Tomatos! and detour explanation

 

They are finally coming in! I've missed tomatos so much!! The plan was to have enough ripen at once to make tomato paste.
The tomato plans didn't receive that memo so they are staggering their ripening. Maybe we'll dry some. There's a bunch more green ones on the vines - maybe enough will be red at once to make a paste? We just know from experience that it takes A LOT to make A LITTLE of any tomato product.

Detour
Ren Man started the detour/distraction. He was looking up something (can't remember what) on craigslist in Vermont and came across an almost 2k sf home with a huge carriage barn for under 100k. This got us thinking... maybe it would be better to have a house that needed fixing up so we could do that and focus on the farm instead of building a new house and fitting the farm in to that.
So we looked. There were five homes were were very interested in.
After much discussion though (and fantasizing) we decided that being on the farm, building a house to our own specifications, and replacing the trailer that is currently on the building site made more sense.
It came down to this:
we could own a house and at least one of us work full time off the farm
OR
we could work on the farm and build our house with less expense to us (so more time to devote to family and farm)
While owning had it's appeals (that I won't detail because then it gets me thinking about it again!) I was having a very hard time imagining being off the farm and commuting (arguably minimally) 2miles to the farm.
So that was the detour.

Garden update on the home front

Our current garden in suburbia (at least I think we live in suburbs) is bearing fruit. Beans and cucumbers have taken off like crazy and tomatoes are on their way!
We're also part of a CSA again this year. We went with a different farm this year which I regret, but it is what it is.
We have beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, squash, basil, sage, and nasturtiums. We tried to do a shade loving wild flower area again but it's mostly grass. Ren Man says teaches him for buying cheap seed. Oh well. Means less work to convert it back to front yard when we move.