Child Labor Season Begins!

It's like Groundhog Day around here, but in a good way!  With the amount lettuces and peas coming in, I had to break out the big guns...

Finnegan!

This kid is a pro at picking peas, he always gets all the "hiders" as he calls them.  Loch isn't much for helping harvest anything, he prefers to be involved in the planting and sprouting of things, packing his magnifying glass and spritzer bottle, and prefers planning the spaces and companion planting to actual transplanting.  Finn on the other hand, loves to harvest things.

Groundhog Day - "Pick Lettuce, Pick Peas, Wash Lettuce, Blanch Peas, Freeze Peas, Bake Bread, repeat"!

My squashes are finally up!  There are little radishes planted around them as per the Carrots Love Tomatoes book to prevent squash bugs - yeah, that made me laugh too!  But at least I could remember where the squash hills were.

One more for Grandma...

Eating the green

Just a quick post, we are headed out to do some chores and cleanup in between rain showers, expected on and off rain all weekend.  We need it, but ugh, why does it have to be on the weekend?!

Lots of greens... this is an oil pan (not used for that LOL) if you know the size of that.  I harvested a whole pound of greens, and that's a lot for such a lightweight produce!  I took a bunch in to Loch's teacher since there is a whole bunch more that will have to be harvested as soon as we can eat it.  My little tester carrots I pulled are looking good, not much longer.

The peas are coming in!

Above, Oregon Sugar Pod II snow peas, below are Cascadia Snap peas.  They are both looking like they are going to be very productive over the next couple of weeks.

Enjoy your day!

Sick of me cooking yet?

Me too!  I had intended to get some photos of the garden today, but Mother Nature isn't cooperating.  Speaking of, holy heck what is UP with those storms that ran through part of our country yesterday?  I hope you all fared well, and if you were in the path, chime in and say all is well, please.  I know I'm getting antsy waiting for Alabama blogger E.G. to pop up in my Reader and say everything is okay there.

The line of storms is just a couple of hours east of us now, so far nothing but massive winds here, if it was cold outside the whistling wind I can hear outside would remind me of Laura Ingalls!  No cold, though - it was 82º at 10 a.m., with winds in excess of 45-50 mph.  We are under a tornado "watch" right now, #271 according to the NWS LOL...nothing really expected to develop here though until after 3 pm.  

With a lack of garden progress photos today, looks like it's going to be food again...

Last night's harvest:  Olympia spinach, Tango and Bronze Mignonette lettuces, Mizuna, Mache, scallions and a few pansies to dress it all up.  Annie's Granny and her harvest post reminded me to start weighing my harvests for this year, so I'll have to update my sidebar today.

Dinner Salad

My 1st loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread!  My starter is now about 12 days old, it turned out really well, and I can't wait to get better at fine tuning the baking to my oven.

I made the kids eat some salad before they were allowed to have bread.  One thing I have found to work a bit:  the "Salad Spritzers"... Finn calls it his "salad shooting gun" and it works for him, but Loch remains unconvinced.  Once these are empty I plan to foil them even further by filling them with my homemade dill and herb vinegars :)

This morning at 6 a.m. hubby says "oh, the guys have a potluck today"... today?????  Luckily I already had lots of chickpeas soaking overnight, I have yet to get that amount thing down, but due to my poor estimation I figured out that I had enough for a huge batch of hummus and I would make pitas again and just drive it all over to him when it was done.

No kidding, it made about a quart LOL!  This time I used up some of the oven dried tomatoes, and roasted garlic with the tahini and lemon juice & salt.  It turned out really well, and I'm anxious to get some fresh peppers out of the garden to roast and put in there as well.

The smell of roasted garlic at 7 am is interesting...

On to the pitas...

- then the phone rings... it's hubby stating that for the 2nd week in a row, the guys at work forgot to bring their stuff in, so the potluck was put off until next week.  Really?  LOL I bet they all tried that 6 am "I forgot" excuse at home with their wives and they all got laughed at!  

So now we are set for the whole weekend... we have a massive amount of hummus to eat, looks like I'm not cooking!  I have no problem with hummus, pitas and salad every night this weekend, so I can get some outside work done instead of cooking!

First Spring Harvest

And it's......STRAWBERRIES, LOL!  I just went outside to "walk the estate" and assess the damage from last night's severe weather and I found the first 2 ripe strawberries, which will actually be the 2nd harvest of the year since I am going to count the 2 leeks I pulled in March that wintered over.  We promptly took a picture and they went down the hatch.  Finn said "Mommy, they taste like the ones we picked at the farm", to which I explained to him "no, they're better because WE grew them" :)   

    

Also a pic of the peas, which just the past week are going like gangbusters now.  Can't wait, but they never seem to make it to the freezer for stash!  I am going to remember to do fall peas this year so we have some for winter.

On the weather note, our area had the works last night:  severe thunderstorms, wind, downpours, tornado warnings - I was terrified for my seedlings, but amazingly there was no damage.  I hope the same for those of you who went through it.  I thank the raised beds and the fact some other seedlings were planted in my heavily mulched borders.  I think if they had been planted in the unmulched ground they would surely have washed away.  It's amazing how I took the safety of the basement for granted in the Midwest.  When that kind of weather happens here, we have limited options to take cover.  

I now live in the land of sand, swamps, high water tables and NO basements!  That is definitely on my list of future-house needs: a basement for severe weather/canning storage/squirrel attacks, and my own version of a harvest kitchen with a huge walk in pantry and a mudroom!   Hmmm, my mom has all that at the house I couldn't wait to leave to go "see the world"...well, Mom - I've seen it and I want back in...can the kids come, too?!!!

*An update to my fruit leather attempt:

While delicious...this is the amount that resulted from having my countertop oven running for 4 hours!  This will be devoured in one kid-snack sitdown!  Bottom line:  Yummy, but this is definitely not homesteading/being green or cheap!  I think to do this without wasting time and money it needs to be done the old-fashioned way with screens in the sun.  The yield would have been much greater with no energy wasted, but with our humidity here my options are limited.  I did, however, use my 6 jars of too-runny jam to redo the experiment in my food dehydrator.  I lined the trays with parchment paper and it held all 6 jars at once and turned it on at 10 p.m. and it was done this morning at 7.  Greater yield, less energy wasted, so a compromise has been found!

You can tell by my frequent postings that it has been raining all day so I can't get outside, my house is already clean, and I am minus one child today :)  This doesn't happen too often!