Because I want to remember...

It's seems like I haven't been in the mood to post lately. I think there are a few factors to this...work has been busier than normal...good busy, but busy nonetheless, home life is always a dance, balancing that work, family, and farm. I suggested to a friend/fellow blogger this morning that sometimes writing a blog post will help you/force you to remember the good things in life...and maybe it will help you move past some of the bad. I thought I would take a moment or two to go through some of the things that have been going on around Fresh Egg's Farm.

I feel like the farm offers us some consistency in our lives. No matter what else we have going on, the animals will need fed/watered/hayed, the garden grows and the lawn needs mowed etc. etc. etc. I'm thankful for that, although at times it's stressful to be in the middle of another project (or blog post) and realize that the goats are bahing for their food and to be let out. I force myself to make time for pasture, from time to time - because I realized that for a bit, I was more or less going through the motions of feeding and letting them out to pasture and not stopping to enjoy them. Now, I make sure that, when I can make time for it, I spend at least a few minutes in the pasture, talking with my animals, scratching their heads, giving them hugs and snuggles and laughing at their antics. They make me happy.

Our birds are FINALLY acting like real chickens! Each day, it's like an Easter egg hunt at our farm. While we have two nesting boxes, which they seem to want to sit in together and fight over, someone (ahem, Andy, our Blue Andalusian...I'm looking at you here), likes to find her way into the turkey's side of the coop and lay her eggs over there. I don't know if the egg laying sneaks up on her and she just doesn't think to get to the nest in time or what...crazy bird. I did have the opportunity to watch her lay an egg though. This time, she was in the nest, I thought something might have been happening and she kept getting comfortable and then wiggling around and repositioning and the next thing I know - she pushes out an egg! I've never witnessed that before. What an honor and an amazing thing to watch. We are getting lots of eggs now - which is AWESOME...but you know what...life has been so busy, we haven't even had the opportunity to TRY them. Can you believe it? My plan is to make some sort of lovely egg dish for dinner tomorrow, so we can all try them together. It's very exciting for us. The eggs are light brown, dark brown and white...hopefully soon we'll get some of the Easter eggers (they lay blue/green eggs) and can round out the look of our egg carton.

Our garden is better this year than it has been in the past - although we still got it in too late and I know some serious changes we need to make...I'm excited about future gardens. We got lots of tomatoes from the garden, although we could have gotten more, if we had staked up the plants like we should have...next year. We finally got some pumpkins - which will make sweet decorations and maybe a pie or two (yay fall), although we've learned about trellising and will likely trellis the pumpkins and squash...next year. We've also seen super cute trellis options for beans and such (I think Mark is going to be busy, building trellis options for our garden...I'll help, but he is super builder). Garlic and potatoes were great too, although we know that we could get a better crop with a few adjustments. Next year, our gardens will be different and better.

In extremely exciting news...we are getting ready to harvest honey for the very first time. We have decided to open this experience up to anyone that wants to come out. I hope we'll have a few takers that want to learn about the experience with us. The plan is to take off all the honey frames either the day prior or earlier in the day of extraction, so that the likeliness of someone (other than us) getting stung is limited. Yesterday we got our bottles - we decided to get a case of the 2# glass jars and a box of 50 of the 2 ounce little bears. The bears are more of a sample size and the 2# will be for us and if we have extra to sell. I have no idea how much we will even be able to pull off of the hive...I'm hoping for a billion pounds, but we'll likely get around 20 :-) I'll share another blog post after the extraction party.

So I've had to force myself to look at all of this good, because we also had something extremely terrible happen here. Our LSG (livestock guard dog), Ollie, passed away, extremely tragically and unexpectedly. He had been digging his way out of the pasture lately and we were afraid that he'd get into the road, so we made the decision to put him on a long lead, that would allow him to go between the barn and the pasture. Unfortunately, he tried to jump a portion of the fence that we'd been using as a makeshift barn door and got hung up and ended up hanging himself. The boys and I were coming home from picking up the boys from school and as we drove down the driveway, we saw his body hanging from the fence...we thought he was just struggling...but he was already gone. Our hearts are broken. His body is being cremated and his ashes will be spread under the bush where he liked to lay with his flock.

To end this post on a happier note, I want to remember this past weekend. Mark gave me a weekend getaway, for my birthday. He purchased a weekend pass, for each of us, to attend the Mother Earth News Fair, in Seven Springs, PA.  First, Mark and I have only been away, on our own - without kids, without it being for work etc., since we've been married - well, this is the third time. In 17 years. We even spent a portion of our honeymoon visiting with our older daughters (their bio-mom still had custody, at the time). So, when I say "We needed this time away" - you know I'm speaking the truth. Second, the weather was a perfect way to enter into Fall. The air was crispy and cool, with hints of the warm sun shining through. A thunderstorm and heavy rain made for perfect snuggle weather on Saturday. We watched the leaves turn colors over the few days that we were there from just a touch of orange here and there to bright oranges and reds streaking through the entire treeline. It's such a beautiful area. We were happy with the hotel and the food we ate. It was such a nice time...But finally, it was awesome because of the content of the Fair. It is a three-day event, at a ski-resort, in PA - there are vendors, both inside and out, showcasing their sustainable living goods. Throughout the day, they offer many breakout sessions with a WIDE variety of topics - from authors highlighting the content of their books to seed saving to live poultry slaughter/processing and everything in between. We walked away from the event with a renewed sense of excitement about our farm and our journey. We've been second guessing our poultry slaughtering methods - but when Daniel Salatin, yes, SALATIN, as in Joel Salatin's son, as in Polyface Farms fame - processes chickens, using the exact same method that we do, I think we are good. And when the person teaching how to make goat milk chevre cheese, is also using the exact method we do, again, we are good. In addition, it got us thinking about the future of the farm. We, as stated above, need to better set up our garden - perfect our seed starting and saving processes, perfect our planting/transplanting methods, add/take advantage of all our spaces by putting in cold frames and raised beds etc. While we are perfecting our gardening methodologies, we need to also perfect our "putting up" methods. When we were at Mother Earth News Fair, we had the privilege to listen to Niki Jabbour - "The Year Round Vegetable Gardener" author and Sherri Brooks Vinton - "Put 'Em Up" author and look forward to ordering their books. While we were there, we bought some delicious kettle corn and maple syrup. We bought Gage some tea - he's been getting into the idea drinking more natural herbal teas. For Cora, we got her a bunch of seed packets to get her started on her bee garden - she wanted a garden of her very own and I think that giving her the bee garden will help her understand pollination, beauty, bees, seasons etc. Drake was honored with a gift from a vendor. The gentlemen were so impressed with Drake's confidence (his willingness to crochet on the bus, without fear of being made fun of etc.) that they gifted him a skein of beautiful light olive green yard (50/50 mohair and wool)...he has already made a hat with the yarn and it's really cute...so "him". Finally, it was good for me to see some excitement from Mark, about our farm. He's so even tempered that I'm not always sure what he thinks of all this craziness, but he seemed just as pumped about most things as I felt. Which makes me even more excited.
...and these are just a few of the things that I want to remember.

Last Day of June Happenings

The summer just started and we are already in the thick of reaping some of the fruits of our labor. We've been trying to get our projects worked on to make our animals more comfortable, to feed our family and make this place more complete (ha! What does that mean...I don't think it will EVER be completely complete). We knew when we bought this house that there were many projects that we would want to do to make it ours. We love the bones of this place, the wrap around porch, the pocket doors, the amount of land (although we'd always love more) - the previous owners did a nice job of adding flower gardens etc. but that wasn't really our main focus. Although we want this to be a beautiful home, we NEED it to be functional first. I feel like there are so many unfinished pieces, but I need to realize that we are just one family, working full time jobs, on limited incomes etc. With time, this place will continue to grow and morph into what we want.
Mark is working at P&R Communications for the summer. This is the place we worked when we first met each other and fell in love. Although it is nice to have the extra money for a bit, his time spent away from the house (it's an hour commute each way and he doesn't get home until around 6 PM each night) is challenging and we are still trying to find time to get his school/teaching/decorating stuff sorted through and into his classroom (have I mentioned how FREAKING excited we are that he is working as a Second Grade Teacher, starting this fall?!?!?!?! - He is going to do an amazing job, he's a good man and will be a great role model for those kids and it will bring consistent money into our home and he will be working SO close to home and we'll be able to be a stronger part of the community that we live in....all very good things). I see next summer being very different for us - we'll have bills under control and money in savings (knock on wood), we'll have some projects completed and working on new ones (to get the house and property ready for Kait/David's wedding), Mark won't be working (well, FT anyway - he'll have sorting/planning/organizing that he'll need to do for school and he'll be here to help with everything around the house, instead of getting home so late at night).
Even though we have so much going on - we've been trying to make time for relaxing and community. This weekend, we spent some much needed family time, fishing at Hueston Woods, picking black caps, having dinner at the church down the street, digging up our potatoes and more. Today we will be FINALLY planting the remainder of our garden - I'm SO not on the ball with all that. The weather hasn't been very cooperative either...today seems like a nice day, with rain expected later. So with that, I'll share some photos and videos of our adventures and then I will be off to start our day.

Mark and me at Hueston Woods State Park. I think that we've realized that we are missing a water element to our lives. We spent yesterday morning, sitting on the docks fishing for a couple hours. We didn't catch a thing, but it was relaxing and not too hot. It's not the beaches of Florida, but it'll do.

The kids on the dock - I love the picture, but I love the reflection of their heads and faces in the water so much more.

Potato harvest - this is how many potatoes we got out of the garden, before it started to rain. The next day, we pulled the rest out and were able to AT LEAST double this amount. Can't wait to make salt potatoes....delicious!

This is our first year for growing artichokes. This one is the biggest and it is so beautiful - can't wait to taste home grown artichokes.

Here's our oh so handsome, ever growing, young man, Drake - showing off just a bit of our black cap (wild black raspberry) harvest - so far, we've gotten about 4-5 quarts of berries off the bushes and there are SO many more to ripen and pick. I'm thinking that a batch of my Nana's berry dumplins is in our very near future.

This is SO exciting! One of our apple trees has four apples on it. We've been watching these trees...hoping and praying for some beautiful, tasty, homegrown apples (it takes several years for the trees to get established and start to fruit). This is a big step for our family and our food independence. We eat SO much fruit and knowing that we have four apple trees (hoping to add a Granny Smith soon...next planting season?), four peach trees, two pear trees, two apricot trees, two plum trees, two paw paw trees, a cherry tree (hoping to add a tart tree next planting season), several blueberry plants, a hedge filled with black caps, a few mulberry trees, purple and white grapes and both pecan and walnut trees - right here on our property. Just writing this makes me so excited about our property. Sometimes it is challenging to see the differences we've made from day-to-day...we are so knee deep in the thick of things, it's hard to step back and see how awesome it really is.

Some of our black caps over vanilla yogurt...this is SO good.

It's hard to see on this photo, but perched up in the tree is a turkey vulture. It was just hanging out, by itself. We really like vultures, they are nature's clean up crew, strange and cool looking and pretty fascinating.

My dad asked me the other day, when we are working with the bees, just how many bees are out and about. It's so hard to get a good idea - but we are estimating that the "good hive" has around 50,000 bees, maybe more - but as you can see, they aren't all in our business - they kinda just do their thing and only give us issues, when we are overstepping our boundaries. They start to let us know - they buzz louder, they send out guards to ping at our jackets, they start to fly around more...we are starting to know when to smoke, when to feed, when to just get out of the hive and let them go back to their business.

When we were in the hives, I took a few videos to give everyone an idea of what we see when we inspect the hive (what we are looking for vs.what we are seeing). Here are links to the four videos...let me know if you have any questions.

Bee Video Number 1


Bee Video Number 2



Bee Video Number 3


Bee Video Number 4

Randomness

So this post is going to be a bit random...because, frankly, my life is pretty random right now. I first want to talk about friends and family. I used to believe that simply because someone was "family", meaning a blood relative, that I was required to have that person in my life, thus giving them permission to affect my life. Several years ago, in 2006, my husband, youngest children and I decided to pack up and move from Ohio to Florida. During that time, we learned to rely on each other a bit stronger and realized that, from that point forward, we'd only allow people to affect our lives if their affects were more positive than negative. We understand that life isn't going to always be wine and roses - people argue, feelings get hurt, people misspeak etc. but then life balances out. However, if your scale is constantly tipped to the anxiety, sadness, frustration, getting spanked in the self esteem side of the scale...I've figured out that it is ok to let that person out of your life. I say it that way...letting the person out...because obviously if they are constantly in a state of WANTING to hurt you, make you feel bad, make you feel less than or not good enough...then they can't be happy in your relationship either. I'm talking about any relationship...this isn't just about a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend...this is about siblings, parents, aunts/uncles whomever is always making your life so challenging. So for those of you reading this, wondering if I'm talking about Mark...I am not. Mark and I do have our challenges - like all other couples; however, I hope that we will continue to grow old together and will be playing SkipBo and scrabble on the front porch, while our grandkids chase baby goats around the pasture :-)
That all being said - since I realized that it's ok to let those negative people out of my life, I also learned that just because someone isn't a blood relative, doesn't mean that they aren't family. There are a few women in my life that we have made the choice to be in eachother's lives for a long time. Some I've been friends with since high school or shortly thereafter and others I may lose touch with for a time and then we come back together and it was like we just saw each other yesterday. I love my friends. There are a couple people in this world that I can say just about anything to and they place no judgement on me. The love me for who I am, they love my children, they support my decisions (even when they don't understand them or wouldn't choose them for their selves)...I am so thankful for this group of women, friends who have become my family. The other day, was a little rough for me...I was having a bad self-esteem day. (for those of you that know me, may or not, know that I have some pretty bad self esteem issues - there are days that I just don't really like myself, don't worry, it'll be ok, it happens). But one of these wonderful women sent me an amazing gift...flowers...delivered to my home. Remember, we live out in the boondocks...this took a lot of planning to locate a florist near me that would actually deliver out this far and do such an amazing job. The flowers are still gorgeous and still put a smile on my face when I look at them...like just now, I looked over while typing and smiled. I'm thankful that I there are these awesome women out there that love me as much as I love them.

My lovely flowers

The weather FINALLY broke around here...just like my previous post mentioned - we finally started to get some warmer, sunnier and generally more beautiful weather than we've experienced through this very long, nightmarish winter. Our children have fixed up their bikes and watching them regularly cycle up and down our very long driveway (another thing I love about this house is that driveway - the kids can bike, scooter, do chalk art all around and never have to get close to the road. I love it. Below is Gage basking in the sun. He pulled the legs of his PJ pants all the way up and made shorty shorts out of them...God, I love my kids. They are all so funny.

As I mentioned last post, we had our Backyard Chicken class this past weekend at Meyer Hatchery (the place that is shipping our chicks) - we decided to make the weekend of it. The kids and I picked up Mark at work (he worked Spring Break at a place he worked for several years ago - a two-way radio sales and service shop...to make a little extra money), and then we drove a couple more hours to NE Ohio. We stopped to eat at one of Mark's favorite restaurants (a place that we don't have where we live, but it was right down the street from our apt. in Florida), Cheddars - YUM! By the time we go to the hotel, everyone was too tired to swim - we opted to get a good night of sleep and then swim after breakfast. Everyone grabbed a quick shower and off to chicken keeping class we went. I HIGHLY suggest this class. The teacher, Carrie (I don't know if she's a Kerry or Kari...we'll just call her Carrie), was relaxing and funny and extremely informative. She took us for a short tour of the hatchery and everything (BTW - VERY clean building, VERY wonderful and helpful staff, excellent customer service). After the class/tour - we decided to drive just a little bit farther to let the kids experience Amish country. We've been there in the past, but always find it so fascinating. We visited Lehmans and had lunch/dinner at Mrs. Yoders (DELICIOUS). We talked with a young Amish couple and then taught us a bit about Amish travel (horse drawn carriage) - it takes them about an hour and a half to visit her parents, that live just 15 miles away. Definitely a slower pace to life. Here are just a few pictures from our weekend...

Gage and Drake - hotel comfy!

A horse drawn carriage - you can see the horses feet from under the carriage. One thing I have learned is that you should never take a picture of an Amish person's face, it is against their beliefs. There is something so beautiful about the seeing the carriages - sometimes with a beautiful face peeking out at us. Gosh, I just love it.

This gentleman was pushing four horses - I believe he had some sort of farm equipment - the horses were ginormous.

Amish parking lot - near the restaurant that we ate at, they had a special area that the horses could be hitched to, while they ate dinner.

While we we driving through, we came upon a house that was a deer farm - how neat to see about 15 deer wandering through someone's front yard.

We stopped to turn around in a parking lot and this "little" guy peeked over the fence at us. Looking not amused lol.

Oh, did I fail to mention the turkeys. Hmmm...Well - while we were at the hatchery, they had turkeys for sale. Turkeys were not on the list for this year...they were a possibility for next year or the following - but since we were there and they had no minimum purchase, since we weren't shipping them, we decided to pick up four of them. Two blue slate and two red bourbon - they are cute and sweet and will hopefully make a delicious meal. We've decided that if, between the four of them, there is a mating pair, that is nice and we like, that we will keep them and slaughter the other two - then we'll breed the two for more turkeys. I guess holiday dinner is on us?

The Spring flowers are beginning to bloom.

 I thought I'd share a couple pictures of the pasture crew...

Jester and Steve (mostly) and Ethel is climbing up the balance beam.

Jester and Steve chowing down on hay.

Sweet little Fauna, hiding from all the craziness (don't let her fool you, she's a crazy maniac too...she was just needing a little break).

Sweet Pea - hard to believe that this little goofball had such a rough start.

Ahem, Steve REALLY enjoys his hay. LOL

Turkeys!

Turkey, turkey, turkey.

They are so cute now - don't get attached! They are dinner!

Happy Spring Everyone!!

Hives and Coffee

We had quite the eventful weekend. We attending our beekeeping school - something that we've both been looking so forward to, for a few reasons. We learned that we know more than we think we know, we learned more of what we didn't know and we feel more comfortable than we ever have about adding bees to the farm...and we picked up our hives! That's right - we picked up two full kits (with tops, inner covers, bases etc.), along with two additional brooder boxes and four honey supers - we should be all set in getting these bees settled in and producing honey. We've heard mixed opinions on a honey harvest - some people have said we can expect a small honey harvest this fall and others say we should leave the honey with the bees...I say, we let the bees guide us. No sense in stripping them of their food, just to spend the winter wondering if they have enough food - but if they go crazy gangbusters and have enough yummy goodness to share with us...then we will gladly take a bit of honey off the top. This past weekend, we were able to build the two main brooder boxes with all the necessary pieces to get our hives up and running - we'll build the additional pieces as we have time.

Drake, Master Carpenter

Hammering in the frame foundation.

Ratta tap tap...

More frame building.

Look at that beautiful completed frame - can't wait until these are covered with bee brood.

Fancy beewear!

Cora modeling my bee jacket lol.

Oh, wow - the living room was quite the mess.

Stuff was all over the place.

Cora is helping hammer a brooder box together.

Building our hives, lid and brooder boxes.

Mark and Drake putting together the boxes.

Proud father and son moment.

Look at that awesome completed hive! We have two just like this and will be adding additional brooder boxes and honey supers.

We are officially ready for our honey bees. We'll be getting two nucs in the middle of April.

In addition to becoming bee hive owners this past weekend, we also were surprised by (yet another) new baby!!! This one is a buck Oberhasli/Angora cross. His name is Coffee and he is Itty Bitty's baby. He is absolutely adorable. He and his Mama have figure out the whole nursing thing, all by theirselves. He is just as sweet as can be.

Mama Itty and Baby Coffee...I love his smirk in this photo.

Time to eat!

Coffee

Coffee!!!

Coffee!!!!!

Coffee!!!!!!!

Coffeeeeeeee!!!!!

Itty and apparently something I'm going to need more of around here...COFFEE!!! LOL

I'm going to knock on wood while I write this, but we've had four mamas give birth to six babies and everyone has done amazing. I'm so proud of all of my girls and their beautiful babies. Soon we'll be milking Mabel and Flora (once we wean the babies) and we'll be able to have milk and cheese (and soap?!) from our backyard. We'll also be shearing the fiber animals in about a month or so - before the hot weather rolls in.
Milk, soap, cheese, honey, fiber...soon chickens will be here for meat and eggs...this place...it grows on ya'