Summer Joys

Our table at the Freight House Farmer's Market

Smiling sunflowers and peacock orchids in the midst of spring and early summer honey and yellow Romano beans

Pulling stiff neck garlic.  It's now or never with this amazing wet summer.

More soil than usual but they will dry and clean up nicely in a week or two.

Copra, Spanish Yellow and Red River onions.  A bumper harvest.

Stripped of their greenery.  These will dry nicely.  And then they too will be ready for cleaning.

White lisianthus and sunflowers

Beauty in the wild.  Chickory.

The pumpkins and gourds are growing

Black raspberries - fall bearing - preparing their fruit.  A week or so away.  Can't wait to pick (and eat!) these beauties.

Gomphrena in morning dew and sunlight.

Today's Journey Joys: Cooler temperatures (84 degrees today) with sun shining bright, Jersey Giant rooster announcing the break of the morning, honey bees cleaning supers, turkeys gobbling at Farmer Husband's motorcycle, kittens playful and puffy, pole beans climbing for fall harvesting, and tomatoes red and juicy.

Dew Drop In

Benary Zinnias

Irish Eyes Rudbeckia heavy with thick dew

Bumble & Phenomenal Lavender

Rose Lisianthus

Eight in the morning and the bees are hot already.  I better check this hive for space.  They may have slept out on the porch last night due to the heat and lack of room.  Should probably put another super on the hive.  Yum, more honey!

Denver Daisy Rudbeckia

Our friendly pair of bug eaters

Creating bouquets at the market

Ally, my super helper, filling new potato containers at the market on Saturday.

Washing leeks.

The Highlander loaded down with sunflowers, stargazer lilies, lisianthus, zinnias and liatris. 

Clouds filled with moisture - we've gotten 8 inches of rain on the farm in the past two weeks.  We could use a break so that I can plant the fall beans, beets, sunflowers, peas, spinach, kale, lettuce and scallions.

Today's Journey Joys: air conditioners in 95+ heat and excessive humidity, flowers blooming, cheerios with fresh blueberries, kittens growing and taming, aerial applicators friendly &willing to work with this bee keeper.

Summer's Bounty

Sunflowers sweet and golden (photo by Stacy Z)

Still picking..... accompanied by Ally's new little kitten.

My good friend Stacy picking blueberries and being "helped" by Lil' Boots. Love that hat!

Stacy and Ally among the blueberries.  Eat two, pick one.....

My predator kite - keeping birds and bunnies away....

95 degrees, hot and humid.... but still going.  The berries delicious!

Judy, (Ally) and Amy.  New U-pickers on our farm.  They were great pickers! Ally sang to them all morning. :-) 

Shasta daisies smiling.

Don't you just want to grab a bunch and plop them in your mouth?  Ah.... yum!

Ally's first pint she picked all by herself.  I think there is a young farmer here!

Today's Journey Joys: cool morning showers, honey harvest of spring clear honey and summer golden honey - creamy tasting and oh-so-smooth, breakfast of coffee and yummy treats with friends, an adventurous trip to California for Dad and Ben, fall pole bean planting, dreams of remodeling and building a "farm kitchen".

Summer Picks

Patriot Blueberries - plump and delicious

Hanging baskets - they didn't sell but they sure make the farm pretty

"Mumbos" - three-colored chrysanthemums growing

Lavender - one of my most favorite fragrances and flowers 

Ally's new kitten, "Lil' Boots"

Potting up perennial mums "Igloos"

Chickens on the oat straw - getting rid of the seeds before I put the straw on the strawberries

The weeds in the hoop house are bigger than me.

Tom Turkey among the grasses

Ally's shadow.  She is a great photographer - captures images by seeing the amazing.

Today's Journey Joys: U-pickers enjoying blueberry picking, turkeys learning to gobble, eight baby kittens playing and tumbling, cool weather in early July, sunflowers blooming, raspberries beginning, friends with laughter, wood for burning, and a promise of six more honey supers ready to harvest today.