Annika's 3rd Birthday

Pictures from Annika's 3rd Birthday party. She wanted to Strawberry Shortcake Cake. And lots of balloons. Her brothers picked out special gifts for her- crayons, an umbrella, candy....

Squash Carving

This year we decided not to buy pumpkins, but to use what we had growing in the garden for our jack-o-lantern carving fun. We have a bucket full of jack-be-little pumpkins that the kids have been painting and carving and decorating with. Annika used one of them as her tiny jack-o-lantern.

It was a little small to get a spoon or hand in to scoop out the seeds, but luckily the chickens were around to lend a hand, or beak...

Cohen and Lakin let the Kamo Kamo squashes get very mature in the garden. Kamo Kamo's are like a summer squash when they are picked young, but as they get mature the begin to turn orange and become more like a winter squash. I love the look of them!

Cale's monster pumpkin plant put out a few more flowers after his big ones were picked. One of the pumpkins ended up sitting in a fence and grew itself stuck, so he destroyed it....But the other turned into a nice sized pumpkin to carve.

Here they are, all lit up!

Carving Big Jack

 

Remember Cale's big pumpkins? One exploded all over the house before the fair, and for awhile we weren't sure his second was going to make it, but it did. And it made it back home. The fungal infection that was invading the stem stopped and he was hopeful that the pumpkin would make it to Halloween. But then....the chickens got it... 

See that hole that goes all the way through to the inside cavity? It's from the chickens pecking and pecking and pecking all day long.  So it was carving time!

Because of the location of the hole Big Jack's face had to be facing a different direction than planned. The hole was incorporated into his mouth, and he's facing the sky.

As you can see the chickens were very excited about carving. I believe a couple even tried to go inside once the top was off.

And here he is all lit up!

Cale's already making plans for next year- and now's the time to prep the soil. Last week we heard that a new world record was set- 2032 lbs!

More Mountain State Fair Entries

 So I missed a few when I shared the kids projects the other day. Like Cale's completed sculpture.

And their baking. 15 total baked goods. Things like snickers fudge, cookie dough fudge, orange chocolate truffles, peanut butter truffles, sweet potato yeast bread, pesto rolls, chocolate crinkles, apple muffins, apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies....

And spaghetti and meatballs cupcakes, skeleton cupcakes, spider cupcakes and sheep cupcakes....

A metal craft robot, bottle cap wind chime and a recycled bottle ice cream truck.

Pottery Rylan and Cale made in a class they took this year, which they entered in the pottery category.

 Rylan's biggest watermelon entry. It was a big one!

13 art pieces (one not shown)...oil, chalk, watercolor, pen, collage, crayon...

8 photos in all...the top 2 are Cale's and Cohen's. The rest are Rylan's which I showed last time.

When we dropped off the big entries were weighed:

 And today we dropped off a few more entries. Rylan's herbs and flowers in the flower show for a grand total of 95 entries between the 4 boys!

Fancy Dresses....and Dirt

 Earlier this summer my mom gave Annika a dress. She called it her "fancy dress" and she loved it. Then Paul's grandmother found a dress on sale and gave her another "fancy dress".  Then a couple weeks ago we found a third at the Goodwill Outlet.

 She wears them any chance she gets. And with three of them, one always seems to be clean, which means these dresses are pretty much in constant wear.

But she lives on a farm. And has 4 big brothers to keep up with. And, although she loves fancy dresses, she also loves dirt.

 And no matter what, at the end of the day. Those fancy dresses aren't quite so fancy anymore.

But they are covered in mud and dirt and are usually sopping wet too. 

Peach Pickin'

Last week we went peach picking at a local U-pick orchard. 

Rylan was absolutely in love with the orchard and came home with a perfect vision of how he wants his future orchard to look.  And I will say it was nice- the trees were all pruned and kept to a accessible height. Even Annika could reach a lot of the fruits.

 We picked a ton. In about 15 min. A total of 5 bushels- with one half bushel being nectarines.

 See that nectarine Cale is holding? They were huge! We had 3 carts full of fruit  to bring home with us.

Aren't the beautiful. I love the color! And the kids had a blast, and would have picked more if we had let them.

We also picked a gallon of blackberries while we were there. They had apples too, but those weren't quite ready.

Then I spent just over 2 days in the kitchen. Peeling and cutting and boiling and canning. In total I got 84 quarts of peaches. And the knife only slipped once! Which in my book is a success! We still have a fair amount of nectarines left for eating and a few peaches to make some preserves. 

If you've never canned peaches and are planning on it, I've written up the how-to over on The Free Range Life!