It's not unusual to find little "gifts" on our doormat in the morning or late afternoon, left by our wildest cat MouseyTongue. In fact, it was the regular presence of these sometimes whole, but usually parts, of various rodents, amphibians, and reptiles that caused us to change his name from Mao Tse-tung to his current moniker. When parts show up regularly, you remember to look before you step. When the pace slows - and you forget - you get to play the game of "what was that I stepped on/in?" Then I get to examine the little multi-colored lumps of guts and gristle and use my Comparative Biology 101 skill set to try to identify the organism that they came from before I take the whole mat to the dock and dump the parts. Always me, because Thais won't go near it - and this is one of the truly masculine jobs at the farm with no contest. Usually it is mouse or frog parts. Sometimes only a hide. On occasion, a detached head sitting upright, eyes unblinking like something out of a Godfather movie.
Mousey is the cat we used to fish for on a regular basis. He likes his fish whole and flipping. Mercifully, he usually eats the small bream (his favorite) from the head down. If you go anywhere near the pond when he is in sight, he bolts for the dock, singing his desire for sushi. We haven't been fishing in a while... Now, how he managed to get this one-pound bass out of the pond and to the doorstep I can only guess. And my guess is that either the fish launched himself out of the pond while chasing prey or, more likely, a blue heron speared it but the fish was too large to manage and the cat took over. I would like to believe that the cat pulled it out by himself - and the mental picture is hilarious - but I don't think he could manage that. Anyway, Mousey was very smug this morning as I stepped out, and wasn't at all interested in his dry food.
Many many thanks to the CSA Members who came out to help.
Will traveled down to Cameron, La. (for those who don't know, it's south of Lake Charles, kind of almost in the Gulf - and there's very little left down there since the hurricanes). He picked up a ton of...well...it is basically fish gut fertilizer - it's in a big plastic 'tote' on the back of the truck...because getting it OFF of the truck is a problem for now. But Will cannot go anywhere near a body of water without trying to catch fish - because that's just the way he is. Luckily, there was another dude hanging around by the edge of the water, and this guy had some bait with him - and he was willing to share. Will caught his limit of redfish in no time at all! very nice. 
Now that I look back, I guess it was a pretty busy week.
We have the field preparation done (lots of dirt moving and row making). At some point (and I can't even remember which day it was), Will unloaded this GIANT piece of felt he got from Georgia Pacific. It was so heavy that the two of us could not even spread it out flat. But we did the best we could. 
The idea was to get on your hands and knees (that would be me) and, using one of those handy-dandy little razor knives, work your way backwards and cut a STRAIGHT line all the way down until you have a 42" strip about 80 feet long. Geez. I did that twice. That was all I had in me. Then it rained. and the felt is still there and i need to do at least two more. Maybe I'll get out there and give it a try. don't know how wet it will be...nasty job. The point is to have long strips to lay between the rows inthe greenhouses to cut down on weeds. A laudable concept - difficult to bring to fruition, but a lot of what we do is like that. 
In addition, we finally got our order of honey jars. That took until mid-September. So we've been slowly decanting the honey, and have it for sale. A we all know, if you leave honey sitting around for any time at all, it begins to crystallize. We had ours in 5-galon buckets. Most people store it this way. But the honey at the bottom of each bucket had begun to set. So we had to figure out how to warm it up. Once you warm it, it achiees it's beautiful fluid state again, and all is well. No harm done. But we were concerned about heating up the plastic buckets. We didn't want to take a chance and accidentally overheat it, so placing them in the crawfish boiler outside, in the end, didn't seemlike a good idea. Will did a lilttle research and checking around, and in the end built this groovy box and hung a lightbulb in it. Voila!
We are awaiting our 'government greenhouses' - ordered and now shipped. Two high tunnels that we will put up in the very near future. We'll be having a 'Greenhouse Raising' weekend. Much more on that later, I'm sure.
...you would think.
...even the Kitty Witty looks a little wistful.
The basil REALLY needs to be trimmed, but to do the job correctly would give you a garbage can full of basil, and that's too much to fool with all at one time. I had to fight the bees for this, even: 
It's the time of year when you have baskets and wheelbarrows and boxes and bins of vegetables kind of everywhere...not to mention all over the kitchen(!)
Didn't get around to pictures of the eggplants and peppers this morning: purple hull peas was the goal - enough for dinner. Calling on our CSA members to come on over and pick before the rains come. T.S.Alex should give us plenty of rain - it will mess up the garden, but the garden is halfway messed up already - and it will put water back into the pond, which is a good thing...
It's so easy in the spring to take pictures of the developing garden...pictures that show order and beauty and all that is (at least for a little while) 'under control'. Before the weeds, before the drought, before the maturaton of anything planted for this season. I'm always amazed at the rapidity of change...so here we are, third week of June. Here are some 'then and now' scenes: 
(The sunflowers are beautiful in both stages)
This is just a taste of what's happening out in the garden - some things are just now coming into their own in the heat (eggplants, peppers...) 
We all know we will remember this year as the Amazing June Heat year - let us not think about August, ok? On Friday evening, csa members began to show up around 6 to help pull red beans off of the plants...a LOT of people showed up! This picture does not show the entire group, which expanded as time went on - and when we ran out of plants, we had to truck on out there and pull more - because Will was busy back there in the potatoes. It was beYOND hot. No breeze stirring; just sitting there in a chair, and sweat pouring off of you..and nobody complained. Beans were pulled and piled into carts, then boxes...ready for the Saturday baskets.
This morning (monday), I picked (or cut, rather) the cucumbers...beginnings of week 4 ...