Monday, July 30, 2012

Summer Fun

What do you get when you cross a hot Saturday afternoon, a hose and a long tarp?  Some Summer Fun

On Saturday Grandpa came up with a fun activity for the little girls.  He pulled out an old tarp from the barn, staked it down on the lawn, added a small slide and a hose, creating our own little water slide.  At first the girls were hesitant, not knowing exactly what to do but Uncle Zach joined in the fun and showed them how it was done.  After they got started there was no stopping them.  They would have continued for the whole afternoon if the adults hadn't got tired. 







Sydney discovered how fun it can be to roll UP the hill and DOWN again.  

Life is so GRAND when you are a kid!!!

The HARVEST has begun

So it is that time of year again.  The vegetables are coming on and they need to be harvested almost daily.  It has been a very hot dry summer and a lot of the veggies have struggled to produce much crop.  The beans have done fine and the peas are holding their own.  Some days it feels like a never ending job of picking and either snapping beans or shelling peas. 

It's not soooo bad when you get help. Especially cute little helpers like this one.   Gracie and Sydney and Amber all helped although Sydney had more fun dumping the bucket of peas.  Gracie stuck with it to the end and then even came to help snap the beans and shell the peas.  What a GREAT helper she is.  And so happy about it too.  She was so excited when she figured out how to open the pea pod.


And here are the results of one days worth of bean picking. Won't they taste yummy in the dead of winter.

9 bags of green beans
With the drought we didn't get a very good crop of raspberries this year.  I had just enough to make a batch of raspberry jam and a another one of Raspberry/Blueberry.   I also picked enough gooseberries to make one pie.  The zucchini are producing very slowly and I haven't seen any cucumbers yet.  There are a few small squash .  Half of my plant died even though we tried to keep them watered.  I guess they just couldn't take the heat. My tomato plants are barely up to my knee and have only a few tomatoes on them.  I guess I will be purchasing my tomatoes at the market for making salsa this year. 

I am hoping to get/make time to can peaches and pears this year.  If I can just coordinate with those lovely daughter of mine (all 5 of them?) maybe we can have a production line going and get enough for everyone. 

Here's to a hopeful harvest at Bellyacher Acres.


Saturday, July 7, 2012

I scream, You scream .....

So what do you get when you cross fresh raspberries from the garden


with fresh goats milk?


Delicious home made ice cream and raspberries!!!



I found an easy recipe on line for homemade ice cream.  This is exactly how much ice cream it made too.  Just enough for a taste.  And it was soo yummy.  I didn't share it with anyone either!!!

To make the ice cream I used:

1/2 cup fresh goats milk (or you could use half and half cream)
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla

Place ingredients in a sandwich size ziplock bag.

In a large ziplock bag put 3 cups of ice and 1/3 cup rock salt.  Add your small ziplock bag.  Zip up tight.  

Now toss the bag back and forth between your hands.  Work it!!  Grab a tea towel cause its going to get very cold.  Keep playing with the bag of ice/ice cream for 5-10 min.  

Voila, you now have ice cream.