Its all a bit much.

I have had a very hard time keeping up with the farm chores of late. Liam is determined to not be put down at all and will not nap on most days. Pair that with the start of harvest and the sleep I am not getting and it all adds up to a bit to much. Tonight I'm going to go to bed quite early and tomorrow i'll try to get as much done as I can before it gets to hot and I run out of steam.

We are going away for a couple of days at the end of the week on a bit of a holiday. It will be nice to take a brake for a few days but at the same time I know it will all be waiting for me when i get back, but i'm just not going to think about it.

Anyways on a happier note I got to go on a little visit to a farm two hours away from ours last weekend. I went to Half Caper farm to check out her goats and talk about buying a pair of kids from her next spring. They were so cute; running around the barn and fields. I'm sold!

Planning for next spring gives me the time to prepare without putting the horse before the cart (or goat before the barn). As a bounce she raises geese and rabbits which was great to ask questions about.I have been trying to working on some sewing. I made this banner for my boys. There birthdays are coming up in the next month or so: Matt in August, Liam in September. I got the idea from Amanda Blake from Soulemama. I wanted to make something that would become a tradition for special days rather then just gifts or cake.
The first tomatoes are ripening this week in our garden. But these are not the tomatoes I was looking for! The tomatoes I planted are big and beautiful but very green. We have volunteer tomatoes popping up red and yellow everywhere. On the up side its like a little surprise to see what all the plants are producing and i didn't have to care for them at all (besides not pulling them out). The down side is they did smother my small carrot plants when i was not looking. Oh well, When life gives you tomatoes......make pasta sauce!

Long weekend.

We spent our long weekend Sunday working in the yard. The weather was nice for working outside: warm but not to hot and over cast. We got all the stuff on the list done and got to spend some much needed time together.
We picked all the onions out of our garden. Normally we would not pick them until much later but we had such a warm spring that they were all dieing back already. The shed that we were using to keep the meat chicks in is right beside the the onion garden so we fenced in the garden and let the chicken run around and scratch it up. This will hopefully add some nice nitrogen rich manure to the garden for next years crop. Plus they will eat all the slugs that have been at my basil.
My little guy got very muddy while his daddy and I were picking onions. He had a good old time munching on the onion greens, which did not surprise me as he has taking to eating spicy food with us curries and hot mac'n cheese.
I did a big cutting of our basil plants to keep the chickens from digging them up. I plan to pick the leafs, blanch, chop and put them in the freezer to add to our pasta sauce for the winter. I just finished the stuff from our CSA from last year, which i had turned into more of a pesto with ground nuts and garlic. I liked it but it was more work and I didn't find it any better when it came to putting it in tomato sauce, which is what we did most of the time. We were two months behind in putting in our garden this year so our garlic did not bulb. They look more like green onions that last of garlic. I have not come up with a plan of what to do with them yet but i think i will just leave them in the ground until I need some garlic and then chop them up fresh.