We spend a good deal of time with my couin Tim and his girlfriend, Tamara. In some ways, they lead totally different lives than Raph and I. They are very career-oriented, which Raph and I would rather not work at all. They work very hard, while Raph and I like to work as little as possible. (Whatever that means for teachers.)
But we share some things in common with them too. When they aren't working, they like to get out and do things, like kayak, which is cool because they bought two inflatable kayaks this year, which we've been able to use on occasion which has been great. They also look to go to the beach, though Tim has a habit of resembling a lobster after such occasions.
These are sun-dried tomatoes from our garden!
But the biggest thing we share in common is FOOD! We all love to eat. Tim recently started a blog about food, called Crops of the Seasons. We shared in the creation of the garden. We shared a share at a local farm's CSA, which for those of you who don't know what that means, stands for Community Supported Agriculture. When you buy a share at a CSA, you are paying a farmer up front for a box of food every week for the entire growing season. In this way, farmers can plan on how much to plant, and also have some money up front to help them start. This year was a very difficult year for Maine farmers, as it virtually rained for the entire month of July. Farmers watched their crops rot in their fields. Our farm, Wolf Pine, did okay, but there were a few times that I thought to myself "I thought there'd be more." Whether or not it was financially worth it is up for debate, but I know the four of us feel good about supporting a local farm, helping to make sure that their land remains farmland, and that we know where our food comes from and who grew it.
And now we've started "winterizing" (as Tim calls it.) But like everything else Tim does, we have to do it big and complicated. So we spent hours last weekend making filling for raviolis and then rolling the homemade dough too. And we only finished half of what we had hoped to accomplish. Poor Makili didn't get to bed until 9:30, when we finally gave up for the night and decided to eat some of our creations. They were AMAZING! A lot of the fillings we had grown ourselves. It was pretty cool. We actually went back there on Raph's birthday to eat some more. I don't think that these raviolis are going to make it very far into the winter, but that's okay.
Tim and Tamara were also our guest babysitters on Raph's birthday. Our first non-mom babysitters. And they did great. So now they can babysit AGAIN!
