This morning

New calluses. Hoeing corn.

The menfolk tinker on the tractor, repairing a wheel baring.

Jerusalem Artichokes, which kindly replant themselves every year, wherever they choose.

These ones in with the pop corn.

Pop corn. Best corn I've ever grown. Kept us in stock all winter and some is still hanging in the pantry.

"What are you growing?" I'm often asked, and I stop to think of the weeds crowding out the carrots or the lettuces I'm apparently growing only for the rabbits which frequent the beds early morning, just out of the reach of the dog's wireless collars.

Mostly, I'm trying hard to grow a family.

Gardening comes as a side. A means to do what is first.

  I only garden for the eight that congregate at the farm table three times a day.

These Hutterite beans (photo above) will be dried and made into soups this winter.

Yellow wax beans

Peas. I don't know if they are snap peas or snow peas. It has just been that sort of growing season, missing papers telling me what is what. :)

Garlic, planted last fall and now past knee high.

Butter Beans, which the ants seem to think are nice.

Pole beans and Telephone Peas with rows of wax beans and pickling cukes in between.

A very early crop of potatoes, thanks to the hot spring we've been having.

A new apple tree of a blight resistant variety. Orcharding is a love of my husband's and he knows all these trees by name and how old each is and how many (!) fruits they are making this year. Over the past few years we've put in twenty to thirty additional dwarf fruit trees on our little two acres. If God keeps us here, I am looking forward to having enough fruit to can to keep us all winter. A hen out and about. We've switched to feeding the biddies only at night and so for the rest of the day they are busy running around the yard eating bugs. It is fabulous seeing them jump up into the air to catch a mosquito. Since we've changed their feeding habit, we've also had no ticks on anyone in the yard. Lettuce in with strawberry plants.

Ella's pumpkin which she started from seed in a mason jar. She took this photo as well as the photos of me weeding. Under that housedress is a 14 week rounding out belly

A chicken's just been popped into the oven with veggies to roast, it's juices dripping over carrots, mushrooms and celery, garlic tucked under its skin.  A summer dress for Annaliese is calling my name, button holes to be made and little red buttons sewn down the front.
I hope whatever your day brings, it is beautiful.