First of the harvest:

Our lettuce is in! I've been eating salad every day so that none of it goes to waste. How is your garden doing? Everything else I've planted is a bit behind schedule due to that fact that I've had to replant everything several times. The main culprit this year seems to be snails - I personally killed 12 snails this morning and my boys kill them all day long. We used to pick them up and throw them as far as we could in the opposite direction of the garden, but they were obviously making their way back. Last week I went to water the pumpkin patch and all that was there was dirt covered in shimmery snail tracks. I almost cried. I know the news of snail killing up here on the farm will make some of Moses' more tender-hearted friends sad, but it has to be done.

To be honest, I'm really not a great farm girl at heart. I hate getting my hands dirty and even though I tried really hard, I still don't like those chicks. BUT, I've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, which my dad read to me when I was a little girl, and they have been motivating me. Those pioneer women worked SO HARD, and their family's survival depended on them doing their work quickly and well. Of course, that is not the case with us, but reading the books makes watering the garden and fishing poop out of the chickens' water seem a bit less dirty and a little more exciting. Oh, and now I wear my fluorescent pink rubber gloves every time I go outside, too, which makes all the dirt and snail slime and poop more manageable. And the salad is really good, too!