Six or so weeks have passed since I last blogged, and on a farm during the height of the busy season that means a tremendous amount of change. It’s a daunting task to bring you all up to date, so I am presenting you with the picture book version of events. Just click on the first photo and scroll through. Enjoy!
The pigs outgrew their temporary home on the hill and we moved them to an awesome enclosure in the woods behind our house. We’ve since moved them to a new paddock in the woods. They love the shade from the trees and digging up blackberry plants!
Our intern Sam has been a huge help! It’s great to have someone around who is dependable, but even better that she’s so fun and lovable!
Farmers sure know how to have a good time!
We are now well into turkey raising for our Thanksgiving harvest. Turkey babies (poults) are very difficult. They squish each other a lot when they sleep and sometimes they refuse to eat or drink for no reason at all. We started with 100 and are down to about 80. It’s traumatic every time we lose one, but they are such amazing creatures I couldn’t imagine not raising them. It doesn’t hurt that they’re so delicious either!
The Farmer’s Market continues to be a big part of our week. Every Sunday we get up early for harvest, and then head into town. We love being at the market; it’s such a great experience!
Sam made a vegetable mandala one day with some freshly harvested goodies.
We have had two very successful chicken harvests so far, and are approaching our third. Andrew has perfected the art of the BBQ chicken. I absolutely love this time of year!
I have become very interested in different preservation methods, especially old school ferments that are high in probiotics and B vitamins. Pictured is an awesome crock I got for my birthday, some delicious beet & cabbage kraut, and my newest craze: kombucha!
I spend a lot of time cuddling with this cat (and taking photos of said cuddling!). He’s amazing. He also catches all kinds of critters and leaves them for me to find. Birds, moles, voles, rabbits, mice, etc. Fortunately he usually returns to eat his “gifts” after I’ve found them.
We had a crazy weird humid spell a couple weeks ago and we were treated to an amazing fiery sunset.
It’s a family business!
This photo was taken by Andrew’s mom. His family came to visit in their RV for a week and we had such a great time with them. It’s nice to have family around to make sure we’re eating dinner at a reasonable time!
Basil!! I love weeding basil, it smells so amazing.
This type of bean is called Dragon’s Tongue. We’ve had really good success with most of our veggies this year. Our CSA members seem stoked so that’s very encouraging!
You’ve seen them before, but I’m still always excited by the hot air balloons. This time of year our farm is part of their main highway. Such an amazing sight!
Dill! For pickles!
This year I planted some flowers, and was amazed to see them bloom! I didn’t think I had it in me, but I guess if you can grow carrots you can grow anything!
We clean up nice! We snuck into Seattle for a date night to see Book of Mormon at the Paramount.
The first of our heirloom tomatoes are ripening up!
Just a pile of nature’s candy, Sun Gold cherry tomatoes. So amazing!!
This is our new (tiny) flock of Katahdin sheep! They’re hair sheep, which means they don’t need to be sheared. We are close to adding six more ewes to our flock, so we should have lambs next spring!
Bright Ide and Bushy Tailed 
This is a great way to blog during your busy season! If you find great canning and preserving recipes, please share with us tiny-scale farmers AKA gardeners…Pinterest maybe? When you come up for air.
Really great to hear from you – thanks for keeping me on your email list – It has been a busy summer — seems more we do to the property the more there is to do – we did get away in July to the Atlantic Ocean along the Georgia coast and a few days in Savannah – back hard at work here and trying to get ready to go to Canada — we will be gone for about a month – wish we had time to swing out to see you both but maybe on next years trip — glad to see your smile — all the best John and Brenda
________________________________