it was clean it.

Our new food mill.

Unfortunately, I did not realize that it didn't pit the cherries, so that was A PROBLEM. Do you know how few stores in rural areas sell cherry pitters? We do. That was several hours on a Saturday morning. We eventually found a swiss-army kitchen tool thing (below) that pits cherries, cores apples, does something to strawberries and also zests things and I don't even know what else. It actually worked quite well.

The swiss army kitchen tool.

Colleen and I had quite the system going - she would use the food mill to process the cherries after I cleaned and pitted them. Then we got them cooking and canned. So blueberries and cherries are done, now we get to move on to the raspberries and blackberries.

Jars of cherry jam.

Spring (and every other season) is here!

Weather in the mid-atlantic east coast area has been strange lately. Today feels like spring, last week was very very summer, and the week before we had the heat running! Our poor animals have no idea whether to shed or what, and the trees think they are supposed to bloom... And the pollen!

We are working on making some changes to our farm as well. Due to my increasing allergies to the goats (and the lack of any kind of allergy serum for goats), we are down-sizing our goat herd. Since my daughter and I are both riding horses now, we are bringing my horse to the farm to make the horse care easier (pictures to come!). There will be goats posted for sale on our sale page, although most of them will be for sale after August when the summer shows are over.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures:

This is the female of the angora triplets, picture taken a few months ago. She ended up being the bottle baby.

Here is one of her brothers. They are so soft!

Bubba. At 5 months old, he is almost as big as his mother.

Corgis counting goats. 

Our puppy, Mia. She is much more interested in chasing balls than goats.

Mason Dixon Fair 2016

We have finished up our part of the Mason Dixon Fair this year, although the fair runs through this Saturday. There was no angora goat show this year (very sad news), so we took three of our boer-cross goats to show. Colleen and I each entered a jam. Colleen's jam placed first for her category, mine placed second. She was really excited about that (this was the first year she entered a jam).

For some reason, our goats were put in the "Sheep" tent, even though there was a "Goat" tent (as well as a "Cow" area and a "Swine" area). It was very strange. Having never been in the Sheep tent before, I cannot say if it was just this year, or if this happens all the time, but the sheep seem to enjoy escaping their pens. Then someone yells, "Sheep!" and all available bodies assemble to corner the sheep into an area where they can be caught and put back into their pen.  By the end of our three days there, the word "sheep!" seemed to be synonymous with a four-letter-word.

The cow area was behind us. I always find them interesting to watch. Many of these animals (not just the cows) are 4H and FFA projects, and you can tell the love and care that the owners put into their animals. Since we are there during all hours of the day, we see the morning, afternoon, evening, and late shifts. We get to watch the cleaning, bathing, fluffing, primping, and cuddling that occurs. The cows directly behind us (pictured below), were definitely quite tame. The lighter colored one was regularly used as a couch by her young owner, with her sprawling across the cow's back, and the two of them taking a quick nap together.

The very tame cows that were behind us for the week.

Is she picking her nose?

Below are pictures of Colleen showing the three different goats:

Colleen showing Gracie. I did tell her to smile before she went in the show ring. 

Colleen showing Luna Belle.

Colleen and Little Red.

If you have never had your goats in a fair situation, just know that they will want what the other animals are eating, no matter what it is. That's just how it is. In previous years, we have seen some interesting ways in which the goats try to go about sampling their neighbors food. Some of the sheep, like our goats, had constant hay access through hay nets and bags, while others were on a feeding schedule. The sheep diagonal to us were on a feeding schedule, and they were not happy with this arrangement; to the extent that they were eating hay that our goats had dropped on the ground by sticking their faces through the bars into our goat pen to get to it. Luna Belle (the red goat with horns) took offense to this and dealt with it in a very goat way: by head butting them. The sheep dealt with it very differently, however, and grabbed her horns in their mouth and pulled very hard. Luna Belle did not like that at all. She twisted until she was finally free, and then ran to the other corner of the pen, glaring angrily at the sheep. Unconcerned, the sheep continued eating the hay off the ground. This became too much for Luna Belle, who then had to head butt the sheep again, thus starting the whole cycle all over. At some point they either ran out of hay to eat or got tired of fighting each other, because it stopped.

Then we get to the end of our time there, and stall cleaning. It is impossible to clean a stall with three goats inside of it. The stalls next to us were empty, though, so we put the goats in there temporarily. I didn't realize that we had just put them directly across from the sheep that Luna Belle had been fighting with earlier, or that she still had a grudge against them. In very little time, she had managed to squeeze herself through the bars into their pen, and was tossing her head around in a blatant show of aggression. Enough to impress the sheep into submission. Once that was over, Luna Belle realized that there was nothing good to eat over there, so she settled for taking a drink from the water bucket, with one eye on the sheep, to make sure that they were watching. By that time I had managed to walk around the set of pens to get to the front of that one so I could open it. But Luna Belle was ready to leave then anyway. She had done what she had come to do.

Colleen and Gracie snuggling in the goat pen.

The Mill of Bel Air had a tent set up not too far from where we were. They had some free things that they were giving away.  Colleen made sure to go get one - she got a dog toy. Toby has already been enjoying it, especially when the center has peanut butter inside!

Toby enjoying his new toy.

A New (for us) Recipe: Blackberry Blueberry Jam

Happy 4th of July everyone! Americans anyway. I guess to anyone else, Happy Monday that happens to be the 4th of July!

So, the fruit started rolling in back in June with the strawberries. With the wet, soggy, grey spring that we had, our strawberry crop was just enough for my breakfast and lunches. I can go through a pound of strawberries a day by myself when they are fresh-from-our-bushes-picked berries. Mmmm, Vitamin C! Sadly, cherry season was super short due to the spring that we had, and we missed out on going to our local orchard to pick those (super bummed, as those are my all-time favorite fruit, but I am working on getting my husband to plant us our own cherry trees. We'll see if I get those or the dishwasher first...)

So now we are on to blueberries and blackberries. Our blueberries are a later variety, so it will be a few more weeks until they are ripe, but Colleen and I did go up the road this weekend and pick their early variety. Our blackberries are doing really well this year! We've been getting a 2-4 pints a day. And they are super, super sweet!

Blueberries that we picked locally, and our blackberries.

It was a rainy day, so a good one to be in the kitchen making jam. We made a batch of just blackberry jam, and I had to adjust the next recipe and cut waaaay down on the sugar, because the first jam was so sweet. (Those berries are sweet!) Ice cream topping anyone?

Several years ago, my mom bought me the "Farm Journal's Freezing and Canning Cookbook." I LOVE this book! It has so many recipes, and combinations that I would never think of, such as blackberry and blueberry jam (other people may think of these things, which I am sure you can look up on the internet now, but when you are busy picking and picking and weeding and feeding animals and also have a fractured foot, it is easier sometimes to just be able to flip through a book and have a the recipes right at your fingertips). It also has recipes for green tomatoes, pickled everything (even fruit!) and meats. The other thing that I really like about this book is that the recipes are for large quantities of fruit, such as pounds and bushels (which is what we tend to have around here) rather than cups and pints (which is generally what I find when I look online, although not always). So, if you are going to seriously get into canning, I would recommend that you look for a copy of this book.

Blackberry-bluberry jam - final product!

Some Pretty Pictures

Yeah, it's been awhile. 2016 has been a difficult year, starting off with mono, which I somehow managed to escape during college only to have once I have a kid who is a tween. What?! And then a whole bunch of other medical things!

But let's move on. I promised pictures! So here they are, in whatever order I feel like putting them in.

This is my front walkway. This is what happens when I don't weed it. Personally, I think it's much prettier this way.

Our dogwood tree in bloom. Yes, I like to take pictures of flowers.

This is Moonpie, one of my favorite goats born this year. Because she's adorable!

And some violets. Because not only do I like taking flower pictures, I also don't like weeding.

I Could Have Been A Storm-Chaser

I could have been a storm chaser. I love watching storms come in. I will stay there until they are on top of me. And then some. Also, I am awesome with directions. I don't even own a GPS, and until this year I didn't even own a smartphone (and even that one doesn't have access to internet unless I'm at home, so I have to do maps old school, or use my actual sense of direction, which rocks). I don't even know how many times my daughter has said to me, "Mommy, do you know where we are?" and the answer is, "No, but I still know I can get where we are going." And I do.

A few weeks back I was driving home from work when I heard the emergency alert system come on the radio.  Thinking it was "only a test," I didn't pay it much attention, until I realized it wasn't only a test.  Apparently there was a massive storm system moving through the area with winds 60-70 mph and rain and hail and fun kinds of things.  Which normally wouldn't be too much of an issue.  Except that we'd had almost two weeks with no rain and had put our yearlings in a pen with no run-in.  So.  Rapid acceleration home.  Based on the track of the storm, I had about 30 minutes to get them in.  And of course, the goats never make things easy.  And neither does my husband.

I got home, and started moving goats around.  Because I couldn't simply just open some gates and have that be the end of it.  I had to play musical goat pastures, and move the angoras in order to move the yearlings, and then move the angoras back.  Yeah.  And the yearling's gate was tied with bailing twine. (WHY WHY WHY???!!!). Even though I bought all these nice goat-proof metal clips.  I HATE when things are tied with bailing twine.  Because I do NOT carry a knife on me at all times, because I CAN'T due to work reasons.  Of course there was no knife to be found in the barn.  I briefly considered using my teeth.  Then I thought about just using brute force.  Eventually I got the gate open.  And three of the four yearlings pranced through.  The fourth one, of course, got her head stuck in the fence.  And refused to be helped.  In order to get un-stuck she had to go backwards, and all her pals were in front of her.  Meanwhile, the stormclouds had started rolling in and it was getting kinda dark.  And dogs were barking and leaves were starting to spin. Ok, so to be honest, that is when I started yelling at the goat.  Eventually I got her out.  Meanwhile, her buddies had disappeared into the barn and were scattered around to see what trouble they could get into while unsupervised.  And this is when I started to question my own sanity in even having goats.  I think it took another 15 minutes, but eventually I got everyone where they were supposed to be.  They were not at all thankful, but wanted to know where their grain was. Of course they did. I fed everyone super quick, and then locked up and left them to their own devices.  Somehow I managed to get it all done and the storm was still not yet here.

So I took some pictures.  Let me also just take a minute to mention here that one of our neighbors was actually outside raking leaves while the storm was rolling in. Not bagging them or anything, simply raking them into a pile. I have no idea why. It was a little strange.

Clouds moving in.

More clouds.

Right after I finished taking pictures (I only went inside when the rain started coming down), there was a loud explosion in our front yard.  Like fireworks. And more dog barking, only this time it was coming from my dogs. I thought our transformer was blown, until I realized that we still had power.  Our internet was dead though.  My husband didn't believe me about the explosion.  He kept telling me that I must have been seeing and hearing things (riiiight).  Until he went to the barn the next day and saw our electric fence charger blown into little tiny pieces in the barn.  The one that we just paid to have re-built. But at least nothing caught fire, right?

Storm rolling in

The ungrateful goats

Toby Gets His Christmas Request In

And it's finally October! I cannot say that I am sad to see September go. There were several good and great things that happened in the month of September this year, including our wedding anniversary, a wedding in our family, and a much-needed trip for me to visit friends in California.  But there were also several very horrible and stressful things happening that rather over-shadowed the good.

The main horrific thing had to do with Toby, who is like my second child.  For those people who understand, I do not need to explain.  For those of you who don't, no explanation is going to suffice. 

In case you don't remember Toby, he is my older, diabetic corgi:

Toby

At the end of August, I found an ulceratic lump growing underneath one of his paw pads.  This is a fancy way of saying it was bleeding ALL over the place. Strangely, for a dog who tries to bite anyone who messes with his feet (even me, if I am just trying to trim  his nails), this did not seem to put him in any abnormal amounts of pain.  And it certainly didn't affect his appetite.  For reasons to be explained below, my carpets may now be permanently stained, as I did not have time to pre-treat all of them.  Also, because of his treatment, I have not be able to to steam clean yet.  If you cannot deal with blood and gore, you should probably skip this post.  If you decide to read on, you have been warned.

So we wrapped the foot as best we could and took him to the vet.  We had to wrap it about 5 times in the course of an hour to get the wrap to stay on before we even got him to the vet. He kept getting it off.  Toby seemed to think it was some kind of game: "Hey! These people put this thing on my foot, I unwrap it with my teeth, and they wrap it again! Fun times!" Did I mention this happened on a Wednesday, when my husband and I both had to work, so Toby had all day to unwrap it and bleed everywhere before we got home? I think he definitely had home field advantage here. 

So, vet visit #1: they diagnosed it as potentially a very deep bacterial infection (given that we have the goats and all, this was a high probability), gave him lots of antibiotic, re-wrapped it, put a head cone on him, and sent us all on our merry way.  Toby was to come back every three days to get his bandaged re-wrapped.  Toby had the bandage off within 24-hours, even with the cone on.  Here is where it can be bad to have a smart dog.  He figured out that the friction of the carpet, combined with the wood strips where the rooms meet, make perfect places to rub the wraps against to get them off.  When I told this to the vet, her response was, "Well, you need to leave the cone on him all the time." Well, duh. I did. All all of your dogs stupid?  (I didn't actually say that last part).  So we tried putting a layer of duct tape over the last layer of wrap to cut down on the friction, which helped a little (it gave us an extra 24 hours). 

Then I had to go to California and leave Toby in the care of my husband for a week and a half.  Neither of them was particularly happy with this arrangement.  Toby, who previously had to be dragged (or carried) into the vet office because he was so unwilling to go in there, actually went in there on his own four feet the first time I took him when I got back.  I guess he figured that me taking him was a better deal than Chad taking him.  Chad had a vet visit while I was away, where they just put him on more antibiotics, still thinking it was an infection.  The first visit I had when I got back, it was at least twice the original size, definitely protruding above the paw pad (at first, you had to actually dig a little to find it), and gross.  I was determined that there would be no more antibiotics. Clearly, the antibiotic approach was not working. The vet agreed with me, and we scheduled surgery for within a few days, to include a biopsy of the lump.

Toby did well with the surgery.  Throughout the whole thing, with the wrap and the stitches, he adapted to life with a cone relatively well.  At first, he had his sonar bark, when he would need to find me.  That drove my husband a little nuts. But as soon as I called out to him so he could find me, he would stop barking.  

The other thing was needing to keep it dry and clean.  Whenever we took Toby outside, we had to put a plastic bag on his injured paw.  For the most part we had a dry week.  But we leave for work early in the morning when the dew is still on the grass.  So on went the bag.  And Toby is a water wuss anyway.  It didn't take him long to figure out that three of his paws were getting wet, while one of them was staying dry.  I will never forget the look he gave me one morning.  It clearly said, "Hey, Mommy, you have been holding out on me here. Why aren't all my paws covered! They could all be dry!"  I guess Toby wants dog booties for Christmas.  They actually make them. There are tons on Amazon. Here is just one pair that I found.

After about a week, we received the results of the biopsy, and found out how lucky Toby was. He had cutaneous extramedullary plasmacytoma.  Which, in this case, was a benign tumor.  It is not usually found under the pad of the feet.  They are part of a larger class (if that is right term) of plasma cell neoplasms; the majority of plasma cell neoplasms (97%) are malignant (source; National Canine Cancer Foundation).  So Toby got the "good" kind I guess. There is a small chance it could grow back and have to be surgically removed again, but if it does, it should be the same kind.  

So, September was quite the roller coaster ride, emotionally.  Given everything that was going on, and what Toby went through, how well he went through it, how cheap the dog booties are (and that Toby is likely to actually wear them), I may just cave and get him his booties for Christmas. 

Sauteed Ginger Green Bean Recipe

Green beans are one of those vegetables that we grow, but they never make it to the canning or freezing stage in our house.  If my husband had his way, he would just boil the snot out of them and eat them that way.  It is a gross comparison, but that is about how I feel eating them that way.  So I have found a few other ways to cook them to make them more appetizing.  It must work, because the pounds and pounds of green beans that we grow never make it past the dinner table.

One of the easiest things to do is to make "Green Bean Fries."  Clean the beans, snap off the ends, and put them on a cookie sheet lightly coated with olive oil.  Bake at 400 degrees until they are all nice and crispy (the time it takes will depend on the size of your beans).  They won't taste like french fries, but they will be tasty and have a nice satisfying crunch.  These are a favorite of both myself and my daughter. She likes the crunchiness.  I like the easy preparation, and being able to leave them in the oven to cook while I prepare the rest of dinner.  You can add some salt if that is your thing.

Another recipe that I frequently use is Ginger Green Beans.  It doesn't seem to matter how much I make of this recipe, there are never any leftovers, even when I want there to be!

Ginger Green Beans:

Ingredients:

• 2 TBSP olive oil
• 2 tsp minced ginger
• 1 lb green beans (washed, with ends snapped)
• 2-3 TBSP soy sauce (we used reduced sodium)
• Sesame seeds as desired

Directions:

• Heat oil in the skillet over medium-high heat and saute green beans until they begin to lightly brown.
• Add ginger and sesame seeds.
• When all ingredients start to brown, turn heat down to medium-low.  Add soy sauce and stir until just cooked.
• Serve.

Garden Harvest Begins

The rain has finally let up a bit.  Our zucchini, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, green beans and other veggies have been keeping us busy and well-fed.  The raspberries have also been coming in well.  My daughter and I made a very good raspberry-zucchini bread.  I tried a new recipe, courtesy of Fern Creek Farm.  The bread was delicious.  Sadly there are no pictures, because any loaves that didn't make to the freezer were eaten within 3 days.  They sure were tasty.

Zucchini and raspberries.

One of our zucchini plants.

A zucchini peeping out from among the leaves.

Our acorn squash have been taking over.  They have busted out of their fence and are moving into the goat pen.  Luckily for us, the goats don't find the plants tasty.

The acorn squash that have demolished the bunny fence.

Acorn squash, moving into the goat pen.

Chad has also been having some trouble with his tomato plants.  One in particular refuses to be contained, busting out of every kind of tie-up.  It has almost turned into a shrub it is so large.  I have put a picture of Chad next to the plant for some perspective.

Chad and his tomato shrub.