More summer highlights

Jack is waiting to for me to get him out of the crib, I need to get lunch on, and we have to wash eggs and take them to the farm where we trade them for milk, but I have to steal five minutes to post the rest of these pictures from the last few weeks or I will never get around to it! So, here are more summer highlights. Enjoy!


Rose and Riley try their hand at croquet at the Genesee Country Museum, one of our summer day trips.

And Jack tries out the game where you roll the hoop with a stick, yum!
Riley and Jarret work the two man saw (Jarret says a prayer of thanks for his chainsaw!).
It was Laura Ingalls Wilder Day at the Museum and their special guest was the actress who played Nellie Olsen. She was hysterical. And let me tell you, it's weird to hear Nellie Olsen's voice coming out of a grown woman!

Molly and Rilley belly up to their Shirley Temples at the wedding reception of our friend Jay Tackabury.

Rose and Ashley Gibbs take a break at the Empire Farm Days in Seneca Falls.
So, we are in the market for a tractor, what do you think honey?
Watching the equipment demos at Empire Farm Days.
Aidan Prendergast oversees the fire starting operation at Camp Winum, this was before the thunderstorm rained on our cookout.

The next day, the kids and Jarret throw in a few hooks at Keuka Lake before we head for home.

Our 4-H club's booth at the Ontario County Fair. Rose's decorated apron, hanging on the wall, went to the New York State Fair!
Her painted bunny and wood cart with zucchini from our garden.

Rose ended the summer by losing front teeth!
Tomatoes and diapers keep me busy these days!

So much to say, so much to say...

I've been putting off doing this entry for so long because it seems so much has happened around here over the last two months that I didn't have time to type it all out. But my wonderful husband, who always gives great advice, told me to just pick something and start there. And so I will!

It's Friday and Riley's bus will be coming down the road in a few minutes. I didn't have time to go and restart the fire in the furnace, so I will have to do that after the bus arrives. Until then, I will just have to freeze. It's one of those cloudy drizzly days that makes you want to curl up under a blanket and never come out except to eat chili with homemade cinnamon rolls. I was planning to have tuna casserole for supper, but I think I just talked myself into a new menu!

Let's see, Rose and Riley are loving school. Rose is in first grade and Riley is in pre-kindergarten at Gorham Elementary school. It's so cute to see them run to get on the bus holding hands. Riley has a half day of school, so the bus drops him off at the door at noon, and Rose gets home a little before 4. It's quiet in the mornings without the two of them here, and since Jack takes a nap, it's quality time for me and Molly to spend just hanging out, folding laundry and listening to Dr. Laura solve everybody's problems!

Summer was great for us. We did a couple of day trips and one overnight camping trip, during which we were rained on for breakfast and dinner (I should say stormed on, deluged upon, if that is proper grammer) and let me tell you that if you haven't slept in a wet tent with four kids then you haven't lived! Ha! Ha! We decided against staying a second night and came home after a quick fishing excursion. I will try to post the pictures if I can, but that seems to take more time than I have these days...

Anyway, we were also so excited to have my college roommates visit for the weekend with their children over Labor Day. All together there were nine children here, with Rose (6) being the oldest! It wasy busy to say the least, but we all enjoyed getting together and watching the kids get to know each other. It seems that with the girls, we can just pick up with our visiting right where we left off the year or two before. E-mail helps! Here are some pics of teh occasion courtesy of Larry Winum. Thanks Larry!

Riley and Simone check out the rabbit cage:

Adrea hangs out on the porch with Catherine and Lucci:

Molly, Vincenzo, Rose, Riley and Simone chill out in the living room:



Now I am just trying to keep up with the produce from the garden. So far, we have filled the freezer with about:

50 quarts of green beans
4 quarts of beets
25 quarts of corn
5 quarts of tomatoes
25 quarts of zucchini
15 quarts of peppers

and canned, so far, 11 quarts of tomatoes, with many more to come. I also have to process the apples from our apple tree. I think I am going to make sauce out of those. They are quite juicy, so the crisp I made from them a couple of weeks ago was not too crispy.

In my "spare" time, I have taken on the honor and duty of educating the folks who are going through RCIA at our church (there are only two this year) and teaching the religious education classes. I have one woman and her daughter who graciously answered my call for help with the little kids, and another more experienced lady is helping me with RCIA. I am also a co-leader for Rose's 4-H club, which is the only extra curricular activity we are in, to try and curb the craziness!

I have also been doing some sewing - making some pajamas for Riley with a pattern that I bought last fall thinking that I would have time to have a baby, unpack from moving and sew a few garments here and there! What was I thinking!!!!!!! Anyway, now I need lessons in alterations because the pants are too baggy for him and I am not entirely sure how I should go about trimming them up.

Jarret is enjoying teaching this year, as usual, and he is keeping very busy with his other full-time jobs - cutting wood for heating our home and hot water, and doing contracting work as the Holiday Handyman.

So, I think that gives you a good overview of life here at Maplestone Farm. I will try my best to blog more so that I can give you more details of daily life, which are far more interesting to read and write than an update!

Check back often!

Long Time No Blog

I've been so busy keeping up with life that I haven't made time to blog. Keeping up with a small farm and four small children - garden, laundry, mowing, animals - leaves one too exhausted to put words together at the end of the day. In fact, Jarret and I have been falling in to bed at 10:30, not up watching too much TV, but racing the sun to get work in the garden done, feeding the chickens, cleaning up after the adventures of the day. But to adapt a cliche it's better to blog now than never, so here's an update of what's been keeping us busy for the past month at Maplestone Farm.

Rose graduated from kindergarten at Gorham Elementary on June 25, 2008 with a lovely little ceremony. My camera was acting up, so the pictures are not great, but here they are nonetheless. Mrs. Sloth was a great teacher and Rose will always remember being a member of her class.

The PTO hosted a nice little reception after the ceremony, great for those Kodak moments, and then we headed over to our friend's the Prendergast's to celebrate the start of summer with an afternoon by the pool!

Here is Rose with her best friend, Emily Lehman. Aren't they cute? Nothing is more pure than the affection girlfriend's have for each other at this age.


I mentioned in one of my last posts that I was going to have to cook goat for the party for our departing priest who is from Kenya, where they regularly feast on goat. The party was wonderful, and we do miss Fr. John, but we are happy to welcome another Fr. John, also from Kenya. I will not however, ever cook another goat. The cooking fat has an odor that I don't find pleasant or appetizing. But the goat itself did taste very good. Here I am seasoning and cutting up the goat. This was only my portion - my friend Mary cooked up the other half. Jarret had to use a jigsaw to cut in half the 90 lb goat that was delivered to my doorstep, as you can see here.


We celebrated the fourth of July with a long-standing tradition we have of attending the parade in Auburn, NY, a small city about 45 minutes east of Stanley where Jarret's sister lives with her family. It was through visiting with them that we came to know and love the Finger Lakes region, which I really feel is a piece of heaven on Earth. The parade was great - the kids got a lot of candy - but you can see that they are used to the quiet of country life and not the noise of the city! This is how they spent most of the parade. Luckily the lady standing next to us helped me pick up candy for the kids. I don't know if you've ever tried it, but it's nearly impossible to gather candy and cover your ears at the same time! We followed the parade with a great party at Laura and Frank's.

I jammed up the strawberries we picked - 12 quarts of them! And while I was making jam, Jarret was brewing beer from scratch. I know, we are insane. If you want a great recipe for making your own graham crackers I can give it to you. They are very tasty. I am not kidding. Take that Martha Stewart!

Jarret does an all-grain brew in the garage:



We have also come by some Bantam Cochin chickens, which I bought at a yard sale. Ten to be exact. Bantams are mini chickens. Perfect for you city dwellers who want to own a flock. They should also lay eggs, although it would take two eggs to equal one regular chicken egg, but I think we have about four roosters, so I am not sure what will play out there.

We got our first eggs from the regular-sized chickens last week! We got them as chicks in February, so we've been waiting for a while for eggs. Here is Rose showing them off. They taste great, and I love to have a glass of farm-fresh milk with my breakfast of fresh eggs and homemade jam on an English muffin (I haven't attempted to make these yet, but I promise to let you know when I do!). Production should steadily increase, until we are getting about two dozen per day. That's a lot of protein!

Last Tuesday we went to watch our nephew Noah play on the Little League All-Star team in Geneva. It was Auburn vs. Waterloo and Auburn creamed Waterloo easily. I don't even think Waterloo scored any points. Noah played great! An all-star among all-stars. The kids enjoyed the game, and dinner at the concession stand, and visiting with Uncle Frank.


Other than that, we have just been enjoying some beautiful summer weather, spending a day or two at the lakes, having dinner with friends, entertaining some friends here,


Tomorrow, we are headed on our first camping expedition to Keuka Lake, which is about 15 minutes from here. This is our first trip since Molly was born, and we are tenting it, so I am sure I will have some stories for the next post. Here, we air out the tents, and Riley makes sure we have all the stakes accounted for while Jack oversees. Check back soon to see how our trip went!



Don't you just love those fat thighs!

A Perfect Day

I can honestly say that today was about as perfect as it gets. I got up, skipped the shower since I was headed to the church to help shape up the flower gardens there, and headed out the door. (Of course, I got my breakfast in, you know I don't skip a meal!) The volunteer crew and I, headed up by my friend Miranda, really did great job on the beds and they look awesome for our farewell party for Fr. John next weekend. Jarret stayed home with the kids and cleaned the chimney.

In the afternoon I took the girls and we headed to get milk from a farm about fifteen minutes away. We get raw milk from a farmer who milks 23 cows. This is a very small dairy, since the farm across the road from us milk 850 cows! We love the raw milk because we are supporting a local farmer and the benefits of not pasteurizing or homogenizing the milk are wonderful. You can read all about that at http://www.realmilk.com/. Anyway, on the way home we stopped and picked 6 quarts of fresh strawberries. Rose and Molly did a great job, and it's really hard to put into words how deeply happy I felt watch my girls covered in mud and strawberry juice, hair damp from the rain, hunting for the reddest berries they could find. And of course, I ate a berry right in the field, because there is nothing like a just picked strawberry. Now I am going to make a strawberry pie, since I have never made one, and make some sugar-free strawberry jam so I don't have to buy that stuff in the store anymore. I am sure I will have to go out and make a couple more picking trips this week. I should look up how to freeze the berries too...

Then we stopped at an antiques place I have been driving by longingly since we moved here. Since I was without the baby, and they were having a great sale, I went in and lost myself. They have so much stuff! I have my eye on a punch bowl set for $5 and a child-sized roll top desk for $50.

After a dinner of leftovers we all headed out to the garden to spread straw on the tomato patch. Rose and Riley threw more straw on each other but at least most of it got where it was supposed to go. Jack supervised from the stroller. Then bath, dessert (sherbet from the Schwan's man!) and a couple of books, Jarret and I headed back out to the garden to enjoy the stunning sunset and some weeding. The mosquitoes were ferocious though, so tomorrow at Mass I will be sporting one lovely giant bite on my jaw, and since I forgot my purse over at my girlfriend's house last night I won't have any lipstick to distract from the bite. Well, as my Grandma Bette used to say about her wrinkles, I earned every one (bite, I mean, not wrinkles...yet).

I really don't think my life could get any better.