Busy as Bees

Wow! This past week seems to have flown by! We made jars and jars of pickles - a batch of regular ol' bread and butters and a whole bunch of lacto-fermented pickles. I'm very excited about those. They are so easy! Basically, you add whatever herbs and spices you want (garlic, onion, mustard seeds, hot pepper flakes, dill, etc.) to the bottom of the jars. Then you pack in sliced cukes (you could use small pickling cukes, but I didn't have small ones so I sliced them a bit less than 1/8" thick with a food processor). Pack them in TIGHT!!! You can cram a LOT! After the jar is full, pour a brine (pre-made with 1 1/4 Tbsp sea salt per quart of water) over top the cukes, release air bubbles, put lids on and loosely tightened rings and let set for a few days at room temperature. I recommend putting old news papers under the jars as a lot of juices will escape - especially in this warm weather!! After a few days, move to cool storage (a cellar would do wonderfully!) Before I moved the 1st batch to cool storage I opened the jars, pushed down the cukes and added a bit of brine to make sure they were totally under water; put the lids and rings back on and wait 4-6 weeks before eating!

How simple can it be!!!

Lets see... we also made pesto; Abbi made biscuits; I made corn-bread with freshly milled corn and wheat (It was AMAZING!!!!); we picked the first beans from our garden; the kids read poems about some wildflowers that are in bloom, found the flowers, then drew them; I went swimming almost every day (SO much better than running - which I don't do. Ever.); Andrew fixed Annie's roof; we played outside; built train tracks; tortured the kittens; and a bunch of other things that I can't remember!!! Today, we're going to make a big crock of sauerkraut! Some friends of ours gave us 18-20 cabbages; we're going to make the sauerkraut and give them back half. I think that is a GREAT deal!

Speaking of kittens, MooShoo passed on. We don't really know what happened, but Andrew found him Satruday morning, unconscious in the driveway. He didn't last long. We had a funeral for him; Abigail wrote his name on a rock with bright blue chalk - to match the color of his eyes. Now, ChowMein and Elroy are absolutely the best of pals! They are like Milo and Otis, playing, sharing food, chasing each other around. Actually, ChowMein is usually the instigator! Elroy follows his lead.

Another sad thing happened: two of our chickens, Gertrude and Josie, mysteriously disappeared. One evening, they just didn't come home! We're still hoping that they might show up, but as time goes on, the chances of that happening are less and less.

So, that is a bit of what we've been doing!