Promises of plums to come

Carrots emerging

green bean seedling reaching for the sky

This year, one of our Easter activities was to start the many seeds we will need for our summer garden. It seemed like to perfect activity to connect the children with the many beginnings and endings of life. Plus I love any activity that gets them all to sit down and be together for a while. We had a grand time digging through the seed box to see what we had for the coming months. Starting our pumpkins generated grand discussions about Halloween plans and all the different things we like to make with our yummy pumpkins. While planting the eggplants, we remembered roasting these black beauties and making the best fritters ever! I felt such a thrill as we planted each thing and my children chatted happily about the memories each plant evoked. This is what I want for my family. This is the life I am striving for.

Easter Treasures

We love to paint around here and since we mix our own paint from stockmar water color pigment concentrates we needed something to store our paint in. Each of our children received one of these beautiful handcrafted paint jar holders. I found it on etsy from the Wood Clinic shop. So much painting happened yesterday that I now need to go and buy more water color paper!

Mike is a wonderful person to work with and his product is top notch!

Look Out For Large Brown Hare

He is known to leave presents! What a lovely and very simple holiday we had this year. No driving, no fuss. Just plenty of hand crafted presents and a fabulous hunt for eggs in the garden. It was chilly and a bit damp but fun was had by all. Cap it all off with crepes ala Donni and strawberry sauce, a nice way to use up all those egg guts and dumpster strawberries, and you have one happy family!

Celery Salad

so, what to do with 12 lbs of rescued celery? Well of course you could make stock and soup, but why not make this amazing marinate celery salad? I got this recipe from my favorite cook book, "How To Cook Everything Vegetarian" by Mark Bitman. This book is packed with awesome recipes that any regular cook can execute. so yummy!

Chinese Marinated Celery
1 pound celery stalks
1 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar
3 tbsp dark sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice or cider vinegar
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp chili oil ( optional)

1. cut celery into 2 inch lengths. mix with the salt and 1 tsp of the sugar and set aside for 10 minutes while you whisk together the remaining ingredients.

2. Rinse, drain, and pat the celery dry, then toss with the dressing. Let stand in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours and up to a day. Serve chilled!

Your Trash - My Treasure

so if you read my husband's blog, this is old news and he writes better than I. If you haven't here's the deal. Tried to swing by the farmer's market on my home yesterday only to find all the vendors packing up. I hate it when that happens! SO I stayed to chat with a few friends when I here my name from across the lot. I wandered over to find that one of the farmers had tossed a GIGANTIC bag of produce in the dumpster. Now normally i am not a dumpster diver however, I have a lot of animals to feed here on the farm! SO I dragged it all home with the help of my wagon and the 11 yr old and started to process it all.


It soon turned into a very pleasant family affair. Sorting through 40lbs of strawberries and getting them ready for processing. So far we have made some excellent strawberry popsicles, breakfast smoothies and a lovely strawberry coulis over ginger ice cream. Quite tasty!

We also managed to score about 12lbs of celery, 20 lbs of kale and some random red cabbage and zucchini. So far I made tortilla soup with the rest of the veg and my favorite Chinese style marinated celery salad. I will post the salad recipe tomorrow.

what is black & fluffy

and oh so cute?????

well, bunnies of course.......

but baby rabbits take it a step further don't they?

they are getting so big now. Eyes are all open and they are hopping about.
No names yet as every single one is jet black!

bite size bunnies

so as you can tell we are pretty rabbit focused around here right now.

Here is the reason why.
That black lumpy pile is composed of four ever so soft and furry baby rabbits.
They are just over a week old now, so we feel a little more confident that they will survive

for this little guy it was not a sure thing. I found him pushed out of his nest the morning after he had been born. It had been raining all night and he was completely chilled and soaked. He was still moving though, so I snatched him up and put him in my shirt. It took about 2 hours but next to my skin he was able to warm up again. I was worried that mama rabbit might not let him back into the nest or nurse him. Never fear he was welcomed back into that warm little pile and is thriving!