Green Energy

I loaded the boys up on garden greens before soccer practice tonight.

Liam promised to practice listening to Coach Mike. Seamus vowed to stop messing around with the net (he is not the goalie).  The boys were overflowing with energy by the time practice started but they both managed to stay (mostly) focused. 

It was a lovely evening for a soccer game and these two crazy munchkins ran their hearts out.  I consider the fact that neither boy tried to wear the pylons as a hat this week a solid win. 

They definitely earned their end-of-game rocket ship Popsicle tonight (and I think they enjoyed it substantially more than the bowl of leaves that I fed them for supper).

Liquid Amber

Behold our first two jars of honey from 2019. I expect that there will be many more to come. Interesting to note that one full shallow honey frame produces almost exactly 1 kg of honey.

A Sweet Father's Day

I tried to sell the idea that we should let Daddy sleep in this morning but the boys were so excited to bring him breakfast in bed that poor Ian ended up being awoken by 7 am.  At least he got to take an uninterrupted shower - ah, the small things.

I took the boys shopping for Father's Day at the dollar store the other day, they picked out Daddy's favourite treats and spent a ton of time wrapping up their gifts for him just right.  

Liam and Seamus could not wait for Daddy to open everything up.  They were so eager that they could not resist helping him a bit.

Liam was especially proud of the card he made for Papa at school.  I may have teared up a little at the line, "Tu es mon super heros".  It was beautifully done and so incredibly sweet.

In other sweet news, the weather finally cooperated and I was able to inspect my hives this afternoon.  This week, we have three hives and a nuc with laying queens, one hive and a nuc with virgin queens who are not laying yet, and one queenless hive.  That is not too bad.  I had two honey frames that I needed the bees to clean up and so I swapped them out for frames of capped honey.

I cut the cappings off and we are leaving the frames on top of a cookie sheet to drip drain.  This will be our first honey from 2019. 

What a sweet day.  Happy Father's Day Ian - we love you so much!

Brew by Two

Ian and I did concurrent brews today.  He made a base American wheat beer.  He took some of the wort and is fermenting it with a German Hefeweizen yeast for something different and perhaps for competition.  His plan is for part of the wheat beer to be fermented with some of the 22 pounds of passion fruit puree we ordered yesterday from Oregon.  We are also dreaming about passion fruit jam for Christmas gifts, passion fruit flavoured yogurt, and passion fruit kombucha.

My brew in the foreground and Ian's in the back.

On the topic of kombucha, I brewed a new batch today.  For the second ferment of my finished batch I added lemon ginger flavoured tea and bottled.  I then brewed new sweet black tea and refilled my mason jars for the next round.  My previous lychee flavoured batch turned out to be delicious and is days away from being carbonated enough to go in the fridge.  All is looking well in the kombucha department lately.

Since the bad weather prohibited our planned painting and fencing, a family brew day was not a bad way to spend this rainy Saturday. 

A Veggi-rific Bundle

Our Week #2 CSA basket was another success. It included: green leaf, red leaf and iceberg lettuces, winter and strawberry spinach, garland, arugula, endive, watercress, chard, radishes, red scallions, cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower leaves, kale, dill, parsley, garlic chives, pea shoots, daikon micro greens, wasabi mustard micro greens, red clover micro greens, wheat grass (for smoothies), and a dozen farm fresh eggs.

This week’s bonus item is homemade honey lavender yogurt.

Something our basket did not include was rhubarb. For a plant that is supposed to be easy to grow, I am having a heck of a time getting it going.

Such a sad, meagre harvest.

I have been trying to be patient but I just had to snip enough (off seven plants!) to make a batch of rhubarb-raspberry muffins and a rhubarb-apple crisp.

Thank goodness I have more luck growing greens than I do rhubarb!

Two Thumbs Up for Lambie Hammies

With a little (okay, a lot of) effort I redeemed myself and managed to earn two thumbs up in the dinner department - no, I did not cave and serve Kraft dinner.

Tonight's dinner selection was lamb burgers with garden salad.

We used red scallions, garlic chives, oregano and radishes from the garden.

Lots of fresh greens too.

Homemade buns.

And our homegrown lamb meat, of course.

"Look Mom, I cleaned my plate!" 
He ate a whole burger!

During dinner Ian and I reflected on the incredible amount of time and effort that went into this particular meal.  From breeding the sheep, bottle feeding one of lambs, and helping him nurse until Violet, a first time mama, got everything figured out.  To harvesting the ram lambs and the incredibly long time it took to clean and butcher the meat ourselves.  To planting the vegetable seeds and transplanting the baby sprouts.  To weeding, watering, harvesting, and cleaning the vegetables.  To baking the buns, including the mixing, stretch and folding, and two rises.  Not to mention, preparing and cooking the meal.  And doing the dishes.  It is quite amazing when we stopped to think about it.

To make up for last night's dessert flop, tonight I served homemade frozen chocolate ice milk.  So much simpler and, thankfully, very well received.

Especially when topped with tiny score bits or super mini chocolate chips.

In the end I received two thumbs up.

I suppose that makes up for the two solid thumbs down that they gave me last night?  And you know what the kicker is about feeding kids?  They would have been just as happy with a box of Kraft dinner.

Lovin' Lavender...Maybe?

Our day culminated with honey lavender ice cream.  However, it took us a while to get there.

Continuing our quest to eat off the farm, today's lunch included: daikon and clover microgreens, lettuce, garlic chives, scallions and homemade bread.

All fuelled up, we harvested lavender from the garden and combined it with our wild flower honey and some store bought milk and cream (I cannot wait until we have goat milk on the farm!) to make a batch of homemade honey lavender ice cream.

Feeling inspired by the honey and lavender combination, I decided that I might like to include homemade honey lavender yogurt as the bonus item in our CSA basket this week.  We got to work...

Yogurt making is a lengthy process so we ate dinner in between.  We had grilled deer chops, asparagus and a delicious salad made from the most beautiful head of red lettuce in the garden.

I actually planted this lettuce last august and it is finally ready to eat!  Talk about being in for the long haul.

I remembered to add radishes this time!

Instead of salad dressing we topped it with sprinkle of brown sugar and a drizzle of white vinegar - a trick I learned from GG.

Amazing, you say?  Well, the boys hated it.  This was not a winner in the kid department.  They also detested the ice cream.  Apparently to them, lavender tastes like stinky soap smells.  Ian's verdict on the ice cream: "It is good...sort of."  Hopefully the honey-lavender favour profile is more popular with our CSA families that it was with mine.