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.

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'

Mama Mabel

It happened! I'm so freaking excited!!! Mabel gave birth to two beautiful baby girls this evening. Both girls, both healthy, both nursing, both walking around...everyone is quite tired, as you can imagine. Of course Mabel chose when I wasn't even home to give birth and all of us missed the actual act. I had to run Cora to Dayton for a trip to the ENT (survey says...she needs her tonsils and adenoids taken out - no shocker there!) - they are hoping to get Drake and her scheduled on the same day (if Drake indeed needs his taken)....more to that story later. 

I had last checked Mabel and Flora around 1:45 this afternoon and while I noticed that Mabel was especially grumpy, I thought we had a little time. Although her whoha looked glossy - there wasn't a noticeable drip/ooze coming from it. I asked my daughter, Kait, and her boyfriend, David, to check the girls before Kait went to work (if Mark wasn't home yet). Gage and Drake checked her around 3:30 and....nothing...no babies. BUT, by the time Mark got home at around 4:35...two babies were surrounding Mabel!! I was still about an hour from being home (GRR...I missed it!). I got a text from Mark "Two Babies! Call Me!". I started to cry in both celebration and frustration that I missed it. Cora and I spent the trip home high fiving each other, dancing and singing along to the radio - both hoping that the hour trip home would pass by quickly. 

When we got home, Mark was waiting in the driveway with a pair of boots for each of us....and then, we laid eyes on those sweet little babies...Now, I'll share them with all of you...

....and here are some of the most adorable videos you'll ever see...



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!!!!

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...