Rain, Risotto, and Raspberries

Greetings from a humid Sunday evening! Mick is practicing banjo in the next room (sounds GREAT!) and I wanted to post some pictures, which coincidentally all have to do with words beginning with R. Feels kind of like Sesame Street.

So, rain. We used to check the weather forecast on weather.com, but their exceptional lack of accuracy put a quick end to that. Instead we look at the radar maps, and Mick is getting very good at predicting from that when we should expect rain. This has proven to be much more reliable. So last week when we checked we saw a very dramatic thunderstorm warning for our area. A severe weather system had been spotted in Locke a half hour earlier (about twenty miles away) and was headed our direction at 40 mph. Sure enough, the sky soon turned gray and it began to POUR!



We put buckets and jugs out to collect as much of the rain as we could to bring up the hill for watering plants. It was very exciting for us! but not so exciting for Roscoe. We invited him to come outside with us, and he quickly found the driest spot on the porch.


After the mega-storm passed, we went up to the hill to work and were able to observe the weather from there. Mick got some incredible pictures of another storm moving through.



Next is risotto. Mick made a wonderful lunch this afternoon -- brown rice cooked in rabbit broth with spices and our very own chicken breast. It is amazing to be able to eat such delicious, hearty, nutritious food and know where all of the ingredients come from! Rice and spices from the Mennonites, rabbit from our garden, and chicken from our homestead.

And to finish up with raspberries... A while back, Heidi forwarded us an email that claimed to be the diary of a dog, and it went something like this: "Went for a walk. My favorite thing! Ate breakfast. My favorite thing! Took a nap. My favorite thing!" etc. Well, today on our way up to the hill I told Mick that of all the soft fruits I think my favorite is blackcaps. Only a few short minutes later, having spent those minutes picking raspberries, I decided that raspberries are my favorite thing (at least until something else comes in season). :)


So pick-your-own-raspberry season is officially open! You are welcome to come anytime, it doesn't seem likely that we will run out. They are quite delicious, and there is nothing like fresh fruit. Also, picking fruit on our own land is a beautiful piece of our dream, and one of the things that always particularly captured my imagination growing up, so that makes this harvest extra special. A little less imaginative is this week's grocery store circular...


So let's see if I got this right...
The grocery store offers 6 ounces of raspberries, perhaps seasoned with pesticides? no way to know, cost: $2.99.
The homestead offers as many ounces of raspberries as we can pick, grown organically, cost: a walk in the woods with my husband and dog on a lovely summer Sunday afternoon.
I love it!


The raspberries also make delicious smoothies when blended with homemade vanilla ice milk, whey protein powder, milk and a dash of sugar.

Bottoms up!