july 4th blackberry pickin

fresh and FREE blackberries!!!!!

no stinking serial killer is going to stop me from going into the woods to pick fresh and FREE blackberries!!!!!!! ok, so the serial killer is technically in gaffney, which is about 1.5 hours away, but i still got ray to come with me just in case. plus if i get attacked by bees or bears, someones gotta call 911. or i could just use my natural defense of scary faces and funny hats.....

really..... would you mess with this crazy lady?????

so for what i thought would be the last weekend of berry picking, off me and ray went to gather food. as it turns out, there are still quite a few berries that won't be ripe for about a week or so. therefore, i get one more round of picking before my trip. YEAH!!! here are some pictures from our blackberry excursion this morning.

a pickin we will go.
a pickin we will go.

oooohhhhh!!!!!!

yummy!!!!!!!!

you can't really tell in this picture, but all up in there is blackberries galore.

oh so many.

and still there is more.

well yesterday was the 4th of july, of course, but since we drove all over last weekend for the farm tours (pictures coming soon), we decided to take it easy this weekend and stick close to home and try to relax. after a quick trip to the farmers market in the morning and a stop at the raw dairy where i totally scored a pound of raw sweet butter, we decided to make a tasty, and pretty darn local, holiday lunch. ray cooked the venison tenderloin to juicy perfection and i made us a quick fresh summer salad that we enjoyed out on the back porch with a beer and the puppies.

fresh summer salad:
fresh garlic (that grew up from the buried kitchen scraps in my garden) sauteed with local onion, local organic zucchini, and dried herbs from my garden.
fresh local corn cut off the cob and kept raw for the salad.
organic grape tomatoes from florida.
topped with fresh basil from my garden and some spinning spider goat cheese that we picked up, fresh from the farm, last weekend on the farm tours (i swear, pictures are coming soon).
all dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.

so good, so clean, and soooooo fresh.

and beer.......gooooooood!

cleveland was pretty tired, so he took a nap on the new rug.

maisy opted for her usual place of underneath ray.

and now today, since i cleaned yesterday, all i have planned to do is to work on making my small kitchen veggie scrap compost bin and for linner (lunch/dinner) i am making some sort of chicken enchilada casserole and blackberry bread pudding. i also need to work on my dress in the worst way or it will never be finished for my portland trip. some fabulous person left me a comment the other day asking how my dress was coming along, and to tell the truth it isn't. but today hopefully that will all change. but not if i don't hurry up and get off the darn computer.....

my dress so far..... the pattern has been taken out of the package.