Fried Frog Anyone?

Things have been busy on the farm. Then again, when are things not busy here? Probably in January. We've been running around harvesting vegetables, delivering vegetables, planting vegetables, weeding vegetables, and eating vegetables. To break things up I went to a u-pick strawberry patch yesterday. :)
One morning this week I woke up to a crazy loud snapping sound. I live right next to the horse pasture that has an electric fence that usually makes a mild clicking noise. You can only hear it if you listen specifically for it. However, this morning it was a insistant snap. Being the farm novice that I am, I had no clue what it was or why such a loud sound was occuring.
My curiosity was quelled at breakfast when Farmer Dan announced that the electric fence had been grounded out sometime during the night. He was expecting to find a downed branch. Instead he found the fried remains of a tree frog! No kidding, a tree frog had grounded out our fence! It was perched on one of the iron poles and had reached out to the electric line. That is how he met his untimely end. Farmer Dan said he was burnt to a crisp. I laughed and laughed. Ah life on the farm. It's great!

Harvest Time!

We harvested our first crops for the farm members this week! It came as quite a surprise. I arrived back on the farm Monday night after traveling to a friend's wedding the previous weekend. Farmer Dan was very gracious in giving me a four day weekend. We sat on the porch sharing our various weekend experiences and Farmer Dan announced we would be harvesting this week. The first week in June! And what did we harvest this week? Spinach, Romaine and Loose Leaf Lettuces, Swiss Chard, and Green Kale.
Harvesting was quite hectic and the normally steep learning curve dropped off and became a very tricky cliff. We survived though and Farmer Dan was quite patient with us newbies. Hopefully this coming week will go better and we will only make mistakes half or less than half the time. :)
It took a while for me to get back into the swing of things after my incredibly busy four day weekend. I blame the weird weather. This past week it was cool then hot and humid, then cool, then ridiculously hot and humid, then cool again. Unfortunately we are in need of rain again. We were doing so well for the past few weeks, but it's dry again. I guess farmers are never satisfied when it comes to weather.
The picture I'm including is me in the harvest shed where all the picked produce is washed in these huge bins and then sorted into the boxes that we deliver to the members. We get all the extras. So, needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway) I've been eating a lot of salads. Yesterday I found some slices of cornbread that I had baked a couple of weeks ago and I think I've discovered a few new strains of mold or at least some new colors. I will attack that mess today. I hope that a lot of boiling water and a few hungry pigs will erase this disaster and this blog will be the only evidence of it ever happening.
I made two discoveries this weekend. First, I found a German textbook at a garage sale and bought it for 10cents. So in my free time I will be brushing up on my german. The funny thing is that this textbook is much more up to date than the one I had in high school. In my garage sale textbook Germany is actually one country! In my high school textbook there was still a West and East Germany! Ha ha!
My second discovery is a beautiful but short walking trail in downtown Osceola. Osceola is located on a bluff that looks out on the St. Croix River. There is a smaller river that runs on the south end of town and there's a staircase in the middle of downtown that takes you to the waterfall and then follows the little river as it runs to the St. Croix. It was beautiful.
Well, I'm off to do some cooking. Auf Wiedersehen!