Eggs, Eggs, more Eggs, and Toad in the Hole

As more of our chicks from this spring start to lay eggs our daily egg count is slowly climbing up.  The last two days we got 19 each day, but today we got 21.  We do love our eggs, but it may start to get out of hand, so we will see if we can peddle some to friends, family, or neighbors.

Sure glad we saved the cartons from Costco.

Ethan has been put in charge of helping to prepare breakfast during the week.  He has always like to cook, or bake.

Here he is cooking up some Toad in the Hole.  That is what we call it when you cut a hole out of your bread and cook the egg in the middle.  Super yummy!

Since we are talking about food, here is another one of our favorite breakfast treats.

Dutch Baby Pancakes

We have enjoyed these for years.  However with Jennie and Mia staying away from dairy, we now make a non-dairy and a dairy, hence the slightly different look to them.  Jennie can usually throw these together pretty quickly and they taste great with maple syrup, or a mixture of lemon juice and powdered sugar.

This is making me hungry, I am going to have to cut it off here and have some popcorn.

Family Pictures

With Jennie's sister (Julie) and her family in town this summer we wanted to get some good family photos taken.  Luckily it worked out to have our friends mom take the photos for us, up at their house, which is very nicely landscaped.  Here are some fun photos I took (not the professional ones!).

Mr. Casual

All those fancy photographers always have some at an odd angle.

Grandkids!!

Mr. Casual laughing.

Best Cousins Forever (BCF)!

Ethan entertaining Lily with piggy-back rides.

Having fun.

Mr. Serious

Princess Mia

Hmmmm..... Princess Lily

Serious full speed ahead.

Mr. Casual sprinting.

Chicken Bling/Bracelets

Our chickens now have bracelets.  It dawned me as our chicks got older that we would have hard time telling them apart.  Currently our plan is to have them lay eggs for two or so years and then move them to the  crock pot.  The bracelets allows us to tell how old a bird is and whether her time has come.  There are a couple of places you can get them, but we got ours here http://www.cutlersupply.com/ .

 

We got three colors as I figured worst case they would live 3 years, and then we will repeat the colors.

The oldest ladies got the pink bracelets.  It is a two person job, one to hold the chicken and one to open up the bracelet and get it around their leg.  It is like a keyring, but the plastic allows you to pull it all the way open, and it springs back when you let go.

They don't seem to mind them.

This lady is showing off her new bracelet.

Summer Garden Update

Here are a few pictures of the garden from the last month or two.

In the picture below the long bushy row is our potatoes, both Yukon Gold and some blue ones.

In the cages are some bell pepper starts, and the little row on the right are tomato starts, that we got cheap as it was kind of late in the season for starts.

We planted a 50' row of sweet peas, but only about a 12' section grew, but we enjoyed what the Lord did provide.

Below are our zucchini just starting to grow, and we are now overrun with them.  We had numerous volunteer plants come up as well, and one of those is the largest plant we have.

Below is Lily in front of a volunteer, that is not even getting watered it is going crazy!

We planted a 15'x15' patch of sweet corn and only had 6-7 plants come up, and they were swallowed up by weeds as I counted it a lost cause with so few plants.  Last year they grew pretty well, but in a different spot.

Here is one of our first bell peppers.  We may only get a dozen or so.  We really would like to have a bunch of plants so that we could cut them up and freeze them to be used later.  Maybe next year we will get our seeds started early enough.

This is a tomato on Ethan's plant.  He is always looking for the big Beef Steak tomatoes.

Our blueberry bushes did pretty well this year, we could probably use another 15-20 bushes.  We still ended up going to a u-pick to stock up for the year.   Now I just need to learn how to prune the bushes.  If you know how, stop on by!

NOT OUR GARDEN

THIS IS WHAT I PRAY OUR GARDEN WILL LOOK LIKE SOMEDAY

This is the garden of my dad's cousin, and it is gorgeous.  He sent us home with a huge handful of chard.

So, currently we are eating romaine lettuce from our garden and it seems to be doing well.  We still have some turnips growing, a couple of sunflowers, some sweet meat squash, and possibly some acorn.  Our tomatoes are starting to turn from green to orange, and our green beans are climbing.  The slicing cucumbers are climbing their trellis, which is very exciting and we had one the other day, it was delicious.

While on vacation a deer blew through our fencing.  My first trip through the garden when we got back I noticed that the green beans appeared to have been nipped off about 4' up, and then I noticed our raspberry canes were just stalks with all the leaves gone.  Then I found the massive hole in the fencing.  Our fencing is a 4' high metal fence with the deer netting taking it up to about 7', and so far this has worked pretty well.  Although the deer netting is so fine sometimes I wonder if they can see it.  Ethan asked "why do they call it deer fencing if they can jump through it??"  Good question!  Another reason they were able to take advantage of our garden was that the motion sprinkler "Scarecrow" battery was dead.

Zucchini overtaking our kitchen island.

Hash browns.  Some of the potatoes were sliced by the shovel and would not store well, so we cooked them and then shredded them to be frozen and used as hash browns later.  No that is not mold, that is our blue/purple potatoes.

Something we did differently with the potatoes this year, is that we did not water them at all.  We did mound dirt on the one long row, and put some straw around them, but that is it, and they seem to have grown pretty well.  Potatoes are not one of those huge cost savers, by growing your own, but they are fairly easy, and fun.  The kids have been working off and on all week to dig them up.

Girly Bunk Beds

Wow, we are way behind on our posts.  This one dates back to late June.

We knew at some point we would need bunk beds for the girls, but our timeline was pushed up a little when we found out our niece and nephews would come stay with us for a short period.  We were looking for something inexpensive but sturdy.  We found a few people on Craigslist that make them to order and opted to go that route.

Since it was put together with lag screws there was a lot of ratcheting to be done and both boys were a big help.  As it turns out it is taller than the boys bunk bed, but it is kind of nice as you have more headroom on the lower bunk.  Mia loves it.  Lily was still sleeping in her toddler bed for a little while, and actually just recently moved into the lower bunk.

Finished bed with new bedding.

This does not have anything to do with the bed, it was just wandering through our yard with its mother.