Saturday run-down, two days late

This morning we slept in until nine. That's pretty unheard of in this house....but we DID stay out for an uber-late date night last night...so we didn't get home until close to 1am, and didn't get to bed until almost 2 am.Crazy, I know. I'm getting old and late nights don't work for me as well as they used to a decade ago.

Today Nathan and Daniel worked together to help a friend move into a new house (hurray for friends relocating to the countryside!). While they worked, I took Diego into town to pick up our order from Bountiful Baskets. (Haven't heard of Bountiful Baskets? Look it up in your area! It's great! We love getting a large box of produce for $25!) Today we also added a crate of peaches and another box of plums onto our order. I'm looking forward to peach jams, peach smoothies, dehydrated peach fruit snacks, and peach cobbler. Mmm!

I love the sense of community at this place. The produce truck pulls up and all the volunteers band together to unload pallets full of produce boxes. Then we helped divide everything into baskets. Diego was trying so hard to be helpful, carrying a basket down the line to collect veggies. While we waited in line to collect our produce, Diego quickly became bored. So when he found a stray piece of broccoli on the sidewalk, I started doing magic tricks with it. He'd wave his little fists over my hand and say, "Abra Dabra!" We made it disappear into thin air and reappear from his ear or his bellybutton. He loved it, and time passed much more quickly.

On the way home we stopped at the farm supply store to pick up chicken food. Our farm supply store is so eclectic...I always intend to do a blog post all about it, but never remember to take a camera along with me.

Right at the front door is a large watering trough full of baby chicks for sale. Diego loves to stand on his tiptoes, peek over the edge of the container, and wave hello to the 'chickees'.

When we brought home the chicken grains, Diego loved helping feed the flock. I call to the birds and they come running to us from every corner of the property: flying over fences, descending from tree branches, leaping over tufts of grass in the meadows. It's really fun. Diego loves to thrust his hands deeply into the large sack of grains and throw them exuberantly into the air. It's his favorite chore to help with.

For lunch we headed into our little town to enjoy lunch with several friends at our local diner. This little nugget is a-MAZE-ing. People drive all the way out here from Austin to eat at this place. That's saying a lot, since there's really not much else to do in our town other than this. Dahlia's has wonderful food with a small-town, rustic atmosphere.

There's also an outdoor play area for children, which makes it really appealing for us. While we wait for tables, we "Toss Washers" outside.

While we waited, Diego found the resident cat and decided he was happy to just hang out with it. 

This evening our family all worked outside together for over 4 hours. The children raked several large piles of leaves (including a massive pile that was born by combining 5 other piles....this was their fort the rest of the evening). I used several wagon-loads of leaves to mulch our fruit orchard while Nathan constructed another raised-bed for our veggie garden. Then we worked together to move 6 wagon loads of dirt into the new garden bed. Sarah was a darling and repeatedly brought out ice water for us (it was pretty hot and definitely over 100 degrees while we worked).

While I watered the orchard with a hand-held hose, the kids played water games with me. I taught them some games from my childhood. It's called "Water Doors", and it's a game I have fond memories of. I spray the water in an arc to create a 'door', and the kids try to run through it without getting very wet. To make things more fun, most of the 'doors' are opening and closing rapidly, which happens when I flick my wrist to make the arcing water move. So they have to time their run just right, or they'll get sprayed. It's really fun and makes watering the trees much more pleasant. Our pomegranate trees both have fruit, and so do our jujube trees. As a girl from Idaho, it seems wildly exotic to me to have my own pomegranate trees.

As the sun set, we moved our work to the pasture. After watering the goat herd, I tried to segregate the does from the boys. Bringing buckets of alfalfa pellets, the children helped feed our pregnant does, who are named Rosemary and Paparika.  It was really neat to watch Paparika's sides move as her babies kicked. We're hoping to see little kids in late October.

Anyway- there's our Saturday wrap up!