High Tunnel...

 Kevin took the day off Wednesday and spent it outside assembling our high tunnel before the possible freezing temperatures last night.  It was a very long day for Kevin, Isaac and Caleb.  Kevin started at 7:30 a.m. and finished about 11:30 p.m. with 2 fifteen minute breaks. 

 They finally got to putting up the poly on the ends while the sun was still up.

 My dad (Sam) and my brother came over to help get the poly on.  I should have taken a picture of the two vans parked on either end so we could stand on them to pull the poly over the top.  A neighbor also came over to help.

 Finally, in the dark of the night the top is getting secured on with wigglewire.

Emily and Kevin are working by headlights.  It paid off and the plants were all saved although it looks like it only got to 34 degrees.  Today it was about 80 degrees in there.  My tomatoes will love it.  I had a good day at the market again so maybe next week I'll have a ton of tomatoes and do really well again!  It may be the last market day so I sure hope we do our best day then.

Here is Lena doing her "school".  Emily has been teaching her to write her name.  She is a noisy student who talks the whole time, hard to do math with her around.  She hardly stops talking during the day and has said some cute things.  Gideon bumped her ear yesterday and she cried to him to say sorry to her.  Then she came to me and told me she needed garlic in her ear and a kleenex (that's what we use for an ear ache).  The telephone guy was here trying to figure out why we didn't have an internet connection and we were doing school.  She was looking at a book about Martin Luther and saw a picture of Luther praying and folded her hands, said "Dear Lord,  You  (pause)    are (pause)     nice.  Amen."  He looked at her and I wonder what he thought!?!   She sure makes us happy!

 My computer won't put this right but thanks to two friends telling me in the same week that they had eggplant parmesan and liked it because Wow, was it good.  We made it last night and it was so tasty.  Of course the eggplant is dipped in egg, then flour with crouton crumbs (can use bread crumbs), and fried in oil before you use it so it doesn't really resemble eggplant.  We used bought spaghetti sauce.  I could have used home grown tomatoes and made a home made sauce but I was canning raspberry jelly and the stove was busy already.  I got 25 more jars of it!  Pray for a good turn out at the Farmer's Market this week.  We did so good last week, it was exciting to see some fruits from our labors. 

Here is our garden/home made supper last night.  Eggplant parmesan, garlic herb bread, tomatoes and cucumbers.  I had two kids try it and then couldn't eat it because of the idea of the eggplant.  I don't think they gave it a fair shake.

 Straining raspberries for jelly.  We really like raspberry jelly, but I hope it all sells at Farmer's Market tomorrow.  We have enough juice to make twice this much on Friday though because I ran out of pectin and time.  I'll make a good profit because I didn't have to technically pay for the raspberries!  The kids are tiring of picking but only a short time more and they will be gone.

 Here we have a mix of garden produce for a veggie soup I'm canning.  I had 14 1 pound bags of baby carrots leftover from graduation to use up so those aren't from the garden but the beans, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and peppers are.  Thanks to my wonderful kids for all their hard work.  They helped in picking, washing, digging, peeling, blanching, cutting, snapping, stirring, snitching, etc.

Our spelling came today!!!!!  The girls were very excited.  I didn't think Gideon would be happy about it but he seemed to be.  Tomorrow our Grammar and Vocabulary should arrive! 

Garden bounty...

We had a wonderful garden supper on Saturday night.  It was all fresh picked that day except for the squash and carrots.  The squash was fresh cooked from squash that was still in our basement.  I've been terrible about eating it this winter.  It's a shame because I have so many squash eaters.  We had squash with butter and honey, mashed potatoes with a touch of garlic, cilantro and parsley, coleslaw with shredded carrots, sliced tomatoes, green beans, fried onions with yellow squash (we love to eat this on mashed potatoes)(I do anyway), lettuce salad, and sliced cucumbers, sliced peppers and celery with ranch dip.  The celery ended up being  favorite of some kids.  I was surprised.  They were quite strong tasting and a bit chewy.  We were stuffed and had leftovers.

We ended our evening watching Tangled (a Disney movie).  I normally would not recommend a Disney movie because of how they have added "junk" into it.  This movie actually had no language (Disney is very known now for it's minced oaths and other expletives that kids think are funny but are still bad words to me), it had no sexual references or jokes (even adult inferred, another commonality of newer Disney movies) and it had a plot that you could follow along with an action packed theme.  We all laughed much.  It followed along with the fairy tale theme of Rapunzel with some magic (there was a magical flower that when eaten or you recited a poem, it would heal that person).  As I write this, that sounds a lot like witchcraft.  If fairy tale witchery doesn't bother you then this is a movie to check out.  There wasn't a sorcerer or witch in the movie. 

Market...

 

Farmer's Market yesterday.  We started out with a little card table and finally have enough to fill our two small tables.  It was great.  We made smaller loaves of zucchini bread and added banana bread this time and had good success.  We sold a bit of jam this time.  These pictures are more at the end of the market day.  We had several things on the ground and on a chair and by the end everything fit on the table.  I had two crates of tomatoes and got down to what is in the picture. 

The vendors sell a variety of things; most have produce, some other things sold are jellies, eggs, chickens, pasture-fed beef and pork, crafts, snacks, bread, plants.  Someone also sells perennial plants that she is cleaning out of her yard.  It is a little community. We took part of our earnings and went to the laundromat and washed 7 loads of laundry because...

  Sunday night our septic backed up into our house.  The boys and I dug the hole on the right side all the way down, it was the wrong spot.  Kev has found a cracked pipe but we aren't sure that is the only problem.  We had a plumber come help locate the problem.

 This is half the buckets we had to take out and wash and dry and then carry back down.  This is oatmeal, wheat, beans and other staple items.  Jordan washed about 100 jars and other things that got sewage and other water on them.

 

 

  A bright spot in the week;  my cousin and her husband and two boys (from the Cities) came a bit out of their way just to visit us.  They couldn't make it to the graduation and so we got to have them for supper a couple days later.  The boys got to ride the barrel train and dig in our hole.  It was great!  I'm so happy they were here!

Happy Birthday...

 to Lena Mae!!  She is 3 years old!  We are praising the Lord for giving us this special joy!

 Mud cake!  Mmmm!  A very favorite crock pot cake that is gooey on the bottom.  Lena only ate the ice cream.  She doesn't really care for cake.

Thank goodness for the birthday box.  I didn't remember to get something for her birthday but I've had this Little Pony in there for a few years now.