One of my baskets of leftovers from our harvest this week. Lots of kaleidescope carrots, giant zucchinis, some okra, fennel, and very fragrant lemon verbena which I am using for tea everyday.

Over the weekend, I went back home to Toronto. It was a really short trip, mainly took care of some errands with my grandfather, went to church and a BBQ with family friends. I also managed to squeeze in some time to go raspberry picking in Markham. 

I had no idea we were so close to all these farms. One side of Major Mackenzie are housing developments and small shopping centers 

And on the other side of the street are farms

Anyways, we went to Organics Farm just in time for the last of their raspberries. They were really good but I still made some of it into jam. My sister also brought home the most amazing wild blueberries. If it sounds like I'm obsessed with berries, it's because I totally am! All summer fruits really. They're only available during such a short window. 

Speaking of the farm, we've been having some issues with the tomato hornworm the last couple of weeks. Since we're not spraying, we spent a good amount of time last week searching for them, then collecting them in a jar (so gross), which we fed to the chickens. But we missed one of them and it turned into a huge moth. We spent more time trying to eliminate it than we should have. Water does not work, and neither does bleach. I don't even want to say what we ended up doing with it. Also, we caught a woodchuck. (I have pictures of all of these but I don't know if I can put them up or if anyone would want to see them anyways!) 

All this made me think of the book I'm reading, Eating Animals. One of the main reasons he cites for being a vegetarian is that he doesn't want to hurt any creature, that we should treat fish the same way we treat dogs and cats. Well, now I see that we have to kill quite a few creatures in order to produce vegetables, herbs, and fruit. Aren't they alive too, have nociceptors like us and are frightened when locked up in a small cage?

So what people normally do when they encounter a woodchuck in their garden is shoot it. It finds ways inside the garden gates, eats and destroys a lot of the vegetables, and probably tells all its friends and family about it. I don't know if it's because it was only the three of us girls trying to figure out what to do with this woodchuck and we didn't really have the heart to shoot it or allow anyone else to, but we ended up driving it a couple miles away and releasing it. May not have been entirely legal, and it will probably end up getting killed by some predator in its disorientation, but it was the best we could come up with. I wonder what we'll have to deal with in the weeks to come!