This is my thumb after picking and eating three different berries: Black raspberry or Rubus occidentalis, Gooseberry or Ribes hirtellum, and Mulberry or Morus (unsure which species). We managed to get ahead of our mouths enough to bring Mulberries home where they found their way into corn mufffins, pictured below.
Curiousfarmer 
Living off the land is fresh and yummy.
I just noticed the stems intact! Like exclamation points!
I expected a different post–perhaps the effect of a long stretch of
heat on the animals, the garden, the farm activity in general. Does the farmhouse have AC? Did you set up a sprinkler to run through? Did anybody kvetch?
No AC, and after getting by last year, I don’t anticipate much more difficult conditions.
This year has been wonderful with plenty of moisture until now, (experiencing a typical summer mini-drought), and some nice cool nights to break the heat and remind us why we love to live in Wisconsin. I really think I would move north instead of south if I had to move somewhere. I don’t mind staying inside more during the short days of winter, but it would break my heart to be stuck inside during the long, ever-changing days of summer.
I think many urban folk wouldn’t get this. It would spell hardship for them. You seem to be an outdoorsman in the most expansive sense–which includes being a farmer.
I wonder how many people could thrive on the hidden beauties of the changing seasons, the depth of the sky and clouds, the rhythms of the animals. You cannot possibly be self-absorbed–all these things pull on you, pull you out of yourself.
I am not a farmer. I am a former Chicagoan, but the shades of green, the birdsong, and the deep sky of the Southern Kettle Moraine in rural Wisconsin pulled me and kept me here. Shoe shopping and platinum jewelry and expensive clothing don’t compare to these charms.
I wouldn’t trade and money cannot buy what we have.
charms of