Tea party

The theme of our tea party was hats--cowboy hats, little red riding hoods, bonnets, hats with artificial flowers, shiny, black top hats. I read Do YOU Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli. Then we shared party sandwiches, deviled eggs, cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered blueberries, blueberry lemonade and, of course, tea in china cups with tiny flowers around the rim. By the end the little girls had chocolate and cookie crumbs smeared on their faces, which is the mark of a perfectly wonderful tea party.

Little helpers

My cousin and her three daughters came for a visit this week. While they were here, the girls helped to gather the eggs from the chicken coop and pick blueberries. 

Cultivating

The sweet corn is growing, though it will be awhile yet before the ears appear on the table for dinner. 

Country church

The light was fantastic Sunday evening. After the service two of my sisters and I took a walk on the gravel road near the church building while the rest of the family visited outside the building. 

Snowflake

Ripe

Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields;

for they are white already to harvest.

John 4:35

Blueberries...

hundreds of quarts of blueberries. 

The blueberry bushes are loaded with blueberries. We opened the farm to the public for the first time on Monday. Since then I've been at the farm twice a day picking blueberries, supervising pickers and serving customers. We added two Farmers' Markets--one on Monday evening and one on Thursday evening--to bring our total for the week to four markets. 

Our supply exceeded our demand this week. Mom has been experimenting with blueberry juice and Wednesday night the girls packaged and froze fifty quarts of blueberries.