August Snapshots

 

This post is a potpourri of totally unrelated images except that they all have to do with life at our farmhouse in August.  

Don't you love this time of year with all the fresh produce from your own gardens, neighbors' and coworkers' gardens, and the local farmers' markets?  The onions, tomatoes, purple tomatillos, and zucchini are ours.  The cucumbers were from elsewhere, and a bag of freshly shucked corn was mysteriously found on our front porch last night.  If it came from any of you local readers, thank you.  We're having it with barbecued ribs for dinner tonight.

 

Tomatillos weren't the only purple vegetable we grew this year.  My husband loves to grow out-of-the ordinary produce, so this was his new exotic experiment for the summer.  Our daughter turned them into mashed potatoes earlier this week for dinner.  The coloring hasn't been enhanced in this photo either; they really are this beautiful shade of violet.  Oh, in case you're wondering, they do taste like normal potatoes.

 

We've been going on evening hikes when the temperatures are a little cooler.  It doesn't matter what the month or season, I think it's beautiful up here in the Alleghenies.

 

While hiking up the mountain, we discovered the blackberries have ripened.  Time to don the insect repellant and start picking so we can make some blackberry cobbler.  First I need to pull my daughter away from the new Harry Potter book we picked up at Target this morning so I have some help.  

 

As we came down the mountain and got near our house the other evening, this is what we saw in the pasture.  Our little male goat kids love to hop on the back of our large ram and ride around on him like this. 

 

Asiago kept his balance on top of Snowflake as they ran up through the pasture to me.  There is always something ridiculous and crazy going on around here.

 

This really has nothing to do with life on our mountain farm except that it's now sitting in our farmhouse kitchen.  I've had my eye on these metal cork holders since I saw a jumbo sized one at Revival Kitchen.  Kohl's has had them on their shelves throughout the summer, but I held off because with five kids at home, there's always something more pressing to spend your money on than a cork holder.  But today they were 70% off.  From the picture I can see that we either don't drink as much wine and champagne as I thought, or we've thrown some corks away over the past year.

 

I'm going to end on a more serious note and a snapshot from July, not August.  But I haven't seen our newborn grandson in a week because he's been having digestive problems and has been hospitalized.  I usually keep these things to myself, but I do believe in the power of prayer.  So to all my praying readers, I ask that you keep him in your nightly petitions.

Thank you and God Bless!

Sights on the Farm

Today I share pictures of life on and around our farm.

I hope your remaining days of summer are filled with beauty and peace.

Soaking Up These Final Weeks of Summer

Here we are in August already with only weeks until the new school year begins.  We are grabbing the remaining bit of summer break and holding on to it for as long as we can.

After finishing up a week of robotics camp and a trip to the public library, we tried out a new park this weekend and had yet another picnic (I'm getting my money's worth out of this new picnic tablecloth.)

From ages 6-14, they all actually ate and played together, which is no small accomplishment these days.

Our youngest insisted it was her American Girl doll's birthday, so she had to come along and receive presents and be wished a Happy Birthday.  She was once Felicity, but since her haircut, I think she looks like a hybrid of Felicity and our 6 year old.

After the park picnic and playground, we tried out a different swimming pool.

It was great fun for the children since our pool doesn't have water slides and jungle gyms.  It was great for me since I'm not responsible for cleaning it.

Our weekend continued with our teenage daughter at a candy molding class and then taking over my kitchen as she prepares a mega-cake for the fair.  In between, my youngest and I tried our hands at making crafts from an old issue of an American Girl magazine.

We were trying to make edible bunny slippers out of marshmallows, frosting, and colored sugar.  This was a sticky project, and we didn't have certain candies that would have made it easier.  So they turned out looking like this, but as you can see, she thought they were fantastic.

My little ones have also been picking many flowers from our gardens and beds and making bouquets.  I love the late summer flowers in bloom, and since these are all perennials, I don't have to do anything but admire them.

I'm sad to say that it took me this long, but for the first time all summer, last evening I finally just lay on the ground and gazed at the sky like I used to when I was a child.

I didn't think about the chores I had left to do or getting the children ready for bed.

  I listened...and heard the locusts in the trees and my husband and children laughing in the pool.  I smelled the grass under my back and the apple mint growing beside me.  I felt the evening breeze coming down off the mountain and the claws of one of our cats kneading my stomach as he tried to get comfortable on me.  I watched the bugs, birds, and bats fly overhead as the sun finished setting.

And I wondered if years from now, when our children come home to visit with their little ones, this is how they will remember their summers growing up at this farmhouse in the mountains.