Vegetables love the sun and so it’s no coincidence that during the year’s hottest weeks, we really begin to feel the heat as well. It’s good to be busy.

Lately, we are …

spending lots of time taking water to the chickens and pigs :: eating as many tomatoes as possible (we love them on sandwiches with homemade mayo, slow-roasted and tossed into a frittata, braised with the summer’s first okra, in ratatouille, and eaten out of hand while our ALMOST! THREE! year old digs and digs and digs) :: washing eggs (more and more every week) :: eating outside almost every night (and putting our bug spray to work!) :: happily banging elbows around our ever-messy kitchen island on the nights when the mosquitoes are just too fierce :: honing our pie skills with peaches from our family tree and dreaming of a small orchard for the farm :: hoping it’s not too late to order this year’s batch of Cornish Rocks :: basking in the ease of several weeks now with no poison ivy rash :: absorbed in a new read :: feeling humbled, challenged, and reassured as we learn that even the children of farmers are particular and strong-willed eaters as they stretch and grow :: delighting in all the noises the pigs make, and in how fast they can move :: smiling as our market tables grow more bountiful each week :: watching the pollinators all around us and wishing we’d planted more sunflowers :: bookmarking lots of recipes :: digging just a little deeper in our knowledge of the wild edibles and medicinals on our farm, like purslane and chicory and plantain and chickweed and burdock, and feeling quite in awe of all we have yet to learn :: hoping hard for a bountiful crop of storage vegetables :: picking, washing, sorting, loading, delivering :: sleeping hard :: feeling grateful

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We would love to hear some of the things filling your midsummer days. Leave a note in the comments if you like!

(Turns out we did a similar photo-heavy post around this time last year. Have a look!)