Another Maintenance Day (with Chicago-style Pizza!)

Vacations are always too short, aren't they?


Now that the excitement of having my parents visit for the week has subsided, we're back to business on the farm.  And, as usual, Thursday was a maintenance day on the farm.  That means we take a crack at the never-ending to-do list.  


We spent all day planting out in Garden 2.  We had some fantastically-growing seedlings in flats that have been hanging out on the porch just screaming to be planted in the ground so they could stretch their legs.  So we planted the biggest and brightest of the lettuce starts for most of the day on Thursday under a blazing sun.  I didn't have nearly enough sunscreen on and now I'm paying for it with a vicious farmer's crescent on my back (think: plumbers butt sunburn...).

The best part of maintenance day is that all of us are in the same place working together unlike picking days where we're frantically all trying to fill our bushels. That means lots of belly-ache laughing, giving each other a hard time, storytelling and messing around.  We told the best kid jokes we could recall and guessed each other's middle names.  In no time, we wrapped up the day just as a drizzle fell over the farm.  

Dave and I headed off for Bozeman for a quick drive to drop off the van.  My friends Abe and Beth and their son Isaac are visiting from DC for a family event and are borrowing the van for the week while they're here (rentals are expensive).  The drizzle quickly turned into a torrential storm as we drove through Bridger Pass with cloud to ground lightening and weather alerts interrupting the news on the radio but we made it in and out of town uneventfully.

Until, nearly home.... 

Montana traffic jam!  There was a big cattle drive going down the road that had cars nearly at a stand still.  It was probably one of the coolest we've seen so far - instead of ATVs, they were real cowboys on horseback, complete with trench coats, spurs and bull whips (I didn't get the camera out in time to take a picture!).  

We were in a rush to get back because we knew what was home waiting for us: authentic Chicago-style deep dish Lou Malnatti's pizza shipped to us from Dave's Mom Mari and Aunt Margie as a birthday gift!

Amazing deep dish pizza!

How lucky are we?!  THANK YOU, Mari & Margie!  It was mouth-watering!  A perfect taste of home.


This pizza capped off one of the best birthdays of my whole life, between having my parents here, Sara's homemade Barbie birthday cake, Irish sausage straight from home, a card in the mail from my best girl friend, visiting Yellowstone, staying at the cabin in Big Sky - and being surrounded by some of the most incredible people I've ever met.  I couldn't have asked for more.