Summer staples

While summer does not officially begin until June 21, we are in full summer mode at our house — inside and out.

There are a few indicators, especially on a farm, that shift with the seasons, so you really do not need to look at a calendar to see what time of year it is. The weather, our meals, food around the house and, of course, what the guys are working on outside on the farm are key indicators.

We turned on our air conditioning weeks ago, as temperatures have been in the 80s quite a bit in May. I have filled the kiddie pool for the kids several times already. Carson loves to wear shorts; he wears shorts to bed all the time, but he is happy to wear shorts during the day now, too. We are outside as much as possible. Most days, after chores in the evening, I have to drag the kids inside to get them ready for bed. It is also much more difficult to put the kids to bed in the summer versus winter because it stays light outside so much longer. Since they cannot tell time yet, trying to convince them it is bedtime when it is still daylight is a daily battle.

When it is hot outside, I tend to make more no-bake desserts such as no-bake cheesecake, rice Krispies and no-bake cookies or fudge clusters, as Jason calls them, so I don’t heat the house by turning on the oven. We did not have air conditioning growing up, so when it was really hot, we grilled as much as we could and turned on the oven just to make meals when necessary.

I think that, just by looking in our kitchen, you can tell it is summer. My kids love fruit, and we go through a lot of fruit year-round, but in the summer especially, we are constantly eating berries and watermelon. When I get home from the grocery store and put food away, the kids often find the berries and start eating them right away. At least for the watermelon, they have to wait until I cut it up for them.

In addition to the watermelon, we always have brats and sliced ham in the fridge and beans in the pantry. We do not eat brats and ham sandwiches every single day, but always have them on hand for a quick meal when we are all busy and I do not have a lot of time to cook. Our meals shift from a lot of hot dishes and roasts in the winter to brats, hamburgers and sandwiches in the summer. While I like to try new recipes and mix things up when cooking, we are very much a brat, hamburger and sandwiches household in the summer.

We have graham crackers year-round as a snack for the kids, but in the summer, we also have chocolate bars and marshmallows on hand. When the weather is right, we pull out the fire pit, the kids grab their own lawn chairs and we make s’mores and sometimes hot dogs over a campfire in the yard. Maybe we will actually go camping someday, but for now, the front yard works just as well as a campground.

We just finished up first-crop hay, and with the multi-day process that each hay crop is, it usually means a quick and easy meal for dinner, but for supper, I try to make something heavier, like steak or chicken. We sometimes have other family members or hired help at the farm during the day, and they stop in for dinner, too.

Hay season alone is another indicator of summer. We are not making as many small squares as we used to for hay, but we still do straw in small squares when that time comes.

All in all, there is more work to be done, so it is a good thing that the days are longer this time of year. Otherwise, I do not know how we would get it all done.