Mushrooms and Green Tomatoes and a bit of Free Geek

What a busy week! A friend brought over 5 lbs. of chanterelle mushrooms that he had picked at the coast. We traded a medium sized frozen chicken and a dozen duck eggs for the 'shrooms. Good deal as we've all decided that we love the chantrelles! They're in the dryer now. We'll seal the dried mushrooms into pint sized jars and freeze for 2 days to kill anything that might still be alive after the drying process. I'm keepin' my fingers crossed!

I've been told over and over again to include some computer based learning in to our curriculum. I've been told that to know the zen of the computer is to know the path of the future. Well fine. After rebelling against technology for years (except for this fine blog! I don't even have a Facebook page) I decided to include some technology based lessons into our studies by volunteering at Free Geek. If y'all don't know what Free Geek is, find out! It's so super duper cool and we so love all the Geeks working and volunteering there. Here's a link to their website, research! http://www.freegeek.org/ We spent 4 hours dismantling disk drives and recycling the different bits and pieces, learning what each part looked like and what each piece did. We're doing the Adoption program at Free Geek; volunteer for 24 hours and earn a computer. Simple eh? And fun! Stella and I don't need a computer but Joshua and Jason are super stoked to be able to earn themselves a computer that they'll be able to use all by themselves a couple of hours a week. See, I'm progressive!
Until super recently, we were able to draw out the growing season and were eating pretty much every day from the garden. Though the last few days have been nothing but deluge and downpour, I'm afraid to take a photo of what it looks like now. This picture was taken just a week ago and look how healthy we are! How happy! I feel like I could write a book about all I've learned this year with the garden and the animals and although I didn't achieve what I sought to achieve, I did learn a lot. I feel we're on the right path and I wouldn't have traded all these ups and downs for a million dollars. Every death, I carry with me and every triumph, I wear on my sleeve. All in all, a good harvest season.