Aurora Turns 90 and Becomes "Queen for a Day"

Well, my mom's 90th Birthday has come and gone with a wonderful Sunday celebration this past weekend. I am fortunate to have so many friends (who don't even know her) to come to help us celebrate. That's what good friends do! Aurora was "Queen for the Day" and absolutely enjoyed herself. I hope that I have at least half her character and all of her youthful looks when I reach her age. She is now 90 years old! Yet, Aurora says she is still 75 years old "in her head".

“We were on a break!” Ah, but Thanksgiving beckons…

Mom "Aurora"

Need I say more?... Except that I am glad to be back on the blog. With the holidays moving our way, I will opt out of cooking for Thanksgiving Day. There are benefits to having a mom in assisted living. Along with exemplary care of their entrusted population, The Villas of Casa Celeste in Largo, Florida, serves a superbly delicious, homemade feast prepared by the most loving folks you can imagine! We really lucked out finding this community.

Not cooking for Thanksgiving won’t stop my mouthwatering curiosity for recipes

Amazing Grace (& Greens) of Okra Leaves

Well  “I just went ahead and did it!” No--though not as exciting as a facelift--I ate okra leaves. Now you probably have to be fairly desperate to eat okra leaves, which I found out through firsthand experience, since they are not easy to soften up for eating.

The Garden Seasons at Raccupine Farms

Travel through the seasons at Raccupine Farms by clicking on the photo above... Enjoy!

The Abundance of Avocados

Have I mentioned that our 30-foot avocado tree has yielded at least 30 avocados so far this summer? All have been a little over a pound and, when they ripen, their nuttiness is a taste of heaven and they spread like butter. Nathan planted this treasure from one avocado pit in a pot when he came to live here. We have waited about eleven years for this tree to bear this much fruit.

Volunteers for the Harvest

Lucky us! We have volunteers that show up from time to time in our garden. But ours don't sign in when they arrive; they just pop up out of the ground. Last winter's frost put a dent in their production but a few have managed to linger and recover. So we have spurts here and there of last winter's crop mixed in with this summer's bounty. 

Yesterday, I gathered some winter friends

Dirt, Composting, and Love

Then...

When Nathan first came to live in this house, he wanted to buy a yard of dirt to use for landscaping the “football field” (aka the backyard). I remember putting up such a stink over it. The truth was that I had been “left” before in this house AND--to add insult to injury to embarrassment--I got left with a huge mess to clean up.

Eating what’s “hot” when it’s hot!

In Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle she urges us to digress to a time-- before trucks burned fossil fuel ad nauseam to transport fresh vegetables coast to coast--when we had no choice but to eat what was grown locally. Where I grew up--in Maine in the 50’s and well into the 70’s--there only was local produce. Kingsolver’s wonder-filled book encourages us to buy local produce and be creative in eating it every way imaginable until that crop runs out and the next abundant vegetable crops up to challenge us to do it all over again. Animal Vegetable Miracle is a veritable gold mine of Kingsolver’s family’s experiences doing just that and it even contains recipes we all can use.

First Post from The Levy's On The Farm

I lived on this 3/4 acre property for almost five years before Nathan captured my heart in 1996.  That's when Raccupine Farms was born... 

(Someday I'll explain where the name comes from.)