I repeat...

Fatman and Robin (aka Fatty McKittykins & Black Kitty) napping on the couch.

...they are not housecats.

Olivia got an excellent report at her appointment today. Everything looks great, and a hearing test showed that her hearing has returned to normal levels!

She said, "Yeah, no more surgeries!"

I said, "Just don't go breaking any limbs now."

My little farmer

Rafe is remarkably self-entertaining out in the garden. You'd think he'd get sick of being out there with us, but we usually have to drag him in the house when it finally gets too dark to weed anymore. He loves to drive his pedal tractor up and down the rows. I'm thinking I need to find him a miniature plow and a miniature manure spreader and put him to work.

We're off to Iowa City again tomorrow for another follow-up on Olivia's ears. Oh darn, another stop at Reminisce.

June Garden

the garden, June 23rd

What a difference one month makes! In last month's garden snapshot the only visible growing things were the strawberries along the fence, the sweet potato transplants mid-garden, and the lettuce bed a ways beyond that. Now the garden is a riot of colors - all shades of green, red strawberries, white pea blossoms, purple potato blossoms, yellow tomato, cuke & zuke blossoms.

And of course there's the addition of a sit-and-spin, courtesy of Rafe. When your parents spend as much time out here as his do, you gotta have some form of entertainment.

This is by far the best looking garden we've ever had, thanks mostly to Matt and his daily dedication to weeding. Or in his own words, "It's amazing what a whole lot of manual labor will get you."

Not that I've been lolly-gagging about. I've been working at weeding last year's perennial garden. Every time Matt passes me on his way to weed in the vegetable garden he remarks, "Can't eat them flowers you know." I reply, "Gotta feed the soul, too."

But don't you just love it when the words, "I take it back" come from your significant other's mouth?

"I take it back, about the flowers. I read that they attract beneficial insects and pollinators."

Had to put that one on the blog, for posterity's sake.

pole beans reach for the sky

I said I was done. Dunzo. Finito. Finished. I've had my fill of planting for this year.

Well, there are exceptions. Like another sowing of lettuce. And spinach. And maybe peas, broccoli and cabbage.

But other than those, I am done.

Matt has other ideas. Saturday he picked up carrot seeds. 2 packages.

"Show me how to plant carrots?" he asked tonight.

I'm the wrong person to ask. I planted a 35-foot row of carrots. Not a single one germinated.

Not. One.

He's on his own with this one.

Look what I found

Someone's building a clutch under the catmint :)

The best gifts have feathers

Can you believe this bunch of beautiful girls?

(And a couple of very handsome boys.)

And can you believe that Patti from Over the Garden Gate so generously gifted them to me? She decided to downsize her flock and I was the lucky recipient. So my flock has been upsized :)

Thank you so much, Patti and Eric! (And sorry we kept you from your supper so I could ogle all of your wonderful animals :)

Bed o' greens (and a few reds)

The first crop of the garden for us is always a bed of mixed greens and lettuces. I love it with only a simple oil & vinegar dressing. My mom said it also made a good wilted lettuce salad.

Even this small bed was more than we could eat and give away this year. A few days after cutting a section, you could hardly tell where it had been cut. It's been a good spring for lettuce.

Restraint

I had to share this picture of Ava showing remarkable restraint for a 3-month-old puppy, watching as 3 orphaned kittens have their lunch. Though she is licking her lips.

Cats definitely add an interesting dimension to the farm. When we got cattle, we also got rats. When you'd open the door to the cattle shed a wave of rat bodies would scatter into the darker corners. So then came 4 cats, courtesy of the vet clinic where my brother works. It wasn't long until we hardly saw a rat anymore.

Farm cat populations are an ever-changing demographic. Some get run over, some are re-homed when they eat a family of Silkie chickens, some are given away to cat-deficient neighbors, some simply disappear. Last year we had 3 generations - 2 of the original four, 3 of their children, and 9 of their grandchildren. This year all that's left are 3 of the grandchildren, and now these orphans.

Little Girl, the matriarch, is not the world's best mother. Last year she had 2 litters and all of them died. No Mother of the Year awards for her. This spring she had a litter of four. About a week after they opened their eyes, she ditched them.

So we've been attempting to foster these teeny tiny little things. We were keeping them in Matt's garage but they would come running out when they heard a person or even a car. One got run over :( So we brought them in the house.

Yesterday "Orange Kitty" died. She never got the hang of eating on her own. We tried "bottle feeding" her from a syringe but she just couldn't catch on.

The remaining two - "Black Kitty" and "Fatty McKittykins" - are doing well and I'm working on a transition strategy for getting them back out of the house. As much as I love cats, I don't love cat litter boxes.

Garden Yum

I think if pinned down I'd say that strawberries are my favorite fruit. Apples would come in second but the sweet juicy strawberry would win. I love them over vanilla ice cream. Or cake - angel food, pound, or short.

This is the first time in 9 years that we've had our own strawberry patch to pick from and I'm loving it. We've frozen half a dozen bags of whole berries, made 9 pints of freezer jam, and eaten a whole lot besides. I've also had eggs to use up so I've been freezing angel food cakes alongside them and plan to freeze some poundcake this week, too.

If you don't have a patch of your own, check out the Pick Your Own directory. Around here the place to go is Furleigh Farms near Clear Lake (2 miles east of I-35 on Hwy 122/old Hwy 18).

Freezer jam is the simplest thing to make. Save up the small-sized margarine containers to freeze it in. This is the recipe I use:

4 cups berries, caps removed
4 cups sugar
1 foil pouch liquid fruit pectin
2 T lemon juice

Crush berries. Combine berries and sugar. Let stand 10 minutes. Combine pectin and lemon juice. Add to berry mixture; stir for 3 minutes. Ladle at once into jars or freezer containers, leaving a 1/2-inch headspace. Seal and label. Let stand at room temperature about 2 hours or till jam is set. Store up to 3 weeks in the refrigerator or 1 year in the freezer. Makes 4 half-pints.

Happy Fathers Day

Ava, 3 months

Today Ava turns 3 months old! Madeline is training her in German. So far she (sometimes) knows "sitz" (sit) and "plotz" (down). She also loves to "bring" (fetch) a tennis ball. She's a real sweetheart, very much a people dog. Her favorite spot is parked on the front porch. The only thing driving me up the wall is the lack of progress in the housetraining department. So please leave any ideas for me about that in the comments!

Gotta love those GSD ears!

Technical Difficulties

My network adapter quit working after a 2-second power outage last week, thus the silence on this blog. I just can't seem to get motivated to post without pictures, and the pictures live on the computer that is now without internet accessibility. That, and I've been busy with gardening, kids on summer break, freezing strawberries and spinach, etc.

So...as soon as I get the adapter fixed or get a new adapter, I'll be back!

This, that & the other thing

~ Broiler chickens will be ready for sale this weekend! Email me if you'd like any reserved and to arrange a pickup time. We butchered 92 out of 102, so not the best or the worst death loss ever. But they averaged 5.75 pounds dressed out, at 8 weeks. Very happy with that! I think I have 34 left to sell out of that 92. They can go fast, when one person takes 5 or 10. Now they're in the freezer and should be frozen and ready to go by the weekend.

~ Pork won't be ready until the first part of September, but already half of it is pre-sold. So don't wait to pre-order if you're wanting some. I hate to disappoint! And I think we have about 1/3 of the beef pre-sold already.

~ According to Revealing the Secrets of an All-Iowa Meal, 90% of Iowa land is in agricultural use, but 90% of the food consumed in Iowa is grown elsewhere. That statistic just boggled my mind this morning.

~ Gracious Acres' blog has a new home after being hijacked recently.

~ I've updated my links list to the left. Check out some of the good reading there.

~ An update on Olivia's ear - she had an appointment in Iowa City last week. They said it's looking good, just one area where it is still healing and there's some "reactive tissue" in that area. But she was given the go-ahead to play sports again, so her only restriction is no getting her ears wet for a few more weeks. They did a hearing test that still showed slight to mild hearing loss in the upper and mid-ranges. They said the hearing loss she's experiencing is conductive, meaning that sound is not being conducted effectively through her ear canal back to the eardrum and middle ear. This type of hearing loss should continue to improve as her ear heals, as opposed to hearing loss caused by damage to the nerves or inner ear which is permanent. So that is good news, though I don't think they expect her to regain 100% hearing in the ear. But the hearing loss should only be slight. I can't say enough good things about our experience with University of Iowa Hospitals. We could have gone to the Mayo Clinic, which is only an hour drive as opposed to 3 hours to Iowa City, but I think we made the right choice.

I have this theory

that there are two kinds of people: those who like to fish, and those who don't. Furthermore it's my opinion that people who like to fish are born, not made. This weekend Olivia discovered that she's a born fisherman.

Sugar Creek is a small creek, only inches deep in some places, and home to only very small fish. Chubs and minnows, mostly. But it's handy. Just walk down our front yard and you're at the creek. Matt took the kids fishing down there Saturday and Sunday. They caught a couple of little chubs, and Olivia got the fever.

Today she had a friend over and they fished down there for an hour and a half. Olivia was in charge of baiting the hooks with worms, her friend Julia in charge of taking the fish off the hook.

I was working in the yard and heard that shrill scream that all you mothers of little girls know. What?! A hook in someone's eye?! Someone fell in?! No - that was the sound of "we caught a fish!"

I heard the scream five times in all. Five chubs dropped into a bit of water in a five gallon pail. Five fish caught on a Tweety Bird fishing pole with a hook, a worm, and a red-and-white bobber. They fished until they were out of worms, and then let all the fish go again.

Yep, Olivia's got fishing fever. On tomorrow's To Do List is "buy more worms".