Just in time for Christmas

Oh boy! I'm going to be in trouble if I don't write a post soon, so I figured I would sit myself down at this WAY TOO EARLY hour of 6 AM and write.

I’m just so thankful for our Thanksgiving success. I find this day a bit stressful, just because there are so many pieces of the puzzle that have to come together, perfectly, to be a success. I ended the day feeling extremely proud. Proud of where we have been in life and how that has morphed us into who we are now. Proud of the food that we served, which is getting more and more local each year. Not just local, but homegrown. Imagine a day where nearly all the meal is grown here. Yum.

We started the morning with two turkeys to cook, along with all of the other dishes that were our responsibility (we share the responsibility and ask that everyone attending bring a dish). We started one early and were amazed at how quickly and beautifully the birds cooked. We were able to get them both cooked and rested before everyone arrived. We made sweet potatoes/candied yams, using real sweet potatoes, our own honey and local maple syrup. We whipped up some deviled eggs, using eggs from our beautiful birds, even though their laying has significantly dropped off, for the winter. We saved up a dozen and shared them with our family and friends. The coleslaw was not grown here, but hopefully next year(?) – we did, however, shred the cabbage and carrots and made the sauce. The fruit salad was all canned (boo), but it was pineapple, cherries and mandarin oranges, so unless we change up the salad, I don’t think there will be any way around this one. Oh, and the stuffed dates – delicious! A childhood memory that I just love. We take dried dates and stuff them with various cream cheeses. One plain, one with nuts, and the other with maraschino cherries. SO SO good! Next came the desserts apple, pumpkin, key lime and pecan pies, cherry crisp and my cousin, Rhett, brought banana pudding (using my Nana’s recipe). I look forward to the year that we will be using our own apples for the apple pie, but this year we had to settle on growing just the pumpkin and pecans. Something that I changed up this year, instead of using Crisco for the pie crust, we used local, organic lard, from a local Mennonite farmer. WHAT A DIFFERENCE that made. Seriously! I’ve never had my pie crust roll out so beautifully. It glided across the surface. I know I sound like a crust geek, but seriously! It was awesome! I will never go back to Crisco. Plus…who doesn’t like the hint of bacon smell when you are baking pies?! The pecan pie, was probably the best pecan pie I’ve ever eaten. Those pies were delicious and I am so proud. But I couldn’t have done any of this, without my team of helpers. Mark, Cora, Drake and even Gage were so helpful that day. They helped me keep my sanity, rolled up their sleeves to wash, cut, clean out, whatever I asked. Thankful. Yet another thing to be thankful for – after a heart attack and a pacemaker installation, my dad joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. He’s healthy and looking good. It was a wonderful day of laughing and enjoying the company. It was such a successful day.

 

Beautiful, homegrown pie pumpkins.

We went ahead and cooked all the pumpkins and made puree out of all of them. We are ready to make several more pies.

That's a lot of pumpkin!

My girl, Cora. She was so helpful that day! She made the decorations on the wall, behind her shoulder and she kept me on task with making the food...and she's cute!

Mark's favorite job of peeling, coring and slicing the apples for the apple pie. After the kids had their fill, the remaining peels went out to the birds. They thought it was a Thanksgiving miracle!

Yams in the crockpot, in the back, and date stuffing in the bowls in the front!

Look at that bird! GORGEOUS!

A little salt, pepper, butter on the outside and onion and celery on the inside...that's all these birds really needed, so tender and juicy on their own. Totally worth raising them!

Seriously look at that crust! Mmm mmm MMM!

Pumpkin and pecan pies - so so good!

Family sitting around the table...Have I mentioned how much I love my dining room? I love that we can have this many people for a sit down meal and be comfortable.

The dessert table!

I'm so happy about that day. It was a good feeling to look around the table and see the food, family and friends. It was good.I look forward to hosting next year as well.
We do Christmas breakfast and dinner at our house too - but since my brother also hosts a Christmas event, we have fewer people attending. We've found it's just too hard for us to do too much running around on Christmas...and we have a very awesome Christmas Eve tradition that I look so forward to each year. More on that in a bit.
With the holidays come so many other exciting things - kids concerts, Mark's room decor, Christmas lights and more. Here is just a glimpse at some of the reasons that I haven't posted in so long...

We redecorated Mark's bulletin board at school. We went with the winter wonderland theme, to reflect the craziness that is outside right now. Isn't the "fireplace" cute?

Have I mentioned that I'm hot for teacher??? Look at that handsome man!

Oh! On a side note, with all of the cold weather that we've been having (single digits!), our house is SO cold. We've been trying to come up with creative ways to stay warm. We actually found this beautiful wood door, in the attic of the garage. It was made for this spot, a doorway between our living and dining rooms. What makes this nice is that it cuts down on the drafts. We close all the doors in the living room (to the parlor, to our room and both doors leading to the dining room) and it traps some of our body heat in here. It's not perfect, but certainly better than last year!

While Mark's was in the attic, he found these old shutters - how neat are these!?

This is how I go to bed most nights! Not very glamorous, but certainly warmer than without the toasty warm hat :-) What you can't see is the electric blanket, under the comforter. WARM!

Here's me and Cora at Drake's holiday concert! See, I told you she is cute.

Drake had a holiday concert - Look how grown up he is, handsome. We are so proud that he has stuck with flute for this long.

Our tree is decorated for Christmas! Here's me and Mark :-)

Last year, we went with a real tree and between that and strep throat, I was miserable with allergies. So this year, we decided to go back to our "fake" tree. It's really beautiful though. I love going through the ornaments each year and remembering why we have them, who they were for, who we received them from etc.

Told you it's a winter wonderland around here. This is the field behind the house, Each branch and blade is covered with ice. COLD!

Cold, but beautiful! I love seasons, I really do...but the single digits have to go!

Each year, we do this. It's a drive through Christmas light display. It is so nice. We turn on Christmas music and drive through, looking at the lights and scenes. If you weren't in the spirit of Christmas before driving through, you would be after!

It looks like some exciting things are on the horizon for us. I'll post more about this in the future, once I have more details. But let me just say that our future looks bright.

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.

Food.

UPDATE:: HOLY MOLY!!! How could I forget the honey! Oh my goodness...we have the MOST delicious honey here on the farm!

I thought I would do a food roll-call today...we've been working hard to establish long-term food growing on the property and we are so close to having this complete.
We have:
2 - Pear Trees
2 - Apricot Trees
4 - Peach Trees
3 - McIntosh Apple Trees
3 - Granny Smith Trees (one here, two on the way in November)
1 - Empire Apple Tree
2 - Plum Trees (one here, one on the way in November)
2 - PawPaw Trees
1 - Montmorency Cherry Tree (tart - on the way in November)
1 - Sweet Cherry Tree
5 - Blueberry Bushes (I believe)
A Strawberry Patch
A HUGE Hedge of Black Caps (wild black raspberries)
A few Mulberry Trees
A patch of Rhubarb
A Black Walnut Tree
A Pecan Tree
A Lemon Tree
Purple and White Grapes

Some "short-term" food
We've planted herbs, garlic, artichokes (may be long term, depending on how they make it through the winter) and potatoes.
We've got tomatoes, beans and zucchini growing in the garden (and other things are still popping up).

We've raised 10 chickens for food (we gave two birds away two some family/friends that helped with the processing)...we'll soon be placing an order for more birds.
We have 4 turkeys growing and filling out - we'll likely keep two for breeding and slaughter two for eating.
Whew!
This is just huge for us - We'll still need to invest in replacement trees, should we have some fall out...but for now, everything on our wish list is checked off.

Celebrating Life

This weekend we celebrate a few things, but the most important celebration is Mark's 49th Birthday. WOOT! For 49 years, my handsome hubby has made this world a better place and we celebrated him by never letting him get his own cup of coffee, extra snuggles, great presents from the kids (Gage gave him a Science Game, Cora made him an awesome frog out of her very cool and colorful duct tape, Drake hand knit a case for Mark's pocket knife, Kait/David gave him a Spider Man Comic from 1979 and a gift card to Pizza Hut - his favorite eatery :-)), and yummy food. In our house, the birthday boy/girl gets to choose if they want to go out to a favorite place or if there is a special homemade dinner that they would like. Mark chose to have meatloaf (I make a mean meatloaf), macaroni and cheese, green beans, strawberries, rolls and for dessert - homemade Carrot Cake (the recipe follows). It was a long day, but a day of comfort foods and sharing so much love for Mark. I hope he realizes how awesome we think he is.

Mark’s Carrot Cake
Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans

Icing:
1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.
SO DELICIOUS!!!

Ta Daaaaaa!

Celebrating Spring...I've definitely got a case of Spring fever - being cooped up in the house is never good for me. It's cold and snowy outside. The water is often frozen in barn and we (by "we", I typically mean Mark) need to carry out heavy pails of water when we go out. Our fingers are painfully cold, by the time we come back in. I don't get to visit with our animals as long as I would normally like...I miss them.

I miss green things too - everything is sleeping outside - although the silhouettes of the naked trees look beautiful against the sky on sunny days, it's hard for me to go several days without seeing the sun...gray skies...UGH.

I'm trying to counteract the winter blues/cabin fever with planning and dreaming about spring. We have a lot of projects planned for the spring - most I've already mentioned here (the bees, the chickens...) but I haven't talked garden planning. We went through and evaluated our gardening from last year. With all the stress that happened last Spring, we really got a late start on planting. Most of our seed starts outgrew their containers (and unfortunately died), before we could get them planted in the ground. We had our neighbor till the garden very late in the year and really didn't get a good crop of anything. Sure, we enjoying homegrown potatoes, peas, onion, cucumbers, beans and zucchini - but not nearly on the scale that I was hoping for. Also, I realized that we really left our zucchini on the plant longer than we should, making the skin tougher. We also used a green bean seed that I wasn't very happy with - very stringy. Now, we have a lot of leftover seeds - some to get into the ground for this year and others we will hopefully be able to trade for other seeds or provide to someone who needs them more than we do (maybe we will plant some of the green bean seeds for donation??).
Seed starts - soon we'll need to move from the planning what to plant to the actually seed starting. Last year, we put our seeds on a table in front of our dining room window - which unfortunately also acted as a cat bed (Grrr) - they would actually lay on the plants to look out the window (brats). So this year, we are going to set up an area in the basement with a couple of grow lamps overhead - this should hopefully keep the animals away and provide sufficient lighting. In another exciting/different move, we've always purchased potting soil in the past - but this year, we are going to be able to take advantage of our "homegrown" potting soil. This week, we'll be digging out some of the bottom of the pile compost mix that has been baking in the back yard since we moved here. There should be some pretty good compost under there - we are also adding bunny and alpaca poo (which we have PLENTY of around here) to the mix. The GREAT thing about bunny and alpaca poo is that they do not need to be composted (aged) to put on plants, as long as they haven't been mixed with too much urine. I don't know if any of you are aware of this - but bunnies and alpacas will set up a restroom area - the poo berries are typically piled up in one area, easy to find, easy to shovel off a bit and the pee is fairly separated. We also have Cora's worm garden this year and perhaps we'll be able to make some compost tea to put over our seedlings as they grow and as we transplant them outside. SO we should have FREE soil/fertilizer for our plants!! Awesome - this helps us in two ways
1) We don't need to pay for any of this awesomeness
2) We don't need to figure out how to dispose of any of our compostable waste
The perfect solution.

Things I am looking forward to this Spring/Summer:
1) Peep Peep Peeps of baby chicks
2) Shearing our animals
3) Cleaning and spinning the fiber and creating a masterpiece from them
4) Buzzy bees and warm honey
5) Eating homegrown food, right off the plant
6) Goat milk - making cheese, soap, lotion
7) Oh! Goat babies boinging around the barn and back yard area :-)
8) Our first egg (...and every other awesome egg)
9) Eating backyard raised chickens
10) Making our yard cute/pretty again - plants, gardens, chicken coop
11) Seeing which of our fruit trees produce fruit this year
12) Seeing our finished, big, red, barn
13) Sitting on the porch with a glass of sun tea.
I'm sure this list will grow, but for now, that's a pretty good start.

Celebrating Football???...Finally - today is the Super Bowl...49ers vs. the Ravens. In honor of Mark's 49th birthday, I'm rooting for the 49ers. Honestly, I do not care about football - we only watch one game a year, this one and it is more for the commercials, the snacky food, the razzing each other about who is going to win etc.
Soooo Go NINERS!!!!

Holidays, family, barnyard and sickness

Three weeks since my last post!? Oh what a terrible blogger I have been. I'll share what has been keeping me away for so long. First, just a few days after my last post, my cousin, her husband and their three children arrived at our house for a week long visit. We had ten people in our house - and no one killed anyone else LOL. I'm so thankful that our home is large enough to comfortably house so many people and everyone even had a bed! Unfortunately, we all passed around quite a bit of germs while they were here and I've been suffering from it ever since. Ugh - I wound up with strep throat and am on my third round of antibiotics! The strep seems to have cleared from my throat, but I have a terrible ear infection and can't hear very well out of my left ear (still). Enough of the bad news. On with all the good happenings around here.
Thanksgiving was amazing. We hosted 23 people for dinner at our house. 23! ...and we were able to seat everyone together in our dining room. We (mostly me) kept fretting about being able to comfortably seat everyone together - I didn't want certain people in the living room and parlor and others in the dining room...I didn't want to have a designated "kids" table...I wanted everyone to be able to sit together and mostly, I wanted to be able to look around the room at so many faces of the ones I love. We had my mom, dad and Nana, my cousin, her husband and their three kids, my aunt, uncle and other cousin, Mark, our five kids, our daughter's boyfriend and his parents, sister and her boyfriend and me and SO SO SO much food...and SO SO SO much dessert!

I'm amazed that we fit 23 people in our dining room for a sit down dinner. I love this house!

My cousin, Tonia, serving up her Thanksgiving Dinner. Look at that spread ;-)

Mark took a picture of me - not a fan of pictures of me...but loved this day.

Unfortunately, we lost our poor sweet Runt kitty this past week. He was born this Spring, in Captain's first litter. He was one of the sweetest cats I've ever known. He would always come running from wherever he was, as soon as he would hear our voices. He would sit on my lap, on the porch out front - especially when I was having a not so good Spring and Summer and his purrs would make me feel better. I miss him so much. He died trying to pull road kill off the road for Captain's new kittens. A car killed him swiftly. We buried him under our black raspberry bushes, a favorite hang out of his. His brother, Lockhart, stood by our side the entire time, while we dug the hole, said good-bye, laid his wrapped body in the hole and filled it back in. Our children dig a good job saying good-bye...such a painful part of life.

Beautiful Runt, RIP

I'm sure one day Gage will kill me for this photo - but look at my little man shaving for the first time ever! Mark was patiently showing him every step. It was so cute. And not a single cut! Makes a Mama proud.



We started a new tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree this year. Here are Gage, Drake and Cora warming up in the stone house in the tree field.



Ta-daaaaa we found The Roberts Family Christmas Tree!

Mark and my little lumberjacks.

Got the tree home and it ACTUALLY fits in the spot that we wanted it to!

Oh Christmas Tree! Oh Christmas Tree! So pretty...we're using LED lights on the tree and mostly outside.

A wreath that Mark and I made with our left over garland.



...and here is a cuteness intermission...this is Luna - Drake's new angora bunny. There is a chance that she is pregnant - Drake is hoping that this will be a new business for him...to sell the fiber and possibly sell the babies. Isn't she adorable!?



Our beautiful Nutcracker collection - Mark and I got engaged at the Nutcracker...so so many years ago! Seventeen, in fact!

This is our entry from the living room, into the parlor.

Watch out for the mistletoe!!!

Real pine garland smells so amazing.

We bought a discounted tree to get some of the boughs off of to help create our wreath and make a table decoration - the rest of the tree we three into the pasture and let the animals go to town.

Josie says "Oh, you're taking more pictures? Let me give you my best side"

Um, Steve...you know that is your brother...and you are both males...right? I mean, who am I to judge and we love and accept you for who you are...and I guess whatever happens in the barnyard stays in the barnyard???

Num num num! Pine tree goodness :-)

Ok, it's time to fill my body will mass amounts of pharmaceuticals and crash out on the couch! Hope everyone is doing well...

Fresh Eggs Farm Update 7.8.12



Beautiful flowers from my husband. Take note gentlemen - you don't have to spend money to make your partner happy - sometimes, happiness is taking the time to cut flowers from the yard and put them in a vase and set them on your wife's table. <3



Our newest inside kitty, Bella - she came from Captain's litter (Captian, our outside kitty had a litter of five of the most beautiful kittens - with black fur, but it is smoky as you get close to her skin).

Huge storms hit our area last week - I was working an event for my job. This is what our tent looked like when we were able to go back to it.

Another view of our tent - the stacks of lightbulbs we nicely arranged and the table on the right was upright when we left. In the background, you can see Verizon's tent - it flew down here from two tents away and wrapped around that vintage military vehicle. It literally bent the 4" poles that held it up. I couldn't imagine if we didn't get away when we did.

Looks like a disaster! This is the Verizon tent - our tent is two more down. Their displays are trashed.

Finished first attempt at Chicken Pot Pie - DELICIOUS!

Chicken Pot Pie - before we put the tops on.

Cora and Daddy rolling out the crust for pot pie.

Josie and Blossom - working on their tans!

Gage won tickets for getting good grades! It was a great time! The Reds won!!!! And since there were 11+ strike outs, everyone got free LaRosa's pizza and free UDF ice cream!!!! DELICIOUS!!!

A picture from our seats...those tiny little ants down there...those are baseball players!!!

Feeding time! I think they know LOL

Itty and her poor little broken leg :-(

Our first attempt at Goat's Milk CHEESE!!!!

Oh hell yeah! It was awesome - who would have ever imagined we'd be able to milk a goat, in our back yard and create something this amazing!?!?!

Our cheese - after it has been drained. Isn't it gorgeous!?!

Our cheese while it drains.

Our pea harvest - peas on the left, shells on the right. They were so delicious. Now, my kids love peas :-) Even raw!

Cora loves peas - look how many she got in just one pod!

Like two...or wait three...no more like four...oh, I guess it's like eight peas in a pod.

Peas!

Thanks Mabel!

Who is that handsome man straining our milk?!

Harvest! On the left, leftover pea pods, so we have seeds for next year! In the middle - yummy onions! On the right, our potato harvest...so delicious.

I feel like the pictures are so random, but honestly, that is kinda how our life is....so...very...random. As I mentioned in my last post...my husband and I are going through a bit of a rough patch. I'm not sure what the future holds for us, but  I hope that it holds amazing mornings of coffee on the porch, watching our children...and their children running around after animals in our front yard, long talks about our hopes and dreams...and love. A good step to assuring that will happen is to do very simple things that lets your partner know that you are thinking of them. One morning, my husband woke up before I did and went out to our gardens our front and cut some of our beautiful flowers. He arranged them and put them in a vase, so when I woke up, the flowers were sitting on the table next to my favorite chair. Simple things like that help me remember our oh so good times and help ease the pain of the bad times. I'm thankful he is making an effort to make things right.
We've added a few more members to our family...Captain, one of our outside kitties, surprisingly had a litter of five kittens and decided to raise them in our garage. We found homes for two of the kittens (thanks to our daughter Kait and one of Drake's friends) and one of the sweet kitties found her way into our home. We still have two little boys left outside. We are feeding and caring for them and hopefully they will be good mousers and mole killers for the property.
Last weekend, we had an event at Wright Patt Field - around the time that the gates were supposed to enter, patrol came around and said that they were not letting people onto the field and that they were encouraging people to have a "Weather Plan B" - after watching the clouds roll in a bit, we decided that we should stack all of our event stuff in the middle table of our tent and make our way to our vehicles, temporarily. We started to walk toward our van, did I mention that Mark and Gage had gone for ice and we didn't know where they were? So that left me, one of my co-workers, Drake and Cora to get to a safe place. Right about the time that we were at the security tent, a huge gust of wind hit and the tent went up in the air. Military men and women were yelling and trying to grab the poles so we could get away from the structure. We ran the other direction - realizing that we needed to get to a safe place, but not really sure where that place was. As we were trying to make our way out of another gate area, an Air Force member came and said we needed to get off the base and offered to carry Cora - he scooped her up and took off running. We followed along - running as fast as we could...the wind blowing hard enough that it nearly pushed me over, and would have certainly knocked Cora to the ground if the Air Force Service Member hadn't helped us out. Still afraid because I couldn't find Mark and Gage and scared that this was getting ready to get really bad...we ran into a gas station and the first faces I saw were Mark and Gage...thankful. The next little bit was pretty terrifying. But thankfully, we all made it through the ordeal safe and sound. The pictures above don't really give a good idea of the devastation that the storm did...but it was really bad.
We made homemade chicken pot pie and it was delicious. We used homegrown peas, onions and potatoes and used Nana's "Never Fail" Pie Crust for the top and bottom. I'm hoping that next year, we'll also have carrots and chicken grown and raised right here at Fresh Eggs.
Our animals are silly - Josie and Blossom are loving this hot weather we've been having. We took the hose out and tried to hose everyone down, since you know...it hit 103 degrees here! But the only animals who really enjoyed the spray down were Josie and Blossom. Josie would put her face right into the hose spray. It was really funny to watch how excited they got. All of the animals will try to fit in the small hallway that we runs the center of the barn - they know when it's feeding time. I'm going to try to get a video of the sounds they make when they hear our voices - every time it makes my heart feel warm and I laugh. I love having these goofballs here.
Gage won tickets for a Cincinnati Reds game - our tickets were in the nose bleed area - but it was still a great time! Plus the kids got to see the city. In fact, I was asked to work in the office in Cincinnati for two days this week. During that time, my company put me up in a hotel and I had Mark and the kids join me. While I was at work, Mark took the kids to explore the city and in the evenings we were able to listen to sounds and enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city. Gage, my city boy, needs to have that balance in his life - and honestly, I think it is good for all of us to get out of the country from time to time to remember the pros and cons of city living.
WE MADE CHEESE! Cheese!!! From milk...from a goat...from our back yard. It was amazing. I cannot wait to make more. It is delicious...and it makes me proud that we were able to accomplish this. Can't wait to learn how to make other kinds - the one we made was a simple Chevre, which is essentially like a cream cheese type texture.
Our large garden is growing - I'm hoping that we still get a nice harvest from it. Although, we've been suffering from a drought this year, as much of the US has been...so maybe not as much of a harvest as we could have. Fingers crossed, we will be able to get some fresh cucumbers (perhaps a couple batches of pickles), some zucchini, maybe corn and some other yummies. Our early raised beds did well - we got a basket load of potatoes, onions and peas and were able to dry some of the pea pods for next year's planting.
Again, I feel like this blog has been all over the place, without a real "theme" - but there is always so much going on around here. I'm glad I've been keeping up with my goal of taking more pictures. I think pictures just add so much to the experience of what goes on here. Maybe next time we do cheese, I can do a how-to walk through on what we did.
Well, right now, I need to go so that I can have a few minutes to sit on our front porch and then Mark and I are going to a Barenaked Ladies/Blues Traveler show...BTW, did you know that Blues Traveler was the very first concert that Mark and I went to when we were first dating...and now we are going to see them again approximately 16 1/2 years later...and we are getting ready to celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary on July 23rd...fate? Maybe...