Spinach Specialist

With the big boys out with Daddy for some bonding time, Alistair and I were left to our own devises.  After a long walk around the neighbourhood, Alistair took charge of harvesting some absolutely massive spinach leaves for our supper salad.

We have had great luck with Olympia spinach this year.  This is our third planting, this one is in between the tomato plants in the main garden, and the leaves got huge!  This spinach is sweet, crunchy and oh so delicious.

Our little harvester is a spinach specialist indeed.

A Pair of Fancy Pants

Seamus was hankering for a change and asked me for a new hair cut.  He was so thrilled with my creation (amazing, I know) that he decided to give his daddy the exact same cut.  When Seamus took an overly ambitious swipe with the electric razor and half Ian's beard fell off, I laughed harder than I have in ages.  Ian was an excellent sport about it and now both he and Seamus are proudly sporting bare faces along with their new summer hair dos.  They are indeed a pair of fancy pants.

Killin' the Kale

We are really, really good at growing kale.  Like really good.  It is taking over the garden.  In an effort to control it, we have been eating lots of kale.  Tonight it was roasted kale chips with grilled tofu and a parsley-couscous salad.  I love when parsley is ready in the garden.  Until kale (yech!), parsley makes excellent salads! Yum.

A Sunday Hike

Cognizant of the scorching weather, we took advantage of the recent opening of the Quebec-Ontario border and headed into the shady forest of Gatineau Park.  I have never felt more like I was in Cuba - except when I was actually in Cuba.  The forest was sweltering - it felt tropical - hot, humid and moist.

Thanks to summer hiking conditions and with Ian accompanying us this time, we were able to complete the Carbide Willson Ruins and Meech Lake Falls trail that we attempted this past spring and had to abandon.  The water level was significantly lower today and the falls and trail across them much, much safer.  The fertilizer factory ruins were awesome and the boys enjoyed the waterfalls.

We hiked 8.5 km in the hottest weather we have experienced yet.  The trail near the ruins was busy upon our return trip but the rest of the trail was empty, except for oodles of mosquitoes (perhaps why other hikers turned back?).  Poor Alistair apparently has the sweetest blood in the family.

It was a great, though, very hot Sunday hike.

A Saturday Ride

Remember back in the day when people used to go on a Sunday drive?  Today, Liam and I fit in a Saturday ride.  We left Alistair napping and Seamus and Daddy cleaning out the cars.  Liam and I pedalled all over the neighbourhood and got some good resistance training thanks to all the gusty wind.  It was a great day for an afternoon bike ride.

Creating a Refuge from the Rain

We are in for some much needed wet weather over the next few days, so we took today to clean out the barns and bed everything down with fresh, dry straw.  The animals will likely get a bit soggy outside but it will be nice for them to have a clean and comfortable refuge from the summer time downpour.

Ava was not nearly as interested in the barn mucking as she was in enticing Seamus into giving her belly scratches.  Who doesn't love a good belly scratch?!

We also worked on laundry, grocery shopping and dropping off a donation of a bunch of outgrown kids' clothes and Alistair's high chair.  Our boys are growing like weeds (and I am thrilled to finally be rid of that bulky high chair in the dining room - yahoo!).

It was a busy Friday.  We are looking forward to a relaxing yet productive weekend.  Have a good one, everyone!

It's Delithith

Seamus is growing up!  He lost his front tooth today.  He was so proud.

After

Before

Seamus was super happy to eat an apple comfortably again and declared the pasta we had for dinner "delithith".  It was indeed delicious but so is his new lisp.  Loving it.

Death Nap

No matter how many times it happens, it is always disconcerting to look over and see a goat laying flat out.  Martha is the queen of the death nap.  She gives me heart failure every single time.

P.S. She looks dead but she is totally and completely fine.  Just napping like a champ after an enormous breakfast.

Buttercup Blossoms

After another big tidying day - we tackled the toy disaster in the basement and play room - we all needed some fresh air and exercise after supper.  We took a family walk around the neighbourhood breathing in all the fresh, crisp evening air.  Seamus picked me a bouquet of wild flowers.  Buttercups are my favourite!

 

Reclaiming What is Mine

We continued our (somewhat belated) spring cleaning stint, focusing on de-cluttering (read: de-toyifying) our living room.  Toy boxes full of heaps of mixed up toys is my kryptonite.  Unfortunately, it is also my reality.  Sigh.

With the big boys' help,  after eight long years, I finally reclaimed my living room.  All the toys were banished to either the basement or the upstairs toy room.  We re-alphabetized my library and returned the books to the shelves at all levels now that Alistair is able to understand and respect the "no touchy Mama's books!" rule.

The living room looks fantastic...the basement and toy room, not so much.  Double sigh.

While we were busy indoors today, Pecky Becky was also busy - getting up to mischief in the chicken coop.  I have no idea what happened but I found her completely splattered with egg yolk.  #farmmysteries

Daddy's Day?

The boys were beyond excited to celebrate their wonderful daddy today.  They planned him the "perfect" day which ended up being straight out of a Critter book.

They gifted him with an early wake up call (Ian is not a morning person), a new fishing reel (which Liam almost broke less than a minute after Ian opened it), and loads of their "help" sausage making (there were lots of deep, calming breaths involved).

They then treated him to ice cream (Ian is moderately lactose intolerant).

And took him for a car wash with flashing lights and rainbow soap (literally the boys' favourite thing to do).

The boys had a fabulous day.  Daddy is exhausted and I'll bet very grateful that Father's Day comes only once per year.  Happy Father's Day Ian!  We look forward to many, many more utterly exhausting years and giving you even more grey hair.  Our family is so lucky to have you as our Daddy Bear.

A Classier Burn

We are happy to report that after some serious gardening effort, the weed-fest in our chicken coop vegetable garden is now under control.  I am sure our growing potato and garlic plants are grateful for the extra room and sunshine.

With our pond re-done and tea garden built, the front of the house spruced up and flower gardens weeded, and the veggie gardens in tip top shape, we are now ready to move on to our next farm improvement project: a backyard fire pit.  As useful as our burn barrel is, I am very much looking forward to a classier set up to host our backyard burns.

We got this new project underway today by starting a bonfire (to burn up the last of the cedar bushes from the front yard) on top of an old stump from a weed tree that occupies the spot upon which we plan to build our fire pit.  Next we will install a metal fire ring surrounded by bricks.  We have plans to refinish our Adirondack chairs, buy/build a few new ones and relocate some large pine stumps from Grandma's cottage to act as side tables/extra seating.

Anyway, Step #1 is watching the cedar burn and I must say that this is certainly easier than weeding the garden.  I should have started building a fire pit a long time ago and delegated the weeding to someone else!

Lovage Overload

Our garden harvests are ramping up.  I love having enough variety to make whole meals from the garden.  Of all our plants, the kale has really taken off - typical.  Despite being very good for us, kale is unanimously our family's least favourite vegetable.  We are very good at growing it, however.

I am always looking for good ways to disguise the strong taste of kale in our meals.  My most recent attempt: scape stir fry.  I did well using a bunch of different vegetables from the garden: green onions, garlic scapes, borage leaves, chard, lovage, cabbage leaves, snap peas, wine cap mushrooms and, of course, kale.

I am not sure why the lovage (a perennial herb whose flavour is supposed to emulate celery) is so flavourful this year.  Maybe the dry weather has concentrated its taste? On the plus side with all the lovage taste we could not even taste the kale.  On the down side, the stir fry overwhelming tasted of lemony celery - like, a lot.  

Our stir fry was definitely not the best tasting meal in history but it certainly was healthy and filled us up.  It might be time to revert back to Mme. Gaelle's soup - a favourite around here - to use up our next kale harvest.  Luckily that recipe does not call for lovage.

Goats are Weirdos

We are still behind in our garden maintenance duties, but at least we are doing better than our goats. The goats' paddock is now so long that the grass is going to seed.  The goats are not trying very hard at all to keep it mowed.  In fact, they would rather prance around on their hind legs stretching to eat the leaves off the bottoms of trees than munch on any of their plentiful and very easily accessible grass.  

Unlike the goats, we are not ignoring our overgrown landscape.  We continued to work on vegetable gardening today shifting our focus to the chicken coop garden.  It is a mess - a garden full of prickly plants and heaps of weeds of all sorts.

Yes, this is actually a garden of rows of garlic, potatoes and vegetables.
I know you can't tell.

Yikes!

 After an hour or so of weeding, Liam and I managed to at least find the rows of vegetables.

We still have a long way to go - the potatoes and garlic need some major attention - but at least we are better landscapers than our goats.  Goats are weirdos.