With temperatures for several days this week topping out in the 104 range we have been scrambling to keep everything alive and kicking here on the homestead.
Mass quantities of water have to be laid down to keep the plants happy and even then we finally resorted to leaving a sprinkler on in one bed and praying for rain while we were out yesterday. Which thankfully we received a bit of last night.
It was Kevin’s birthday on Sunday and we had a great last minute impromptu birthday party with a few friends.
Kevin decided it was finally time to try out the Fried Green Tomato BLT he’d been drooling over since we went to Jake’s Ice Cream in Atlanta and saw their sign for it. It seemed like a fitting meal and we finally had enough large green tomatoes from the garden to support the endeavor.
Noah was his normal delightful self, waving to mommy while I cut up tomatoes.
Five tomatoes went plenty far for the seven of us. We used the Whistle Stop Fried Green Tomatoes batter and have to say we weren’t that impressed with it. Word on the street is you normally get fried green tomatoes with a remoulade sauce or ranch. It was fairly bland although the texture of the batter turned out very nice and held well without flouring and egging which was a pleasant surprise.
An impromptu hat wearing moment started as one of our friends Matt kept reappearing from his closet with a new hat everytime someone stole his current one.
Noah wasn’t so sure what was going on. Note to self: train next children to wear sunglasses and hats before they know any better.
We cooked ourselves greasy wonderfulness…..probably to the point of true excess. I mean really, we dipped the bread in bacon grease before we toasted it on the pan. We contemplated whether frying the lettuce was necessary and after deciding there truly is no way to do so gracefully bowed out on that one.
Of course we chose to do this on the day when it was 104+ out and everyone baked their faces off taking turns out at the fryer or bacon frying station!
It was a delicious site to behold:
But even with the heat we had a great afternoon and the sandwiches turned out great. Next time around we think we will add much more spice to them because they were a bit bland thought still very tasty. We added some fresh basil to the combo and it really was a nice fresh taste in the mix so we will probably do that again and definitely do that for a regular BLT.
The rest of the week was dedicated to our church’s week long celebration time called Pleasant Valley Days. Every morning is teaching from our head pastors and the afternoons have different activities that you can pick and choose from. The 4th is a crazy day with a big potluck, lawn mower races, a mini parade, jumping houses and inflatable waterslides and obstacle courses and lots more.
This year they had a great misting tent which Noah loved so we spent a lot of time hanging out under there trying to stay cool. We were bombarded left and right with people amazed at his little personality and how happy he is. Yes, he truly is this happy of a baby pretty much all the time.
Love this kiddo.
They also brought in ponies this year for the kids! Not gonna lie, I probably had more fun with this then he did. Granted, he had a really good time and loved pat pat patting the ponies mane while he was riding and saying hello. But this momma’s been jonesing for a ride for quite some time now and somehow just seeing him ride the pony eased this just a teensy smidge.
It’s official, he’s gonna need a goat herding pony in the future.
This week also brought a bounty of harvest from the currently somewhat neglected garden:
We also got our first EVER homegrown cantaloupe! It was a very exciting moment.
The skin is very different from any variety I have seen and Kevin says it doesn’t look like the Burpee hybrid variety his grandpa used to grow (which we planted this year also). So it’s either a strange mutant Burpee or its the Hearts of Gold variety we also planted.
Either way it was ripe and smelled great. It wasn’t incredibly sweet however so we wrapped it and chilled it for a few hours and then used it as an ice cream bowl. Half a cantaloupe and a bit of vanilla ice cream is heaven.
We also harvested our tire tower potato vines as the foliage had died back. We got a meager bag of spuds for our efforts and discovered that the towers were completely infested with ant nests and were slug and snail havens during the day.
I believe that they just get too hot for our weather here with the black rubber. Maybe in a cooler climate but don’t think we’ll be doing that method again here. The few that I sliced though cooked up nicely and the flavor was great so no failure on that end.
It was also thinning time in the carrot bed so we had lots of pan fried carrots and green beans with dinner.
Pretty exciting that everything in our dinner and dessert except the meat and ice cream came from our garden! Soon meat chickens and goat ice cream will bring the whole thing to our tummies from our own animals and garden.
We absolutely love watching the way that God feeds us and cares for us in this way!
What’s coming out of your garden these days?
