Scenes From Fairburn Farm

Water Buffalo

The Chicken House

The view from our window

We can't wait to return. The Sunday Lunch was amazing. Four hours of lovely local food and wine, at a communal table with wonderful company. If any of you are ever in the area, you really do have to have a meal there at the very least. But we slept well in one of the beautiful rooms and woke to the sound of a rooster. Love it! Try to spend a night or two if you can.

Now we're off to make more memories in the Okanagan, then on to our most beloved of places: Parksville!

Jelly Jar Cocktail

Fill a jelly jar with crushed ice.

I am using my Grandma's vintage ice-crusher from a-way-back. It has gathered dust for a good decade in my storage room, but now I have discovered the wonder of it. No more dusty shelf for this baby! (until winter perhaps...)

1 ounce rum

1 ounce lime juice

1 ounce mint syrup

Pour over ice and top up with sparkling water or club soda. Very mojito-ish in flavour, but quick if you make a mint syrup and have some squeezed lime juice in your fridge. I do because I need quick access to mojitos once the mint is up in my garden. Isn't that why everyone grows mint? For mojitos? Anyway, this cocktail must be served in a jelly jar on a sunny porch, preferable with a breeze. If you love mojitos but don't like the mint leaves in your drink (I do, but perhaps I'm odd that way) try this. And you will thank me as all your worries melt away...

PS: I throw about a cup of sugar and 1 1/2 cups water into a pot, bring it to a boil, throw in a handful of mint leaves and let it steep off the heat for a while. Maybe 20 minutes? Don't recall. Then strain and keep in a jar in the fridge, ready for a cocktail at a moment's notice!

PPS: Terrible photo, but I keep drinking them too fast to take a better shot...

And The Final Bell Has Rung

School's out!

I have been out of blog action for a few months - oops. No camera, no time, and probably other excuses too. I'm too tired to think of them right now.

But I now have a lovely new camera - a Canon G10 that I got for Mother's Day - woohoo! As soon as I can figure out how to make enough memory in my darn computer to download my many new photos, I'll really be back in action!

But for now, I am just glad to say that school is out.

We love our little Annex, we really do. But we are not morning people. Well, we used to be early risers (and I still am), but we weren't get-up-and-go-ers, if that makes sense. We'd rather get up early and hang out in our pjs most of the morning, drinking tea and reading. My kids have moved into a later sleeping schedule, so it is so great to not have to wake them up every morning and drag them out the door. Please, oh please, children, keep going with the 9:30am wake-ups you've been doing on the weekends. How lovely a summer will I have then? I mean, that would be about 2 hours every morning to myself!

We also aren't very good at schedules and having to be certain places at certain times so we are day-camp/summer camp free! That means lots of days to fill for me as the summer break is ten weeks. Right now I am super excited, but I know after two days listening to the Bickersons (as I call my two older kids) I will be counting down the weeks until school begins again! Oh, I hope not.

We have started our Summer List. They aren't finished yet; most likely we will add to it over the next day or two. I'll post it here when it is done so I have to follow through!

As in the above photo, one thing on my list for sure is eating outside as many days as possible! That photo was taken back in May, I think. I can't believe how much the garden has grown since then. June has been good to us this year. Although looking at the photo is reminding me of the loaded raspberry bushes that we promptly killed a day or so later by moving to another area. What idiots we were. Lucky for us, those raspberries have forgiven us in the past and come back to bless us with their yumminess the following year. I am mourning the raspberry vodka I make with our garden berries every year. Although it will taste pretty awesome with u-pick berries too! Yummmmm.

Summer vacation. Awesome.