What a Colorful Life!

Just thought I'd share a couple things that make my life a little brighter before we head into the weekend. Tomorrow we will be having a booth set up at Art in the Park in Holland, Michigan. Come and visit us! 

This is one of the best games I've ever experienced. It's called The Magnificent Race. I suggest finding the game and playing immediately! 

These are my proudest findings this week. I found 36 vintage coloring books from the 70s and early 80s for less than 50 cents a piece. Only one or two have a colored page, and very few have torn out of their binding. After loosing my coloring book collection two years ago to water mildew, I'm pretty excited to go to town in these. The illustrations are so beautifully detailed. 

Today's colorful harvest included watermelons!

I'm particularly excited about these tomatillos to add to our salsas. nom nom.

Last but not least, this is what I woke up to this morning. My oldest is with his grandparents for the weekend while we are at the art festival. We will miss him, but we are glad he gets to visit with more of his family. I'm sure he will come back spoiled as ever. With me doing all this preparation for the booths he deserves it.
I love these boys. 

Bring on the weekend!

-Hannah

First Canning Experience

The other day my sister and I had our first experience with canning. Neither one of us had much knowledge going into it, but with a little bit of research and all the supplies in front of us we went for it. Besides our garden that was bursting at the seams to be harvested, our first motivation was finding a interesting mix of pickling spices. After one smell the spices intrigued us. Inside our little container were cloves, mustard seeds, cumin, bay leaves, dill, allspice, and a ton of others I can't think of but I wrote them all around the container if someone should ask. 

My first goal was to make pickles, I mainly wanted cucumbers to use for my juicing, but my mom has a knack for buying every variety of vegetables and fruits she can find. So of course, we have a ton of picking cucumbers. I juice them sometimes, but we had so many in the fridge it was time to pickle. My sister and I just decided to do a sort of fridge ready pickling because we will eat them so fast, they don't need to have a shelf life. The pickles are so zesty it's fantastic and have the best crunch I've ever experienced compared to the store bought. We may have to make some with a shelf life after all. 

Pickling Spice from our Co-op Maple City Market

Pickling Cucumbers 

We also tried our hand at salsa making, but in the middle of peeling the tomatoes, we had more of a desire to create a fresh and light tasting pico de gallo. This is probably one of my most favorite creations yet. Even without a fresh onion (we used a little dried minced onion) this was great. For the last couple days I've been eating pico de gallo and some chips for lunch. I find myself nearly licking the salsa bowl clean before telling myself to stop. I'm very happy that this tomato season has just begun and soon we will be making some pasta sauce!

Pico de gallo with a wide variety of tomatoes, sweet banana peppers, sweet jalapeno peppers, onion & garlic chives, dehydrated cilantro, dried minced onion, and garlic powder.

Accomplishments from our first day canning!

-Hannah

The Family Garden

Out where I live there are a couple acres of property designated as a community garden. When I first moved in I wasn't sure how much I would actually be interested in utilizing any of the land. It took a year, but now my family is really into it. In fact, my family (three households of us) have a little over 5,000 sq ft all to ourselves! My mother has always had an amazing green thumb and has enjoyed gardening her entire life. I'm fairly new at this whole growing thing, but I'm in love with gratification of growing something so beautiful and being able to harvest it later for a fantastic meal. 


This year we have decided to try out a new approach to gardening called sustainable permaculture. A family member suggest we watch a film online called "Back to Eden" explaining the methods for gardening in depth. Their website even provides pretty extensive instructions, but it leaves room for you to figure out what works best for you in your location. By adding new covering to your garden you just keep adding more and more nutrients as the year goes on with no tilling involved at all! It's already really impressed us, especially the weeding aspect of it.


I suggest checking them out and get growing!

-Hannah