Blueberry Picking

We started our July 4th morning by going Blueberry Picking! I am have been so excited to go do this. They come in much later here (a little farther west in the state) than what I'm used to, so I've had to practice some patience. We wanted to get there early before it got hot, so we left the house, picked up some McDonald's breakfast (of champions - ha!), then headed to the Blueberry Farm. We got there by about 8am and it was still nice & cool.

Jeremiah starting off in the wagon eating on his hashbrown, but he wouldn't be contained for long.

This kid LOVES blueberries (and most other fruits), so he got to work picking the low berries.

He had to inspect them to make sure they were blue (although we tried to encourage this inspection BEFORE he picked them). He was surprisingly good at picking only the ripe berries, but he had a bit of practice since there were a few small blueberry bushes at Nana & Popa's house that he'd already picked & eaten from.

Mommy at work picking the berries...

and Daddy too!

We picked for about 45 minutes and got a gallon before we had to head to church. I want 3 gallons, so we'll be going back when a few more berries ripen!

Cucumber Washer

It's summertime, which means it's pickle time! Jeremiah always wants to help me, but there's only so much an almost-two year old can do. This year, I have given him the job of cucumber washer. He LOVES this job, does a pretty good job of getting the dirt off, and makes an excellent mess!

Step 1: Fill the left side of the sink with water (cucumbers in the right side).

Step 2: He throws the cucumbers in the water washes the cucumbers.

Step 3: Then hands them to me to slice on the mandolin.

He gets just a LITTLE wet in the process! =)

Cherry Picking Adventure!

Nana, Jeremiah, and I went up to Levering Orchard for our first Cherry Picking adventure....and what an adventure!! 

I thought this would be a fun, easy outing like picking strawberries or blueberries. I envisioned Jeremiah riding around in the wagon or playing at the base of the trees while we climbed the ladders to pick the cherries. I was WRONG! This orchard is on a mountain. The grade was steep and we were wearing flip-flops & birkenstocks! The wagon was definitely not making it up and Jeremiah did not like such a steep terrain with tall grasses/weeds. Thank GOD I had my Ergo in the car, so J (all 30lbs of him!) rode on my front or back almost the entire time. And those ladders I thought we'd climb...they were 12' wood ladders that I did not feel comfortable on. Thankfully we were able to find trees with lower branches full of cherries. We ended up having a great time and ate TONS of cherries. I'd definitely like to go back, but a bit more prepared (like tennis shoes!). There aren't many pictures because I forgot my camera in the car and I sure as heck wasn't going to climb back down to get it.

Here's how J rode while we picked cherries (for 2 hours!).

Nana was sure to pit PLENTY of cherries for Jeremiah. Can you see how stained his face is?

We ended up with 2 buckets that I canned. We've made a few cobblers and they were delicious!

Another (unwelcomed) visitor

That BEAST made a trip home with me after picking a flat full of lettuce from the garden today. Too bad I didn't notice it then, when we were outside. Or even when I transferred the lettuce into a bag for the fridge. Nope, he didn't make his entrance until I had a sink full of water to wash the lettuce out. Then he crawled out of the lettuce and on my hand. I SCREAMED. Like a girl (well, I am one!). It scared me to death. My scream scared Jeremiah. I'm not sure what kind of spider he is, but he (she?) is BIG! That's a quart size jar and he's taking up a large portion of the bottom. YUCK!

And here's a close-up, just for my spider-loving brother, Harry! :)

Garden Update

OK...here's a picture of the most adorable, snotty-nosed & drool-filled face. I just love this kid!

OK...now on to the garden. We headed out to the garden again today to gather & plant. Before we got started, I decided to take a few pictures. We've already pulled all our green bean plants & are in the process of planting more (because the Hanes LOVE green beans!), so no pics of those.

Because there are about a million pictures in this post, they are small. If you want to see them BIG, just click on them :)

First off a pic of me & my favorite little monkey!

He had some issues with the sunshine in his eyes...if he would keep his sunglasses on it wouldn't be so hard on his beautiful blue eyes!

Here's J checking out the gourds. Heaven-forbid he let go of that wrench.

Mom, I could care less about the watermelon. You know I'm not a fan of the grass on my bare legs. But I do like making silly faces for you!

On to the garden goodies!

Gourds...

Cantaloupe & Watermelon...

Okra & Peppers

Squash! Baseball-bat size squash :)

Tomatoes...LOTS of tomatoes!

And here is the beginning of the barn for future farm animals!

Hope you like pickles!

We enjoyed a visit from Mimi & Uncle Harry the past few days! We had fun going to some of our favorite shops - Etc. & Hip Chics, going to Big J's softball game, and a first for all of us (except Big J) - getting dinner from Snooks. It may have been a first, but it will definitely not be a last...it was DELICIOUS!! Little J is officially spoiled from all the lovin' he's gotten recently.

Mimi came in not only to visit (which is always fun & wonderful!), but because I sent an S.O.S. to Raleigh since the garden evidently forgot that Nana is at the beach for 2 weeks, leaving me with no help & a lot of produce. In comes Mimi to the RESCUE!! We worked in the garden picking green beans, cucumbers, & squash, as well as weeding the jungle produced from all the rain lately. Today, we worked from about 6:15am until 6:30 tonight weeding, picking, snapping, slicing, pickling, & canning. We were so busy that I didn't even take pictures of this visit except for our adventures today. Take a look...

Cucumbers cut up & waiting to be pickled

(this was only about half of the cucumbers)

Mom & I hard at work in the pickling process

Making Bread & Butter Pickles...yummy!

Final Product: 17 Pints of B&B Pickles

Kosher Dills are next of the pickle list, just for Big J!

Now on to Little J's favorite...GREEN BEANS!

in the snapping process

All snapped & ready to be blanched

Finished Product: 6 Quarts of Home-grown Green Beans

Aren't they pretty!

Daddy & Little J helped too :)

A lot of work, but now we have plenty of pickles and a good start to our green bean stash for the upcoming year. We're going to have a boatload of green beans by Monday or Tuesday, so here's another S.O.S. to anyone who wants to help! :)

Go BIG or Go HOME!

Thought it was probably time for a Garden Update! And what would an update be without some "in-progress" pictures. In case you've forgotten what everything looked like before, check it out here.

Well, we've had the addition of 3 blueberry plants - yummy! Ken (Popa) also planted/started a muscadine grape vine (sorry - no pics of the vine yet).

The Square Foot garden has been busy producing lots of lettuce (Romaine & Iceberg), as well as spinach, broccoli, radishes, and carrots. Here is some of the iceberg lettuce.

And here are some of the carrots. Although we don't think they're quite ready, so we haven't been able to taste these (yet).

Here is a broccoli plant in the Square Foot garden. Note for next year - these should only go in the big garden because the get HUGE! We were able to eat some fresh broccoli this week and it was absolutely delicious!

Here's a picture of our big garden. Looking good! We now have a fence to keep out the critters and I hear there's a drip system coming very soon.

Here's the Romaine Lettuce.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Romaine Lettuce! We've had lots of yummy salads recently.

Here's one of our huge tomato plants. Unfortunately there are no tomatoes on this yet, but we're hoping soon. We do already have tomatoes on the upside-down tomato plant & at least one of the MANY tomato plants in the garden (but more on that in a minute).

And in case the fence doesn't work, I'm putting my faith in Orson Owl to scare off all those country critters that think it's OK to have a midnight snack in our garden!! Note to critters - stay OUT!

Speaking of the big garden. I have dubbed the title of this post, "Go BIG or Go HOME" our Garden Motto...let me explain why. So the garden is looking great, but I was starting to get a bit concerned about the number of plants in the garden (but I'm a gardening novice, so what would I know & I don't mean this flippantly...seriously I know NOTHING about gardens, plant production, or anything else except what I'm learning as we go along). Anyway - we decided to take an inventory of what we have planted, mainly so we can make notes about what we should do next year (plant more, less, when, etc.). Boy were we SURPRISED to find out how much we had actually planted. Here's a sample from the inventory:

Watermelon - 10 vines

Sweet Bell Pepper - 13 plants

Cucumber - 13 plants

Squash - 26 plants

Tomatoes - 60+ plants (I stopped counting)

Green Beans - about 200 plants (I lost count)

And don't forget we also have lettuce, carrots, onions, leeks, hot peppers, okra, cabbage, broccoli, hot peppers, cantaloupes, & pumpkins (did I forget something??).  Of course Ken also planted 5 fruit trees, as well as the the blueberry bushes & muscadine vines. But probably those won't have too much for us this year. 

I must say that I was pretty stunned, overwhelmed, and a bit scared thinking of all that upcoming produce yesterday. However, after some searching I have found a bunch of recipes (and organized them in an Excel Spreadsheet) so we can put a lot of the food aside to use for the rest of the year. I see a LOT of canning & freezing in our future. But, I'm excited! I think it's pretty cool to know that some (or a lot) of what we'll be eating throughout the year is food that we grew on our own (well, my in-laws) land. 

But don't be surprised if you see me at some road-side cart selling produce this summer :)