The farm is coming along

We have our first green beans! I didn’t even realize that they were growing until I was weeding yesterday and saw something weird coming off of the plant. It looks like we will be having green beans with dinner this weekend. :)

Our cucumbers are going to be crazy this year – there are about 20 blossoms on our plants and some baby cukes are growing already. We are going to try making pickles this year. I found some recipes for fridge pickles as well as canned pickles. I suppose that we’ll be trying the fridge pickles first. That should be a fun project while my sister in law is visiting.

The chickens are about 8 weeks old now and get bigger every day. At first we were allowing them access to the garden, but then they started eating all of our plants. So chickypoos are now banned from the garden, although one or two seem to find a way to get stuck in there every day. I’m hoping that once their permanent run is constructed that they’ll be less likely to want to get in to the garden. We should be getting our reward of fresh eggs in about 2 months. Supposedly our black stars will start producing eggs at 16 weeks, which is July 29^th. Our silkies (the white fuzzy chickens - Mouse and Dresdy) aren't very smart and are definitely near the bottom of the pecking order... but they are so freaking cute and SOFT. They feel like bunnies! We've been trying to make the chickens more tame by handfeeding them treats and petting them. When they hear the back door open and see someone, they all come running. It's pretty adorable.

Here is Jay having a mealworm frenzy with the chickypoos

As I think I mentioned before, we are planning to have a green carpet unveiling. It seems that the party keeps getting pushed back to later in the year. When Jay and I talked about a date, it now seems that our party will be at the beginning of October. I really wanted to still have fresh tomatoes to make bruschetta for our party, but I suppose that I could can my bruschetta mixture. Who knows, I may still have tomatoes in October. I sure hope so!  I found this recipe for canning bruschetta that I will probably try out:  http://motherskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/bruschetta-in-jar.html

Part of the fun of the party that I’m planning is that I want to use all (or at least mostly) locally-sourced ingredients. I’m sure that most of the firemen sure to be at our party won’t appreciate it, but I know that most of my friends (and the firemen’s wives and girlfriends) will enjoy it.

Here is the first draft of the menu... we may add or remove some items:

Chips & Salsa (fresh made salsa from our garden vegetables)

Deviled eggs (fresh from our chickens)

Duck w/ goat cheese, shallots, apples wrapped in phyllo (locally sourced duck and goat cheese, if I can find them – shallots from our garden, apples from a local orchard)

Bruschetta (fresh made from our garden on homemade bread)

Buffalo chicken dip (we’ll tell everyone it’s an unlucky chicken)

Salad (not sure on this one yet, but we have Bibb lettuce growing in the pallet garden)

Quiche (made with our eggs and garden vegetables)

Pulled pork (from Cedar Run cattle, a local farm)

London broil (also from Cedar Run)

Sandwich rolls

Fresh pickles from garden

Chocolate chip cookies

Brownies

I want to have a signature cocktail and do a twist on Long Island Iced Tea. I'm trying to think of a fun name to call it – Delmarva Iced Tea sounds kind of lame. I’m going to experiment with it, but it’s going to be some kind of peach sweet tea with a kick. I’ll probably make it with peaches, peach nectar, vodka or rum, and iced tea.

I’m also in the process of attempting to grow rosemary from cuttings. We have a rosemary bush that is completely out of control, and I was thinking that it would be nice to give little potted rosemary plants to our guests. There will be a little sign that says, “Take a piece of our garden home with you.”

Please disregard the neighbor's overgrowth on the left. We're planning to send a formal complaint letter to the county so that he will finally have take care of it. He hasn't taken care of his property in years and told us the one or two times that he stopped by that he was planning to mow his yard. Uhh, yeah. It's not much fun to constantly battle his foliage, plus it's a haven for mosquitoes.  

Some more exciting news on the home front - we should have our siding completed sometime around July. This should fix our leaky family room window situation, which I'm pretty concerned about because of the weather forecast for tonight:

THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR SOME STRONG TO SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS
LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT AS A COLD FRONT ARRIVES. ANY
STRONGER THUNDERSTORM COULD BE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING LOCALLY
DAMAGING WINDS AND HAIL. IN ADDITION, HEAVY RAIN COULD ACCOMPANY
THIS SYSTEM WHICH MAY RESULT IN LOCALIZED BUT BRIEF FLOODING. AT
THIS TIME, THE GREATER CHANCE FOR A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM APPEARS TO
BE ACROSS DELAWARE AND MARYLAND TO PERHAPS INTO SOUTHEASTERN
PENNSYLVANIA.

Jay sealed up the chicken coop today, which was having some leaking issues along the back of the coop. So hopefully our chickypoos will be safe and dry tonight.

I'm planning to post a recipe soon, but that's it for now.