Weed!

Okay, that title should be weeding, but hey made you look! Today was the perfect day to spend out in the garden doing the least favorite task. It was overcast but not too cool. All the damp Seattle summer has made for a bumper crop of weeds. I pulled up eleven (yes that's 11) wheelie buckets full of them today! Three from the front flower beds and 8 from along the back fence line, including the ginormous dandelions that were hiding behind the berry patch. I sure hope I can move my back tomorrow.

Speaking of the berry patch, it's taking off! Today, we harvested strawberries, raspberries, and the first of the blue berries. We had the former as part of our shortcake dessert tonight. The other two kinds went on pancakes this morning. Yum! I love berry season.

We finally made it to our local Wednesday farmer's market. It used to be really, really small, but now has lots of variety. Of all things, we found a gal who sold British sausages and bacon made on her local farm. Among the other highlights were the Philippine lumpia stand and a local jewelry artist whose silver and natural gemstone work is exquisite!

Since Ari and I were soooooo tired from going to the midnight showing of Eclipse last night (our fav of the 3 movies so far), Alex and David commandeered the kitchen tonight. While they made tostadas with all the trimmings. Us girls: read a book, drank a latte, and built a tower out of Lego. Just try to guess which girl did what.

Alert: Check tomorrow's post for a special photo!

Seattle Time

Yesterday, we stayed close to home enjoying our farmer's market, a sale on used books at a local independent bookstore (40% off on some hard to find titles!), and walks/bike rides on our favorite river trail. Along the way we found a dead mole (yuck!) and saw two live rabbits (yea!). Our market finds this week were Parmesan herb bread, striped zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, new potatoes, asparagus, and giant radishes. We had several of these items for our post market lunch! (yum!)
Alki Lighthouse and future farmers
Farmer Anni checking out the seaweed.
Robin in trees.
David at the water's edge.
Tree stretching its limbs.

Today was a head to Seattle Day. I went with writing buddies Lisa and Judith for a class at Hugo House. It was great. David and the future farmers went to Seattle to look at the botanical gardens, have lunch at Pyramid Ale House (terrific pizza!), and then head west to Alki Beach. A great time was had by all.

Berry Season

Berry Season is well underway here on the funny farm. Here's a very flattering photo of me harvesting our desert strawberries this evening. (Thanks David!) We got another hundred today and 156 yesterday. We also had a big handful of raspberries form the canes on the hill. The blueberries are just beginning to show their first blush of blue. We're also harvesting lots and lots of lettuce, trying to get it in before it bolts in the warm weather.

Anni's week of gourmet cooking camp ended yesterday with pesto chicken pizza and creme brulee. She had a great time! My feet are complaining about the extra miles I'm having to run to counter all that butter and cream!

Tonight for dinner we had a big veggie noodle stir fry (no butter, no cream).

Good eatin'

Today was another beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest. We finally hit 75 degrees! Wahoo! This officially marks the start of summer salads for dinner season. Here's our first for 2010: a Chinese chicken salad featuring lettuce, green onions, cilantro (all from our garden), radishes, celery, apricots, hazelnuts (all from the farmer's market), and nectarines (from our CSA box). It was delish!

We had strawberries from our patch with fresh whipped cream for desert. The garden strawberry patch is being especially prolific this year. We've harvested 276 strawberries so far! Everyday, we race the slugs to the red ones. So far, we're faster!

In other produce news, we also harvested collard greens and chard from our garden today, and our CSA farm box arrived full of seasonal goodness. This time we went heavy on the summer fruits. Our box featured carrots, spinach, peas, mushrooms, tomatoes, avocado, blueberries, oranges, grapefruit, apricots, nectarines, blueberries, and more strawberries! There may be shortcake in our future.

Anni happily cooked on at her camp. Today, she made English food. She mixed up a sherry cream sauce to baste pork tenderloin as it roasted, and then added butter cooked apples and onions. Next, she made mini apple spice bundt cakes. We enjoyed our lunch immensely (and now I need to run again!).

Summer

Yesterday was the summer solstice, and summer has landed on the funny farm. The veggies are growing and the slugs are beginning to shrivel.

Ari is enjoying her one week of vacation before summer quarter starts at the college. Her enjoyment involves lot of sleeping in.

Alex has finished up his junior high class and is also taking some time to kick back for a week. His slacker moments seem to involve lots of Nintendo products. I think I'll assign him a book to read. (Wahaha - evil laugh!)

Anni is going to her first week of gourmet cooking camp. As it's several towns over, I'm going too. This week, she's learning to make international cuisine. Yesterday, Anni made Sesame garlic marinated chicken with rice and Chinese custard tarts, from scratch! Delish! Today, she made lasagna and Tiramisu, also extremely delish!

After Anni's somewhat heavy lunch offerings, I felt the need for lots of exercise. Off to the river trail for a 7.5 mile run in the glorious sunshine. David also went for a run in the sun. Yes, it finally came out here in the Seattle area - yippee! I actually have a tan line on my shoulder to prove it.

Happy Father's Day!

The daily garden harvest: one giant leek, strawberries from our patch, a handful of peas, and lots of lettuce.

Yesterday's finds from the Redmond farmers' market: gigantic radishes, tomatoes, apricots, free range ground pork, apples, organic strawberries, and Parmesan garlic herb bread. We came home yesterday and had a simple lunch with the bread, radishes, strawberries, and some cheese. Delish!

A photo from one of David's early morning adventures. This one is of Denny Park creek.

Happy Fathers' Day to all the dads out there. We had a fun one. We had a big funny farm breakfast and then went bowling. We had a blast. Everyone has their own unique style. Anni sit down and pushes the ball, very, v e r y s l o w l y. Ari drops it with a wicked curve. Alex hurls it. Julie Ann gets down low and lines it up. And David? He just rips it down the lane. After bowling, we went out for pizza at Zeeks. We love Zeeks. They have lots of veggie topped pies. Yum!

New Goals!

It's been quite awhile since we've update goals down on the funny farm. Here's how we're doing:

1) Eat seasonally, locally, sustainably, and organically. The funny farmer have been doing really well on this goal. We still have a few exceptions to the local rule, like coffee and dark chocolate. We frequent our farmers' market and use a local dairy. We also participate in a local CSA (community supported agriculture).

2) Grow more of our own food. We've had lots of family fun with this goal. We have 3 chickens and a large organic garden. Both are doing well despite our crazy Seattle weather. Our next step is to add a small green house.

3) Increase community, decrease consumerism. Sometimes, we struggle on this goal. It's easy to cocoon inside our corner of the world, but we're trying to connect to other green minded folks. We recently all participated in Green Fest. We also have been buying too much stuff. Time to cut back by using the library, making our own coffee, and repurposing (see new goals).

4) Live and play simply and locally. We've been staying fairly close to home in our vacationing, going just one state below or up into British Columbia. Most of our local play involves walks along the trails, visits to parks, or local celebrations.

We've decided to add a couple of new goals to the family project:

5) Eat vegetarian 3-4 times a week. We already do this on a fairly regular basis, but now we want to make it a project goal. Why? Red meat production is heavily taxing on the environment, so we're limiting this to no more that 1/wk with chicken and seafood on the other non-veg days.

6) Buy only what we need or truly love. We would like to save more green for fun and long term goals. Therefore, we are going to limit our consumerism to things we need, stuff we truly love, and experiences.

7) Make less trash. Despite religious recycling, we still generate too much trash. So it's time for mandatory travel mugs, reusable shopping bags, and packing free options. We do most of these already on a semiregular basis, but now it's time to do them every time.

8) Repurpose reusables. By repurposing, we use or creative brain and buy less stuff. For example, pop bottles can be bird feeders. Old jeans make cool denim purses. Vintage buttons and broken watches become jewelry. Wine bottles can become plant waterers. Broken flower pots are frog habitats.

Saturday on the Oregon Coast

I recently went down to the Oregon coast for a writer's workshop. Note the blue skies!

A giant mussel resting in the sand.

Haystack rocks in the slough.

A confident seagull takes a stroll.

Lava flats at Lincoln City.

Seagulls on the rocks.
Mounds and mounds of mussels.

Hermit crab on a seaweed stroll.

Seastar hanging on.

Anemone hosting guests.

Cormorants king-of-the-hilling with gulls.

Hearthstone Day

Today was a Hearthstone Day, a day to stay around the Funny Farm with the family.

We spent an hour in the garden weeding, pruning the maple tree, and picking. We harvested the last of our rhubarb and Chinese cabbage, as well as lots of parsley, cilantro, greens, lettuce, chives, some strawberries, sage, rosemary, and a single tiny radish. We also collected 3 beautiful big brown speckled eggs from the the cluck sisters today.

What to do with all this bounty?

We had the eggs with whole grain toast for breakfast this morning. The strawberries and rhubarb will be turned into syrup for Wednesday's breakfast pancakes.I had a big leafy salad with herbs for lunch. Alex and Anni made noodle soup, with chives and cilantro added. We also used lettuce and cilantro with our burritos for dinner. The greens are for dinner tomorrow. And the remaining herbs will either be made into sauces, frozen in stock cubes, or dried.

Down on the funny farm, we try to use what we harvest. We have a lot of sweat equity invested in that food!

Much to do about the sprew?

Today's CSA farm box photo is brought to you by David, who not only remembered to pick up the box but also snapped the photo. This week's box featured onions, curly kale, red leaf lettuce, broccolini, spinach, carrots, cucumber, onions, potatoes, peaches, nectarine, oranges, and grapes.

The layout for our green house foundation. The guys have been working hard on this one. The weather has been a spoiled dumping lots of liquid on the tarp. We've filled up our rain barrel again with just what has dropped on top. Ah, summer in Seattle. Today was sunny, humid, rainy, and stormy complete with thunder and lightning!

This funny plant, maybe called sprew (???) was supposed to be an annual, but it's come back for three years in a row and bloomed each year.

Joys of warm weather

Anni makes and dishes out fruit salad with a drizzle of honey. We had this with nachos for our lunch the other day. Many thanks to our friend, Lisa, for the extremely excellent homemade salsa!

The very first strawberry peaks out from the berry box.

The weather hit 70 degrees today. (Finally!!!) In the Pacific Northwest, that means BBQ time! Ours consisted of a garden salad (lettuce from out garden), baked potatoes with chive (garden) butter, grilled spareribs with BBQ sauce (local food from the farmer's market), and a trio of red fruits (strawberries from our garden). It was delish!

Greenfesting!

Today was the first day of Seattle's 2010 Greenfest, a weekend full of learning about the environment, social justice, and living a greener life. Our whole family went. The future farmers got in for free. David and I were $10 each after a $5 discount for riding the bus. We listened to nationally known speakers such as Tom Hartman speaking on the personhood of corporations and Cecile Andrews chatting about the positive benefits of a slower more community based lifestyle. Anni got an undrivers license showing that she likes to ride her bike and take the bus. Ari sampled organic coffee, and Alex learned about ocean safe seafood.

We also toured the booths in the exhibition hall where many green vendors had booths. We purchased a solar flashlight, organic tea, organic dark chocolate, organic cotton t-shirts, beeswax and essential oil candles, and the first 40 years of Mother Earth News on DVD. We also signed up for a subscription to Herb magazine to help us use all those herbs growing in our garden, and I found a very cute, 1920's style, recycled fabric hat.
But one of the awesome things about the Greenfest exhibitors is all the great free goodies they give you to encourage you to try their good for you and the environment products. In the household department, we received 12 full size bars of goat milk body soap, a sample bar of lavender and rose castile soaps, a roll of 100% recycled toilet paper (the kids needed to make sure this was not recycled from actual toilet paper), a ruler made from recycled materials, a greenlite bulb, a bumper sticker reminding us to plant trees, a packet of marigold seeds, a button, a dozen compostable trash bags, a magnet with kitchen conversions (so useful!!!), a set of birchwood eating utensils.

In the edibles section; 5 minibags of organic cereal, 4 minibags of the only kind of dog food Barkley will eat (California Natural), 3 organic teabags, 3 packets of organic sugar, 2 packets of hemp seeds, 2 organic granola bars, 2 organic dark chocolates, a packet of organic crackers, a box of organic shell pasta, a sample of omega-3 fish oil, coupons worth $15.50 (on products we use), and a straw of organic honey.

And otherwise: an Alaskan poster and education placemats (for Anni), 8 Alaskan tattoos, a seafood eating guide, 6 seafood recipe cards, a Puget Sound Beach guide, a veggie restaurant guide, 7 metro tickets, 7 magazines, a farm guide, and a Natural Choice Directory.

We learned a bunch about green energy, green causes (Did you know People for the Puget sound is leading an effort to help prevent oil spills in our area?), and social justice. We laughed, we ate, and had a terrific time, and....

Tomorrow some of us are going back!