With the traveling we've been doing, we've not been to the grocery store in quite awhile. So when I opened my fridge last Friday to make lunch for my kids and thought to myself, "Hmmm, how can I make a delicious, nutritious meal for my children with a bottle of mustard, a bottle of fish sauce, a moldy onion and some tortillas," I realized it was high time I went to the grocery store.

And then I put that off and raided the food storage instead. Whoever invented food-in-a-can was a genius.

Then I taught them how to make their own lunches. Give a child a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a child to make her own fish and Momma gets to sit her ass down once in awhile.


Canned beans, canned tomatoes... you know what? It's really too bad no one has figured out how to can cheese yet. (And please don't say, "But what about Easy Cheese? That's in a can." Because, my friend, THAT IS NOT CHEESE!)

Then on Monday, after I'd gone two more days feeding my family loaves and fishes, I decided it was time to a) get some real food and b) teach them that food doesn't actually come from a can originally. Hence:

Our Trip to the Farm


Technically, I think, I live in the suburbs. But what originally was conceived of as being suburban in the D.C. metro area, has now become more urban than anything else. So when I think about where we live, I don't think of it as the suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs and this ain't it. The suburbs have sidewalks and two car driveways, and no neighbors selling pot across the street from you... wait... maybe scratch that last one.

Even so, as a kid in the suburbs, I would never have conceived of having a working farm right around the corner from me. And here - in my urban environment - I do. Just one more reason why the D.C. metro area is an island surrounded by reality.

I like to stop by our local farm to pick up produce whenever I can and since my kids haven't eaten a vegetable since May, I thought it would be a good idea to just go buy everything they had and then figure out what to do with it later.

First we enjoyed some honey sticks. Because it is impossible to go to the farm without consuming at least one of these. It is. I'm surprised you didn't know that.


Then we walked out to the north forty to see what was a growin'.


It was corn.


And more corn.

Except for where it wasn't corn.


The Dormouse couldn't figure out what kind of devastation had been employed kill off the entire field here. When I told her that's what a field of corn looks like after it's been harvested and they're finished growing things there, she shook her head as if she was the first person to discover global warming. She could have been useful in the dust bowl.

The sunflowers were doing mighty fine...


and getting ready to produce their seeds.


The sunflowers we planted at home look really anemic compared to this. And this isn't even half the size that I remember the sunflowers getting to be in the Southwest. It's a good thing I wasn't relying on the income from my sunflower seed harvest this year.

Despite the fact that we've been growing tomatoes and peppers all over our front porch this season, it was still hard for my ankle-biters to comprehend that this yellow blossom...


would turn into this melon.


::sigh:: My kids is so citified.

The only part of the farm where we could pick our own stuff (and, admittedly, the only part where we were really allowed to walk out to, though I pretended innocence to that particular rule) was the flower garden.








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I love these plants because they look like a brain to me. I keep insisting that The KoH go out and get me "brain flowers" every Spring when he gets that Spring bug some people do and starts planting things around the house. And because, apparently, I am the only person in the world to call them that, no one at any nursery ever knows what he is talking about and he always comes home empty handed.

There were a lot of butterfly-friendly flowers...


and The Dormouse tried to catch all the butterflies. Then she proceed to show them to me, whereupon, she would open her hands a tiny, tiny bit for me to see and each and every time, the butterfly happily fluttered by and out of her hands. Each time this happened (and it was a lot) she was surprised by the fact and yelled, "OH, MAAAN!" Then she ran off to catch another. What was that thing Einstein said about the definition of insanity?



The Caterpillar was too concerned with her honey stick to be very impressed by any of it.


Despite the fact that it was lovely.


And then, when we were done at the farm, we took another trip to see where milk comes from.


The grocery store, of course.