Let's Dance

This has been a wet season.  Dramatically wet.  Rain everyday for a over a month.  It's easy to make an analogy to dancing when it comes to how we work with the weather, but this year the dance has been taken over by a solo-performing-rain-making fool that just likes to watch himself parade around the dance floor and not care for a partner.  It's finally dried out enough for us to do some tractor work, possibly enough for us to plant some poor rootbound plants that have been camping out on the start table for a month too long.  We've moved on with the attitude of better luck this fall and winter.  The good news is that we picked an almost 3 1/2 lb tomato!  We made a crew lunch with it, bacon sandwiches with huge thick slices of the beast.  The sandwich will not be forgotten anytime soon it was so good!  

  As for the pregnant flower lady.....things are alright I suppose.  My belly is tight and this baby moves around 2-3 times as much as Ruth did.  I'm ready to hold the baby in my arms instead of my belly, but I have 8 more weeks to lug it around and deal with rough back pain.  I'm trying to propagate dahlias so I can have an amazing flower display in early winter, but it's proving harder than I thought.  Wish me luck, I could use it!

Garden Fresh.

 So we contributed to a cookbook sometime last year and got a nice surprise in the mail a few weeks ago!  It is a really beautiful cookbook, well-done, with lots of great recipes.  Thank you Martha Holmberg for putting this together!  We sent in the radish/sugar snap pea recipe.  So healthy of us.  But of course I jump to the dessert section first and get fast to work....a strawberry cake first and then the cocoa beet cake which I just have to say is WOW.  WHOA.  So good.  Ridiculously good.  I feel a little more domestic this pregnancy; been spending more time in the kitchen.  I have been washing dishes (!)(what?!) and vacuuming.  Making full sours (don't worry, I just discovered what that meant a few weeks ago) and canned pickles and for this weekend am planning sweet and sour pickles and some more full sours and canned dills.  No, I'm not craving pickles all the time we just have a gangbuster crop of cucumbers this year.  Cucumbers and beets.

 But it's definitely not all gangbusters this season.  We've lost quite a bit from the garden with all this rain.  Luckily all the wet has kept the temperatures cooler, which makes it feel a little more alright.  And maybe we were due for a more challenging weather year to keep us on our toes.  Helps us be better planners, make wiser decisions.  So much of farming well is about planning.  Definitely a skill to hone.    

Rolling into June

We did it.  Got through May.  I got through the two wedding weekend smoother than imagined.  Another wedding coming up this weekend that should be very nice.  We have a big order of woody cut liners here from Spring Meadows waiting for some love.  A big order of perennials for cutting from North Creek (wow, what an awesome company).  Get me out of this annual cut rat race!  We have no idea where we are putting them.....(should I have admitted that?)...but sometimes it's all about the dive in with farming.  Also this year, peonies and blueberries.  I know, they have been on the list for years, but this is their time!  Our time!  Any time we have before second baby!  AAAGGGHHH!

Our produce is really starting to roll in with lots of delicious eating and amazement at what comes out of such a small space.  With a hell of a lot of effort and love.  It is time to start putting some food up---this is the week for strawberry jam (did I mention on the blog this is our worst berry season ever with all the rain?  Horrible, horrible.  Peak week we picked a measly 10-15 flats.  Disgusting.  Next year we are cutting back by half.)  And also the beginning of cucumber pickling.  Beet pickling.  And I'm so ready to eat that first tomato.  Patience, patience!

Rock Quarry Farm Wedding Flowers

 This one will definitely go down as one of my favorites.  Lots of mind time went into this one, complete with weird flower dreams filled with anxiety and anticipation all week long.  Where bits and pieces of our own wedding and my own weird subconscious showed up for a strange, mingled concoction of reality....where the hell is my dress, what am I doing watching the ocean turn into a whirlpool that oddly enough I want to dive into, did I actually forget to do the bridesmaids bouquets until right before I got into the truck for delivery?......who can really draw the line between reality and the perception of it?  I'm always shocked at the letdown factor after doing something monumental like this.  I tend to feel so raw, exposed, and what is the word...deflated?  Bottomed out?  Like I need a huge glass of wine and a hot bath.  But wait, I can't do either of those.  I think I'm going to bake it all out today and put all the stress and nonsense into a strawberry cheesecake or something.  Although I've been wanting to charter new territory and make a pavlova.

 So, some other big news I've been meaning to share (to help explain the no big glass of wine or hot hot bath), most of you probably know, but for those who don't, I am five months pregnant.  Part of the reason for my insanity this season.  I had the BEST gift from the sweetest of friends waiting for me as I returned home, utterly exhausted and full of weird, unsorted feelings.  A set of wind chimes as a gift for me and the upcoming baby!!!  Wow.  Sarah, if you read this, your heart is as sweet as the sound of the hummingbird hovering close by, as soft as the roundest of rocks worn by eons of waves, and as deep and lovely as I imagine the fjords of Norway.  Thank you thank you thank you.  My heart broke a little in the best of ways when I heard them on the porch.

Mother's Day