Market is over!!!

 We are still enjoying our home grown produce.  The other night we had rice/hamburger,tomato stuffed peppers with steamed cauliflower (from our garden) and a veggie tray that had peppers, radishes, cucumber, and zucchini all from our garden!  I found some radishes which made one market customer very happy on Thursday. 

 Thursday, Oct. 3rd was our last day of market in Wahpeton.  It was the first time I went without baking any bread and it was wonderful!  We sold a lot of spicy pickled carrots and quite a few jams.  I had 24 varieties of veggies and fruits!  It was a beautiful varitey of veggies.

 It was a great last day of market.  It was cold and rainy but the customers were there and steady.  Kale and tomatoes were the top sellers.  Gideon cut three baskets of Kale and one customer bought 4 bunches!  It was a very popular vegetable.  The carrots, tomatoes, grean beans, squash, leeks, cabbage, kohlrabi, and radishes all sold out and most of everything else.  I had a great time selling at market this year.

 Even though the hail took out some of our crops we had a productive year.  We just had a lot less of some things. 

 I actually need to buy one more table for next year.  We can't quite fit everything on our 3 six foot tables.  It's a good problem to have! 

The kids were so great this year.  They each had a veggie or two that they were responsible for and Rebekah got to help a lot with taking money. Customers were so nice and they'd give her a 20 and help her figure out the change.  She mostly did customers who only  bought bread.  She learned how to display the veggies and the jams and breads and enjoyed that part of it.  Thanks to the kids and their hard work this summer we were able to go to several camps, put money away for music lessons, school books, and other things.  I'm proud of the kids and hope they are up for another year.

I'm also happy and relieved it is over for the year.  I commented to Emily as I was washing laundry and making supper yesterday and having a "normal" day at home with the kids that I felt so relieved and "normal" again.  I missed having those kind of days this summer.  There really wasn't a day that was free of market duties; either canning something, weeding, picking, planting, or cleaning someone's elses house.  I spent most of Monday and Tuesday this week cleaning the house and it feels "normal" again without the market supplies everywhere.  Now onto the best adventure of the year: schooling the kids.  We've got some great books to go through this year.  It's Emily's last year and Lena's first!  Praise God for his goodness this summer! 

Boat builders...

 We went to family camp this last Labor Day and one of the activities was to give each team (about 17) a pile of cardboard, 2 rolls of tape and one utility knive and about 1 1/2 hous to build a boat that could float. 

 It took us about 45 minutes to devise a plan and then we discovered we used way too much tape at the beginning because we ran out of tape. 

 Our boat was one of the smallest.  Your boat had to hold two people from your team.  Isaac and Rebekah got the honor of being our representatives in the boat race.  Isaac had some design ideas and Jordan used some tips she learned in sewing to put the front of the boat together. 

 We named our boat the Mighty Mrs. Sip after Mrs. Sip who puts on the camp with her family.  She's pretty amazing.  We call her Mighty Mrs. Sip at our house sometimes so thought it was a good name.

 Ready to launch. 

 A few boats sunk right away although I was too busy watching our boat that I didn't notice.  We were number 4 across the finish line!!!  After the race, all teams were instructed to come back towards shore for a battle to see who could be the last boat on the lake.  We did not win this part as our boat was small and tipped easily.

 Here is it getting down to just a couple teams.

A lot of wet, soggy cardboard was the end of the activity.  It was great fun!  We came home Monday quite exhausted from the swimming, rollerskating, tubing, eating, walking, etc.  Gregg Harris, home school giant, was the guest speaker and he was excellent.  I have some of his family's materials but have never heard him speak.  It was wonderful. 

A very Happy Birthday for our Lena...

 We were camping in Wisconsin when Lena turned 5.  Emily put together a scavenger hunt and made it a bit like the "Amazing Race".  They ran from clue to clue gathering the gifts Em had acquired for Lena.

 She's five!!

 Silly fun!

 Her birthday present was a violin!   Hoping for some lessons from big sisters!  She wants to play it all the time so I'm thinking she'll catch on quickly.  In 15 minutes she was doing a song already by plucking not with the bow.

 The favorite gift was a sock monkey that is currently misplaced.

 Silly Lena!

 Boyka and Lena.  It didn't take long and he had the hat off :)

 Thanks to Grandpa and Don for the beautiful birthday cake.  She loved it!

Sisters who look so much alike sometimes!

Summer suppers...

I love those summer suppers eating our wonderful garden produce.  Eating our produce is challenging since we are usually getting ready for market, at market or doing something else and we eat a lot of luncheon meat sandwiches lately.  It is a very green meal but we have a salad (thanks to Em for cutting and washing) with cucumbers and homemade french or cream dressing (another thanks to Em for making).  We have green beans picked by most everyone (thanks to Jordan for washing and probably snapping the other day).  We have onions (from Azure not our garden) grilled with our green peppers, our kohlrabi and our zucchini.  We added it all on top of a grilled pork chop.  Loved it and am stuffed!  We grilled the veggies outside on the grill 2-3 times a week now.  It goes on tacos, hamburgers, pork chops, rice, just about everything.  We are now watching the movie Ratatouille and snapping quite a few pounds of beans we had leftove from market.  

Tomorrow night's menu:  

Ratatouille

(Lena will be thrilled, she loves it.  Eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, onions, zucchini and plenty of garlic all cooked together for some great flavorful meal!) 

Life Lately...

 Emily is scraping the house hoping to paint it this Fall.  She had a crew helping her for a few minutes a day.  She's almost got it done.

 Jordan was drying herbs one day when she was home.  She's been a nanny for the summer off and on and when she is home she is teaching music lessons, cleaning house with me for others or helping with market.

 It's been cool lately but the kids have had some fun in the pool.  Lena can touch the bottom now and loves to be in there with the kids.  She doesn't like to be splashed though so I try to convince her not to go in a swimming pool if you don't want to be splashed!!!!

 I think this was our first day of market in Wahpeton. We started the season off with three markets a week, Lisbon, Wahpeton and Fargo.  I soon found I couldn't keep up with anything at home so we quit the Fargo market.  The customers have been great in Wahpeton and even Lisbon.  The first week in Wahpeton I made 44 loaves of bread and we sold out in 45 minutes.  It took 1 1/2 hours to sell 55 loaves the next week and yesterday I was able to make 73 loaves and we brought only 5 home!!!  My kids love leftovers.  We rarely have leftovers so they were happy to have zucchini bread this morning!

 Lena got an umbrella this year but it's destroyed.  She was sure proud of it and had some fun with it.  For some reason the children thought you could go out on a very windy day with umbrellas!?!?

 A white boule I make for market now.  I made 9 loaves yesterday and it sells out fast.  It's all white flour and so simple to make.  It surprises me that it is so popular.

 My favorite bread; multi-seed whole wheat.  It has cracked wheat, flax seeds, ground flax, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and fresh milled red wheat in it.  I flopped four of them yesterday so we have some of these to eat this week!  Yeah! 

 I was looking at my pictures and found about 100 pictures of legos. Isaac is so creative!

 We got a huge hail and wind storm on Tuesday.  Our yard is completly covered in branches and debris.  It will take awhile to clean it up.

 In less than three minutes most of our gardens were wiped out.  It's not a total loss.  Time will tell if the plants were shocked or not and the blossoms we see produce any fruit.  It's been hard to walk outside and see our whole summer's work gone.

We are not home very often and when we are we are taking care of animals, gardening, preparing for market, getting ready to go clean someone else's house or going somewhere.  We are home today and tomorrow and are loving it.  I was going to keep it low key (not much for projects) but it's so nice to finally be here so we've got a few things planned so we're hoping for no invites anywhere the next two days :) 

I just dumped out about 4 gallons of yogurt that I made that didn't get eaten for some reason, cleaned out the fridge, made new yogurt, making 3 gallons of kombucha, emptying the school room (ordered some books last night :), raking leaves, feeding tomatoes and pepper plants, dusting leaves with flour hoping to choke out the grasshoppers, cleaning and laundry just for starters.   I absolutely love being home though even if it is busy!!!!!  Last night we ordered something for Lena's birthday which is the 24th of Aug.  She'll be five.  I'll post pictures of her with it.  I'm so excited, everyone is hoping it'll be just the thing she'll want! (Keeping it a surprise from you though!)

Happenings...

 Caleb became an i-pod owner (I should say co-owner with mom).  I told him I have total control over it.  It's only allowed on the counter top and not in his room.  He has to have permission to be on it for gaming but it came in real handy for geography in school this year.  We have wi-fi now and the kids are each in charge of doing the research for their geography chapters.  They use wikipedia the most. 

 Here is One Adam Twelve.  He is one our first goats born this year.  He came out with the black on him. We have an all white breed but there are some recessive genes that can show themselves.  Last year we had an all brown goat born.

 

 The chickens started laying.  We get anywhere from 22 to 32 eggs a day!  We are looking for about 15 more layers before market starts.  We are looking for about 1 year old hens.

 Moriah and I are in Chick-fil-a in Omaha, Nebraska.  We traveled to St. Louis, Missouri the beginning of May for a conference and found a Chick-fil-a on the way!  Emily has been wanting to eat there for awhile.  They have a policy: as soon as they know someone has a gluten allergy, everyone in the kitchen changes gloves while that person's food is being prepared.  I was impressed!  They only serve chicken and they actually have a gluten-free menu, not many fast-food places have one.

 Chick-fil-A

 The children standing in front of the arch in St. Louis, Missouri.

 We ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory the one day we spent being a tourist.  It was good.  Again, they had a gluten-free menu so we had a good time knowing we didn't have to be so particular and ask so many questions.  I looked up gluten-free restaurants in St. Louis on Kevin's phone on our way there!  Technology can be fun and useful!

 The last day of the conference Jordan got to pose with Elizabeth Botkin.  Jordan has two of the books she wrote with her sister.  She spoke at the conference with her sister and with her family.

 Mmmm!  We have been eating roasted asparagus!  It is coming out our ears.  Too bad we've thrown some out.

Grandpa came to visit a few days!  Jordan was gone with friends.  She spent two weeks in South Dakota helping a family with a new baby.  She's home just a few days and she's going back for a couple more weeks.  We miss her but I'm so glad she get this chance to help out someone in need.  She has a great time there so that is a huge bonus.  Annie is like an older sister so they have a lot of good talks!