Our New Compost Bins

    For as long as I can remember, we've saved and recycled our compost. We've tried a lot of different methods, from burying it to using a hand-cranked composter. Finally, now that we live on a farm and can do things right, we built ourselves a set of compost bins out of cinder block, gravel and re-bar.

    There are four bins. One for black dirt (that's what my brother is sitting on), compost, and sand (that's what my sister is sitting on). The black dirt is essentially manure that is so old that it has turned into dirt -- the best nutrient rich dirt ever. The sand is just something we buy and add to our garden soil because the ground around here is mostly clay.

Today the children when out to shuck the corn right into the compost bins.

That sure was handy.

Oh, and corn silk makes for a good nutritious snack -- if you didn't know.

    It feels good to start cultivating the farm. Little by little we are building sheds, grading the yards, making flowerbeds, deciding where the lawns will be, and planting trees. It will be a long time before everything is finished -- in fact I don't think it ever will be. But that means we get to dream and make those dreams come true for a very long time.

Shucking Corn in the Shade

    It is corn-shucking season. What a fun time of year. We drag a tarp into the shade, pull the sacks of corn and a couple of camp chairs to the tarp and get to work. 

    All of the husks are thrown onto the tarp which makes for a really easy clean up. All of the cobs are placed in the tub of water and scrubbed before being taken to the to be cut and frozen. It's a big job, but with a family team like mine no job is too big.

Our new dog, Lady, is still learning the household rules, one of which is to not 

to pull the corn out of the tub of water.

We let her play with the husks instead.

    Everyone helps on corn-day, even the youngest of us. It is a great feeling to hang in there together through the heat and the tired hands and the bruises. There's nothing like being a member of a hardworking team.
    What a blessing families are!

Helping Our Friends Harvest Honey

    We've been thinking about getting a couple bee hives of our own, but it feels like such a big undertaking. One of our friends invited us to come and watch as he harvested the honey from his hives so we could see how it was done.
    I thought it would be scary, but it was actually a lot of fun!  

    There were sure a lot of bees, but no one got stung, not even our friend who didn't wear a bee suit. She said that the bees smell fear and if you're not afraid they would sting you. I guess she was right.

Me, my dad and my brother got bee suits. It was so cool to be THAT close to the bees.

    Inside each of the bee boxes there are slats called frames and the bees build their honeycomb onto these frames. We took out the frames that were covered and put in empty ones. After we had gathered all of the full frames we took them to the barn.

    In the barn, our friends let us try the honeycomb. It's a lot like gum. You peal off a piece of the wax and chew it until all of the honey is sucked off and it looses it's flavor, then you spit out the wax and do it again. It was a neat way to sample the honey.

    To get the honey out of the wax we had to melt the wax caps off of the comb and then put it in an extractor. In the picture above, I'm using a heated knife to cut away the wax caps. I had to do it fast because we didn't wan the honey ripping out of the comb and into the sink before we put it into the extractor.

The extractor spins with the frames inside it so that the honey is forced out of the comb. After it spins we remove the empty wax and our friend keeps it in the fridge to make beeswax candles later.

    Then we open the extractor and strain the honey as it drains into a bucket like liquid gold. We got to take a little jar of it home. What a fun day!

Introducing Lady -- Our Newst Family Member

    We have a new family member. Our black Lab, Lucky got run over by a truck a few months ago and since then we've been looking for a new dog. We found Lady on Craigslist, she was dropped off at a park and some lady found her and gave her a home until we picked her up.

    Today we gave her her first bath.

  We all got pretty wet, even me and I was mainly taking pictures.

    I don't think Lady new what was going on. She kept jumping out of the tub so my sister had to hold onto her the whole time. She got the wettest -- not counting the dog.

    We think that lady is a beagle/hound mix because she had the floppy ears and long nose. We've heard that hound and beagle mixes tend to wander so we're hoping our other dog keeps her around the house. Our other dog we own in a collie mix and thus a home body.

Ohhhh ... look at those sad eyes.

My little brother just supervised from the side.

He stayed high and dry :)

    At Last! All dry . . .
    Well that was fun. We all hope that lady is a good match for our family. We have gone through a lot of dogs (and cats for that matter) and all of them are different and special.

All the Little Peaches Standing in a Row

Ahh, Peach Season Awaits! 

Peaches are one of the first things to be harvested each year along with peas and strawberries. My family has a big problem when it comes to peaches though -- we love to can them because the process is fast and a lot of fun, but none of us really care to eat them. 

This year though we solved that problem. Instead of canning the peaches whole, we've pureed them and made peach raspberry jam out of them. It's a recipe that Mom came up with and now we eat get our peaches eaten. I'll have to blog that recipe sometime.

Enjoy your Peach Season!

Annual Viset to the County Fair

    It is Fair Time!

    Every year, our town hosts a county fair with rides, contests, animal showings, games and exhibits. As a family we look at the newspaper -- find the events that we enjoy best and decide which day to attend. This year, we took some friends with us.     

   

We went the last day so we were able to try all the rides we wanted for a lot cheaper. 

I love our little county fair, it reminds me of the county fair in "Little House on the Prairie"

    The fair brings this huge slide in every year and it's a favorite of ours. My little brother took a while to warm up to it, but he loves it now. He tried to go on his own a few times before actually pushing off the platform, but he does it by himself now.

We look really excited in this picture but that's because the ride hasn't started yet. 

After the ride was over we both looked a bit sick.

    

    Today we got to see the craft show, the tractor pull, the lama showing and the goat costume contest. We were going to stay for the round up, but it just got to hot and we got too tired.

Some of the rides are just a little too loud :)

    This brother of mine just does not like the rides that spin or go in circles and unfortunately, there are a lot of those at the fair. He decided to save up his rides and do the bungee jump instead. He got harnessed in and did some crazy-high jumps on this fun trampoline thing.
    He loved it!

    Here we are. We found the largest wheel we could and got a picture with it. It was a grand day. Goodbye County-Fair-2011, we will catch you next year.

Picking Raspberries in the Fog

 

    We have friends in town this week. It's one of the best times to visit the farm because there's a lot going on. One thing that July always brings is red raspberries, and this morning we were picking them in the fog. It was a beautiful morning.

    We pick the raspberries into buckets that we belt around our waists. That's a trick we learned frm the You-pick blueberry farm just down the road. Maybe we'll have our onw blueberry plants some day too.  

    

    We weren't just picking raspberries this morning though. My brother had a bucket of soapy water belted to his waist as well as a picking bucket. The soapy water wasn't for hand washing, it was for Japanese Beetle drowning. The soap kills them quickly.

   
    Japanese Beetles eat our raspberry leaves and do all kinds of damage so we pick them off our plants and kill them whenever we can. They are jumpy in the heat, but in the morning they are lethargic and easy to catch. 

   I think the boys picked more beetles than berries this morning :)

   Oh well -- a country life for me!