Happy birthday Julia!

Today is the would be the 100th B-day of Julia Child. We celebrated by having a delicious Salad Nicoise for dinner featuring organic red butter lettuce, dolphin safe tuna, tomatoes, green beans, herbs, and onion from the backyard funny farm, eggs from our hens, and several other delicious additions (mini bell pepper, olives, fingerling potatoes). It was delicious. Anni ate her weight in salad!

We are in that part of the yearly cycle where we harvest our herb crops. Over the past few days, we've gathered sage, thyme, oregano, rosemary, lemon balm, mint, chives, lavender, and raspberry leaves. After rinsing and bundling, we have herbs everywhere. The chives were flash frozen and reside in the freezer. The raspberry leave are drying in a basket. The oregano, rosemary, and thyme are drying in small bunches, and...

 Ari sorts herbs in the backyard.

 She calls in the reinforcements, Alex, to help with the bundling.

 A bowl of pineapple sage sits waiting on the kitchen table.

 Sage hanging from our impromptu drying rack between the dining room and learning center.

 Bundled lemon balm drying on a towel.

 Lavender hanging from the curtain rod.

Chocolate mint drying on the kitchen counter.

We'll gift, trade, and use the dry herbs over the coming fall and winter seasons. We love a mint and lemon balm combination tea in the evenings and a raspberry leaf ice tea during the day - yum! The funny farmers love the sage in buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. Oregano takes center stage in our home pizzas, and rosemary is tops with our small homegrown potatoes. And I love thyme in practically anything!

Our Northwest weather has been steadily heating up over the past week. We may even break a hundred on Friday! The veggie beds are ready to explode in torrid showers of tomatoes and zucchini. (Does anyone have a really heavy duty brolly?) I can hardly wait!

A warm day in the backyard farm!

 Today, we were in the warm eighties, practically a heat wave for us lily-livered Pacific Northwesterners. We spent most of the day out in the garden.

 We were visited by a bevy of beautiful Swallowtail butterflies.

Peas on the vine

Canterbury Bells on the stalk.

Blooming zucchini

Spanish lavender

Blackberry blossoms

 A hidden strawberry

   Anni looking for that strawberry!

We added organic compost to all the fruits and veggies and harvested lots of lemon balm, mint, and sage. Alex, David, and Ari tied the herbs into bundles to dry and later be used for seasonings and tea making. The garden is loving the warm weather. Tomatoes and zucchini are coming on in droves. We have lots of blueberries, and the blackberries are just turning. We are also enjoying plenty of beans and a few ears of corn.

Yesterday, Alex and I made a big pot of tamales to go with the corn. They were delish! We've also been enjoying all the peaches, plums, nectarines, and pluots available at our local farmers' markets.

To escape the heat of the later afternoon, we loaded up the Prius with books to take to our local book exchange. We came back with even more! Such is the curse of a family full of bibliophiles!

Traveling to the Ends of the Earth

Okay, well maybe not the very ends, but at least to northwest end of the continental USA! We took a road trip last weekend. We boarded an early morning ferry from Edmonds, Washington and jugged our way over to the Kingston dock. The sailing was just long enough for strong coffee and pastries to be consumed

Edmond's Ferry Terminal at low tide. See the ferry in the top left corner?

A hungry grey heron catches his breakfast.

 Julie Ann picks up a sleepy Dungeness crab. Mind those claws!

 A sunflower starfish craws beneath the pier.

 

Nudibranchs (sea slugs) were out in full force. We love these tiny little critters!

 A pod of sea life eggs. We aren't exactly sure what these are, maybe a dogfish shark?

We journeyed on to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. It was beautiful sunny day, in the nineties at our home, but in the low eighties near the water, perfect! We cruised around the suburb farmers' market finding delicious goat cheese rolled in white pepper and time, hard ginger apple cider, homemade crackers, cherry tomatoes, and lots of fruit. We had a delicious picnic lunch at one of the town parks.

Then we drove a very long and twisty road out to Neah Bay, Washington. Did I mention long? 

The distance didn't seem that great, but most of the curves were down in the 20-25 mph zone; 

so it took awhile! Here's what I thought of some of those hairpin turns!

But,

It was worth it!!!

We drove through Neah Bay and arrived at the trail head around 5:30pm.

David and Anni hiking the forest trail to the point.

Unusual trees lined the path as well as voracious mosquitoes. Apparently, they loved my blood the best!

Check out these photos of Cape Flattery, the NW tip of the continental USA

  There are lots of rock islands,

 trees at precarious angles,

water from aquamarine to deep blue,

 and huge sea caverns.

 Cape Flattery Light House.

 Sunset at the Cape.

 Heading back toward Port Angeles. A tired duo.

 Twilight on the Peninsula

 The moon over the water back at the Kingston ferry terminal. We caught the last boat back at 11:05pm. We all slept in the next day! 

All in all a most excellent family adventure to the end of the earth (or so it seemed).

The blog is back!

Julie Ann at the beginning of the 2012 garden season.

Well, it's about time! I know, I know, the blog has been missing in action. But, we do have a pile of good excuses. I've been really busy working on a new story. Ari and David are crazy with their college schedules, and Alex and Ari are in the full swing of summer vacation. Now, that my first draft is nearly complete, (thank all and everywhere), the blog is back!

Today was a busy one in the 2012 garden. I harvested a whole bucket worth of herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage, tarragon, oregano, three varieties of mint, chives, Italian parsley, and summer savory) to hang and dry. We also processed a full gallon jar of sweet melissa (lemon balm) for evening tea. Then it was time to transplant, 100 basil seedlings and a dozen Canterbury bell plants. Finally, I sowed a planter box full of lettuce seeds and potted pumpkins, sunflowers, and beans. Phew!

The 2012 garden is a big one! We just keep on expanding it. This year, we've had a bumper crop of all of our berries: strawberries, black currants, jostaberries, raspberries, Marionberries, Loganberries, blueberries, and we still have blackberries are yet to turn. We also have 29 tomato plants of various types, lemon, Persian, and English cucumbers, leeks, onions, chives, 5 varieties of lettuce, 2 types of corn, radishes, 3 types of carrots, Russian kale, cabbage, broccoli, zucchini, pumpkins, mustard greens, lemon balm, 3 types of mint, 3 varieties of potato, rhubarb, garden and sugar peas, two types of thyme, rosemary, 3 types of sage, tarragon, Italian parsley, summer savory, tomatillos, lavender, 4 types of beans, two types of basil, eggplant, and a few I'm sure I've forgotten.

 This year, I decided to make the garden really beautiful by planting lots and lots of flowers throughout the garden. I added lots of our favorite varieties like snap dragons, lupines, pansies, calendula, nasturtium, daisies, and marigolds. As an added bonus, many of the flowers are either edible or protective or in some cases, both!

The chickens are still with us and casing lots of fun and shenanigans. They earn their keep with all the delicious brown eggs.  And also, by tracking down buglies in the garden patch. We love Henrietta and Claudette, except when they wake up early and cackle at 5 am.

In other news, we are all in a baking jag right now, largely to keep up with all the produce. Yesterday, I baked 3 dozen very, very berry muffins. Today, it was 4 loaves of apple pie bread and a dozen oregano rolls.

As a family, we trying to squeeze in 20 hikes over the summer. So far, we've done six. This past weekend,  we trekked around the Ballard Locks and botanical garden and also went out to Flaming Geyser State Parks. The geyser was more a flickering, than a flaming, but the scenery along the Green River Gorge was beautiful.

Until tomorrow, happy farming!

Happy Ostara!

Spring has finally sprung and we got a small dose of much needed and much appreciated sun.
Here's the weather on my birthday:

Yep, snow! And it snowed a little everyday for the next 8 days, as well as lots of rain, sleet, hail, and more rain. Then the wind came in and blew the living daylights out of everything not well secured, and it was cold. So you see, we deserved some sun.

How did we spend our first day of spring? We all went for a walk in the sun. Then, we planted of course! Anni and I started tomatoes, peppers, radishes, peas, beans, corn, cilantro, basil, eggplant, zucchini, sage, and pumpkins from seeds. We are already harvesting some over wintered chives and rosemary. Tomorrow, we're cleaning out the greenhouse. I love gardening season!

Signs of spring

Blossoms

and lots of green leaves!