Friday Farm Photo: Have a Freshly Picked Weekend.

Any plans this weekend? Summer has already arrived in full force on the farm, with sweat-drenching humidity and temperatures predicted to stay up in the 90's for the next week, so I'll be spending a lot of time watering the kitchen garden and eating mixed green salads.

I also have my eye on the new little gravel-bottomed swimming hole Tractor Joe carved out of our beloved and refreshing wet weather creek, which has been running steady for several weeks thanks to over eight inches of rain in May, though it will probably dry up in the next few days. Tall glasses of fresh mint sun tea that we brew in half-gallon canning jars (we use these jars with plastic lids for so many things), plenty of ice. The spearmint patch is going nuts. Maybe a batch of homemade coconut almond granola, with raisins and organic apple slices I dried last fall and fresh Jersey milk from down the road. A cool and easy, no-think breakfast.

Then there's all that catching up to do in the laundry and dishes department after five days of having no hot water, which actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, probably because it isn't the middle of winter. But it sure is nice having the hot water heater working again. Such a luxury we so often take for granted. The cold showers were tolerable but with the amount of cooking and baking I do, heating up vats of water on the stove to wash dishes got old real fast.

My hunky farmguy will be spending the weekend tackling the never ending spring/summer tasks of mowing grass and weedeating around the farmyard with breaks for woodworking, bottling beer, tractor maintenance, and hopefully installing the final new oak step on the staircase. It looks beautiful! The dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, and donkeys will be hoping for treats and chilling out in the shade.

Garden notes: We've slowly been replacing the rotted wood on my fifteen-year-old 4' x 8' raised beds with 12-inch wide fake wood decking boards from Lowe's. (I'm sure there's a real name for this stuff, but I just always call it fake wood.) The cost is about $100 per bed (verses about $2 in local rough-cut pine boards for each of the original 21 beds which started falling apart years ago), but they should theoretically last forever.

We built the first ones a few years ago, and I love them. The height is great, and it also makes it easier to yank garden hoses around without having them jump onto the plants. (The raised beds all supposed to be filled soil, but some of the new ones were put in place last fall around beds that were already planted.)

The metal hoops are made from inexpensive 1/2" EMT (I think it was about $2.50 for a 10-foot piece), shaped using the handy dandy bender we bought last year from Johnny's. Before that Joe had rigged up a homemade version from plywood, but this one works so much better. You can make the hoops taller or shorter depending on how far you push them into the ground, and they also worked fine in a couple of beds that didn't have any sides on them yet.

We have the EMT on eight garden beds so far, and over the winter I covered them with 6 ml thick clear plastic to make mini hoophouses. Then in early spring I removed the plastic and draped old sheets and frost blankets over the frames at night to protect the plants from cold. And when it started to heat up during the days, I clamped old sheets over the beds to shade the cool season lettuce, arugula, and spinach. Both the clear plastic and the old sheets are attached to the hoops with those little 1" quick-grip metal clamps that are so useful around the farm.

The greens in the closest bed are Swiss chard (except for a lone lacinato kale plant), overwintered as tiny plants and now handling the sweltering heat with no problem, which is more than I can say for myself. Plus unlike kale, which I also grow nearly year round, the ravenous cabbage worms (who are out in force) ignore Swiss chard. Unfortunately the striped cucumber beetles (which pretty much decimated nearly everything in my garden last fall during a freak invasion) and the nightmarish blister beetles do like it. Grass clippings make an excellent weed-suppressing mulch.

Those of you who have been visiting here a while know much I love delicious, nutritious, easy-to-grow-from-seed Swiss chard, and that for years I've been on a one farmgirl mission to convince everyone to try growing it. Fordhook Giant (pictured), which makes me think of Jurassic Park because the leaves get so big, always does well here but I especially like the prettier and smaller (and probably more nutritious) red, yellow, and orange varieties.

Our chickens love to eat Swiss chard too, so excess bounty or bug-ravaged leaves never go to waste. In fact I just fed them a 5-gallon bucket full direct seeded spring thinnings from another bed.

Wondering what to do with Swiss chard? Simply toss young leaves in salads, saute chopped stems and bigger leaves in olive oil, or try some Swiss Chard Tuna Salad with Scallions and Kalamatas, Swiss Chard and Artichoke White Pizza, or Swiss Chard Cabbage Salad with Garbanzos and Cottage Cheese.

Friday Dose of Cute: Have a Fun Weekend.

Visiting young friends (and donkeys) enjoying treat time in Donkeyland. (Love longears? Lots more donkey pics here.)

Any plans this weekend? We're staying around the farm as usual (by choice). Joe will be busy with lawn care and yet more vehicle maintenance (not by choice). Last week we had to sneak along the gravel back roads into town in our back up back up vehicle so we could go vote. Sometimes I wish the guys at the auto parts store didn't know us quite so well.

On the other hand, lawn care means the grazing fields are also growing up, and that's just what we want this time of year. The sheep and donkeys are very tired of eating hay, especially when they can smell all that fresh green grass.

It looks like my mantra this weekend is going to be Garden, garden, garden, with hopefully lots of nice clean laundry blowing on the sunny line, or if it starts to cloud up, I'll hang it out as rain bait. We need as much moisture right now as we can get.

Between the warm weather and a few little thunderstorms over the past week, everything is growing so fast you can practically see it. In no time the woods are going to be completely filled in and leafed out, which even after all these years always kind of blows my mind.

Lots more farm and garden news below. . .

Wednesday Farm Photos: It's Spring!

Jasper is so much help in the kitchen garden. Not.

Spring: The time of year on a farm when it feels like you're already behind before it even begins.

Whew! The weeks of snow and ice finally ended and we went straight up into the 70's. My hunky farmguy Joe and I would actually prefer at least another month of winter—minus the treacherous layer of ice covering everything—but Mother Nature is having none of it.

The birds are chirping, the peepers are peeping, the grass is growing, the daffodils are blooming, and last week we saw at least a couple of thousand geese heading north. The butterflies are out and the rhubarb is up.

The kale and spinach and cilantro (which loves cold weather) and Swiss chard (so easy to grow!) that I managed to keep alive this winter despite single digit temps (some outside in raised beds, some in the unheated homemade greenhouse) are taking off and already finding their way into our nightly salads, along with the first freshly snipped chives.

More photos and story below. . .

Recipe: Italian Countryside Raw Tomato Pasta Sauce and a Tomato Growing Report

This simple and flavorful fresh tomato pasta sauce with basil, capers, and olives lets you escape to the Italian countryside for an end of tomato season celebration (recipe here).

Autumn already? Yes, please. The leaves have started to turn here in Missouri, and the oppressive heat and energy-sucking humidity of summer are history (I think). But just because we've already had a few nights down in the low 40s doesn't mean I'm giving up on the heirloom tomatoes and basil in my kitchen garden just yet.

As usual, I was late getting most of my tomato plants into the ground this spring, although I did manage to start them all from seed, along with a bunch of pepper plants, for the first time in years. Unfortunately I somehow forgot to start any basil seeds, despite probably having five or six different varieties in my stash, so I ended up with just a few purchased purple plants because by the time I realized I was basilless (new word), everybody was already sold out of green. (Got some beautiful purple basil? Here's what to do with it.)

My four sprawling gold nugget cherry tomato plants, which were loaded with sweet little fruits and planted first so I would get ripe tomatoes as soon as possible, were finished weeks ago; I highly recommend this cheerful variety.

And the usually prolific and flavorful San Marzanos are just about done after battling some kind of wilt all summer and offering up a small and lackluster harvest. It may have been the new (to me) strain of this classic paste heirloom that I tried, or maybe it was just the weather. You never know around here. We haven't been eating them all, so I've been drying a bunch for winter.

But the tasty and reliable VFN slicers (a disease resistant variety I bought from a tiny co-op back in 1995, my first year gardening in Missouri, and have been saving seeds from ever since) and the pink Arkansas Travelers, a pretty, longtime favorite with great flavor that tolerates heat and humidity really well, are finally just coming into their prime.

No problem. A few bed sheets draped over the plants on those cool nights and we're still good to go. After tomorrow night, it's supposed to be in the 80s during the day and stay up in the 50s for at least the next ten days, so I'm looking forward to a little more vine-ripened bounty before I bring all the green tomatoes indoors to ripen. 

This easy No-Cook Fresh Tomato Pasta Sauce is my version of the simple, flavorful pasta sauce made with chopped raw tomatoes and uncooked seasonings that is eaten in country houses all over Italy, and it's the perfect way to celebrate the last juicy tomatoes of the season.

Capers, kalamata olives, garlic, and fresh oregano and basil amp up the Mediterranean flavors, while tossing the hot, drained pasta with some of the tomato sauce juice is a neat trick that makes the whole dish taste lustier. A hunk of crusty bread to sop up every last drop of sauce is optional. Enjoy!

So how did your tomatoes do this year? Any spectacular successes? Massive failures? Tips, tricks, brilliant discoveries? New favorite varieties from the garden or the farmers market?

P.S. Greek Style Panzanella Salad with pan-fried croutons (I love this stuff) and my extremely popular Super Simple, No Sugar, Salsa-Like Green Tomato Relish.

© FarmgirlFare.com, always garden fresh.

Friday Farm Photo: Have a Freshly Picked Weekend.

Heirloom lettuce direct seeded in the kitchen garden the first part of April. Want to grow your own gourmet lettuce from seed? In this popular post I show you that it's easier than you think!

Do you have any plans this weekend? We usually hunker down at home for the holidays, though I do wish I'd thought to buy some potato chips the last time we were out.

In between munching on homemade sourdough rye French bread (a new experiment—so good toasted and topped with melty cheese and freshly laid fried eggs) and as much of this gorgeous lettuce as possible (we're racing the heat clock here), I'll be trying to get 50+ heirloom tomato plants, a few dozen heirloom pepper plants (after a several year break, I'm finally back to starting my tomatoes and peppers from seed!) and a bunch of other stuff in the ground.

More below. . .

Recipe: Arugula Salad with Pan-Fried Herbed Potatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Feta Cheese, & Kalamata Olive Vinaigrette

A flavor-packed main course salad bursting with seasonal bounty (recipe here).

It may have taken until October, but I finally have tomatoes, potatoes, and arugula in the kitchen garden at once. Let everyone else go on about apples and butternuts and pumpkins; I'm making this Arugula Salad with Pan-Fried Herbed Potatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Feta Cheese, & Kalamata Olive Vinaigrette.

Somewhere in the midst of an overwintered kale extravaganza and a lettuce explosion last spring, I forgot to plant any arugula. Fortunately this cold-loving little brassica can go from seed to salad bowl in less than a month, so the two small patches I planted in early September are already providing us with peppery bounty.

Despite several nights in the low 40's and even one chilly dip into the 30's, my four Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants are still ripening up a few fruits, thanks to an old bed sheet protecting them from the cold. And although the Yukon Gold potatoes were ready months ago, I've found that the best place to store them is right in the ground where they grew.

These herby potatoes taste great on their own, and the quick kalamata olive dressing is nice on other salad greens too. To make this a more substantial meal, simply add some slices of leftover grilled chicken or steak.

No arugula? Try some nice crunchy romaine lettuce. I've been having really good luck the last few years growing Parris Island Cos, a tasty heirloom that is amazingly heat tolerant.

Seasonal eating can sometimes be a little tricky, and even a little tiresome, especially if you live in the middle of nowhere. But after 19 years of tending a large garden while living far from many ingredients, I've learned that the (sometimes year-long) wait for a special dish just makes it taste that much better.

It's a brief and special time in the garden right now, when the late summer bounty overlaps the first fall harvest, and this scrumptious salad is the perfect way to celebrate it. Once, until next year.

P.S. Arugula Cottage Cheese Dip/Spread/Sauce and Roasted Leek and Potato Soup with Arugula.

© FarmgirlFare.com, always eating well, just not always on time.

Sunday Dose of Beagle Cute: Picking Dinner, Choosing Yoga

Fresh salad fixings from the organic heirloom kitchen garden.

Ready to do something really good for yourself? It's not too late to join me for Marianne Elliott's upcoming 30 Days of Yoga: A Lifetime of Well-Being. The preparatory lessons start next week.

You can read more about this wonderful course (which I've done before) here, and you can register here. I hope to see you there!

Meanwhile. . . (more photos below)

Thursday Dose of All-American Cute

Happy Fourth of July!

Wishing you a wonderful day surrounded by good food and those you love.

More Jasper? Here.

More farm cats? Here.

More about growing those gorgeous Dragon Langerie beans? Here.

P.S. The wild turkeys are out strolling around the hayfield today, celebrating the fact that it isn't that other American holiday.

© FarmgirlFare.com, made in the USA, available around the world.

Wednesday Dose of Cat Cute: Growing and Harvesting Heat Tolerant Lettuce (and The Whole Picture)

Lots more below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #28

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Tiny fawn hidden in the hayfield.

Whew, what a week. In five days we managed to accomplish three big tasks that had been looming over us: clipping poor matted Marta Beast, putting up the first batch of hay, and getting the sheep sheared. I just realized they all have to do with cutting.

Tuesday morning we were so wiped out that we both slept in until 10:30, and that was before the hardest work even started. Then the power was out all Tuesday afternoon (which also means no water pumped from the well), making us even more discombobulated.

Saturday we spent an unplanned four hours wallowing on the ground in the sheep/bunny barn with our new animal clippers and a (thankfully) drugged Marta, who is a 100+ pound mix of three thick-coated livestock guardian dog breeds: Great Pyrenees, Komondor, and Anatolian Shepherd. She's also a big mess. Marta could find a mud puddle in a desert, and unlike her Great Pyrenees partner, Daisy, she wasn't blessed with that amazing self-cleaning gene. She also hadn't been clipped in two years, so this was a real challenge.

The last time we had Marta professionally cut it took them five hours and cost a small fortune. The 80-mile round trip drive wasn't much fun either. So we decided to invest in a good electric clipper—which actually cost less than the last grooming session—and try tackling her ourselves.

I wasn't sure it (and we) would be up to the job, but this little Andis professional clipper outdid itself. If it can handle Marta, it can probably handle anything. She won't be winning any beauty contests (which is our fault, not the clipper's), but she looks much better than she did, and I'm sure she feels a lot better too. (Note for home dog groomers: blowing off the blade every several minutes with compressed air to clean and cool it and then oiling it made a huge difference. We're also going to buy a second blade that doesn't cut as close; parts of Marta are very pink!)

34 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image with your cursor for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #27

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Daisy, our seven-year-old Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, leads the flock down the driveway. (Marta was napping.)

The only thing about starting back up with the Friday Farm Fix is that it's making me realize just how fast the time flies by. It's already Friday again Saturday again?

Here's what's been happening around the farm this week. . .

The highlight was seen from the upstairs bedroom window: a mother doe nursing her itty bitty spotted fawn about 75 feet out in the hayfield. So sweet. You can just make out the baby in the photo below.

The humidity jumped up to 87% in the house and had us turning on the upstairs a/c and wondering how we were going to survive the next four months drenched in sweat, but thankfully we've been given a brief reprieve, with a few beautiful breezy days and sweet cool nights. Temporary bliss. We're gearing up to hopefully start cutting some hay next week if the weather cooperates; it can heat back up all it wants to then.

I spent as much time as I could in the kitchen garden, planting, plotting, mulching, watering, clearing out a few more raised beds, and picking lots of bolting Swiss chard (cold tolerant, heat tolerant, easy to grow!) for the chickens. I've also been marveling at how much farther ahead things were a year ago this week. Look at all that beautiful basil! (The Friday Farm Fixes from this time last year are here and here.)

We signed on for a month of rabbit sitting. So far so good.

We fed about 5,000 ravenous mosquitoes. I think this may be the worst they've ever been, but at least their appearance means we've had a more 'normal' (and much needed) wet spring.

I made yet another version of a yellow cake with easy lemon curd that I've been sporadically working on for the past couple of years. Joe loved it, but I don't think it's quite there yet. At this point I've decided it would probably be easier to simply bake a plain yellow cake and pour the lemon filling over each slice.

23 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #26

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Incoming!

I'm not quite sure where this past week went, so I'm not quite sure what all we did during it besides a whole bunch of laundry. I think we had some rain; I know we hoped for more.

We said farewell to the wet weather creek, which hasn't run this long in years. Hopefully we'll see it again before next spring.

There was lots of lawn mowing and weed whacking and mulching the raised kitchen garden vegetable beds with green gold (aka grass clippings).

I cooked a fresh ham roast and made a batch of Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Coconut Cookies and a batch of double chocolate chip cookies and baked three Four Hour Classic Parisian Daily Baguettes.

We hooked the 16-foot flatbed trailer up to the '86 pickup and spent 11 hours out buying lumber and groceries and supplies while the new cat, whose name at this point is still That Cat, went to the vet to get tutored (my mother is probably the only one who will get this decades-old Far Side cartoon reference).

We ate big freshly picked Swiss chard and kale chopped salads most nights and had macaroni and cheese with leftover ham three times (I may have made a little too much).

Oh yeah, there were two (!) big black snakes curled up together in one of the nesting boxes in Rooster Andy's coop. Black snakes LOVE fresh eggs. The slithery couple was put in a cooler (which wasn't easy) and relocated to another part of the farm, hopefully far enough away so they don't make their way back. I actually snapped a couple of pictures, but I didn't think you'd want to see them.

And I guess that's about all—or at least all I can remember. The rest is in pictures.

18 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Growing (and Using!) Your Own Fresh Herbs: My Six Favorite Varieties (Chives, Basil, Greek Oregano, Lemon Thyme, Italian Parsley, and Lemon Balm)

Portable pots of lemon balm and Greek oregano are surrounded by easy to grow Swiss chard in the inexpensive unheated, homemade greenhouse.

Gardeners are gamblers. Every year we scatter seeds, stock up on seedlings, amend our soil, water faithfully, cross our green thumbs, close our eyes, and pray for something out there to survive—all the while knowing that Mother Nature has totally stacked the cards against us. Why? Because we've tasted that delicious homegrown pay out, and we crave more.

And besides, even if we lose everything this year, we know there's always a chance we can win it all back, and then some, next season.

There are no sure things when it comes to coaxing food out of the garden, but just like at casinos and the horse races, some bets have better odds than others. And after 18 years of growing everything from arugula to zucchini in my large organic kitchen garden, I've figured out how to consistently walk away with the biggest payouts: by planting herbs.

Homegrown herbs are easy to grow, cheap to keep, don't require lots of space or attention, and aren't usually bothered by diseases and pests, making them perfect for the organic garden. They're pretty to look at, bursting with flavor, and far fresher than anything you can buy at the store.

In comparison, store bought fresh herbs are notoriously pricey, often come packaged in non-recyclable plastic containers, and are sometimes sprayed with really scary chemicals. The selection is limited, and a lot of times the fresh herbs aren't actually all that fresh.

More below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday/Sunday Farm Fix #23

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

This past week we had some blissfully cool nights and not nearly as hot days. It feels like we've finally turned a corner. And after nearly two weeks without any rain (and hardly any before that), a big storm blew through Thursday night and gave us two whole inches. We haven't had that much rain at one time in at least a year.

We also finally got the biopsy results back, and everything looks fine (yay!). It's not cancer, and there is nothing else left to test for. Unfortunately the doctors still have no idea what is causing all this debilitating female pain. Thank goodness for homeopathy and Chinese medicine and beautiful healing meditations.

I haven't forgotten the lemon rosemary zucchini bread recipe I promised you last week (it is so good toasted), and I have a few more new summer recipes I'm hoping to share soon too. I may still be spending a lot of time lying down, but we also still have to eat! I guess I'd better get snapping; fall will be here before we know it.

Thank you so much for all your kind words and prayers and support. I'm slowly catching up with e-mail.

Things are moving in the right direction.

14 more farm photos below. Hover over each image for a description. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #20

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

Our favorite hot summer dinner? BLTs on freshly baked Farmhouse White.

There isn't much to show and tell from the farm this week. Hot days, dry skies, burned up fields, blister beetles, same same. I haven't been feeling well for the last few weeks, and when I wasn't lying in bed, we were in the truck driving 500 miles to various clinics, labs, and other places that were seriously short on photo ops (rural living + no health insurance = lots of traveling).

On Thursday morning while we were sitting in a waiting room several counties away, a guy walked by and said something to Joe about the rain they'd had there that morning. "At least I won't have to water the yard," he said, and then added, "I sure feel bad for the people who are trying to make a living farming."

I smiled wanly and half-heartedly raised my hand. He looked at me.

"You're a farmer?"

Yep.

We're not alone of course. All 114 counties in Missouri have been declared federal disaster areas because of the devastating heat and drought. We had 1/10th of an inch of rain fall while we were gone on Thursday, which is better than nothing, but not by much. Yesterday it rained for about 10 minutes. That was it for the week. Last week we got a quarter inch.

I thought I might have to skip the Friday Farm Fix this week, but it turns out I did make a few fun pictures. Another BLT dinner (no complaints here; we're having them again tonight), some pretty purple in the kitchen garden, a zucchini butter photo shoot (recipe hopefully up soon), heading in for sheep working Sunday, and of course some of our 50+ chickens, because it seems like they're everywhere. My favorite big black cat was seemingly everywhere too. Garden companion, photo stylist, mighty hunter. He catches a lot of rabbits.

Cooler weather, ample rain, medical answers. All we can do is enjoy the bounty of the season—including the juicy Missouri peaches, six pints of cherry tomatoes, and several more pounds of zucchini I bought on the way home Thursday—while we wait for everything to hopefully turn out fine.

12 more farm photos below. Hover over each picture for a description. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #19

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

Tim-ber!

We had a slight change in the weather this week. It was still way too hot and way too dry, but for a (thankfully) brief period on Thursday afternoon it was also way too windy. A noisy thunderstorm whipped through the farm, sending chickens flapping, our big gas grill tumbling across the yard, and this beautiful old oak tree crashing to the ground.

Fortunately Da Big Guy and The Kid, our two rams who are currently living in that pen, weren't hurt. One of the bunk feeders suffered severe injuries, but at least the little sheep hut was mostly spared. We got about 1/4" of rain out of the whole ordeal, and although it was better than nothing, I definitely would have preferred a little less excitement and a lot more water.

On to a more appetizing subject. I don't keep track of what we eat for dinner every night, but maybe I should start. Sometimes it can be easy to forget just how much wonderful food graces our table.

This week we enjoyed the first BLTs of the season, made with locally raised bacon (from one of the two butcher hogs in our freezers), juicy tomatoes from a friend, and homemade pesto mayonnaise (first pesto of the year! my favorite pesto recipe is here) on freshly baked Farmhouse White (with a few cups of whole wheat flour tossed in). And then the next night we had them again.

More food talk and another 15 farm photos below. Hover over each picture for a description. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #17

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

Heading back from Donkeyland after Monday's surprise rain.

Blast furnace hot, dry as a bone. Nothing has changed since last week, except the thermometer keeps climbing and the fields keep getting browner. Nobody around here has any grass left in their pastures. The only thing that's still green in our front field is the blasted cactus (you can see a patch of it below). Nothing kills that stuff, although even it looks a little peaked. Some of the trees are starting to die.

Our hearts go out to everyone across the country in the same scary situation. I have no idea what we're going to do. And now it looks like feed prices will be sky high soon too.

Thanks so much for all the thoughts and prayers and rain dances you've sent our way. They worked! We were thrilled to get a surprise half inch of rain last Monday, and although it was just a drop in a big, dusty bucket it did make a difference. You could actually see the grass start greening up within hours and practically hear the plants sighing with relief as they sucked up the moisture.

Two more storms have blown through since then, but they must have watered somebody else's farm instead of ours. Joe sneaked a peek at the forecast this morning (I still can't bear to look) and said there's a chance of rain for the next several days—and the high today was below 100° for the first time in I don't know how long (which is why I stopped checking the weather). Please keep dancing!

There's nothing we can do about the heat and drought, but I can keep sharing the cute. So how about 19 more farm photos taken during the past week? Hover over each picture for a description.

More below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #16

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

Kit Kat Kate perched above the echinacea patch

It's bad out there. Really bad. The months of relentless heat and drought will not give up. It just keeps getting hotter and drier, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. We stopped looking at the thermometer when it got up to 106 degrees in the shade. We've stopped looking at the ten day forecast hoping for a chance of rain.

Last year at this time we had 695 bales of hay safely stored in the barn, ready to feed the sheep and donkeys all winter (and then put up another 180 bales of summer grass in early September). So far this year we haven't put up any. Everyone is scrambling for hay, and nobody has any for sale. If we do find some, it will probably be low quality and priced sky high.

The front field, where 33 sheep are supposed to be grazing all summer and into the fall, has nothing left to eat in it. The green grass you can see in the photos below, which were taken a week ago, is gone. Everything that gets full sun has burned up.

Tomorrow morning after we work the sheep we'll let them out loose to forage for food in the dry creekbed and the woods. Thank goodness we sold half the flock in May. I just hope we don't have to sell any more sheep—or any donkeys.

Donkeyland looks almost as bad as the front field, but the perimeter of our 240 acre property, which is mostly steep wooded hillsides, isn't fenced, and the donkeys tend to wander—like up to the highway.

All we can do is try not to get too stressed out (which isn't easy, as evidenced by my tears earlier), water the kitchen garden twice a day, limit our time working out in the heat, drink plenty of water (and Tension Tamer iced tea!), remember to breathe, and find joy in the little things around us.

A nest of hungry baby birds in a very unlikely spot. The cute spotted frog who has taken up residence in the greenhouse. Peeping chicks all over the place. A beagle with his catch and release bunny. Grilled burgers on freshly baked onion rye buns. Delicious bounty from our garden and our neighbors, sizzling cast iron skillets, the first sweet corn of the season, our first summer sleeping in air conditioning.

Everything may be dying of thirst, but farm life still tastes good.

27 more farm photos below - hover over each photo to see a short description. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #14

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

Mr. Midnight knows the secret to staying cool—you just have to sprawl.

Birds seem to be this past week's theme around the farm: baby chicks, big chicks, wild turkeys, and the two graceful white mystery birds we saw in the front field one evening when we hiked out to count the sheep.

I guess maybe they were young egrets? I love to be around birds but am embarrassed to admit I can't identify very many of them. They looked like they belonged near water. We do see great blue herons around this area sometimes, especially near the river. They used swoop down and grab catfish from the pond at my old farm. Such glorious creatures, even if they are thieves.

These two seemed sort of lost, circling around the field and coming back toward us. Or maybe they just wanted to stay near the sheep. The photos below aren't real clear because I took them on 20x zoom. It sort of drives me crazy that so many creatures are afraid of people but not sheep or dogs or cats or even donkeys. Although it would be nice if the deer were still afraid of the dogs. I'm covering more plants in the garden each night than I did when there was a threat of frost because otherwise they'll munch it down.

We often see wild turkeys in the hayfield, and some years in the spring there are two hens who march around out there with their babies trailing behind. For the past few weeks one hen has been staying pretty close to the house, ambling around in the grass by herself for long stretches during the day.

I haven't gone out to look for a nest because I don't want the dogs to follow me and bother her. I'll never forget the time we were walking through the hayfield and Robin came out of the bushes that grow along the edge with an enormous turkey egg clutched between her jaws.

No sign of any baby turkeys with this hen yet, but on Monday afternoon when I went to pick up the mail and our weekly two gallons of raw Jersey milk, I stopped to let a hen and three little babies cross the highway in front of me. When I drove back maybe 45 minutes later I saw them again, crossing back over in about the same spot.

26 more farm photos below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #12

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling (that sometimes appears on Saturdays) of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

The word of this past week was definitely PEEP! It seems like there are baby chicks hatching everywhere, including another one since last night. The chick pics were starting to take over this post, though, so instead I'll do a separate peep report in the next few days. Maybe the number of new babies will have stabilized by then. In the meantime, they sure are cute to watch.

A brief respite from the unseasonable heat and humidity, along with just under an inch of rain (woohoo!), has made us (and the entire farm) very happy indeed. We turned off the a/c and even put a blanket on the bed last night. We're headed right back into another heat wave, but at least the dust has settled and the grass in the fields doesn't crunch as much when you walk on it. They're even teasing us with more rain in the 10-day forecast.

My hunky farmguy Joe is doing better (hello Sheep Working Sunday!) and was even out on the tractor yesterday and today. I've been busy planting and picking (and watering) in the kitchen garden. Four more tomato plants went in the ground (lots more still to go) along with eight California Golden Wonder sweet peppers, and 20 tiny purple basil seedlings were transplanted into individual plugs. Learn what to do with purple basil here (hint: it makes amazing pesto).

The garden is at that point where everything seems to be suddenly taking off. One day you're delighted to spot a couple of baby beans, and just a few days later you're filling up a colander.

We've been enjoying the first sweet and crunchy, easy to grow Dragon Tongue beans (I love them raw), pretty salads starring Parris Island cos lettuce, and spring onions galore. The flea beetles have been enjoying pretty much everything. Fortunately their nibbling doesn't usually kill plants. The first Japanese beetles have already been spotted; fingers crossed their numbers—and their damage—won't be nearly as bad as last year. They do kill stuff.

I picked 8½ pounds (!) of volunteer Swiss chard from the greenhouse (and that wasn't even all of it), along with enough lemon balm to make about 75 gallons of sun tea. Learn How To Grow Your Own Swiss Chard from Seed here. I see a Swiss Chard Artichoke Pizza in our future, and some of this Swiss Chard Cabbage Salad with Garbanzo Beans and Cottage Cheese. Read about growing, drying, and using lemon balm here.

It's hard to believe it's already the beginning of June, although it's pretty much felt like June since March. The echinacea (purple coneflower) just started blooming. We'll be picking juicy, ripe tomatoes before you know it.

21 more farm photos below. . .