Farmer Dan’s Garden

After a few days of lots of rain, it has been a sunny & beautiful week in good old PA. Since Monday it has been in the low to mid 80’s with no humidity and gorgeous sunshine. Really nothing to complain about.

Every year I think our family garden gets a little bigger. Dan swears its the same size as the last year, but the weeding & upkeep take longer each day. Maybe I am just getting a little older slower each year! Who knows?

Dan really does 85 or 90 percent of the leg work on this garden! After it starts to produce veggies I help harvest, freeze & eat the rewards, but the hard labor is mostly his with a little help from the kids & I. This season he has planted sugar snap peas, italian lettuce, lima beans, green beans, summer squash, zuchinni, cozelle squash, red peppers, yellow peppers, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, big boy tomatoes, broccoli, onions and pumpkins. He didn’t plant sunflowers, but they came back on their own, he did plant them last year. THANKS, honey for all your hard work, we love the fresh food and it definitely saves us $$.

So far we have eaten lots of fresh and stir fry sugar snap peas and frozen 8 quarts for later use. We had so much italian blend lettuce, didn’t know what to do with it all. We gave it away to everyone we could, but we still had way too much! How many salads, hot lettuce, cold lettuce, sandwich toppings can one family eat? WE did our best. Now the heat has killed off most of the lettuce & the peas, they like it much cooler so they are down for the count by the end of this week.

Our summer has pretty much been uneventful thus far. We haven’t really gone anywhere or did anything exciting. I am anxiously awaiting a visit from my favorite (oops, she’s my only one) sister and her 3 beautiful children. I can’t wait to hold a baby and spoil all of them rotten!

Dylan is already starting to get bored. He is supposed to be reading The Diary of Anne Frank for Honors English, next year. ( I can hardly believe my little boy is going to be a freshman in a few months.) Speaking of little, little Dylan is not. He is very close to being taller than both is older brother & older sister. At least someone in this house ended up missing the short gene that seems to run in the Ertter/Brosius family.

Devyn is busy with travel softball, pre-season field hockey activities and reading Fountain Head for AP English next year…plus tossing sorting through all of her college “mail”, taking senior pictures, keeping up with her social obligations and being a normal teenager!

Dustin is still working at Giant, waiting for a permanent full time position when their new store opens. It was supposed to open in June, then Oct, now 2010. Slow go! He is happy just working 32 hours a week, that way no weekends & he always knows he works every night Sunday through Thursday and that only changes if a holiday happens to fall on one of those days.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, no matter where you live or what you are doing.

Have a wonderful week, until next time!

God Bless!

Michele