I pulled another 15 pounds of tomatoes from the garden last night. We listened to thunder for almost an hour and a half when the storm took a dramatic right turn and missed us altogether. Who knew harvesting orange tomatoes early had that much atmospheric influence?!
San Marz aren't prone to splitting, but the others are, so I now have 40 pounds of tomatoes on the counter. Only about 15 pounds are ready to process. The rest are under dark towels to ripen up more.
Getting DS back to the dorm today. I'll have the house to myself again on Monday when DH goes in to work, so it's processing day, and whole house scrub down, music cranked up, house will smell like bleach and pinesol when he gets home day.
They aren't messy, but after 6 months, I just couldn't keep up with their crumb dropping, dribbling, dust ignoring excesses. How do they NOT see it?!
The whole acreage needs mowed as well. I'll figure that out later. I'm not one to mow on a weekly schedule. If it looks ok, it can wait. It sucks 3.5 hours out of my day when I have to do it.
Was at my flower friends yesterday, dropping off some mustard pods for her flower shop. A woman and her three small boys dropped by and bought a bouquet. They were just taking a trip out of one local town to visit anywhere to get out of the house to burn some energy before naptime. She asked for honey, but friend doesn't have any this year. I told her that if she wanted to follow me home 5 miles (it's on her way home) I'm licensed to sell honey and eggs, and that the boys could come see chickens, and alpacas, and get a photo on the windmill.
So off we went. I'm sure she thought she was going to hear banjos any minute, my place looks out there, but it's just off the state park, so it's sparse, people-wise. The 5 and 4 year old were in awe of the chickens. (The chickens are terrified of little people and squashed as far away from the kids as they could.) THey were well behaved and so I took them in the henhouse, where Delmar was NOT happy about being interrupted in the henhouse, so she left. But the movement and noise drew the 5 year old's attention to the nest boxes. "AN EGG!" he shouted.
Well that got his brother's attention, and you could actually hear the click in their head when they made the realization that eggs come from something, and that's NOT the grocery store. I let them gather all the eggs, and they ran off to the apple orchard, then they spotted the "camels". LOL.
Now the alpacas LOVE little people. NO idea why. But they were all sweet, and licky licky, and sniffy smelly, and nose kisses. Then the boys rain up to the windmill for a quick photo. They were adorable free-range children. They loved the wide open space.
I sent mom home with the kids eggs, and washing instructions and a clean empty carton to put them in and a small jar of last year's honey. I didn't charge for the eggs, and I only charged 5$ for the honey, but Maybe I'll have a new customer. If nothing else, the kids had a good time!