Trip to the Atlantic shore.

What do we do if we have not been to the ocean in a while? We hop into the car and off we go. Even though it is quite a trip for us, driving over 2 hours each way, it is so worth it! The fresh ocean breeze, the sound of the crushing waves, the feel of the warm sun on our faces, the freedom to run bare feet, seeing the kids being excited and exploring ...it is all worth it! I miss living closer to the ocean. I think we need to move...

Wild pear tree.

We are taking small steps towards our dream to be able to homestead. This time we have discovered a wild pear tree that we are claiming as ours and want to make preserves for the winter. It is covered with pears! The branches are hanging down with all the pear weight on them almost like begging to be rid of the burden. Take them! Take them! Pick those pears! Help me!
Tata, a creative mind as he is, has come up with a special device to pick the pears. The tree is too high to climb, we didn't want to shake it, and wanted to take as much as we needed without wasting the fruits. Mirek made a net and we were ready to harvest the wild organic pears. He would snip each pear from the tree, collect a few into the net and bring the net down so that we put the pears into the bag. It did happen occasionally that when he snipped and shook the branch other pears fell down and got damaged. So, we ended up with two bags. One was for the nice pears we'd keep in the basement over winter and eat as they ripen, and the other was for the damaged ones that we had to process at home right away so that they didn't rot.

The girls were helpful at the beginning and then were running around, chasing each other on a green field. We were happy picking and excited about making the pear butter. The pear butter came out great and we baked a few cakes with it. We also have a few jars with pear kompot for the winter and a pretty big box of nice pears to eat. It was all for free and nice time spent together.

Boating and mushrooms.

It was the day we decided to try to go boating on a new lake. It's a lake about 45 minutes drive from our house and it's a bigger lake than the ones we usually go boating on. So we were excited and Mirek wanted to try to catch some fish for dinner. The trip plans had to be changed almost on the spot as the lake was full of weeds and the electric motor was getting stuck and simply refused to work. We had to pack and go back to our favorite lake. The lake where we had let our snapping turtle free and where we had spent countless hours fishing, and where I had had great opportunities to snap a few shots. It's our Sunny Hill Lake.

And this time it did not disappoint us. The dinner was being taken care of, I did get to take a few cute shots, we had a great time and as an extra bonus picked a ton of mushrooms.
We spotted a bunch of mushrooms on the shore and just kind of docked to pick them up. It was one of our favorite types, the Red Slippery Caps, which are in abundance this season.
And very quickly that bunch turned into a huge pile that was growing bigger and bigger right before our eyes. The mushrooms were everywhere! We had no bags or anything suitable to put them into, so a quick idea of transporting them in the boat was the only way. We separated the front of the boat with the foam seat and piled them up right there.

In the evening we processed the harvest and now have a few jars for winter. We'll be going mushroom pcking again soon! The thrill is in the air!