Farming and Goodbye Honda

This has been a very busy week and weekend. With school starting last week, and my boycott on working in my classroom before school started, I spent my afternoons and early evenings at school this past week. But by Open House on Thursday afternoon, my room was ready!

This weekend has also been busy, but very productive!

Friday evening we went to dinner with friends. We call it "Sign Group" because they are the people I first started learning sign language with 12 years ago. We don't really sign anymore at our get togethers, but we still get together once a month. I had the yummiest adult mac and cheese ever. It had Monterrey jack and white cheddar cheese and you could add toppings. Two toppings were included and 1 more was $1. I had a VERY hard time deciding, but I settled on blue cheese, asparagus, and black beans. It was HEAVENLY.

Saturday I had a meeting at church, we worked in the garden, we packed up stuff at Adam's house and then we had a game night with friends. I LOVE a good game night.

Today we went to Farm and Fleet to get more canning jars and I came home and just finished canning 15 jars of pickles. Bread and Butter and a new kind of Polish Dill. These are 24 hour processing so tomorrow we shall find out how they turned out! Amy's advice totally helped. I boiled a little water a time and getting the 21 quart pot boiling wasn't so bad. I just need more counter space. My kitchen is so tiny and not so conducive to the canning process. Next year will be better!....if we even have a kitchen by then!

The pumpkin patch is pretty far behind last year. But we are still trying to convince ourselves that it will be fine by October. We just need some HOT days. There are lots of little baby pumpkins growing and we did find some good sized ones. Come on pumpkins!

The view of the pumpkin patch from the middle.

Some Baby Book little white pumpkins. They look so good!

A cool gourd. There are so many of them in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. We just need to research when to pick them.

A Jack-Be-Little little orange pumpkin (technically a gourd like the white ones)

Our sad cucumbers. I picked about 30 more cucumbers yesterday and I think they are done. Amy thinks there might have been a mold. We got a GREAT crop, however, they seem to be done a little early in the year. I think I canned about 45 jars of pickles. I haven't counted exactly.

In other exciting news, we have been selling some vegetables to people. I did some espionage at Target and a local produce stand to make sure to price our stuff appropriately. Our stuff is ALL organic, however, organic prices are high. I priced our stuff comparable to the local produce stand (which surprisingly is less expensive than Target). I would think you would pay more for fresh produce! However, at the produce stand, their large jars of pickles are $8. That is a lot of money!

Our tomatoes are coming along slowly and we sold all of our ripe ones yesterday! We also sold some cucumbers...but sadly, it doesn't look like there will be any anymore. We have TONS of onions. They are healthy and looking great. Hopefully some people want to purchase those!

Also, last week I officially turned in my Honda. It was a little sad to say goodbye even though I love my Escape. My CR-V treated me well for four years and never once had a problem. Let's hope my American car can live up to my new standards!

How was your weekend?

Would you like to come purchase some onions??