I have about a dozen empty jars left, of varying sizes, so I decided to start processing the beetroot. I knew they were getting rather large, so I sent Seth out to pull four of them. Well, “rather large” turned out to be an understatement! This is the biggest: all 10 pounds of it!
All four together filled my 20-quart stock pot to the brim. I think we’ll have enough beetroot this year! How many quarts do you suppose I’ll end up with from these four beets?
Activities at Home
Crooked Grin
A few days ago, Baby invented the funniest crooked grin. It cracks me up every time I see it!
This grin is also typical–especially when he’s coming for a hug!
Guess who liked the pancakes for breakfast!
Pretty pleased with himself–he found a whole roll of fruit leather that someone left on the table.
The two oldest boys were wrestling. They seemed pretty evenly matched!
Getting Back to Normal
I arrived home Sunday afternoon with the four children who went with me to America, and it is so good to be back! I don’t know if I’ll get around to posting any pictures of the trip or not; I haven’t even looked at them yet. Just to let you know we’re all still alive and well, here are a few pictures from this week. Baby got sick on the way home; as we crossed the equator, he started vomiting. Two days later he finally got well, just in time for all the rest of us, except Gayle, to come down with it. Now, I think we’re all well–sure hope so! We did manage to get a week’s worth of school done this week, and Monday, before the plague hit in force, we did some harvesting.
This evening–nearly bedtime, and the boys are having fun playing games with each other.
An aunt sent these fire truck sets to the little boys. They love them! Thank you much–you know who you are.
Monday was our only sunny day since we got home. The boys got all our pumpkins harvested for the year. I had them wash them and lay them out in the sun to cure. Now it’s raining–we should have put them under cover!
The boys found this “horse mushroom” yesterday–about 10 inches in diameter! It’s edible, so we had it for supper.
Today for Science, I read about magnets to the littler boys. There were a few experiments to do, and they had fun playing with the magnets. One of the bigger boys discovered something fun he could make the magnets do–see this quick video! Grandma, this is especially for you. For some reason, the arrow you usually click to watch a youTube video isn’t showing up for me, but if you click on the video it’ll start playing.
Why I’ve Been Absent
I know I haven’t been doing anything here for a long time. I have taken a few pictures, and yesterday I finally had time to look at pictures! Maybe soon I can put up a few posts to update this.
We’ve had visitors from America for the past two and a half weeks. Gayle’s parents and nephew arrived February 23, and they leave in two days from now, so we’ve been very busy with them. Also, I am flying to America for a wedding in a week and a half from now, so that has added a lot of busyness. And, the garden is pumping out food that has to be taken care of! So, I haven’t forgotten this, just haven’t had opportunity to share any of the great pictures Esther has been taking during our time with family.
Saturday I had these 26 heads of cabbage (60 pounds) to do something with. Forty pounds of sourkraut and twenty pounds in the freezer later, we were finished.
Friday we did this.
Tired Boys!
It looks like we’ve been hard on our boys today–at the moment, this is what the living room looks like. The older boys (and their noise) are all outside, so these three have a chance to sleep.
These two (Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination) have been playing hard!
This one (Mr. Diligence) got up at the same time I did this morning, two hours earlier than usual, because he had a bad dream and couldn’t go back to sleep. He had most of his school done before breakfast!
Peek-a-boo!
For about half an hour, I had only one child in the house! Two of them were working in a local vineyard with our good friends, who manage it, and I let the rest take sandwiches and have a picnic lunch. I stayed in the house by myself (with baby!) to keep the green bean-bottling-process going. While I was eating my lunch and reading something online, baby crawled behind the computer desk and played peek-a-boo from behind the screen.
Peas
Saturday turned out to be a very long day. It was a good one, though, although we have no plans of repeating it. Gayle got permission from a local farmer to pick some peas out of his large field which he is growing for seed (a lot of people have been picking peas there). We went over and decided to just pick for an hour and see what we would end up with. We got five bushels! Our pickers are fast. Then–we had to shell them! We all sat around on the front porch all afternoon and evening. I am able to shell peas almost as fast while I read as when I don’t, so I propped a book in my bowl and read aloud. We read an entire 150-page book about a girl in Pompeii that afternoon! The baby played on the porch around us, and 3-year-old brought drinks of water around regularly. The afternoon was a great family time–but we didn’t finish the job till late at night, which was the not-nice part. We ended up with 38 kilograms (57 quarts) of peas in the freezer, but I decided that is not worth repeating (unless they would be organic; these are not).
Dat is Pun!
It’s been a long time since my oldest child at home was three years old! Right now, however, our oldest five are working for our landlord, pulling wild turnips out of a paddock he has planted in Bok Choy for seed. The turnips are blooming right now, but the Bok Choy hasn’t started bolting yet, so it’s very easy to see what to take out. He doesn’t have time to do the job himself, so he stopped by last evening and asked if we could do it. The children were glad to have a paying job, so I took them over just after lunch. That leaves me with only two here–it is quiet in this house! We worked on the bananas I got on special at the supermarket a couple of days ago–the three-year-old cut them and filled a dehydrator tray for me. He was quite excited about that, exclaiming over and over, “Dat is pun! Dis is pun!” (fun). Baby played outside for awhile, and came in with a dirty face, laughing at me as he tugged at my dress. After I tried to get a picture of him (he wouldn’t laugh for the camera), the older one wanted me to take a picture of his face “to see if it was clean” after he washed the chocolate off! And now, I got a message that the children are done for the day and I need to go get them!
Just after I finished writing, as we were heading out to get the older children, three-year-old asked one of his famous questions: “Mom, when is Dad going to have a baby?” “Uh, Daddies don’t have babies.” “But you and Dad are married!” “Sorry, only Mommies have babies.” “Will you have two more babies?” “We’ll see.”
Cherry Soup
We’ve picked wild sweet cherries twice this year, already, and I thought I’d share one of our family’s favorite ways to eat them: Cherry Soup. This is a recipe that my Mom got from a Hungarian cookbook back when I was a girl. We always enjoyed it growing up, and my family loves it today. I don’t think I make it exactly like the recipe, and I happen to be holding a sleeping baby right now so I’m not going to go look it up, but here’s how I make it:
Put in pot:
1 quart pitted cherries
1 quart water or fruit juice (I concentrate plum juice and often use that)
3/4 cup sugar (not sure of this one–might want less)
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon
Bring to a boil. Whisk together:
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup flour
Add to boiling mixture, stir till boiling again and thick.
Beat 2 eggs. Stir some of the boiling mixture into the eggs to warm them, then stir them into the pot. Turn off the heat as soon as you think the eggs are cooked enough.
Stir in 2 cups cream or milk.
We enjoy this with crusty bread. Sometimes this soup will be the main course; other times I make it to go along with something else. Leftovers are great for breakfast, or dessert at lunch the next day.
The finished soup
Baby loves cherries already
Broccoli
When I was in the garden this morning, I noticed (again) that the broccoli needed picked, so assigned a boy to cut it for me. We got a nice bowl-full of beautiful, worm-free organic broccoli! Next question–what to do with it? I can’t eat it raw, and we don’t especially like it cooked. When Gayle got home from work I asked him if he had an idea; he suggested cooking it with mushroom soup. I got online, and found this recipe. Well, I have to work around Gayle’s allergy to cow’s milk, and I don’t keep those ingredients on hand anyway, but it sounded good. So, I cooked the broccoli. While that was cooking, I put homemade goat feta cheese in the food processor, with some goat yogurt, and a couple of tablespoons of basil pesto from the freezer, and whizzed it. Then, I made croutons from a flopped batch of sourdough bread by frying cubes in a skillet with fat, seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika. As soon as the broccoli was cooked, I drained it and in the same pot it had been in, made a white sauce with goat’s milk, flour, salt, pepper and paprika, and added cooked frozen mushrooms and the cheese mixture. I put the broccoli in a baking dish, poured the sauce mixture over it, and topped it with croutons. Then, I baked it for half an hour or so. It turned out quite good!
There! Now, I can look back here when I want to remember how I did this.