Living Off the Land

during august, almost every year, it seems like we pretty much 'live off the land.'  this year it was even more true because we were here all month, the garden was producing like crazy, i was canning like crazy, and friends and family would drop/trade fruit.  we have eggs from our chickens...and brian and beth's milk cow calved, so we even have fresh milk.  my cooking goes down hill during this time.  we just have a lot of fruit salads and skillet dinners or bbq's, and i'm done!:)

we harvested our yellow watermelons from our garden and lots of tomatoes.  the week before school started we picked to 2, five gallon buckets and bentley, bridon, and emerson helped me so much to turn them into salsa and pizza sauce.  we had a great day together!  bentley was my blender man, bridon washed and took all the scraps to the chickens, and emerson helped get jars ready.  we even hosted the missionaries.  we do a lot with them as of late, because each ward has it's own set now.
the week the corn came on, natalie came home from her mission!  she had some problems with her knee and ended a bit early.  the entire family was able to come to welcome her back.  we did a huge group effort of picking and freezing corn as well as a sealing session entirely using family names.

these other pictures include the swallow pair and nest that we watched out the back door, lots of swathing with dad, sliding down the stacker and coming home from the office with my 'babysitter' cooking gorilla poops.  luckily the house didn't burn down and they were actually very good!  we harvested a few apples off our honey crisp tree after a massive windstorm.  they were gi-normous and delicious with homemade carmel!
and, lastly, the boys have been on a kick to trap all the wild 'kittens' up around the chicken coop and tame them.  they have caught each one, and not tamed them.  the last victim was a chicken.  best catch yet.  it was pretty funny!