Last Days of Summer

Usually by the middle of September, it is feeling a lot like fall, and we are thinking about heading south with all the other migrating seniors.  This year, we are still fully into summer, I am still swimming every day, and I am a bit overwhelmed with vegetables and fruit.  The experimental compost garden has been amazing.

In the interest of simplifying our lives, I started doing raised garden beds with "just enough veggies to have fresh" - In this tiny raised bed, the corn is over 8 feet tall, and the beans have basically taken over, winding around all the corn stalks, and dripping over the edges.

I picked enough beans to can 8 pints this morning.  The apples are ripe and dripping off the trees too, so this was a canning day.  I also did 8 pints of applesauce.

Yesterday we couldn't resist the beautiful weather and we played hooky from our mini-farm and took the bike on a really nice long ride.  First stop, Klein farm in Arlington to drop off a jar of blackberry jam to the farmer who was kind enough to let us pick berries on his farm last week.

Don Klein with one of the many antiques he is working on.  This one actually runs and yes, it still takes a penny to make it gallop.

Don with one of his original trucks back in the day when he milked 300 cows.  When the highway department used eminent domain to take a swath down the middle of his farm to reroute Highway 9 just north of Arlington, he quit milking cows and did an organic row crop farm for six years.  He sold produce from the farm then, but now the farm is for sale in pieces and Don looks forward to finally retiring to Soap Lake where his kids reside.