cheery cherries

Kathy wasn't feeling well the other day, so we picked up Lil and Jo and went cherry picking!


First a picnic beneath the not-quite-ripe sour cherries.



The yummiest cherry pie I've ever tasted.

I took this recipe below and just subbed cherries for the strawberries. I pitted and chopped them roughly. The crust was delicious, but you could also do the same thing with a cooked regular 1/2 pie crust, just put the berries in once it's cool.

Raw Strawberry Pie
The Joy of Vegan Baking
By Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

It is best when served within an hour or two of preparing it, since
it is at its most fresh then, but it holds up just fine in the
fridge.

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Chilling Time: 1 hour
Servings: 8-12

Crust:
2 cups raw almonds or pecans
3/4 cup pitted dates, preferably Medjool

Filling:
5 cups sliced ripe strawberries
5 pitted dates, soaked 10 minutes in warm water and drained
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Place the nuts in a food processor and grind until they’re a coarse
meal. Add the 3/4 cup of dates (for the crust) and process until
thoroughly combined. Press the mixture into a non-stick or very
lightly oiled pie plate or spring form pan.

Arrange 4 cups of the sliced strawberries on top of the crust and set
aside.

In a food processor or blender, combine the remaining 1 cup of
strawberries with the 5 soaked dates and lemon juice. Puree until
smooth. Pour the sauce mixture over strawberries.

Refrigerate the pie for 1 hour before serving. This will help the pie
set and will be perfect for slicing.

splish splash

After the "last day of pottery" party, Jamie showed us the way to a nearby river through the farm land. She keeps tubes handy, so the kids had a blast walking upriver a little, hopping on, and sailing down past the moms.




After swimming/tubing, Dante and River wandered up the other branch of the river, seeking huge crawfish. Dante found one with a softer than usual shell, and River found a huge one.





We found a black raspberry bush coming ripe along the way. Dante censors his face with "the best skimming rock ever".

pottery barn

Dante has been taking a new pottery class in Andover. Jamie's studio is in an old dairy barn, that's chock full of hay and other farm equipment. She's carved out a little niche and has a couple of wheels, counters and tables for the kids to work out. His first class was at the table on the lawn on a breezy summer afternoon.

Jamie talks to the kids about their pieces, which they're seeing glazed for the first time.

hatching fever

Luna is sitting in the flock's favorite nest box for four days now on a little clutch of eight eggs. Everyone was ignoring this fact and piling in to lay, so I blocked their access to it. Not counting our chickens or anything, but hopefully she'll stay in the "zone" long enough to hatch the eggs!

successful hatch!

on the verge

Last week, we were checking on some seedlings near the butterfly garden, and Lucia spotted a monarch caterpillar on the hose. We could see the leaves that it had munched, so perhaps it fell off to the ground and was working it's way back up.

Dante found a big plastic jar, loaded it up with milkweed leaves and we watched it eat and eat until it climbed to the top of one leaf, shimmied out of it's skin and made a chrysalis. Last year we'd taken one of these with us to Lake George so it wouldn't hatch while we weren't around to release it, but I think all the movement of travel had an adverse effect on the creature and it didn't ever hatch. This time we've been careful not to move the jar, and while the chrysalis has been green with the beautiful band of gold dots, tonight it has begun to be to transparent and we can see the butterfly within! So exciting! Somewhere I have a link to a site that has a blow-by-blow pictorial of the monarch's transformation so you can see more stages. But for now, I offer this blurry evidence:

Bullseye!

After the trip to the doctor's office to procure some antibiotics for his very obvious case of Lyme disease, Dante and I took some time to hit Belltown Hills Orchards for some cherry picking. Along the way, we stopped at Claire's to check in on her ducks -- who are all grown up already and beautiful, tho the long shot doesn't do them justice. They're very happy, staying together as a tight flock, in their stream.



Dante spotted and snapped this turkey by the side of the road as we made our way home.