3rd week of Month 2008
The colors of summer are bursting upon us. The veggie baskets now have reds, yellows and purples mixed in with the green and it is a delight to gather colorful flowers for bouquets. Not only are the colors more vibrant but there are now so many delicious tastes to choose from. We had our first meal of golden beets this week and the flavor was incredible sweet and delicious. One of our sons even declared them to taste "buttery" and I'm not sure how much this was influenced by color alone. This seasons fruits have also been making eating a pleasure with apricots, blueberries, raspberries and the beginning of blackberries. Our grass fed beef just returned from the butcher and we thoroughly savored our first meal of meatloaf (after being hamburger deprived for over a month). And of course, everything tastes better with fresh herbs tossed in. Lemon basil and rosemary are some of our favorites this time of year.
We chose one of the hottest days this week to tackle butchering our first batch of 100 pastured chickens. Fortunately we had good help from a family that I met at Lehmans who have a 6 acre mini farm near Plain City. They are considering doing broilers but wanted to see what was involved in the butchering process and learn how. They were a delight to teach and work with. The mother was even blind and smoothly handled cutting off all the feet. We received a thoughtful thank-you note saying they had ordered their first batch of 50 chicks and were working on building a chicken tractor. We truly enjoy teaching skills to others and empowering folks to try new things.
Unfortunately my beautiful summer lettuce bed I mentioned last week became lunch for the resident groundhog. I hear many folks with gardens in town lamenting that the deer chomp off almost everything in the garden so I perhaps should be thankful that only my lettuce bed is gone but it still is disheartening to find things chewed.
The other critters that are starting to eat more than their share around here are the Japanese beetles. We're finding them on trees, the potatoes and surprisingly they have an affinity for my daughter's marigolds which are supposedly a plant that repels insects.
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