It's been a long time Baby :)

Our lives have been so busy! Tyler is getting bigger everyday, and I'm happy to report we finalized Tyler's adoption on National Adoption Day, November 15th in St. Louis. We can breathe a sigh of relief now. His adoption is all set, and we can claim our tax credit when we file our 2008 taxes, which is HUGE.

We've also made the huge decision that I would only work through the end of the year. Tyler is so important to us...we love his daycare provider, but we want him at home with me. We felt like we were missing so much. I did find a job working about 15 hours a week that he will come with me to, so he'll always be with me, but I'll still make some money. I'm looking forward to it a lot. It will take some work on our budget, but it's important to us, so we'll make it happen!

We are working on stocking our freezer for winter. We are doing really well. We just bought 20 pounds of chicken breast on sale, and vacuum sealed it. We paid my brother in laws father for a deer (well for the butchering) so we have ~60 pounds of venison and it only cost us $40. We have a whole bunch of pork that has been on sale the last few weeks. We are going to buy hamburg that is on sale tomorrow after work. I think we'll do 20 pounds of that as well. All the protein combined with all the veggies we put up this summer, and some frozen veggies we bought also on sale and our second freezer is packed! We still have jarred tomato sauce, and jarred apple sauce...and we bought two 20 (or more?) pound bags of rice a month or so ago, so we're working through those. We could go for months only buying Milk and eggs :) We're still getting fresh fruit and veggies weekly from the CSA, so we have leeks, lettuce, turnips, bok choy, squashes, apples, califlower and broccoli hearts, collards, kale and scallions! Thats this week only :) The fall CSA should continue till close to Christmas, and then we will be waiting it out till Spring when the new share starts. We LOVE the CSA! So does Tyler :) He ate a whole bunch of bok choy tonight as part of his dinner...

Other than adoption and food...there isn't much going on! The dogs are all doing well, and are completely in love with Tyler. He feeds them parts of his dinner every night. He waves and says, "Hi" when they come in a room. He also waves and says, "Hi" to himself in the mirror now too :) Tyler has 2 teeth now, and even puts two words together. He will say, Hi Dadda, and Hi Doggies (no Hi Momma yet...I'm lucky though, he does SAY Momma sometimes!)

Hopefully I'll have more to post soon!

Runny Noses and Veggies

Ty and I are both sick. I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I highly suspect he brought me home a gift from the daycare kids. He is happy as a clam, runny nose, coughing and all. Is immune suppressed Mommy, is absolutely miserable. I even slept upstairs last night. Partly so I wouldn't wake the two of them up, and partly cause I knew I needed some sleep. I slept like a rock, but woke up feeling worse than ever. My head may explode and I'm more than half way through a large box of tissues I only opened last night right before bed. Me neck is all swelled up and my throat is really sore, and I took Sudafed, so now I'm tired again.

Ty is napping. When he wakes up I am going to drag myself over to the farm to help with harvesting the winter squash. Mike and Ty are going to pick more green/yellow and Roman beans for freezing. We're also going to stock up on swiss chard, spicy greens, and Mike's getting hot pepper to make a sodium free pepper sauce. I don't know how long I'll hold up...I guess we'll see.

Tonight we need to finish the apples, blanch and freeze the beans, blanch and freeze some corn on the cob (we've only frozen corn cut off the cob so far) and cook up some batches of the card to freeze. I am not sure what to do with spicy greens, but I found a recipe online for a mustard green soup, and it sounds pretty yummy, so we might try making that with the spicy greens, and then freezing it. I'm trying to fill up our freezer because it takes less energy to keep the freezer cold when everything inside it is frozen. Need to put more meat away too though...wish we could afford that 1/2 cow or 1/2 pig now...maybe in the spring...

We're FARMERS!

Okay, not really. I guess technically we're farming supporters. We finally found a farm to buy a CSA share in (Community Supported Agriculture)...we go each week and pick up our part of the crop for that week. Course we missed all the weeks in June, but what really is harvested in June anyway?? Radishes? So I go today, and being the cheap-o, penny pinching Mom that I am, I ask if they are pro-rating , since we've missed 4 weeks. The farm manager says, "No we don't pro rate till August"....so I look all sad, and it doesn't seem to get me anywhere. The longer I stay though, the more I like this farm, and I'm loving the answers to all his other questions. I am worried about getting enough tomatoes to can (the 24 plants in the front yard still leave me uneasy somehow...I must have big plans) so he tell me when tomatoes are in full tilt, I'll get my share, and then if I want to go pick more, go for it! Same with Corn. SWEET! So I sign on the dotted line, warm up the CC and fill out my paperwork. As I'm filling out the paperwork, I ask if they grow beets. Mikey and I are loving beets lately. He says, you like beets, I'll give you some beets! I hear give, and that means free, so I say SURE! So he grabs a bag, even asks paper or plastic (which reminds me...I need to bring my cloth bags to the pick-up day) and I say either! He smiles and says,"I'm going to hook you up!" I say great, and we head down the isle and chat about veggies, and animals and stuff, and he fills the plastic bag with 4 big bunches of beets, and I'm THRILLED, almost jumping up and down and telling him about roasting them and how awesome they are. So he looks around and goes and grabs another bag and says, "How about some lettuce? It's a little wilted, but it should come back if it goes in the fridge? Look through and find a couple heads and grab them"....so I find that under the top layer of lettuce, the bottom heads are still beautiful. He says take what you want, at the end of the day, that all goes to the pigs. So I grab 4 heads of beautiful lettuce, 2 red, 2 green. AWESOME! Then I look around and ask if the swiss chard has come in yet, and he says, "YEAH! You like swiss chard?" I'm more than happy to tell this man how much we love swiss chard while he loads up a bag of peas for us, and adds some broccoli to the top of the lettuce bag. He whirls around, grabs a paper bag and says, "Again, some of this has wilted, it was picked on Tuesday, so it will go to the pigs tonight too." (Whoa, it's TWO whole days old??) I laugh and say, well I don't want to take all their dinner! So I only pull out two bunches, and he says, "NAH, some of this is still good!" and hands me FOUR more bunches. Holy Swiss Chard. Then he asks if we've ever had their meat before? I saw, no, I had no idea you were even here! You're a hidden gem back here. So he says, "Can you hold on a second, I'll go grab you a package of our frozen burgers to try." He runs off and I see their burgers are $6.50 a pound, so I doubt we'll be buying many of them, but I'm willing to try them for FREE!

In the end, he had to help me get it all to the car, and he says, "We'll see you tomorrow for your weekly share ok? Oh and come as close to 7 as you can, then I can load you up with all the extras." Ummm.....DEAL.

I just spent an hour prepping all the swiss chard. It came right back, more beautiful than anything we've ever bought in the grocery store. I'm off to shell peas, and prep lettuce.

I love farming....