July Jumble, #2

This summer, we had two litters of kittens born.  We did not discover either set of kittens until they were 2-3 weeks old.  One mama cat had 3 kittens, and the other one had 4.  

Anthony with the prized near-white kitten.

So cute!

Cat-hole into the shed.

Look at that little face peeking out!

Needless to say, the kids love it when there are kittens!

 The garden really began booming in July.

That is a ridiculous pile of cucumbers.

Shucking corn.

Beans headed to the freezer.

A pause for a week of Totus Tuus.  The four oldest attended.  Next year it will finally be Anthony's turn.

Performance at the Wednesday night potluck.

Who do you spy?

Anne front and center.

Back to the garden we go.

Scrub that corn!

Cucumbers and onions all sliced up and mixed in some salt.

Cooking in the big pot.

Bread and butter pickles.

All Over August

Kids shucking corn, lots of corn.

Catherine fixing a shirt for Anne.

My sister and her boys stopped by on their way to visit my parents.

Dan gave the boys tractor rides.

Matthew loved it.

Andrew thought it was pretty cool, too.

For some reason, it is fun to sit on the propane tank while waiting for your turn. 

A big batch of bread and butter pickles.

One day Anthony woke up like this.

It didn't seem to bother him much.

But it rather alarmed the parents.

After a trip to the doctor, we all figured it was probably a reaction to a spider bite or something.  Two prescriptions and a week later, it was back to normal.  Whew!

Ice cream treat!

Dan's stuffed jalapenos.  I ate several, but they were hot for me.  Good, but hot!

July Garden Was Loaded

Towards the end of July, I was picking buckets and buckets of cucumbers, so what else was there to do but make pickles?

Bread and Butter Pickles

Dill Pickle Spears

Dill Pickle Relish

Then the corn started coming.

The kids mostly liked to shuck the corn.

Especially Anthony.  He really liked finding worms and tried to collect them.

Into the pot of boiling water they go.

Oh, yum!

A portion of the many ears of corn that got blanched in preparation for the freezer.

Next part was cutting corn off the ears.

Quart bags ready for the freezer.   This was a little more than half of what we ended up putting in the freezer.

Anthony by the garden in late July.

View of the rest of it.  We were getting plenty of rain at this point, but not yet flooding.

Speaking of loads of cucumbers, guess what this bread is?  Yep, cucumber bread!  That was a new one for me.  The difference with making it is that you have to let the peeled, seeded, and shredded cucumber drain for at least 30 minutes before you mix it in with the rest of the ingredients.  It was tasty!  I froze some of the shredded and drained cucumber as an experiment, so I'll have to see how that works later.

When you have tons of cukes, you'll try about anything to use them up!

Our first watermelon was very large and heavy - about 28 pounds!

Crazy For Corn

We have harvested over 3/4 of the corn from the garden, which has been hundreds and hundreds of ears of corn.  These pictures were from the first picking right before the fourth of July. 

The kids got to work shucking the corn. 

The corn shucking station, set in the shade.

Anne and Joseph.

Catherine and Dominic.

Once Anthony started shucking corn and discovered that he liked it, you could not have bribed him away until it was done.  He especially liked finding worms at the end of the ears and if they fell out, he would pick them up to check them out.  He was also a corn-eating machine.  One night at dinner he ate four ears of corn!

Catherine and Anne have scrubbed a lot of corn.

Some of our corn that got blanched, cut off the cobs, and put in the freezer.

We had one batch of corn that wasn't as sweet, so Dan grilled the ears you see in the pan.

Then we put on a creamy, flavorful sauce.  Yum!