The Big White Barn Farm

New Blog Went Live!

2011-07-25T00:57:00.005-05:00

I will still be posting here occassionally, but please check out my new blog:

Homestead Chix

I am teaming up with farm chicks from around the country to compile all the knowledge we have accumulated throughout our time homesteading to help serve as a fun and informational how-to blog for everyone interested in becoming more self-sufficient or just simplifying life and getting back to the dirt. :-)

I hope to see all of you there!

The Real Cost of Animal Feed

2011-06-30T12:01:00.002-05:00

We have learned an incredible amount in the past 4 months of living in the country. Things we thought we really understood turned out to be hogwash! LOL Thresholds we thought we had already pushed turned out just to be a starting point. In other words every part of life lately has felt like a re-education.

We have recently acquired several more animals in our household than we have ever had before. We hope to add even more by the end of the year. However, along with the addition of all these animals has been a MASSIVE increase in our food budget. Not having an area fenced off yet for the chickens to pasture has increased our grain and scratch bill. The addition of turkeys to our little farm has created a turkey mash bill. Not to mention the domestic animals: dogs, cats and guinea pigs!

So we have been seeking out ways to utilize our land to help offset these costs. Of course, we haven't been able to eliminate these completely...but with a little research and a few minutes tacked onto our chore time every morning we've been able to save a lot of money on feed costs and as a bonus are now giving our animals a healthier, home grown feed.

We are in the process of growing corn to dry and store for the remainder of the year to use as scratch grains for the chickens and turkeys. Something we discovered we could do right now though was almost completely eliminate our guinea pig feed! Out here in Missouri, the going rate for guinea pig feed can vary greatly depending on if you want dried veg and fruit in your feed ($8.99 for cheapest brand at Wal-Mart for 3lbs) or if you have the option to buy a bulk pellet feed ($50 for 50 lbs). Along with either option you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets ($5 for 20 pack) and Timothy Hay ($14 for 5 lbs.). Jeesh! With three mature guinea pigs in our home this was a GIANT portion of our feed cost - more than all 4 of our cats put together.

However, the guinea pigs serve their purpose here on the farm. No, we would never eat them...they are pets! :-) However, we use pine shavings for their bedding and their manure along with the decomposed pine shavings makes for an excellent source of compost for our garden. And we have PLENTY of it!

Once we analyzed what their dietary needs really were we came up with a new feed plan and implemented it over the next week - as to slowly ween them off their old diet and onto the new. We have been using the new mix for weeks and we have seen a significant increase in their energy levels and their manure even seems to be less odorous oddly enough. The most important part is that they clearly enjoy their new food more.

Our plan consists of:

Locally purchased bale of Timothy Hay ($5 for 75lbs.)

Homemade Guinea pig salad every morning containing:

- 75% greens (we alternate or combine mixtures of lettuce, carrot greens, dandelion greens, and cabbage depending on what we have growing in the garden - we are able to give them bolted lettuce that we wouldn't normally eat and carrot greens that normally would go to waste which they LOVE!)

- 10 % veg (ours like carrots, tomatoes - not too many, and celery)

- 10% fruit (oranges, sliced up grapes, watermelon, old banana)

- 5% grain (rolled oats are a treat they enjoy and they keep them at a good weight)

We are able to grow all the ingredients with the exception of the oats and a couple of the fruits. However, we buy those items in bulk as our family consumes them as well and the cost is minimal. In the end we save a fortune and give them a much more natural diet. A total win win situation.

Turkey Season

2011-05-02T09:12:00.002-05:00

I know these photos are a little graphic, but I have to share this experience with Blogworld. Out of the blue, our neighbor called one morning last week and asked if he could bring over a little prize he shot while hunting that morning to share with us. Of course we accepted, a learning experience as well as free turkey meat!

I am not sure I knew what to expect though. With all my girls right alongside me, we watched and helped (some of us more than others) him skin, gut and cut up the turkey. A young tom I am told, with beautiful feathers of which we kept and are preparing for mounting above our fireplace!

The process of gutting the turkey was incredibly eye opening. We got to cut open the gizzard and peek inside at what appeared to be gravel it had digested. Such a fascinating creature.

In the end, we filled 4 gallon sized freezer bags with fresh turkey meat. First dinner was a success! Homemade mashed potatoes covered with shredded turkey and turkey gravy. Yum! Kids said it was the best turkey ever. :-)

All work and no play...

2011-04-25T12:55:00.003-05:00

As the saying goes. We have found through this process that it is important to take the time to enjoy this new life.

Sometimes, silliness is the best medicine in the cabinet.

Surprise Surprise

2011-04-21T23:46:00.003-05:00

When we bought a farm we knew that we'd be starting from the ground up. Years until the young fruit trees we planted would bear fruit, another season until our berries will produce and even the end of this season until we'll be harvesting our veggies. With so much work that we have to do now and so much waiting ahead of us, it is hard to get motivated to do it all. However, when we stumbled upon these little jewels...it was a very welcomed moment. We discovered the rotting, overgrown posts on the side of the house were actually mature grapevines just waiting to be loved and nurtured. With a little bit of tlc from the hubby they are looking wonderful again. So much so that we fully anticipate fruit this year. There are 5 mature vines that we've added to our 10 new grapevines. Hopefully in the not so distant future we will be swimming in grapes!

Orchard Love

2011-04-19T08:58:00.003-05:00

Our orchard is coming to life! As mentioned earlier, we have started the orchard with 18 fruit trees this year. Our property already had a mature pear tree as well as a couple walnut trees, but we really felt the need to start the trees as early as possible given that it will take a few years for them to reach fruit bearing age. My husband spent countless hours researching and ordering the varieties that would grow best in our area and were the tastiest.
I guarantee you there will never be a red delicious apple ever grown or consumed on this land! We chose apple varieties such as Gala, Fuji, Pink Lady and Honeycrisps. Our cherry trees are all Blackgold. The peach trees are Elberta, Elberta Queen, Delicious and White Giant. The pears are a 2 in 1 Bartlett/Crimson Bartlett and Moonglow. We planted 18 trees this year and have room and plans to double that by next year. Within a couple years we should be swimming in fruit - I can't wait!

For as cheap as they are to buy and as easy as they are to care for, anyone who owns a home should have at least one fruit tree!

Golden Girls

2011-04-18T10:24:00.006-05:00

Even with all the excitement of getting 25 new chickies, we haven't forgotten our ladies. The hens love their new home. So far it has proven to be coyote, opossum, and raccoon proof. Fingers crossed it stays that way!
We are converting part of our barn, which had four large horse stalls, into a small animal barn. Maybe someday it will house a cow in one of those stalls...but for now, small animals! As you can see, the two middle stalls we converted first for the layer hens and the dog pen. The two largest on the sides will be for meat birds and pigs.
It is mostly finished at this point, though we do still have plans to add low shelves mounted on the walls to each side that the nesting boxes will sit on to avoid any snake problems.
The downside to our new property is we haven't been able to let them free range yet. Our property is partially fenced but not enough to keep neighboring pups away. And unfortunately bird hunting dogs are pretty popular! LOL Until our dogs get big enough to "protect the flock" I am afraid our girls will have to make due with foraging around their new and improved coop.
They don't seem to mind a bit though!

So cute....so awnry!

2011-04-14T17:18:00.002-05:00

So as many of you know, we have recently become dog owners for the first time. It has been a crazy adventure of constant tick removal, seemingly torturous bathing rituals, wet dog smell, shoe stealing, trash attacking, sticky puppy tongues, muddy paw prints, lost puppy drama, etc. These puppies eat horse poop...like it's the best thing on Earth! They roll around and bath in it. That was not in the manual. But...they are amazingly smart and kind and sensitive to each other and to us. I love my kitties, but these puppies are squirming their way into my heart quickly. We are constantly amazed at their puppy brilliance. They, for the most part, stay on our land without supervision, collars or scolding. They get worn out and find us and sleep next to where ever we are. They use the walkways in the garden. Really, aside from the whole horse poo issue, they are remarkably smart. They get to visit the vet for the first time in their 9 weeks of life next Tuesday. We found out our neighbors' dogs have Lime Disease and we are already well aware that there are tick issues here. So we are deworming and seeing what preventative measures we can take now to avoid any health problems later. Wish us all luck! :-)

Yummy for the tummy

2011-04-14T09:51:00.002-05:00

Bruschetta = The most amazing tasting food I have ever consumed. Shockingly it took me until the ripe of age 30 to discover this little jewel. For those of you who are aware of the wonders of bruschetta, let this serve as a reminder to have some with or for dinner tonight. If you have yet to sample this delight...try some SOON! From what I can see in in my cookbooks and on the Internet, there are a variety of different methods to making this. However, I prefer the basic method. Sliced french bread loaf, drizzled with olive oil and baked at 425 degrees. Topping is diced fresh tomatoes, fresh chopped chives, parsley and sweet basil. Add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!

Feathery Cuteness

2011-04-13T09:09:00.002-05:00

This little guy hangs out on the ledge around my wrap around porch every night these days. Some nights he brings buddies to keep him company overnight, but mostly it is just him. He is so calm and mellow about sharing our porch with us. I adore him! He doesn't make any noise...he just calmly watches all the chaos happening in our house around him. On occasion, Molly (neighbors dog), comes over and torments him with barks and excessive tail wagging to let him know if he were perched just a bit lower she'd be making a great game out of eating him. He doesn't really seem to care though, as he comes back every night to sleep. Anybody know what kind of bird he is? I haven't seen one like him before. Hopefully the photograph shows it accurately but he is dark blue on the top with a rust/cream colored belly and a red face.

Meow

2011-04-10T23:26:00.005-05:00

Waking up this morning sucked. Plain and simple. But it doesn't take long to change my mood from sore and whiny back to peaceful and happy when the wind from the windows is swooshing in over me while I am still in bed and the birds are chirping like wild outside and I can hear the horses frolicking next door, having just been let out of their barn. Just the sounds and feel of farm life makes me feel good.
I wonder if everyone feels this way? Am I just a farm floozy? Sit me around a smokey fire pit surrounded by the smell of horse manure and freshly tilled soil while listening to a symphony of birds, cow moos and gunfire and I melt. LOL Well, I know it isn't just me. The cats love it here too. Every cat in our house...remember we have four....has an assigned viewing window and they are ALWAYS there. Dreaming of being outside farm cats, watching the dogs fall all over themselves, yawning and cleaning while we slave over the yard. The kitties love farm life I think even more than I do. :-)

Sunburned. Sore beyond belief. Can a body take this much exhaustion?

2011-04-10T00:19:00.009-05:00

Something I have discovered in my short time living on a farm is, I check the weather a lot. Seriously. I check the week in advance predictions to see if we need to clear any days appointments for working outside when there is sun and the ground is dry and workable. I check the weather every morning so I know how to tell everyone to dress. I check the hour by hour updates to see exactly how much longer we have until the torrential rain will begin to fall from the sky. Lots of weather checking these days.

Today was sunny and 88 degrees. We worked hard.

Planted the rhubarb, radishes, carrots, onions and the first stages of succession planting the lettuce and spinach. We have had big gardens in the past. Really! Our neighbors stared in wonder at our beautiful rows of raised beds. We worked hard then too.

This is different.

We planted a little under 100 onions last year...ONE HUNDRED ONIONS! That is a lot of onions to a normal person. This year, we planted roughly 500. Yep. Because honestly when you start counting your crops in the hundreds...you just lose count of the exact number. Carrots, planted about 800 which we plan to thin out later to around 500.

After hours of simply mucking through the dirt, because our soil was muddy from all the Spring rain we've gotten lately and we simply couldn't wait any longer to get the plants in the ground, then shoveling walkways and hoeing the beds...this definitely goes down in my book as the hardest day of work I have ever endured in my whole life. Garden labor alone is tough but when combined with drama of family life (aka picking obscure hidden ticks off the dogs...again!, mediating kid drama between my girls, bickering with the hubby over trampoline assembly, etc.) this was a day for the record books!

We end the day on a lovely note as always - cooking campfire style, finding the big dipper, marveling at the owl hoots and the clarity of the moon tonight. We don't regret our decision to live this life. But man! I need a spa day or something. LOL

Here chickie chickie

2011-04-08T09:30:00.004-05:00

We purchased our 25 new layers a couple of weeks ago now. They are growing at amazing rates - my dear sweet husband calls them "chickzillas". LOL Oddly enough, these girls have been the easiest to raise of all our chicks. While purchasing snap together wire organizers for my daughters room, I had the idea to use the same snap together wire system to house the chicks. It has worked out wonderfully. We tarped the bottom and binder clipped the tarp up onto the sides a bit. We can expand the system as they grown if we need to and it keep everything very neat and tidy and you can literally view the chicks from every angle. Our cats enjoy that feature especially. :-)

This year we decided to get three different breeds: Buff Orpingtons, Brown Leghorns and Plymouth Rocks. We have had huge success with our Buff's and just love their personalities. We have never raised either of the other two breeds, but I have read very good things about their egg production. Fingers crossed!

If everyone recalls, last year we had a heck of a time merging our two flocks. Egg production stopped for what felt like FOREVER. But this year, not really as worried. Our three old ladies have all but stopped laying. We get an egg here or there, but not too often. So overall, we on average are only getting an egg a day at this point. SO not enough to sustain my own families egg consumption needs much less to sell or share. So if their laying stops when we merge the flocks....won't really be a huge deal this year.

Depending on how getting our egg license goes and egg sales at the farmers market, we may get more layer chicks next year as our coop has room for probably 40 birds. But we didn't want to get too far in over our heads before we knew what to expect in sales. Overall, raising chicks this time around is a welcomed relief. Something we know how to do well finally!

Seed Babies

2011-04-05T10:29:00.003-05:00

Our seed growing operation has finally begun. I should begin by saying that we have never grown our garden from seed sown inside before. This will be a pricey experiment if it fails completely! What we did was combine an existing metal rack we already had with another larger one of the same style we purchased on clearance at a hardware store. My wicked smart husband was able to use all the pieces to makes three connected shelving units. Very cool honey! We then added six 4' shop lights and four 2' shop lights featuring those expensive grow light bulbs. Later on, a friend told me something about those grow lights don't even produce heat like I had thought though unless you actually have them used in grow lighting fixtures. Hmmm....rookie mistake I guess. Regardless, we are making them work for what we need. We got the cheaper shop lights even and Dave used his handy electrician skills to wire them all together and only use one outlet and their controlled by two light switches. Next was actually planting our seed babies. We initially had thought we were going to plant all our seeds in repurposed plastic containers we had been collecting for months. But, this proved to be somewhat impractical once we realized we were planting 600 tomato plants and several hundred more squash, melon, herb and lettuces. So we broke down and spent a little dough on seed cell trays from http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/. In the picture above, we have several trays we haven't even started yet, we are waiting for the seeds to finish trickling in from the various companies we ordered from.

A few late nights with the whole group of us surrounding the dining room table and tracking potting soil all around my kitchen floor, and we had them in and under the lights....awaiting life to appear. We have them in our basement, which can be tricky if you aren't careful. Our first few days we struggled as we had them covered with plastic wrap (as we had read to do in EVERY gardening book I own) but we got white fuzzy mold pretty quick. So we uncovered the seeds, moved them up closer to the lights, put a heat lamp nearby and aimed at the shelves, and got the air circulating better with a fan. Within two days.....we had sprouts!! The Valley Girl tomatoes were the first to peek their little heads up. Everyday, twice a day, hand misting with a squirt bottle is true dedication to these seed babies. But every time a new one pops up, the thrill I get is totally worth all my hard work.

Lovin' the country life...

2011-03-25T23:00:00.016-05:00

Every day here seems to contain the contents of months worth of work from our previous life. My body has literally never felt this tired - ever. Oddly though, this unspoken event happens after every unspeakably exhausting day of hard labor, the aches fade and the dirt washes down the drain and you can't wait to do it all over again the next day! I do understand that this might fade with time but I simply can't imagine that at this point.

Week 1 was building the chicken coop so we could move our girls from our old house to the farm. Our beautiful new home was hardly moved in to and was filled to the ceiling with unpacked boxes, but we had priorities here! We converted one of our 13'x12' horse stalls in the barn into a chicken pen. Drawbacks are....mucking regularly will be necessary as they won't be mobile and we will have to let them out to graze. Advantages outweighed the negatives though...3 walls were already constructed and it has a concrete pad, keeping the raccoons and coyotes out. We did however have to run chicken wire up into the rafters of the barn to prevent opossum attacks. Let me tell you, nobody's arms are built for hours of staple gunning and hammering while holding pokey chicken wire and standing on top of a ladder looking up. Not fun. But we did it. All on our own - and it is a pretty nice looking coop! We are capable of building shelter. MwahHaHa Silly but so powerful. So, in the dark hours of the night, I visited our old home and stealthily snatched each hen from her old coop and transported in the backseat of my minivan the 45 minute trek to the new farm and they each woke up in their new home. They act as if they have lived there forever and were laying eggs as usual that morning. SUCCESS! :-)

Of course, I should mention that in the middle of all this chicken coop building, we had a freak snow storm. Snow or no snow though, we needed our hens, so we took a little sledding break at the local sledding hill, built Annabeth the watch guard snow lady, and finished the coop in the snow.

Now at this point I keep telling myself that we will have breaks in between projects where we can just play around the farm and possibly get around to unpacking at some point. But let me tell you something I have discovered....I don't think that day will EVER come! LOL In between sweeping and mucking incredible amounts of mud dragged into our house by muck boots (plans for a mudroom are already in the works!) and defending our house against the evils of farm critters like the herd....yes I said herd of giant wolf spiders that emerged from our barn and when stepped on not only do not die but turn around and hiss at you or the largest farm rat that I have ever seen that mocks me from the inner parts of our pantry, the fact that we find time to sleep is truly amazing. Joy is always easily found here though, rainy days under the tin roof barn, playing in the creek with the neighbor dogs, horses wandering over to our fence line to say hi. Life is pretty much wonderful. There is a never ending stream of giggles as we all discover this new life together. Our first week here while cooking breakfast I was distracted by the bursts of laughter coming from outside, when I peeked my head out to check on the girls, I discovered that against my warnings, they had learned for themselves that our neighbors fence line was electrified and were daring each other to touch it. "Mom, I can't feel my arm!" We are so proud of them obviously. LOL

Week 2, garden starting time. We take hours and days to strategically plan our massive garden. Then we do a little farm trading with our neighbor who owns all the good tractor equipment we can't afford yet because who knew that a good tractor with attachments cost more than our cars?! So, for the bargain price of some homemade strawberry muffins and a half dozen eggs from our hens, our neighbor begins the tilling for our potato bed so we can get the taters in by St. Patty's Day. I cannot tell you how amazing it felt to break ground for the first time. The soil had a few rocks, but overall was in great condition. Horses had lived her for years before, so it is VERY well fertilized. We helped it along with composted chicken and guinea pig manure though before planting.

The day after tilling the first bed up, our garden vision was dashed with another freak snow storm. 6 inches of snowfall overnight!

But this time....we couldn't help but be mesmerized at the beauty that surrounded us. It truly feels like we are living a dream. Why doesn't everyone have this dream? LOL They must not know what they are missing.

So, while the snow is outside, we begin working inside on all the seed trays we are starting. We have around 700 tomato plants along with artichokes, squash, eggplant, melons, pumpkins, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower that we are starting inside on some makeshift metal shelves that my hubby has wired up with grow lights. The carrots, lettuce, spinach, onions, peanuts, cotton, corn, potatoes, rhubarb, celery, sweet potatoes, bush beans and peas we will be seeding straight into the ground outside.

Just after we got the indoor seeding started, we got all the berry plants in the mail. 200 strawberry plants, 40 raspberry plants, 40 blackberry plants. Yikes, Luckily the snow melted quick and our neighbor was able to come back and till up another portion of the garden for all the berries. They are chilling in our fridge until this weekend when hopefully we can find a break in the cold rain to do some planting.

Oh...and just for good measure...just got the shipping notification that our 18 fruit trees (6 apple, 4 peach, 4 pear and 4 cherry) have just shipped and should arrive here soon. Lots of holes to dig. I foresee sore arms ahead!

Last week we got some unexpected new additions to our farm...our three new puppies arrived two weeks early and of course before their dog pen had been built. We started at 7am and were able to finish the stall by the time we picked them up at 5pm. What a day that was! But now we have three 7 week old Great Pyrenees/Border Collie mix pups to guard our farm. Petra, Bean and Ender (named for our fave Enders Game characters). They sleep in the stall next to the chickens and have done very well with their training so far. Hopefully someday soon they will serve our farm well. Right now they are just a gigantic fuzzy food drain!

Yesterday we picked up our 25 layer chicks from the farm center. So now we have a full basement of baby chickens and baby plants and almost a full barn. I can't wait for the pigs....I think I have talked Dave into getting them sooner than planned. However, the two beehives will be here in a month, so we have to prioritize building their hive boxes first before I get to go pig shopping! Whew. :-)

New Farm

2011-03-04T10:31:00.002-06:00

Well, we did end up finding our dream farm afterall!

Better location, better land, better house. I guess some things do happen for a reason. We are moving in this week, trying to wade our way through the endless sea of cardboard boxes. Even with all the mess and boxes though, it feels wonderful!

New muck boots are getting worn in while we clean out all the brush in the woods for burning during our nightly meals over the campfire.

The kitties are finally home as well. Minnie managed to find every miniature hiding hole in the house to hide herself in the first few days but they are now all settling in as well and really enjoying all the house they get to explore and discover.

This morning though, my girls woke up, hauled a dead tree trunk from the woods, got a fire going themselves in the firepit and burnt our paper recycling pile while talking about all their plans for our garden out back. I realized...this is truly the life. I can't picture it looking any better than this.

Self sufficiency here we come!!

Broken Dreams

2011-01-15T01:35:00.002-06:00

So our farm - the one we already started planning our dreams around, silly as that sounds, was purcahsed by someone else today! We were 1 day too late in getting our bid in. :-(

I guess the hunt begins again...

It's been awhile.

2011-01-12T00:26:00.003-06:00

I do realize I neglected Blogworld for the last part of 2010. Sometimes life just isn't where you want it to be though - so do you really want to share that with everyone? Well, I don't. LOL

2011 - New hopes, new dreams, new ambitions. I love the way a New Year feels. Like a clean slate to start again with. Everything we let slip to the wayside is now fresh and ready for me to triumph over.

My dear husband and I are trying to buy a farm. Yes, I said trying. We actually haven't even put an offer on our dream farm yet but in my mind, changing the title and header on my blog to "Buys a Farm" helps me feel like I am putting positivity out into the world for it to become reality! :-) I do realize that sounds a little kooky. It all started with a 3 year plan. Year 1 we research the market, take daytrips to our desired area, etc. Year 2 we begin, what we are sure will be a very long househunt. Year #3, we decide on property and make offers, negotiating a wonderful price eventually. This was the plan.

Month 1: Year 1.
We found the house of our dreams and it happens to be located on the land of our dreams. It is a bank foreclosure going to auction in 2 weeks.

Not ideal conditions.

Scramble to get financing for deal, scramble to get down payment and other monies for said deal, scramble some more for the fun of it.

Once we wrapped our head around this craziness there are one hundred million little roadblocks up along the path to owning this beautiful piece of farmland. Financing limitations, FHA appraisal guidelines, strict and unflexible auction dealings, etc. We are going into this with a hope and a prayer and maybe...if we are lucky, in February, my title will be accurate!

More details to come. But for now, I am heading to bed to once again dream about dairy goats, piglets in the chicken house and remodeling a farmhouse kitchen. Wish us good luck.

Looking up

2010-07-26T23:30:00.002-05:00

Well...life is far from normal but we are getting close to our sweet kind of normalcy again.

The pain and helplessness of all the change that this year began with is still ever so fresh and lingers around us daily. But we are strong and have grown from all this change. Our kids push us daily to show them just how strong we are and just how much life can throw our way. But we strive to show them that even though we fall...and fall repeatedly...we will never stop getting back up and dusting ourselves off.

We are not final yet on our adoption of Kim and Alicia but our court date is nearing and we could not be any more ready! Kim is going through a lot of tough times. She shows us how to find patience and love for her and within ourselves every moment. Ckaylei is going through all kinds of emotional turmoil as well...having our family grow so quickly and losing all sense of solid ground under her feet. We love these girls though. Our girls. Our beautiful Adrian is still with us and while we don't know for sure at this point, there are signs that show she might be a permanent fixture in our lives. Dave and I don't mind a bit. Who would have thought we could fall in love with a kid that we didn't meet until her horrible teen years!

Much of the past couple months has been work related for Dave and I. My husband has managed to finally land his dream job. A huge accomplishment for him. Time to start dreaming bigger I guess. :-) I have taken over a company and am now acting as the Director. Very peculiar feeling having employees and writing their paychecks every month. I love this work I do though and wouldn't want to give it up for anything.

We also made the bold decision to start homeschooling all our girls! So I am in massive home school planning mode as I have never home schooled more than one child. Of course, I sit with my planning notebooks every night having visions of all of them speaking to each other in French and writing poetry before bed while I grade solid A papers. We will see. We start in a couple weeks!

The farm is doing great. Some a bit neglected and the other parts thriving. We ended up planting around 100 tomato plants of varying types. We still haven't finished building the post system for them though so some are laying about while others are very tall and bushy. We have still had quite a few to harvest though. I think our claim to fame this year was the strawberries though. We harvested...harvested...harvested and then harvested some more! We still get lingering fruits that pop up but for the most part they have finished for the year I believe. We have two freezers completely full of huge frozen strawberries in Ziploc bags. Overall I think Dave's new sand/mulch/dirt mixture has done very well - though we have had to fertilize far more often with holly tone, tomato tone and veggie tone that we did in the past. But we kept it all organic and are very happy with the results.

Our chix are all doing great. They have had a stellar laying year and have done us proud. Turkey is also starting to warm up finally to Buffy and Ginger - the two young pups in the flock. I will try to post pics soon.

starting again...

2010-04-26T23:38:00.013-05:00

It has been almost 6 months since I last posted. Life looks very different from here.

Change. Every bit of my life has been sprinkled with it this past several months. Beautiful, sorrowful, painful and awe inspiring sprinkles of change that make me gasp at the obvious helplessness I posess over the shape my life will take.

Today. I love my husband. He inspires me and could not possibly feel any more like the other half of my soul than he does today.

Yesterday. Hard day. Saw my sweet girl Kim at the hospital. She is flat now.

Last weekend. Wonderful sun and warmth. My husband brought our farm back to life - it feels good. He adds all his own touches of course. Caring not as much for the asthetics of it all but more about the functionality. He started two experimental beds with a special sand/mulch/dirt mix for the carrots and onions. Planted so many we might not eat anything but carrots and onions all year if they go well. Started the new plants: Rhubarb, loads more strawberries, rasberries, blueberries and gooseberries. Making plans together for the tomatoe beds. May be the only thing I plant myself this year.....if he doesn't beat me to it. Eager little farmer he has turned out to be.

Mid April. I scour Century 21 website looking for farms on the east coast. Dave and I fight because I think he should quit his job and we should live off student loans while he pursues further education in programming and I go to culinary school. I apply to both the New England Culinary Institute and the culinary program at The Art Institute in Kansas City.

Beginning of April. My best friend breaks my heart. She is moving to Vermont. I feel dramatic - so I think to myself that it might as well be China. My children's lives will be different forever. Even though I know, with complete certainty, that in her shoes I would do the same thing...I hate her a little right now.

April 6th. We get selected to adopt Kim and Alicia. My husband was amazing in our staffing. We can't tell the kids yet. But we know and couldn't be happier today.

Mid March. My 5 year old neice and 7 year old nephew move in with us. Wonderful. Exhausting. We are now at six kids in the house. Can't handle much more.

March. My step-father, the only man in my life until my husband, died suddenly. He was 38. I spent a week in Pennsylvania with Mom. Life feels surreal. I miss my husband so much every night I can't sleep. No idea how to comfort Mom. Don't think I could be comforted in her shoes. Want to sleep for days.

February. We add a new foster kiddo to the bunch. Feeling hesitant because she is a teen. But everyone is taking well to her. She is quiet, complicated and beautiful. I think I really like her.

January. It snowed and snowed and snowed. Was awesome. We were actually "snowed in" for the first time ever in Missouri. Couldn't even open our front door or get the cars out of the driveway. Kids had the longest Christmas break ever and we loved every minute. Made more chili and potato soup than we thought any family should ever consume in one lifetime. Made snowmen. Had awesome snowball fights. Went ice skating. Consumed mass amounts of awesome hot cocoa.

Tonight. I feel like I am drifting. Not sure where we are headed right now. But I have to say, in the weeks past I have been so sad about all this change I could hardly stand the helplessness of it all. Tonight, I have hope. And maybe just the smallest bit of excitement about what this next 6 months will look like for my family.

AND AS FOR THE CHIX! They all made it through this rough and tough winter. Strong girls - just like our family.

Recap: Farmgirls don't remodel quickly!

2009-11-14T23:46:00.014-06:00

So, this is how the past 5 years of my life has been spent. Well, in between work, homeschooling, parenting, foster parenting, cooking some killer dinner and oh yeah....farming. :-)
We've been remodeling. Now, this is not the only project we have tackled in our home - but it is by far the biggest. We had the crappiest of crappy basements when we bought this house. My husband saw a diamond in the rough though - really his fantasy basement. The dry...at least we thought at the time, unfinished raw basement. A blank canvas for him to design and play with. So, this is the story of our first house...our first major remodel and how we almost killed eachother during the process!

I will refer to the photographs in the numerical order in which they appear for reference as they do tell the story best. Photograph #1 (Day #1): This shows exactly how our basement looked the day we moved in. Or rather...where we would have liked to moved into. The previous tenant left all her...well....crap for us to deal with, along with a few wonderful presents from her cat as well in there.
Photograph #2 (Day #2): We have finally cleared out most of the previous tenants crap and made room for our own junk. I should also note here that the absence of all the crap definitely brought to our attention that the basement was FUNKY! And not in the cool way.
Photograph #3 (Day #3): We finally move all of our own crap in the funky basement. Yay! Time to forget about it all for awhile.
By the way, we have two sides to our basement as the stairwell splits it in two. The other side...mmmmm nice and finished. Well, finished in the 1980's! Check out that GIANT track lighting. And what is up with that rounded step at the door? Weird. And - not sure if you can see, but the carpet is dirty and crunchy. Yup I said crunchy.
Photograph #5 (Week #4): Time to stop forgetting about the funky basement - it flooded. So, while retiling the kitchen, I busted the water line to the ice maker and flooded the basement below. That sucked. And, as you'll notice, we almost always have baskets of laundry everywhere!! It is completely unintentional but what can I say...we have a lot of clothes apparently.
Photograph #6 (Year #2): This year we did a lot of the framing with David's mother. It was really quite funny. There was a floating wall and lop sided boxes and many adventures in experimental electrical work. Good times.
Photograph #7 (Year #3): Sooooo...we had a lot going on in those three years. Started homeschooling, changed careers....stuff! Don't judge me. So here, you can see still some sheetrocking needs to be done and more electrical work (which David is doing entirely) and much much more mudding and sanding.
Photograph# 8 (Year #5): I know! We lived with our offices in that for two years. Trust me, I lived it...I know it sucks. But look...so pretty. All the electrical and sheetrocking are done. And at this point all we were doing was staying up into the wee hours of the morning sanding and mudding in preparation for Mike the sheetrock guy, who was going to be spraying a knockdown texture on all the walls the next day.
Photograph #9 (Year #5 - 2:00am): Can you see the total exhaustion? Mud, sand, wipe, mud, sand, wipe. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
Photograph #10: Same progress being made in the other side.

Photograph #11 (Year 5, 2 days after falling asleep in a bowl of cereal after 2 all nighters.): *Drumroll Please* Our finished Playroom/Homeschool Room.
Photograph #12: The most beautiful row of bookshelves I have ever laid eyes on. I am easy to please! We have spent the past 3 years homeschooling at our dining room table with only 1 1/2 of these bookshelves usable to us. Cramming our stuff in every corner of the house I almost want to cry everytime I see the organization now and the fact that it all fits with lots of room to spare so I can add more!!
Photograph #13: A shelf for each subject!!!!
Photograph #14: The art/music corner? Ckaylei's keyboard (which hopefully will be replaced with Ckaylei's piano if we ever find the right deal) and the toy box/bench.
Photograph #15: The crafting area. Supplies for crocheting, sewing fabrics and goodies and beading.
Photograph #16: The homeschool area. Note the table surface - we can write on it with dry erase markers! Cool. Lots of school supplies everywhere and a desk for mom to stay organized at. Oh! And don't forget the guinea pigs. The classroom pets? Either way they sing while we school. It is awesome.
Photograph #17: The partially finished office. The master bedroom is through that doorway but it still remains unfinished. We still need to lay carpet in here and get the door installed. They will be coming soon. Hopefully in 09'.

To summarize, when we first decided to remodel we drew up our designs and brought in several contractors to bid the project. The lowest bid of five we received was $21,000. Doing all the sheetrocking, framing, mudding, sanding, electrical work, networking and phone lines ourselves and only hiring out for additional cable lines and sheetrock texturing we have saved thousands of dollars. To date, we have spent $2,500. We do still have the bathroom left, which will cost around $1,500 in itself. But, you can see, we saved ourselves a small fortune by doing it ourselves. We have sacrificed sanity, precious time and many many hours of sleep. But darn it...we saved a lot of money!!

Crazy Animal People

2009-11-05T09:47:00.007-06:00

I find myself always saying..."We have had a lot of changes this month". I am starting to think we are just those people. You know, the kind who never sit still. Never let things settle. How the heck did I become this person??

Well, now we are also, the crazy cat people. They have membership cards to this club - lots of perks. LOL

It began so innocently, just a good intention gone wrong. As you all know I am a social worker. Several weeks ago I happened upon a client of mine that was housing several abused kittens that her housecat had just given birth to. Their living conditions were quite bad to say the least and by the time I finally broke down and took them home, three of their brothers and sisters had been killed. The two I managed to save we named Chester and Lulu. The thing is, we never had any intention of keeping them. Just nursing them back to health and finding them a good home. Their so adorable, it would obviously be an easy task.

8 Weeks later....

We are now the proud owners of two new kittens. They have been through a lot in these past several weeks - between litter box training, daily wrestling matches with eachother, fighting off a nasty flea invasion and escaping the death grips of various neighborhood kids, they are tough little cookies now.
Tough as they are, most days this is how you will find them. Curled up together, snoring!
They come as a pair. When there is one swirling around your foot making you fall all over yourself, the other is sure to follow.
At this point you may be trying to do the calculations in your head...let me help. We are up to:

4 Cats
3 Guinea Pigs (Did I mention we were given two more?)
200 Guppy Fish
1 Beta Fish (Bluegill Ahmadinejad)
5 Chickens

...and whatever insects my kids have trapped in jars or butterfly enclosures.

Like I said, Crazy Animal People.

Falling in love with Autumn

2009-11-05T09:32:00.002-06:00

When the weather is beautiful like it has been these past couple weeks here in Missouri, it is hard not to want to spend every waking moment outdoors.

Even doing chicken chores around our house has been fun for the kids.

Our chickies have begun producing again after a month and a half long molt from the drama of losing the roosters. But now they are back in full swing - producing 5-7 eggs a day! They are awesome little creatures.

But they aren't the only thing on the farm producing.

Here you can see our Nasturtiums are taking off. We frequently use them in salads and sometimes just to decorate our dining room table with bright orange flowers!

Even the delicate little Snapdragons provide hours of entertainment for the kids as they use their petals to mimic talking mouths.

I truly love and adore Spring - the season where I get to sprinkle dust in the earth and watch it create life with a little sunlight and water. But there is something magical about the beauty of Fall.

Spending our days collecting fallen red leaves to make bookmarks with or just raking a pile of crunchy leaves together to use as nature's bean bag....I love this season.

Fall Farming

2009-11-03T13:34:00.004-06:00

Now mid-Fall, we are just getting around to harvesting some of our longer growing veggies and our second and third plantings of others. Shown here, we harvested our largest carrot crop to date. It weighed in at about 100 lbs. of carrots. Normally we harvest carrots with a large 15 gallon bucket but this year we had to haul out the big wheelbarrow! These are all Danver Half-Long carrots. They peel pretty easy and freeze great. Carrots weren't the only thing getting harvested though! We have had enough warm Fall days that our tomatoes are still producing - though we will likely still have several dozen that we have to bring in to fully ripen before the frost comes. Oh yeah, and Dave's magnificent strawberries keep on coming!! They are huge and just SO juicy. Honestly, this year, the strawberries stole the show. The plants have now tripled in size and spread out and multiplied several times. Lots of fresh berries in our house this year.

Lastly, we finally harvested all the potatoes. I was hesitant on what to expect because we had numerous issues with a local stray cat trying to use my potato pots as a kitty litter box. But they did amazing. We harvested over 100 lbs. of potato this year. A mixture of Yukon Gold and Red Pontiac's.

We have various herbs still producing quite heavily with the cooler temps and our tomatoes continuing to grow. But so far, the harvest totals for the garden are higher than we have ever achieved in the past. So the year was a success.

Over the past several weeks we have cut down three of our larger lesser quality trees to make room for the garden to expand even further in years to come. Next year, time/money/energy permitting, we hope to double the size of the main garden and strawberry beds and build 7 more raised beds. Whew! I am tired just thinking about it.

Calling all cabbage experts!!

2009-09-17T18:12:00.004-05:00

This being my first year growing cabbage, I find myself confused by the lack of growth on ours. As you can see here - a few weeks ago when I took this pic, there still was no head forming in the middle.

Being the cabbage novice that I am I ask myself....Did I buy a dwarf headless variety of cabbage? Are my plants developmentally delayed? Did I somehow come across a package of seeds labeled as cabbage but inside was really the seeds of a pretty purple leafy ornamental? Did I overcrowd? Did I not show them enough affection and encouragement?

Who knows?! Well, hopefully someone who reads my blog! If you know what is going on with my cabbage - please shoot me a comment so I will stop questioning my very worthiness to garden.

Thank you! ;-)

Broccolicious

2009-09-13T07:31:00.002-05:00

Well, between the heat trying to ruin my broccoli and the caterpillars trying to steal my broccoli - these plants have been through a lot this season. This is our first year growing broccoli - it is still yet to be seen if we will actually get to eat any of it though!

Squirrel Rescue?

2009-09-01T21:59:00.004-05:00

As if life doesn't throw you enough hoops to jump through, let's toss in some adorable baby squirrels that are injured and abandoned for a little mix.

Well, it began while I was at work a few days ago...I received a panicked phone call from my daughter telling me Daddy had a man cutting down trees and then one had a squirrel nest in it and......garble garble....baby squirrels sleeping in the closet! Ummmmm, did I just hear you say there are baby squirrels sleeping in my closet?? Uhhhh, yeah Mom.

This seems to be how all stories worth telling begin in our life. My husband had finally hired a man to cut down a few of our ancient and practically falling over trees last week. Sphinx (our tree guy - seriously, I can't even make this stuff up!), failed to notice said squirrel nest and my lovely daughters came screaming to their rescue as the massive 50' tree came crashing down into my well overgrown weedy lawn - by the way, I might mention here that it just BARELY missed the tomatoes. Little did Sphinx know how close he came to losing his life had those tomatoes been crushed! LOL

Anyhow, after I got home from work and called our local nature center, we had a plan of action. They were too injured to be returned to their mother at this time, so we did what any squirrel rescuers would do...Heat-Hydrate-Stimulate. Yeah...fun. They perched in a little canning jar box next to our bathroom sink atop a comfy little heating pad, getting fed squirrel Gatorade every two hours and having me stimulate their....parts...after each feeding by "flicking" them with a wet cotton ball to simulate their mothers tongue. Definitely how I envisioned my Sunday night looking when I started the day.

But this story has ended for us now, as we dropped them off Monday morning at the nature center so that their more experienced hands could heat, hydrate and stimulate. Fortunately for us though, Ckaylei starts her Jr. Keeper internship next week and will get to work at the nature center twice a week caring for them until they are released back into the wild.

Oh....and did I mention we are getting a kitten? Man...I am such a sucker. Pictures soon to come. But Chester is still nursing from his mama right now - two more weeks until a homecoming. I promised Dave that he is just a rescue kitty though and we will find him a good home. We shall see. ;-)

Yum!Berries

2009-08-26T00:16:00.002-05:00

Remember back when I posted those photos of the little baby strawberry plants that my husband very meticulously planted this spring? I mocked him as he scurried out to the garden to cover each plant with a little Dixie cup every time the temperatures dipped low or we had a hail storm. But, now looking and tasting the fruits of his labor...I love that man! We have been blessed with a steady supply of plump sweet berries all summer. Few make it into the house as the girls snarf them down while playing in the yard and Dave likes to well, eat while he gardens. :-)

The Beauty of Garlic

2009-08-20T09:45:00.002-05:00

Whether you roast it with olive oil and eat it with some warm homemade bread or chop it up for flavoring dinner or use its oil to soothe a toothache - garlic is maybe one of the most versatile and tasty members of my garden family. This was my first year experimenting with garlic. I actually planted it last fall. Not knowing when to expect it to be ready to harvest, I just watched and waited. Granted it took what honestly felt like FOREVER to finish its growing cycle, it is so rewarding plucking these girls from the ground and hanging my trophies in the kitchen for all to see. This year, I plan to increase our planting x4 - now that I have faith that if I wait long enough...the garlic will come!

Summer Tomatoes

2009-08-16T16:32:00.015-05:00

I have to say, this year was not an A+ gardening year for me. I mean, our garden underwent probably the biggest transformation it ever has, but the attention to detail was just not there for me in certain areas. Once we got all the raised beds built, finished the tilling, laid the weed blocker, hauled and spread all the mulch and soil and all the other bits and pieces that went into our new garden area there didn't seem to be any more desire or energy left in me for the actual planting process. Not so bright, I know.
So, when my plants actually started producing great results this year without all the tender thoughtfulness I normally give them, I thought maybe they were giving me a pass for the year and next year I need to be diligent and repay their effort since they obviously understood it is taking a lot for me to even HAVE a garden this year with all the madness that life has thrown our way this year.
This one in particular is one of my favorite tomatoes. You have to look close to really appreciate what your seeing. In the middle is a smallish regular sized tomato - normal size for a lot of my heirlooms. At the bottom of the photo is a couple almost grapefruit sized tomatoes. And then there....lurking behind at the top is, what we have now tagged as, BIG PAPA. I am guessing when it is all done growing, it will come in easily over a couple pounds. We have it supported with twine and some large twigs forming a nest beneath it. Heirlooms hold their charm but nothing beats those giant Beefsteak tomatoes.

This year I vowed not to run to the hardware store every time I needed a tomato cage or a wooden support stake. So instead, we are using deformed fallen branches from our many trees and twine. Some may call it ghetto....and it may be....but I call it Eco-chic.

All the heirlooms this year I plated in our soil bag experiments. You can only plant one tomato plant per bag, so I thought this would be good for the heirlooms so that if one variety tanked or had a disease (because every year they always seem to be the ones more susceptible), it wouldn't effect the whole crop.
They are moving a little slower than the plants in the raised bed, but I also planted them a week or so later. We have a support stick in each one and the plants are crawling up them nicely.
Lastly, are the late plants. I had some growing from seed that I had given up on. Then back in late June I got a second wind and decided to plant them. Way late in an old onion bed after we harvested. They are definitely behind the others, but still seem to be doing well. I will keep you posted on how they turn out.
Until then....let this picture of our gloriously plump red tomatoes from out first harvest last week tide you over. We were able to harvest about 20 pounds and already today there are another dozen ready for picking. Yum!!

Down to five...

2009-08-16T16:14:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I realize I have neglected blogworld for a while now. We have had a crazy couple of months though and I am justifying my time away by claiming it as a summer break! :-) I obviously spend too much time with my elementary aged kids!

Probably the biggest news since I last posted is that we only have five chickens now. We found a wonderful home for Grady, Rubert and Astro. Actually, my awesome sister in law did! A co-worker of hers owns a large farm about an hour away and had been talking about starting a flock. My sister in law jumped at the opportunity to offer her some of our rooster beauties! We even got her to take one of our neighbor's roosters as well. The night after we dropped them off with her, she regaled us with stories of how two of them escaped and her elderly husband spent hours until the sun finally set herding them back into the coop. They are now living in a nice large barn and will be joined shortly by a flockful of hens for them to "play" with.

All of our girls now are merging together nicely. Turkey is the mama bird of the nest and all the other girls more than willingly flock to her and obey without hesitation.

Summer Flowers

2009-06-30T11:38:00.003-05:00

If you recall, I posted back in April our first photos of the new potted flower section of our garden. I have mentioned in the past my not so green thumb in regards to growing flowers, especially potted flowers. I just never seemed to possess the touch with them. However, this year must be our year. We used all organic soil and lots of yummy compost along with creating a gravel bottom layer in each pot to promote good drainage. Now, even after our incredibly hot 100 degree week, our flowers are doing amazingly!

These are the hosta and lambs ear blooms from the front flower bed. Last year, I nearly killed the hostas. Not expecting much from them this year, we were all shocked when they came back so strong. The lambs ear is probably all the girls favorite in the garden. Fun to touch and the bees love them.

And finally my roses. Never thought I would be a rose fan, even though I am a rose by name, but I have found that nursing these little sickling rose bushes that lived here before us gives me a huge sense of accomplishment when they take off like they have. Plus, they make for really nice floral arrangements around the house all summer and spring.

Baby Girls No More!

2009-06-29T09:06:00.003-05:00

Well, it's official! My baby chicks are no longer babies. They are as big or bigger than the big girls. It was a rough journey, merging the flocks, but we have finally acheived harmony. Well, for now.

We discovered a few days ago that we had some roosters in the mix as it was about 6am when the crowing began. Since then Astrid became Astro, Ruby became Rubert and Grace became Grady. We will be sad to see them leave our farm, but unfortunately we are unable to keep roosters in our area. So currently we are still looking for a good home for our boys.

Astro here was the first to begin crowing. Which is actually pretty funny because he is the BIGGEST wimp of all our chickens. Always the first to hide his head and trample the others to get to the back. It's hilarious.

Rubert here actually hasn't begun crowing yet, but we are sure he is rooster as he struts around and already chases the girls and tries to mount them whenever given the opportunity.

Our big girls are taking all of this as well as can be expected. Turkey attacked all the new chicks for weeks until we seperated her and put her in a dog kennel outside for a week. After that, she calmed and while she still maintains her alpha chicken status, she asserts her authority over the babies without attacking them all the time now.

Crispy June Cabbage and Other Updates

2009-06-29T08:51:00.006-05:00

In past years, I have had no luck growing lettuce. It shoots up fast and then bolts and I lose the crop. So this year I tried something different. I am growing it in our side garden bed that is really more of a partial shade bed than our other veggies beds. The lettuce so far has been slow growing, as you can see from the photo, we seeded in the beginning of April and still don't have any mature lettuce. But, it is coming along and not bolting, so maybe this will be the way to go. Every year is definitely a learning process for our family. Dave nor I grew up on a farm, so everything we know now comes from trial and error on our farm. Year 5....will this be the year we harvest edible lettuce? We'll see.

Meanwhile, our garden soil bag planting is doing wonderfully! Shown here is some cauliflower I planted back in May. We put two plants per bag of soil and that seems to be just about right.
On the sour side of things though is this crazy June heat wave! We had a week of 100 degree days and my cabbage did not stand up well in it. I think I should have put up some sort of shade tent over them, but inexperience on my end did not help. The girls and I have been giving them some heavy watering and hopefully they will spring back to life soon. We are looking forward to some later summer/fall cabbage dinners.

Blog Awards

2009-06-14T10:55:00.006-05:00

I hardly feel that my little farm & family updates are award worthy, but last month one of my readers gave me this award! Don't I feel special. :-)

One of the requirements is to pass the award on to other bloggers and to list 7 things you love.

My evergrowing family.
My wonderful friends.
My adorable animals. (Moe, Minnie, Brownie, Butternut, Turkey, Caramel Heart, Ruby, Astrid, Buffy, Ginger and Grace - even all the little nameless hundreds of fishies)
My garden.
My cameras. (Of course to capture all the above)
My jobs. If you read, then you know - there are many. :-)
Lastly even though he is my family, I will seperate out, I love my husband. We celebrated our 12 year anniversary yesterday. How many good looking strawberry farming men are there out there anyhow?!

To whom I pass this award on to...

http://backyardfarming.blogspot.com/ - The contributors at the Backyard Farming Blog are just beyond awesome. From Dale, my one stop poultry info guy to all those ladies whose beautiful photographs are only topped by all the neat projects they inspire me with, this blog sits at the top as my all time fave to read.

Finally a little farming on this farm blog!!

2009-06-09T12:54:00.004-05:00

I promised farm updates and here they are. Chicken updates will be coming next but it is rainy today so no pics of the girls yet. Here you can see the new garden area is really coming along nicely. We are taking it slowly, trying to make each area work as best as it can and definitely learning as we go. (Click on the image to enlarge it and you can read all my labels and notes)
First off, the broccoli and cauliflower planted last month are shooting up fast! All our perfectly scheduled rain/hot summer day combo's are doing wonders for the garden.
The first raised bed to the left is two types of onions (sweet white and vidalia) and 8 rows of carrots, which are already getting to the point of needing to be thinned out.
The second raised bed to the right is tomatoes. All my beefsteak and big boys are in this bed. 20 plants are planted in this bed and 20 others planters are filled behind it and on the other side.

Here, bean sprouts are just starting to poke up.
The potato pots are soaring this year. We already have them mostly filled to the top with dirt. All that is left to do is watch and wait. We have just under 100 plants growing.
Right behind the potatoes are the 6 blueberry bushes. Amazingly, they are producing a ton of fruit already. We can hardly harvest it though, because the kids eat them straight off the plant when outside playing. :-)
In our raised bed on the other side of the yard, we have garlic from last fall and lettuce growing strong and steady. That side of the yard gets a bit more shade, so I have all our lettuce and spinach planned for that bed.
Next to that planter is the new strawberry patch. Both patches are just booming this year. We have harvested almost 50 good sized strawberries from both. I am a fan of the strawberry patch now!
The 6 raspberry plants, growing right next to the strawberry patch are also doing well. They will not product this year, but their growth already is impressive.
For the backyard, last but not least is the herb garden. My newbie plants from last year, the basil and thyme are looking strong. As long as I can keep the oregano and lemon balm from taking over (which are currently 2 foot tall beasts), everything is looking great.
In the front yard, all 6 of the grape plants have made it and are taking off. The two from last year really didn't look like they were going to come back from the winter. But we were patient and had faith and they are bigger than ever now - almost 2 1/2 feet tall.
Hanging from the grape arbor is a topsy turvy growing (3) Sweet 100 tomoato plants. This of course, is my husbands baby. I don't really do novelty growing like he does, but I give him credit, it is doing well and I will certainly enjoy all those cherry tomotoes during the meal time.

Cosmosphere Trip

2009-06-09T12:44:00.002-05:00

The month of May was filled with trips. Here, we took the 3 hour trip to visit the Kansas Cosmosphere with Ckaylei's robotics club.
Pictured here is Ckaylei in front of the Spaceship Endeavor.

This is Dr. Goddard's Science Lab. Lots of explosions and bangs...so much fun.

Simulating a rocket using a deer park bottle. They said not to try this at home...but maybe just once?!?!

Finally pictured here is Ckaylei in front of the Apollo 13 capsule. Just thinking about being so close to something that was actually in space is just amazing!

Bootcamp, Birthdays and Butterflies Oh My!

2009-06-09T12:16:00.002-05:00

My oldest girl starting a bootcamp for those out of shape little 9 year olds!

Alicia turning 12! Check out my super tasty homemade cherry-dark chocolate cake covered in chocolate covered cherries...yum yum yum!

The day finally came, we raised 10 little painted lady butterflies for the past month and they finally hatched into lovely little butters a few weeks ago. Ckaylei was simply in love as she named each one as they flew on to live their new lives.

One did hang behind though, Ckaylei's little buddy, Broken Wing. Gotta love the underdog. :-)

Memorial Day Campout - 2009

2009-06-09T12:00:00.004-05:00

In total this year, between our two families, we had 15 people camping. All the kiddos are pictured here with the exception of the two babies.

On day 2, Ckaylei had a nasty biking accident. She took it like a champ though and with a little help from our awesome first aide kit (thank goodness we were well prepared) she has fully recovered with no scars! Goooo Neosporin!

Alicia learning how to hold a bass. "Your sure it won't bite me right??? Ouch!" LOL

Here I am enjoying those rocky beach days. Notice the wrap - this was my feeble attempt on day 2 to not make my already painful sunburn any worse...failed horribly. I am still peeling from that burn. Darn lake sun!

Lastly, I leave you with this horrifying image of the fist sized spider we found under our bed while taking the tent down on the final day. I can't even think about it without shuddering!

Addiction

2009-06-06T16:49:00.001-05:00

Forgot to mention...check out my latest obsession.

http://twitter.com/triciawohlford

Update

2009-06-06T16:27:00.003-05:00

It isn't like me to post without a pic...but I wanted to shout out a quick update. Much like back in December when my posting went quiet for a while, my silence has been due to three new additions to our home. We have welcomed three new foster daughters into our home and the transition process for them as well as us is just so overwhelming we all feel lucky just to fit sleep into our schedule. Thing are calming down and my posts will soon return with our adventures of camping in the wilderness for a week as a 6 person family and loads of updates on the garden - which is looking beautiful. Keep reading, I promise to keep posting!

Ok, so I just had to post a picture of some sorts...still dreaming of vacation days. But just like anything else we do, even our vacations are unorthadox, torn up ratty sandals and a rock beach at the lake. LOL

Butternut

2009-05-05T13:12:00.003-05:00

Seriously, can you think of anything funnier than watching a fat chicken waddle-run away from the sound of a garden hose turning on? And no, I don't mind at all the fact that my yard is freckled with yellow dandelions and wild violets. I just think of them as Mother Nature's decoration.

The Versatile Nasturtium

2009-05-04T02:43:00.002-05:00

After picking up a wax paper bag full of nasturtium seeds at our local farmers expo a few weeks ago we decided to plant these little guys all around our potted flowers. We have never grown them and frankly, are all skeptical of flowers being anything but decorative. But I am assured by my farmer friends that these little flowers are much much more than just garden decor.
Firstly, the entire plant is edible, flower, leaves and seed. When the seeds are picked young and pickled they are likened to capers. Yum! The flowers claim to be peppery in flavor and good with salads or stuffed with a cream cheese type filling.

This little beauty also has medicinal uses. It can be used to fight internal bacterial infections, most especially those affecting the skin and urinary tract, as well as the respiratory and digestive systems. It can also be used to treat fungal infections! Why can't all flowers be this helpful?

BPA?

2009-04-28T09:06:00.008-05:00

A fellow blogger, Cherie from the Renaissance Garden, posted this trailer. I hope that it gets a lot of play at local theaters because I think this is an amazing way to spread the word about the dangers of bottled water. It sounds ridiculous, that bottled water - something viewed as a health benefit could be dangerous, but I posted about this several months ago as well (http://chixlife.blogspot.com/2008/07/take-back-tap.html).

The film trailer touches on this, but what most people aren't aware of are BPA's, or Bisphenol-A. BPA is found in: Hard clear plastic (usually indicated as a number 7 plastic), all plastic numbered 3 and 6, canned foods, especially canned formula (these are lined with BPA), and many plastic toys. Basically, BPA is an ingredient used in the chemical compound that lines the inside of food containers. It also is the major building block in Polycarbonate plastic.

The reason it poses a risk to us is that the bonds in BPA are prone to leaching into the foods contained within the container. Once a human has ingested BPA it can disrupt proper hormone functioning, alter genes and interfere with normal physical and behavioral development. That just sounds great, right?

I never try to pose a negative without giving a solution. And this is an easy one! Spring for a BPA free reusable water bottle for a start. I like these: http://www.rei.com/product/750087. But really there are many on the market today. Buy your milk in glass bottles, breast feed your infants, and can your own food in jars when possible. I don't want to go overboard with this, but once again, thanks to corporate America, we can't even trust the water we drink.

All grown up...

2009-04-20T15:03:00.005-05:00

As you can see, the girls are growing up fast! We are planning on introducing them to the outdoors maybe as soon as next week. Astrid we think is now Astro and Ruby is now Rubert. From everything I read, they are showing all the signs of being roosters. :-( We haven't heard any telltale crows at dawn yet, but I do believe that will just be a matter of time.

Today's Work

2009-04-20T14:54:00.006-05:00

I woke up this morning to find that my daughter and husband were both awake and already preparing for the day. My husband had decided to take the day off work and garden with us all day! So, we put on our work clothes and headed out to see Vic. You see, Vic is my main gardening man. He owns a small nursery just down the street from us and is pretty much an authority on anything that grows in the ground! :-) We try to give him as much of our business as we can - as he doesn't always carry some of the less common items we like to grow (like heirloom tomato seeds). Today, however, we had a very specific job to get done. Dave's focus today was to get his 6 new raspberry, 6 new blueberry and 4 new grape plants into the ground. But he first needed to amend our soil quite a bit because they all require very acidic soil - of which we apparently are lacking in. My job today was to finish getting the onions planted, get the carrots seeds in dirt, finish planting all the seed potatoes and tend to our other new seedlings. We have black seeded simpson lettuce coming up (shown above) and we have some nasturtiums that are coming up already. The peas are still a no show, but I have faith that they are just late bloomers. Below is what we have in the ground now:

20 snap peas
150 carrots
200 onions
20 garlic bulbs
30 heads of black seeded simpson lettuce
8 heads of red cabbage
75 potato plants
75 strawberry plants (25 mature and 50 yearlings)
and then of course the new raspberry, blueberry and grape plants - plus our herbs and assorted fruit trees

Going in the dirt later this week will be: broccoli, spinach and cauliflower.

Another pet?

2009-04-19T19:09:00.004-05:00

Yes, it's true. We have added yet another animal addition to our home. Well...several more, around 100 to be precise! These are our newest babies, 100ish slimy little red worms. They are apart of our new worm composting project. After our annual visit to the farm expo a few weeks ago, the "Eco Troubadour" broke me down and convinced me to purchase a bunch of these red worms from his very impressive and very established colony. He spoke to me about the amazing accomplishments of worms and how we should cherish them dearly and feed them all our food scraps so that they can make priceless compost tea for us in return. So I thought to myself, I give them my trash...they make black gold for me. Ok, this is a good deal! I think a lot of people shy away from worm composting because of a couple misconceptions: #1 - It must smell. Well, just to be honest, if I open the bin and remove all the paper scrap bedding on top and shove me head down in there...it really isn't all that pleasant a smell. But I think I can fight the urge to do that too often. #2 - The worms crawl out of there, right? No, not at all. As long as you keep them well fed and out of the light, why would they leave their plentiful food source and comfy home? #3 - Worms are gross. SO WRONG! Worms are COOL! Just ask any kid.

They are so cool, that a few weeks ago I threw a pumpkin seed in to them and they made a plant out of it - without any help from me at all! We discovered our little pumpkin plant a few days ago and took it out so that it could grow in the sun. We have also noticed other various plants growing in the compost. Must be some good stuff in there! To read more about this awesome idea of using worms to make something valuable out of your trash - visit http://www.wormwoman.com/ and learn about the amazing Mary Appelhof!

Dust Bath Anyone?

2009-04-19T19:02:00.003-05:00

Watching a chicken take a dust bath is literally one of the funniest and entertaining sites to see. Enjoy the next 60 seconds courtesy of Butternut. :-)

Garden Makeover

2009-04-16T11:18:00.007-05:00

Last year's view.

(Click to enlarge and see labels)
The new and improved garden. We have implemented the no-till farming approach and built several raised beds. We are still using the old garden area to continue the strawberry patch that is back there and some leftover veggies that there wasn't room for in the main garden. But that back section of the yard will mostly be used for roaming space for the new turkeys! Details on the new garden area are coming soon.

Strawberry Farming

2009-04-16T11:12:00.005-05:00

My husband, David, has taken an interest in strawberry farming. Now, I love strawberries, but have never had much luck growing them. Dave has memories of his grandpa growing these sweet little berries like weeds - so he must have it in his blood right? We will see. Last year he successfully got a small patch of about 30 plants to make it through the winter. This year, he has started another patch with about 50 more plants. I will keep everyone posted as to their status throughout the season. Keep your fingers crossed they all live to see winter this year!

Peach Tree Beauty

2009-04-16T11:10:00.003-05:00

Our prized peach tree is doing better than ever. Flowering early this year and making it through our late season frosts like a champ. We can't wait to taste the peaches this year!

Flower Power

2009-04-16T10:56:00.003-05:00

Pansies, Dianthus, Snapdragons and Phlox Oh My! We have decided this year that our garden can be not just functional but also attractive. With our new mammoth garden, we added a floral centerpiece feature. We have planted functional beauties like Parsley, Red Cabbage and Nasturtiums along with pretty little pansies in all colors and sizes, dainty purple phlox, striking snapdragons and some eye catching dianthus.

Yum!

2009-04-13T10:05:00.006-05:00

When my family got invited next door for Easter dinner I knew I had to make something tasty to bring with us. After all, I was getting out of cleanup duty and Easter ham cooking! The kids all begged for cake, so finally I decided on these little guys. So easy, so GOOD and so adorable!
Birds Nest Carrot Cakes

Ingredients:

Cupcake

1 1/2 c. sugar
1 c. oil
3 large eggs
2 cups unbleached flour
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. baking soda
1 t. pure vanilla
1/2 t. salt
3 c. shredded carrots
1 c. chopped walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 package softened cream cheese
1/4 c. softened butter
2 t. milk
4 c. powdered sugar

Intructions: Heat oven to 350°F. Greese and flour muffin tins. I used one large 12 muffin tin and 1 miniature 24 muffin tin. Mix the sugar, oil and eggs in a bowl with a beater. Add remaining ingredients except carrots and nuts. Beat until smooth. Then stir in by hand the carrots and nuts just until incorporated well. The large cupcakes took about 30 minutes to cook through and the small about 20 minutes. Mix the frosting while they cook and wait until the cupcakes are cooled thoroughly before frosting. Top with a handful of coconut and three little jellybean eggs (just two will fit on the miniature cakes).

Happy Spring!

2009-04-13T09:54:00.004-05:00

All our crew exhausted from hunting for eggs!

No-till farming: Fact or Fiction?

2009-04-07T22:28:00.007-05:00

When I stumbled across the notion of no-till farming I thought..."No way! This is the lazy gardeners dream come true!"
Well, I have only just started my no-till journey but I can tell you, already I LOVE it! Because I didn't have to spend a small fortune buying or renting (which is what I usually do) a tiller this year, filling it up with overprice gasoline, I saved a bundle which I was able to recycle into other areas of my gardening budget for the year. Because I didn't have to spend two days of back breaking labor knee high in dirt - I had the energy to create an entirely new garden bed and build two new raised beds and mulch until I literally could not mulch anything else! So, I will report back on how the plants are taking to this no-till approach later. But, I like where this is going. :-)
I suppose some of you may want to know why this approach is so superior though, even though the whole lazy gardener thing should have been enough! Below are my top five reasons for choosing this approach:

It helps your soil retain carbon. You know...the stuff that when released in excess into the atmosphere causes global warming. And if you are shaking your head no right now about global warming, you should stop reading my blog now.
It helps solve harmful erosion.
It helps build organic matter and promotes fertile breeding grounds for earthworms.
It cuts down weed growth.
It is EASIER!!
Watch more videos like this at www.quantumshift.tv

Saving the earth one cleaning product at a time...

2009-03-24T10:26:00.008-05:00

As I have spoken about before, my husband and I are going through the process of becoming licensed foster care parents. During this process, our licensing worker inquired as to where we keep our cleaning products and if they were kept out of reach from our children. I gleefully responded - we use all natural cleaning products, so they are safe for our children to use and will not harm them. Nope...wrong. Upon further inspection I discovered that the Clorox GreenWorks! products that I had been purchasing for months and thinking that I was using an earth/kid friendly alternative was actually not what it seemed at all. With a giant conglomerate like Clorox buying up all my favorite brand names (Burt's Bees is now a Clorox baby) it can be difficult to know what to purchase or even find good cleaning products that you can afford. With the label claiming things like "natural" and "biodegradable" is can be tricky but upon closer inspection, these bottles still maintain warnings about keeping away from children and that the product must be kept away from eyes because it is an irritant. Want to know how it irritates? Well, the pH levels of the bathroom cleaner and toilet bowl cleaner are around 2.5!! So yes, I would imagine this product works amazingly as it eats away at everything...including human skin. With its listed ingredients and the 1% of non natural ingredients that they don't even try to deny, this product is not safe to touch, breathe in or allow the fumes to be absorbed through he membranes of your eyes. Yikes!! When purchasing this product, not only are you supporting a company that is a massive producer of heavy chemical products but with all their others products conducts testing on animals. In the end, supporting a sub-par product that is solely aimed at taking advantage of the green movement is sending your hard earned money directly to the company that produces the products that are causing the problems we are now facing globally.
So, now that I have ranted about the problem, let me introduce a solution. :-) First let me introduce Holy Cow cleaning products. This is a company started by the husband/wife team of Joni and Bob Hilton. You might recognize Joni's name from her book, "Housekeeping Secrets my Mother Never Taught Me". After completing her book this duo realized that people were spending hundreds of dollars on cleaning products filled with harsh chemicals. So they set out to develop their trade secret soap that cleans everything! There are three formulas available: The Concentrate Cleaner - which is for big jobs such as degreasing a car engine, The All Purpose Cleaner - which is for cleaning floors, tables, countertops, sinks, etc., and the Glass Cleaner - which is a streak-free cleaner that can even remove water spots over time. Now, here is my favorite part...there is no need to wear gloves with these cleaners. No need to call poison control if your child swallows some of it or the vet if your cat licks up a puddle of it - because there is absolutely nothing harmful to humans or animals in any of these products. Now, that is a product I can get behind. Secretly though, my favorite part of these products is that I can get them in Wal-Mart, Costco, HyVee or Walgreens for under $2 a bottle!!

Secondly, I am going to present Biokleen. This is a family owned and operated company that only produces all their eco-friendly products in their own manufacturing facility located in the USA. The product that I use of theirs is the SoyBlends Soy Toilet Scrub. All Biokleen products are hypo-allergenic, gluten-free, dairy-free and do not contain any nut-based ingredients. They contain NO components listed as a suspected carcinogens. This product in particular is free of all acids and caustics, has no harsh fumes, is VOC free, has no artificial fragrances, colors, or preservatives, and has never been tested on animals. This is a product I can feel safe using anywhere in my home and letting my children and animals be around.

Lastly, a great little product I wanted to recommend is the Quickie Green and its Clean recycled scrub brush series. They have toilet scrubbers, dish scrubbers and all purpose scrubbers (shown in the bottom right of the pic above). These products are made from recycled wood and post consumer pet blend bodies. They are sturdy, hard working brushes and reasonably priced. I found mine at Whole Foods for under $5!

I don't claim to be perfect in my usage of all cleaning products. As I stated, just a couple months ago I was using the horrid GreenWorks product line. But, armed with knowledge and a desire to stop surrounding myself and my family with the chemical laden products that seems to surround us, I feel that these are two of many healthier products to choose from when it comes time to clean up around the house.

Formal Introductions

2009-03-22T16:38:00.002-05:00

Breeds: New Hampshire Red
Names: Ginger and Ruby - The Twins
Personality: Both are very mild in temperment. They stick together like glue though - never sleeping apart and always eating and pooping in unison.

Breed: Silver Laced Wyandotte
Name: Grace
Personality: The little fiesty one. Grace is the first to charge the twice her size Astrid to claim her seat as alpha female...or at least we hope female. :-)

Breed: Black Australorp

Name: Astrid

Personality: The big goofy one. That is obvious right?

Breed: Buff Orpington

Name: Buffy

Personality: Buffy is our dainty little girl. She frolicks around the tub almost as if she is dancing on her tippy toes. Buffy is also the screamer. Every night when the lights go off, her chirps turn on. She is incredibly vocal and has an Eeep that carries for miles!

eeep eeep!

2009-03-21T11:03:00.003-05:00

Daily giggle

2009-03-15T10:27:00.001-05:00

Nothing like a fat guinea pig shoving herself into my stinky garden clogs to put a smile on your face. :-)

Comet

2009-03-15T10:20:00.002-05:00

The girls have emerged from their coop to begin frolicking in the yard again, foraging for tasty worms and scratching the frosty bits of grass away. This winter was a tough one...their first one and we got several harsh weeks of cold. Early on in the winter, our sweet Comet proved not to be as sturdy as she looked and passed away. Thank goodness for caring neighbors that also farm, because in the cold, windy, darkness that night, it was just me, Comet, a garbage sack and my neighbor - but we got through it and feel all that much more prepared to handle anything our backyard chickens throw at us now!

Goodbye snow!

2009-03-15T10:15:00.002-05:00

The days of snow forts in the backyard are coming to an end...and we couldn't be happier!! :-) The children and I have been planning and plotting the new garden plans for weeks and it is almost time to start getting our hands dirty and putting the paper plans to work.

Mary Jane and Her Farm...

2009-01-28T09:27:00.005-06:00

On one of our recent trips to the big Barnes and Noble in Independence, I stumbled upon this amazing little magazine. Mary Janes Farm - The American Organic Original. This particular issue focuses on bees but it has some great articles in it that I wanted to share with everyone who hasn't had the pleasure of reading this publication. My mother will be on the ground laughing as she reads this part...but yes, it is an article on working with a starter when making bread. I resist the idea of a starter just because it requires me to do something every day to it - which sounds like failure before I even begin. But Mary Jane has a way of describing making 'Mother' in a way that just sounds irresistible to me. She says all you need is a: ceramic bowl, wooden spoon, cotton dishtowel, cookie sheet w/ parchment paper, 8 cup mixing or glass measuring bowl, and an instant read thermometer. 'Mother' consists of 2 cups unbleached white organic (a must) flour and 1 1/2 cups purified water. Directions are to: stir ingredients with a wooden spoon and cover with wet dishtowel. Every morning Monday through Friday you need to stir in 1/3 cup flour and 1/4 cup water. On the seventh day, Saturday, spoon 2 cups of mother into a mixing bowl (to make your bread with) and then cover and set aside. Add nothing on the seventh day-it is Mother's day of rest! :-) Sunday you start all over again. Doesn't sound too bad, right?
The next article that caught my attention was a little blurb about turning chicken feed sacks and a little rope into reusable grocery sacks. Awesome! I will definitely be trying this one out. Will post pictures if I succeed.

This last article will segway into my next post tomorrow. This article talks about the little known fact that not only animals are added to the extinction list every year but so are foods. This is the fire behind the heirloom seed movement. In the past, we have grown various heirloom tomatoes for their beautifully unique colors and rich tastes, but I really wasn't aware of the reasons why I should be growing heirlooms. The reason more and more heirlooms are going extinct is because of the speed of production in genetically modified foods that get mass produced in factories. I encourage everyone who is planning a garden this year to use as many heirloom seeds as they can get their hands on. I hope to post pictures of Ckaylei and I's garden planning notebook that we've been working on for this Spring. We are hoping to branch our mini-farm out in new exciting ways and have made a commitment to ourselves to keep thinking out of the box!

If your interested in reading any of these articles in full, pick up your copy of Mary Janes Farm - the Feb-Mar 2009 issue. I highly recommend it.

The Browninator

2009-01-27T16:29:00.005-06:00

She has grown so much over this year. At only 6 months old...she has recovered from a nasty broken leg, being stalked by the cats and an overnight visit at the vets office. She is now cuter and feistier than ever.
Yes, we spoil her often. She spends more time on the sofa with us or in a baby sling than actually in her cage!
She isn't a total freeloader though. She does lots of heavy lifting...
and she eats all the leftover veggies we can't force feed the children!
We love her too much though to tell her that lately, she resembles a fat groundhog more than a baby guinea pig.

Snow Days

2009-01-17T23:45:00.006-06:00

While I am craving the early days of Spring and getting working on my garden notebook for 2009 the kids are busy enjoying all these gloriously cold snow days we have had lately. Thank goodness for a hilly back yard!
AHHHHHHHHHH! The whole way down the hill. LOL

DJ after an attempt at snowboarding with the sled down the hill. Not a good idea. :-)

The chicken dance...everyone does this one right?

Can anyone say DIVA?

Say what?

Purple Roof...why not?

2008-12-24T14:11:00.000-06:00

New Additions

2008-12-24T14:04:00.002-06:00

So, most of the few people who actually read this blog may have noticed my lack of posting lately. No, I have not given up on 'All In A Day', but I have been squeezing a lot more into my days lately and there just simply has been no time for blogging. :-) My husband and I became foster parents last month, right after Thanksgiving, to two beautiful young children. They are great kids and we love having them in our home but it certainly is very different going from one child to three! I will keep trying to post periodically but I have a feeling my posts will be more weekly than daily from here on out. Thanks to all who read and have a very Happy Holiday Season!

While mommy's away - the kitties will play!

2008-11-06T12:08:00.002-06:00

No more open windows for them lounge in...no more escape attempts with the winds blowing freezing air...no more little summer bugs sneaking into the house for them to chase. These kitties are BORED! It seems every day lately that I come home I catch these two in the middle of climbing Mt. Refrigerator, scaling Couch Canyon or wrestling each other in what I am sure is a fight to the death. It seems as though we are not the only ones missing those summer days. :-)

Herbtastic!

2008-11-06T12:03:00.002-06:00

With the weather getting colder and the days getting shorter there are no more flowers blooming outside to fill the vases around our house. Yesterday, while we were doing chicken chores, Ckaylei decided to harvest some of what is left from our herb garden. She then had the great idea to make our harvest decorative! Enjoy these beautiful and fragrant examples from around our home.

Fall Beauty

2008-11-02T16:59:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I took a "grown up class" at Missouri Town and was pleasantly greeted with a cool fall morning filled with gorgeous fog everywhere. So, I learned to make soap over a fire and how to use a triangular loom while photographing all the beauty around during the downtime in class. What an awesome way to spend a Saturday!

Don't Vote!

2008-10-30T16:25:00.003-05:00

Winter Chicken Update

2008-10-29T15:40:00.005-05:00

A little update to show how the chickens are making it through the cold weather this Winter. First of all, all of our breeds are very cold tolerant and hearty birds but we are still taking steps to make sure they are warm and safe this winter. We have been layering bedding on their main level for awhile, so the insulation of all their bedding will help a lot in keeping them toasty.

We also installed a heat lamp and mounted it to the upper rafter of their coop. The mounting placement is very intentional as we are hoping it will also keep the water from freezing up on us and they sleep in that back corner. This will make chores a lot easier. And finally, we have the entire front of the coop, the side that is exposed through the chicken wire, covered with a large green tarp that we mounted with nails at the top of the coop. We had initially thought that we would pull up the ladder that lets them go downstairs because all four sides are exposed down there, but they love going down there so much we are just relying on their own self preservation skills to keep them from staying down there too long.

The frost is here!

2008-10-29T15:32:00.002-05:00

I have to admit, the frost came a lot earlier this year than I expected or was prepared for. We had already tucked the plants in for the winter luckily and just the day before the frost we finished getting the chicken coop prepared for the cold weather. This morning, I woke up and the glass on our front door was covered in a beautiful design of frost art. After digging out my furry winter boots, I walked out into the grass and heard crunching beneath my feet. The grass was all frozen. What a foreign sound in October.

We went out back and check on the girls, who were actually quite excited about the frost and couldn't wait for us to let them out for further investigation. The herb garden was really very pretty all covered in a thin shiny layer of frost. I probably should harvest what is left and cut everything back. But, like I said, frost has no place in October, so I am protesting by putting off garden chores.

Winter Berries

2008-10-29T15:26:00.004-05:00

Decorating doesn't get any cheaper than when you get all your supplies from your backyard! When we saw several of our trees in the back part of our yard producing these pretty little berry bundles we decided to harvest them by the basket full to create some festive decorations for the house. Below are some great ways to use any berries you may having blooming in your yard.

Fall Beauty

2008-10-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

Accidents Happen...

2008-10-29T15:05:00.002-05:00

Last week we had a tragedy of Brownie proportions in our house! Our new little baby guinea pig began to hobble around and look at us with sour growls instead of sweet purrs. We easily deduced that something was wrong with her leg and took her to the exotic animal vet. Dr. Rose, our fantastic vet, informed us after a very costly x-ray that she had a compound fracture with bone protruding on her tibia. He gave us several options including bringing her home and doing nothing!! and euthanasia. No option there. We chose the insanely expensive laser surgery, of course. Who wouldn't pay to get laser surgery done on their $15 guinea pig? :-)

Dr. Rose made us no promises, in fact he prepared us for the worst. But now, a week later, little Brownie is at home, happy and hobbling about with a cast on her leg. He was able to get a pin in the tiny little bone and she has been very good about not chewing on her bandages. We give her pain killers and antibiotics twice a day to keep her healing and comfy. When she nuzzles into our chest and purrs, it makes any money we spent worthwhile.

The Beast

2008-10-20T22:42:00.003-05:00

Here it is...it's what everyone on our street is talking about...the beast! My husband's grape arbor is up and functional now and looking more giant than ever. As you can see, it sits in our front yard. Quite close to the road. I have already had to scold neighbor kids for hanging on it and explain it's existence to anyone who passes it. Is it a kids play gym? No. Is it for housing a bench? No. What is it. Well - we plan to grow lots and lots of grapes on it. Yep.

Now you should know, I know nothing about growing grapes. I like the taste of grapes. I think they are lovely in photographs...but in my front yard? We shall see. We have two red seedless grape variety plants on either end. My nursery guy swears that after being tucked in with lots of cypress mulch they will do fine over the winter and will cover this arbor fully by next summer. I am skeptical still. Stay tuned for updates!

Favorite new farm blog!

2008-10-13T20:43:00.003-05:00

http://www.foodiefarmgirl.blogspot.com/

As requested...

2008-10-13T19:40:00.007-05:00

As requested, here are some photos from around the garden today. Even though we are having near freezing temperatures at night - the crops are all still producing and growing fantastically. Here is our tomato harvest today, at least 10 lbs. worth of fresh red tomatoes.
The plants as you can see in the next picture are not as lush and green as they once were, but they still produce great fruit.
Here is a pathetic new growth in one of our potato pots. In total we probably only harvested 5-10 lbs. of potatoes this year. A mere fraction of what we had hoped. Next year we are placing our pots in a much more practical location where maintenance will be easier.

In our large raised bed, you can see what is left of our carrots. We harvested two large buckets already and as you can see, we still have about 2/3 of the crop left to harvest. Carrots have done great this year. We clean, cut and freeze all of them for easy use later at dinner time. Even the green beans, as pictured here, are still growing. It is cold enough that the aphids have stopped chewing into them and now we are just fighting off the caterpillars. But we have still harvested many gallon sized Ziploc bags full that we freeze and hope to harvest even more soon. Here, my husband's pride and joy, the strawberries. He spent several hours last week very carefully weeding the 12x12 strawberry bed and gently burying the runners so that hopefully next spring we will have strawberries by the bucket full. We still need to hay over the entire bed for the winter, but we are letting them soak in these last days of warm sunshine while they can. And finally, the papa of our fruit trees. The Northstar Cherry Tree has just flourished in our yard this year. We purchased it quite small last summer, late in the year at an end of the season sale. It was around 5 1/2 ft. tall then. Now, it towers over everything in our yard, sitting at around 10 feet tall. You can see that we have taken steps to try to spread the branches out a bit, making harvesting easier next year. Though, I should say that David and I haven't the slightest clue what we are doing when it comes to these fruit trees. We just hope and pray for the best and trust our instincts.

So, this is the fall farm update. But, please check back tomorrow for the post on the ever exciting and much talked about (by our neighbors that is) grape arbor. Yes...that's right, we are growing grapes now! :-)

So worth the wait!

2008-10-07T21:01:00.005-05:00

The process is not a quick one - that is for sure. But once you are sinking your teeth into that juicy sweet finished product, it is all worth it.

Gooey Sticky Buns

Bread dough
- 4 c. organic flour
- 1/3 sugar
- 1 t. salt
- 2 pkg. active dry yeast
- 1 c. very warm milk
- 1/3 c. softened butter
- 1 egg
Directions: Mix 2 cups of the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in large bowl. Add warm milk, butter and the egg. Beat with electric mixer on low speed 1 minute, scraping bowl frequently. Beat on medium speed 1 minute, scraping the bowl frequently. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to make dough easy to handle. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead about 5 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl and turn greased side up. Cover and let rise in warm place about 1 hour 30 minutes or until doubled in size. Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.
Topping
- 1 c. brown sugar
- 1/2 c. softened butter
- 1/2 c. chopped pecans
- 1/4 c. dark corn syrup
Directions: Heat brown sugar and butter to boiling in a saucepan, stirring constantly; remove from heat. Stir in corn syrup. Pour into ungreased rectangular pan, 13x9x2 inches. Sprinkle with pecan pieces.
Filling
- 2 T. melted butter
- 1/2 c. chopped pecans
- 1/4 c. brown sugar
- 1 t. ground cinnamon
Directions: Once dough has doubled in size, punch down dough to release any air bubbles. Flatten with rolling pin into rectangle, 15x10 inches, on floured surface. Spread with melted butter. In small bowl, mix chopped pecans, brown sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle evenly over melted butter. Roll rectangle up tightly, beginning at 15-inch side. Pinch edge of dough into roll to seal. Stretch and shape until even. Cut roll into 1-inch slices using string or floss. Place in pan that has already been coated with caramel mixture. Cover and let rise in warm place another 30 minutes or until each roll has doubled in size. Cook for 30 minutes at 350°. Immediately turn upside down onto platter or serving plate. Let stand 1 minute so caramel will drizzle over rolls; lift pan. Drool and enjoy! :-)

Masters of the house...

2008-10-07T20:53:00.003-05:00

Here, Minnie marks her territory by squishing her fluffy body into one of our lettuce planters so that she can enjoy those last days of warmth in front of the sliding doors.
And here is the newest member of our family...Brownie. She is a 3 month old guinea pig that has definitely wriggled and wheeked her way into all our hearts.

Announcing...

2008-09-23T23:45:00.002-05:00

Showing off his big boy lungs here, this is baby Alex Angel, my youngest nephew, which I got to witness being born into this world last week. What a cutie pie!

Thinking Ahead

2008-09-23T10:15:00.004-05:00

All in a morning! Every once in awhile I wake up on a bright, sunny Tuesday morning and actually have the energy to be efficient and plan ahead for the week. This morning, not only did we get up early and homeschool before heading off to Ckaylei's Challenge classes, but I made waffles for the next few weeks. One of our favorite recipes, it spices up the bland taste of waffles with cinnamon, vanilla and fresh blueberries. I make 30 or so waffles and freeze them with sheets of parchment between them. Cheaper than Eggo's and a heck of a lot tastier not to mention healthier. As you can see, these waffles are definitely a favorite in our house!

Little Garden Cuties

2008-09-09T18:03:00.003-05:00

Even thought Fall is in the air, little signs of Summer are still lingering throughout the garden.

Last days in the sun...

2008-09-09T17:51:00.003-05:00

After receiving a terribly sad phone call from my next door neighbor this morning, informing me that a nasty little raccoon had ravaged her chicken coop last night and taken 4 of her 9 chickens with it, we spent the day in the garden with our girls - spoiling them a bit. :-) In our area we have large birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, raccoons, possums and even foxes - all of which would love a little chicken sandwich for dinner. We take as many precautions as we can to prevent them from being hurt but it seems like you can only do so much before nature just takes over. Either way...I think we will add an extra lock on their coop just to be safe.

Fall Goodies

2008-09-06T15:23:00.003-05:00

With the beautiful mild temperatures and general rainfall that has swept into the Midwest, all of our fall garden goodies are thriving more than ever. Here pictured are various varieties of tomatoes that were ready for picking today. We pulled a few of our smaller potatoes for dinner and harvested about 1/6th of our carrots, a butternut squash and a basketful of green beans for freezing. Also pictured here is one of our jumbo English walnuts that fell off the tree as we were walking by. We thought we would crack it open and see if they are ready for picking as well.

For the love of the harvest

2008-08-26T22:34:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I think that the real reason for spending hours, days and weeks doing back-breaking manual labor in the garden is just for this. This beautiful time of year. Fall seems to be sweeping into Missouri quickly this year. The sweltering hot summer days have shortened and given way to smooth, breezy fall evenings. I simply adore the feeling of walking barefoot through my soft dewy grass, feeling the cool wind blow through my dress and hearing the giggles of late afternoon playtime with the chickens. Harvesting the goodies from the plants we have worked so hard on all season makes you forget about everything else. Plump juicy tomatoes by the shirtfull, brightly colored jumbo carrots, crisp green been pods. A little part of me lives in this dream all winter long - just waiting to be reborn with the welcoming of warm weather.

*Note* The above photograph was taken by my dear daughter, Ckaylei. Today in the garden, she captures a little bit of my fantasy.

Food isn't the only thing that has an impact...

2008-08-21T11:27:00.002-05:00

In thinking about ways we can lesson our impact on the environment, I got to thinking, food isn't the only thing that travels hundreds and thousands of miles to get to us. Most of the clothes at major clothing stores are made and shipped in from Asia or Mexico. Now, being a complete novice at sewing, I had to be realistic about what I could actually do. So, my first attempt, a skirt for my daughter made from a natural fabric weaved right here in Kansas City, organic thread hand spun from local cotton plants and sewn in my very own living room. It only took one night to make and I was even able to recruit my husband's help in making it. While I am not sure if we can sew an entire wardrobe for the family from our living room, I am positive that I can take some extra time to supplement our attire with homemade clothes that leave less of a footprint on our Earth.

Good Garden = Good Food

2008-08-17T20:35:00.002-05:00

I absolutely love meals where I can make an entire dish with ingredients solely from my garden. This little gem is a staple in my house all throughout summer. No fancy name...just summer veggie dish. Simple and tasty enough that my 8 year old daughter asks for seconds every time I make it. It contains baby red potatoes and baby gold potatoes, baby spinach, shredded danver carrots, chopped brandywine tomatoes, chopped sweet vidalia onion, minced white elephant garlic and chives. Mmmmmmm!

Applesauce anyone?

2008-08-12T14:42:00.005-05:00

We are big apple eaters in my family. In every form. From devouring them icy cold and raw to apple sauce, apple pie, apple cobbler...ok, that was two dessert dishes, but you get the point. :-) So, while grocery shopping with my daughter a couple days ago we pick up our usual jar of natural applesauce only for my daughter to flip it over and say, "Mom look, isn't this the bad stuff?" Bad stuff? I think to myself. What can be in mushed apples that is bad? Well, apparently they add my lover, High Fructose Corn Syrup as a major ingredient. How disappointing. It feels sometimes like the food production industry's sole goal is to poison and/or fatten us up as a nation.

Of course, we did not buy the applesauce. What kind of example would I be setting for my daughter if I caved on such a basic belief. So today....we make applesauce! And this time...it actually IS all natural. Peeling all the darn apples was really the hardest part. But now we have several jars of homemade, home canned, ALL NATURAL Applesauce. Yum.
*Sidebar* I realize this is my fourth blog post today. Look, I am too scatter brained to save these for later days. I will forget about them. I have had a busy day obviously....so deal with it! :-) Thanks for reading.

Homemade Bread

2008-08-12T14:31:00.004-05:00

Talk about mouth watering. I have never wanted to chow down on a slice of bread more in my life! There are several great recipes out there for all types of bread. I encourage everyone to try their hand of making bread from scratch. It is always easier than I think it will be and is ALWAYS worth it. Bread out here in the Midwest is around $4 for a decent loaf. This loaf cost me:

1/4 of a $1 bag of unbleached local flour
1/5 of a $1.50 bag of potato flour
1/16 of a $1.99 box of dried nonfat milk
1/3 of a $1 rapid rise yeast three-pack

That makes the total cost for my bread: $1.00

The difference is bread from scratch doesn't have all those ingredients you cannot pronounce or don't want (think bleach in your flour), it tastes better and fresher and it is as local as it gets! And bread making, I believe, should be a widely accepted form of therapy for the soul.

Curly Eggplant?

2008-08-12T14:27:00.001-05:00

So...this is our first eggplant. Pretty unimpressive, eh? Yes, we think so too. I am not sure what happened with this guy. It grew quickly, then curled and stopped. We have yet to cut into it to see if there is even any edible veggie inside. Keep your fingers crossed. On the upside, there is another one growing that is already about 4 inches in diameter at the top - so it is looking much more promising.

Farm Pic of the Day: Chicken Chores

2008-08-12T13:59:00.002-05:00

Country Chic

2008-08-11T14:38:00.003-05:00

So, now that our roses and other pretty blooms are not flowering because of all the extreme heat we've had out here in the Midwest this summer - we are getting a little creative with our floral decor around the house. :-) This weed....yes I said weed, is maybe the most determined to live, pest of a plant. So last year, I purchased an iron trellis and decided to let it go wild on the side of our house. In the past I had literally dug 3 feet into the ground to remove every last root and poured root killer all over the area in hopes of trying to rid ourselves of this very fast growing vine.

But every year, it returns stronger than ever. Once we actually let it grow and do it's thing, we discovered that in the late summer, when everything else is done for the year, it is just starting to shine. It covers itself in these pretty little white blooms. So, in honor of beauty in all its forms, we have gorgeous little weeds in Ckaylei's little pinch pots all over our home. For an added bonus...they smell great. So, if anybody knows what my weed is..do share!

Stocking Up

2008-08-08T10:45:00.004-05:00

Canning homegrown food for the winter can be a time consuming endeavor but is so rewarding in the long run. Spaghetti Sauce filled with farm fresh ingredients, strawberries in syrup, chopped tomatoes and various types of jams, jellies and marmalade (including apricot jam, strawberry jam, crab apple jelly, orange marmalade and blackberry jam). Today we are hoping to can some homemade applesauce. I will report back later on how that goes.

Vintage looks good!

2008-08-07T16:19:00.003-05:00

This entire week we have been harvesting the first of our giant juicy heirloom tomatoes. Of course, at the top are pictured my pride and joys... the Brandywines. It is hard to tell in the picture, but they are a funny pinkish orange color with greenish yellow streaks running throughout. Their flavor is superb and well worth tending to their finicky growing needs. The other heirloom variety that we grew were the plump pink Ponderosa tomatoes (on the right side of the photo). We grew several varieties such as Roma and of course the classic jumbo grower, Beefsteak. All are doing quite well and with our first harvest we canned several pints of chopped tomato for use this winter. We hope at the end of the season we will have enough canned to fill our need entirely until next year and currently we are off to a good start. Here are a few of our finished product pints.

Good Summer Food

2008-07-28T14:25:00.003-05:00

In these hot summer months, my family is all about quick, simple, and delicious meals. This one was definitely that! To start with, a Zucchini Spaghetti recipe that is easy and fun to make with the kiddos.

Zucchini Spaghetti

1 lb. zucchini cut into spaghetti thin strips using a mandolin

Directions: Place cut vegetable into a strainer over a large bowl and let strips drain for 15 before covering with sauce.

Cream Sauce

1 cup cream
1/3 cup fresh chopped chives
1 t. salt
2 T. fresh lemon juice

Directions: Mix all ingredients together in a jar and shake shake shake until well blended. Pour over zucchini spaghetti. Enjoy!

The main dish of this meal is my own yummy little creation. I call it...

Tangy Summer Chicken

4 Thinly sliced boneless/skinless chicken breasts
4 T. capers
1 cup chopped fresh cherry tomatoes
3/4 cup cream
2 T. garlic infused extra virgin olive oil
1 T. cracked black pepper

Directions: Saute all in a stainless steel skillet until chicken is cook thru and gently browned on both sides.

Cool Bugs

2008-07-25T16:36:00.002-05:00

This morning, our neighbor gave us a call stating that we had to come over and see what her cat had drug onto the porch. The poor thing, huge and fluttering around in circles had half of one wing chewed off but had a strong will to live. As soon as Ckaylei walked up on the porch she literally jumped over to her and started to climb up her leg. See, at this point my story would have ended with me screaming and running off if it had crawled up my leg. It's furry, fat legs sticking to my skin. BLeh! But Ckaylei, the little bug lover she is was in love. The butterfly crawled up her leg, onto her skirt and then she gave it a lift onto her hand where it sat for quite awhile, enjoying the breeze. What a cool bug!

Little Tomato Thiefs

2008-07-16T22:51:00.005-05:00

Today, on one of Ckaylei and I's daily strolls around the garden, we discovered a thief. A squishy, fat thief! We found them and brought them to our local nature center for identification. Turns out they are Tobacco Hornworms. Each is about 5 inches in length with striking orange spikes on their rear ends. Simple creatures they are. Their day consists of eat...poop....eat...poop. And they don't want to eat just anything. Unfortunately they are quite the tomato connoisseurs. The only plants they infiltrated were my heirlooms...my Brandywines in particular. So currently they are living on a steady diet of unripened juicy Brandwine heirloom tomatoes. The nature center said it would be a great project to keep them and watch them blossom into butterflies. So, being cheap and crafty, we have them set up in a glass mixing bowl covered in some old screening I had that we laced with nylon rope.

An Egg - An Egg!!

2008-07-16T22:47:00.002-05:00

There it is....on the right that is. Our first tiny, glorious little chicken egg. The egg on the left is one of the eggs from our neighbors mature flock. Turkey, the oldest of the group has made us so proud today. What a perfect little egg for her first. We simply cannot wait to start collecting every day.

Purple Bananas?

2008-07-14T12:45:00.001-05:00

My first year growing eggplant is going great....I think. It is supposed to look like a purple banana, right? :-)