We Aren't Farmer's We Just Play Them in Maryland

As I am going through our pictures I realize something - they are almost all in one way or another farm related.  So what better place to start than the farm stuff at home and then in future posts I'll update you on various trips we took to other farms.
Here is teh start of our garden area.  I just love how green Maryland is.

 I always thought I didn't care for blueberries so much.  But Levin and the kids the day before I arrived in  Maryland, went to a pick your own blueberry place by the elementary school.  They were delightful!  So Levin bought me two blueberry bushes and worked the soil to be appropriately acidic for blueberries.  This little bush already had quite a few blueberries on them.  The pick your own closed like 2 days after I got there so we never got anymore.  I'm a little sad because it was actually cheap, unlike some pick your owns that really aren't that great in price.

 Before we moved to Moscow, Levin planted a blackberry plant.  It had a lot of blackberries on it actually and for being only one plant we did pretty well.  Here is Oliver with one day's picking.  At first they were pretty sour, but the later ones were actually getting pretty sweet.  The kids amazed me and always said they liked them even when they'd get a sour one.  Leah would sometimes keep it in her mouth a long time before chewing . . . and they usually only wanted one a day, but every day when we'd pick some they'd dutifully eat one.

 Here are the kids picking blueberries off of our bush.

 Levin also bought me a few raspberry bushes that tiny as they were gave us actually quite a few raspberries this year.  Usually everyone was nice and gave them to me.  Leah thought the raspberries were too furry.

I don't have pictures of all of our garden success, but this was one day.  For only planting two tomato plants we actually ended up getting quite a few tomatoes.  We made one batch of salsa that we canned and we've made a few batches of spaghetti sauce, just to eat right then.  Plus several fresh tomatoes although we won't lie, none of us are HUGE tomato fans.  The corn was a quick grow variety so the ears were pretty skinny, but were tasty.  Green beans we have a lot frozen now.  Levin hates wasted space and had a few green bean seeds left so he just poked them in and around the corn stocks and they grew like gang busters.

 We don't have a picture of the zucchini and Levin ripped them up a little early, but we had several 8 ball zucchini and they were sooo good.  The kids ate those too if there was enough cheese on them and I taught Leah my secret that hot vegetables you have to eat them when they're hot.  If you wait too long until they get cold they are yucky.  So she was always begging for her zucchini because there was a while there that we had it almost every night.  I also made quite a few batches of zucchini muffins that I froze extras of, but we've already eaten even the frozen ones.  I don't know how the kids didn't notice the first batch had flecks of green in it.  It was a little garden miracle I guess. :)  But after that they knew they liked them so they ate the other batches.

Below are my garden favorites and the thing I miss absolutely the most from living with my Mom and her garden.  I love fresh peas!  You can buy corn on the cob, but you can't buy fresh peas (at least not really.)  Levi planted a bunch and we have eaten a bunch.  Unfortunately for experimental purposes they were planted at different times so we haven't often had enough at a time to freeze much, but we have a few.  Mostly I have just pigged out eating them fresh.  I have gone wrong somewhere with my kids though because when I ask them to eat some peas they ask me if I can cook them first.  AAAH!  They are soooo good raw!!

 I tried to take a close up where you could see all the pods, but typing this I'm not sure it worked so well.

Farmers also have animals!  This was one of those moments wehre I was like, hey, let's take a picture and I don't have to run all the way back in the house for the camera - I have my phone!  Well . . . turns out the case I have makes the flash reflect a little funny so our night shots don't turn out so well.  I know this isn't super flattering of Levin with his eyes closed, but it does show us how HOT and HUMID it is here in Maryland.  At least in the summer.  My hair is not curling so well now that it is cooling down.

Here is our calf who has had multiple names.  The calf we had when we lived in Maryland last time had a name of Milky Way so it took a long time for Levin to remember to call the calf "Woody" (you can guess Oliver named him.)  By the time we got his name right we realized he was really a she and so Oliver changed her name to Jessie (Toy Story movie) but now we all forget and still cal her Woody.  Oh well.  I doubt she will have gender identity issues.

 Woody/Jessie was so sick when Levin bought her that sometimes she could hardly stand.  She had scours (is that how you spell that?) and had to be "nursed back to health" so to speak.  I hadn't fed a calf a bottle for a long time. S he wasn't too interested in eating at first so the first few days took a little bit of work.  But we didn't kill her off!!  Three cheers for us!  I wasn't too thrilled when Levin talked me into feeding the calf in the mornings when he started work because he leaves so early in the morning.  But it turned out not to be so bad at all.  I hadn't fed a calf a bottle since I was probably 14 years old.  It's like riding a bicycle . . .  ha ha!

 Levin went to Oxford University . . but I'm never as impressed by that as he'd like me to be.  But I am pretty impressed by this trailer he built.  It bumped up his manhood a few degrees for me. :)  It has come in handy and saved us from having to buy him a truck.  He can just use our old Explorer to pull the trailer instead.

 Our renter may have done a few bad things to the pasture and the fence - i.e. he took part of the fence down and he dumped a bunch of junk in the pasture.  He burned a bunch of stuff, but left glass and nails behind in the burn pile.  He laid millings down so Levin can't even fix the fence easily right there where the gap is  So he has Levin-rigged it so that it should be okay for the calf, but probably not some other animals.

 Speaking of other animals - these were our sheep, but we only owned them for a short time.  I don't even know if they got names and if they did, I don't remember them, and I don't care to remember them.  I do not love them.  Or should I say I did not love them as they are most certainly dead by now.  They were in a stall in our barn for a while, but Levin thought theyd' come back in for grain so he let them out . . . oops!  Well . . . . let's just say I spent a lot of time chasing the stupid things and no, stupid is not too strong of a word, but probably stupid should apply to us, than to them.  They were quite smart.  Finally we ignored them for a while.  Then we couldn't find them.  Then I found them in the back corner of the pasture and stuck kind of behind a tree.  We thought it was a little miracle we could give a talk in church on some day.  We got Levin's trailer and the Explorer back there because we thought we could chase them into the trailer easier than anything else.  Well, the little . . . hmm . . struggling to think of an appropriate word here. . . umm  . , terds . . am I allowed to say that? pushed through a weak spot in the fence and were in our neighbors yard.  She was going to catch them for us, she did, . . bah, blah, blah, 2 weeks later one of them impales herself on some rebar in the neighbors barn and off they run . . never to be seen again.  It raised some interesting questions for Leah about death though and I had some sweet experiences with her over it so it was all worth it I guess.  Maybe that is the "miracle" we'll tell in a talk in church some day.

 Did you notice the sheep were ALWAYS standing like that together.  Little best friends of sorts.

 And last to arrive at the Flake homestead were the chickens.  Levin had 6 weeks of Home Leave he had built up that he used before heading back to work.  But his first week back at work guess what arrived in the mail. Chicks!  I had to drive to the post office to collect the little rodents with wings.  I had to use all my courage and have Leah stand by me to tell me, Mom it's just in your imagination they won't eat your fingers.  Then I had to pull them out, dip their beaks in water and put htem in their little brooding place . . is that even the right term?  Gosh - I better talk to Levin before I write blog posts.  But I will not ever finish blogging if I stop to contact him at work or wait until he's home so . . . yeah, they're place with a warming light.  I did it and all chicks are still alive to this day.  They are almost full grown now and should start laying before too long.  We have 16 which is about 10 too many in my opinion, but I think Levin will get rid of 6.  The person supposed to take them hasn't ever come to collect them so who knows when we'll pass them off.  But when I run out of eggs I sure do hope for these little chickens to start laying.  I'll post pictures whne they do hopefully because some of them are supposed to lay easter eggs.  Something for you readers (are there any of you?) to look forward to. :)

 We slowly expanded the space Woody had before letting him/her roam free!

 I think I have almost an identical picture of Leah when she was this age standing in front of our other chickens.  It has been so de ja vu moving here.  Last time we were here, Leah was Autumn's age and Oliver was Lance's age.  It is so strange and lovely to almost relive it.  Only this time I have these other two crazy older kids running around.  But they also help some so it's fun.

The other benefit of having older kids is Levin has someone to play with him instead of borrowing one of his nephews who no longer live here like last time.  He and Oliver practiced their roping skills one day when Levin was teleworking.  This  must be on his lunch break.

 Fun times!