Mr. Tomato Head

Benjamin has a new friend he met in the garden. It's Mr. Tomato Head!

Katie's Apple Adventure

Making Cider

Yesterday we picked (picked up), and today we smash! Our neighbors had borrowed another neighbor's cider press, and we went over to use the press and have an apple bonanza party. We all had a great time. At the end of the day, we had about thirty gallons of fresh cider, and still four or five feed sacks of apples left over! We will drink plenty of fresh cider this week (and share it with any visitors we get), and preserve the rest by canning it in glass jars.

Quality control.

Appley sweet!

Ethan shows us how to use the jack with the press to squeeze out the cider.

David pounding apples into the hopper.

Winesaps are Falling on my Head

The title of my last post, "Apple Pickin'," was not entirely accurate. We did a lot of apple eatin', some apple throwin', and quite a bit of apple discussin'. But we didn't pick too many. Instead, we brought along our automatic apple machine, just one of the many pieces of farm equipment we have to keep up with. You hook it up to the tree, tell it how many apples you want, and then let it go. Then all you have to do is pick them up and put them in bags, easy as, well, apple pie!

See the video of the apple machine at work.

Apple Pickin'

On Tuesday afternoon, we loaded up the pickup with ladders, feedsack and children. We headed out to the night pasture, (where the cows go beddie-bye), to pick apples for apple cider.
It would have been a lot more relaxing of a drive if it had not been Amanda's turn to take the wheel. She managed to find every single woodchuck hole in the pasture, I think.

Collecting and bagging the apples.

At the end of the afternoon, we had a pickup full of ladders, feedsacks, children and apples, apples, apples. (Benjamin was worn completely out.) It was a golden afternoon. Then we rode back to the house and relaxed in a warm bubble bath...I mean...we rode home, changed clothes, and went out to the barn and milked the cows!

Sunshine and Clouds

We get beautiful skies full of clouds here.

Bee on a windflower.

Farm Babies

Here are Bap and Map, two baby calves. (Bap is the black bull calf, and pretty Map is the brownie.) Map's mommy is a holstein/brown swiss cross, and so Map got the holstein spots, only they are brown! She is the farm darling.


These are Dove and her kittens. Soldier is the gray and white one. Sandy is the smallest one that is mostly tan and white. And the really fat one with all three colors is Calico (David is holding her in the lower picture.)


OK, these are not babies. They are our regular milk cows, coming into the barn for evening milking last night. Number eight was not at all impressed with my taking unauthorized photos. Cows hate paparazzi.

Katie Makes Blackberry Muffins

Katie has been busy lately. It is all the rest of us can do to keep up with her industry.

The other day, she made us all hike up through The Grove, (a very pretty stand of maple trees in the pasture behind the house), to pick blackberries. There were a lot of blackberries: as the kids say, we "hit the bob-george." Don't ask me what that means, other than that there were a lot of berries! We picked quite a few, and made a cobbler. But Katie insisted we also had enough berries to make blackberry muffins.

Rachel and David think Katie's muffins are pretty good.