My Crazy Life as a Farmers Wife

Music: Jam, Mark O'Conner, Harvest Fest & Jenny Oaks Baker

Just trying to catch up with some of the events I've missed on this here blog. As always, music (fiddle and violin) is a huge part of our lives...here are some of our recent events...

End of Summer potluck and jam session at Heise with all of Joe and Jacie's students...

We were thrilled that Joe and Jacie were able to get Mark O'Connor to come to Idaho Falls for a concert! Mark is someone that Grace has really looked up to for a long time, and she LOVES his fiddling! Mark held a workshop during the day, and a concert at night. The kids got to open his concert and play onstage with him!

we played a few fiddle tunes at Harvest Fest...

This past week, Grace and I got to go on a date to the Jenny Oaks Baker concert...

my sister, Shelby, is in the Teton Chamber Orchestra, and played with Jenny!

Preserving Tomatoes

We're still trying to save what summer bounty we can for the long winter ahead...yesterday, we were able to can more stewed tomatoes (15 quarts, plus two quarts we set aside for our dinner that night...we made a big batch of taco soup).

Half of my children enjoy helping in the kitchen...the other two disappear as soon as I mention canning tomatoes. They went downstairs and didn't come up to see what we were doing once. Luckily for me though, Grace and Kate love to help out. They peeled all of the tomatoes while I blanched them, and then I chopped them up and seasoned them while the girls did the dishes...

and seriously, I'm lucky, because canning does dirty a lot of dishes!

One more thing checked off the list...tomorrow, our potato harvest begins!

Who?

Guess who I got a photo of last night? Aren't owls just beautiful creatures?

My Favorite Time of Year

It's offically fall, which is my favorite season, but sunfortunately, it is also the busiest time of year for our family. My garden is producing like mad. There is so much that needs to be harvested and preserved. My kids have started school...and school is a little bit different for us this year. I decided to homeschool my kids, and so that has taken a LOT of extra time, but I love it (that is whole post in itself for another day). There is so much to be done in the yard before winter arrives, and to top it all off, we have had beautiful weather (mid 80's) which is unseasonably warm for us. This makes it hard to work when you want to enjoy the beautiful days. We're also getting ready to start our potato harvest, which is a crazy time for our family. Russell is playing flag football, and all the kids are keeping me busy with their music lessons. As busy as it is, I am so thankful for all of the beauty around me during the fall. I feel blessed for all of the gifts from the garden, even if they are a lot of work. Here is a look at some of our happenings around our farm and yard over the past few weeks...

fall berries...which are in my opinion, the best strawberries. They are so much sweeter in the fall...

berry pickers...more like eaters...

preserving freezer corn for the long winter months ahead...

riding with David to check on irrigation equipment...

it's a good thing Lily brought her purse...

music...

watching the turkeys wander around the farm...

sharing leftover garden goodies with the chickens and turkeys...

wearing what they want, messy scraggly hair...and working outside...

harvesting produce from the garden...

look at all the beautiful grapes I got this year! We planted the bare-root plants last spring, and this year, we got a lot of beautiful grapes from the vines! 

we used these darker grapes to make homemade grape juice because they have so many seeds...

our kitchen has been a busy (and messy) place lately...we canned our own salsa verde for the first time this year...

The first part of this week will be filled with more of the same...and then on Wednesday, we're starting our harvest, and I'll be feeding the crews every day.

Birthday Girls

Our lives have been busy lately...more so than usual. I'm hoping for things to slow down a bit, but our potato harvest starts this week, so I know that the pace won't change for a while yet. Most of us seem to have either a horrible cough or sore throat, and we're trying to rest as much as we can today to get feeling better before harvest starts. 

Yesterday, my sweet baby, Kate, turned five years old. She and Lily are both five years old until Tuesday...my cute little Irish Twins. Because their birthdays are so close, we usually celebrate them together (and since I usually buy them matching presents, Lily can't really wait to open hers). This is the first year in their lives that we haven't been digging potatoes during their birthday (we're starting a little later than normal this year), so we really actually got to celebrate their birthdays. In fact, we treated them to lunch at McDonald's and even ate outside at the play area and let them play on the kids toys. This is a very rare occasion, because one, we're not real fans of McDonald's, and two, I don't usually let my kids play on public toys because they gross me out :) But the girls had a blast...Kate said "This is the best birthday of my whole life!". Later in the day, we had grandmas and grandpas over for dinner, and Kate got to pick her favorite dinner and dessert. She chose Corn Chowder with breadsticks and Raspberry cupcakes.