My reasons for not posting here are pretty simple. Raising a 2 and 4 year old while taking on a new role as CIO at work left me with no free time. Lots of things have fallen by the wayside over the last year and change, including this site. It didn’t help that the server the site runs on was hacked twice. The first time it happened last fall I cleaned things up  a few weeks of down time. The second time it happened, this winter, I gave up, at least for a good long spell. I’ll give it another try now. The kids are a year older and a little more self sufficient, plus I have a new toy to play with. We’ll see how it goes.

…like kids. I catch grief from most of my extended family for not wearing a shirt during the hottest part of the summer. Note the kids’ attire:

for my funny and clever Father’s Day breakfast. Even more amusing was that she first sent Brady in with a tray decked out with all the kids’ toy foods from their kitchen play set.

 I have 22 productive apple trees on my property. Most of them are definitely bearing fruit this year, sticking with the pattern of great crops every other year. Figure on us having a big cider making party around October when the majority of the fruit is ripe enough. Here’s a good sample of what’s to come: 

Here’s two of them:

I could have easily picked at least two more. Our strawberries are ridiculously productive this year!

We do, 7 of them, including this 3 month old. We rented them from a local business, The Goat Girls, to clear poison ivy from the front of the property. The young one needs a bottle every morning to supplement, and the kids have been having a blast feeding it.

a hoop house to hold bird netting to protect our blueberries. $30 or so in parts, and really not that hard to put together: