Tonight was soap night

Posted on April 5, 2016 by farm2011

I’m working on building up my soap inventory and after some coaxing to get up off the couch, I actually got 2 loaves of soap made tonight. I made a double batch of Lazy Lavender soap and I’m hoping to get a couple more batches of some of the other soaps made yet this week or weekend.

With nothing actually scheduled for this weekend on our calendar,  it’s kind of an open book on what we’re actually going to do. But last weekend when our schedule changed and opened up we ended up picking rock (which actually did have to get done before Daryl seeded oats).  With the rest of the fields too wet for picking rock, we’ll have to check out the neighboring towns to see if there’s anything fun going on this weekend. 

Update on Scarlet – well she still hasn’t had her calf yet and she looks pretty miserable. I’m sure hoping that the calf isn’t going to be too big for her and that everything will go OK. She’s in the barn tonight so we can keep an eye on her and also be able to check her easier. She’s close so hopefully she’ll have her baby soon! 

And finally here is a Get Well card that I had made for one of my best friends. She recently had surgery so I stopped over at her house last week to see how she’s doing. 20160330_145902_resized

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It’s that time of the year again!

Posted on April 3, 2016 by farm2011

It is that time of the year when the hay wagons are turned into rock picking wagons and they seem to have a permanent spot in the farm yard to remind you that the rock picking season is happening. 

Now is it the worst thing in the world? Heck no. I mean you get exercise and well… I guess you can get some fresh air. And I think that’s about all the good things that I can think of right now. 

So when my second meeting was cancelled on Sunday and I didn’t have any excuses on why I shouldn’t go out and help, it was time to find some gloves and head out to the field. But with the rain that we’ve been having lately and our basement isn’t completely dry, my chore shoes were wet and were something that there was no way that I was going to put them on. After checking out all my options, I decided to grab my mud boots. They should work pretty good and Daryl said the we would only be out there for a couple of hours.

And I was sure glad that I wore them! You know why? Well because I found out something about myself that I had been wondering about for the past 10 years or even more!  See if you have ever picked rock you know that your best ‘tool’ is your feet. Depending on how the rock is buried, you use the side of your foot to get the rocks that are still kinda loose in the ground and push them sideways. You can also use the heel of your foot to try to catch a lip of the rock to get it out of the ground. But what I found out today is that I use my corner of my foot by my big toe and hit the rock to see if it’ll budge. OK, so I’m sure your’e wondering what they has to do with the past 10 years or so of my life right? Well because I had my mud boots on instead of any chore shoes it just about killed the side of my big toe the I kicked the rock. And the more that I thought about this, I realized that this is why I can’t keep my toe nail from splitting halfway down the nail for the past how many years! Now I’m not saying that this is for sure what is happening, but it’s pretty coincidental don’t you think? So I’m seeing my options so far for picking rocks are to always wear good farm shoes, don’t use your feet as the extra tools, or give up rock picking all together. Hmm.. I wonder which one I should choose?

I snapped a quick picture of the rock wagon when we were done. Even though it doesn’t look like a lot of rocks, I’m just saying that there is a lot of small ones on there.20160403_140532_resized

Posted in Farming | 2 Comments

Vendor Show – check it off the Bucket List

Posted on April 2, 2016 by farm2011

I actually made it through my first Vendor show on Saturday. And even though it’s been on my 2016 Goals that I can now check off the list, it was actually a really good thing for me to do. 

So today was the day. I’ve been working on how to set up my table now for at least a week or two and I felt pretty comfortable on how I wanted that to look like. I had gotten my business cards in on Friday (whew!) and all my soap was wrapped. I think I’m ready! 

Well of course it was hard to sleep the night before and with the information that tables can be set up at 7:30 am, I was ready to go and after a stop at the gas station for a couple of bottles of Diet Coke on my way to the show, I found myself in the parking lot of the Community Center at 7:29. But guess what? There was only one other vendor there with a whole van of stuff and just parked beside me and getting out of her car was the person who was hosting it for the day. OK, maybe coming with my little boxes of soap at 7:29 am was lesson # 1. I had 2 1/2 hours of prepping my table when I guess I could have gotten it done in 1 hour. Especially since I’ve been practicing it for quite some time! 

And speaking of lessons, I also found out that your tables are all ready marked so you didn’t have to go and find one. You know – the first come first serve thing. Lesson # 2.20160402_150916_resized

With my table set up and everything looking just great I did a once over of my table. And guess what ? Well I’ve been reading these past few weeks on what you should and shouldn’t do at a show (yea, I’m kind of a dork) and as I stood looking over my table and how cool it all looked I realized that no where on my display table did it say how much my soap cost! Wow! I think this mistake was like a Cardinal Sin or something in the craft show world! But I had my dad’s little table that he had made when he was a kid with me and it was filled with tape, paper, markers, scissors,… just about everything 20160402_140648_resizedso I made up some quick signs for how much my soap costs. Yup, I’m thinking this would be lesson # 3! 

But during the coarse of the day I sure met a lot of nice people and the Vendors by me all new that I was a newbie and was giving me tips and was helping out with all my 85 billion questions that I seemed to have. I definitely felt that these people were like a tight knit family and to be honest I can see myself doing this again!20160402_103900_resized

Now the big question. Did I make any money? Well I did!! SCORE! I made enough to cover my table expenses along with my 2 Diet Cokes that I bought earlier and then also to even take a little bit home with me.

Yup all in all it was a very good day!

 

Posted in Soap | 4 Comments

It’s a dogs life

Posted on March 31, 2016 by farm2011

Have you ever been in a position when you’re doing something and you think to yourself that you really need to get out of the house more? Well that’s what happened to Daryl and I tonight. 

What happened is that I was upstairs and working on some pictures while Daryl was downstairs watching TV. Pretty typical night and nothing weird about this. Well the upstairs door was open and all of a sudden I could hear some dogs barking. At first I thought what in the world?? Then I realized that it was coming from the TV show that he was watching. I didn’t think anything else about it until about 2 seconds later when the dogs outside were barking like the martians were invading the world or something! 

I beat it downstairs only to find Daryl just dying laughing and the dogs literally running in circles on the front porch. See they heard the dogs on the TV and I’m sure was wondering just why in the heck are there dogs in the house and if there were dogs in the house how come it wasn’t them! 

So as we stood there laughing at the poor dogs, we rewound the tv show and turned the surround sound on almost as loud as it could go and then watched the dogs react not just once, but a couple times more. Yeah, it wasn’t the nicest thing – but seriously it was the funniest thing! 

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Well now that it’s over, I’m thinking what a cruel trick to play on the dogs and also that Daryl and I should really get out of the house more .. and probably soon 🙂

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My pretty awesome Scarlet

Posted on March 30, 2016 by farm2011

Well I don’t know if cows can be pretty or not, but I’m just saying that I think Scarlet is one of the prettiest cows around. The only one who comes close to her looks is No Ears. Just take one look at Scarlet and you know that she is pretty & awesome at the same time! DSCN8835

I’ve been working on getting some of the ‘younger cows’  tame so my plan has been to give the cows snacks at night. Is it working? Well I don’t think I’ll ever get Audrey anywhere’s near tame and for  Sunny our new calf? Well I should have called him Bullet instead! 

Here’s a picture of Sassy and Sunny just hanging out and I’m pretty sure trying to stay away from me at the same time. DSCN8830

So with Scarlet close to having her first calf, I sure hope that she lets me by it and stays friendly enough so we can keep it as a pet. And I also am hoping that it’s going to be a girl 🙂  We should know soon. 

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The sun is shining, what a great spring day!

Posted on March 28, 2016 by farm2011

The weekend weather was so blah it was great to see the sun shining today. I’ve been working on some advertising stuff for my soap business and since the business is called ‘Squeaky Windmill’I only thought that it would be appropriate that my logo for the business be a windmill. But do you believe that I didn’t have one picture that I could really use for the advertisements? Amazing! I feel that I take a LOT of pictures of the windmill and I bet you would also agree! So today at lunch I beat it home to take a quick picture of it while the sky was clear and blue. Of course I’m on a time budget here again and if I didn’t have my stuff ordered by 5:00 tonight,  I wouldn’t get it for this weekend. Another reason to not procrastinate in the future. This time it cost me expedited shipping and let me just say it wasn’t cheap! 

Well like I said the sun was shining and just as I pulled into the yard I had to laugh. Kaiser wanted to take full advantage of the sun and took his day bed off the porch and was just hanging out in the yard in the sunshine.

Kaiser Now was I mad at him? Heck no! I was pretty jealous that this was his life at this moment. And seriously the dogs haven’t even tore the beds up yet so they must really like them. 

Daryl was also in the yard but busy working on getting the cow yard cleaned out. He took all the winter yucky bedding and manure out of the cattle shed and has been working on hauling it out to the fields. You have to time hauling it out just right because the fields can get kinda greasy when it warms up and you don’t want to get stuck. 

As for me? Well it was a quick trip home to snap the picture and then back to work I went. But I did get a shot that I can use and now the business cards, poster, and stickers are all on order. So below is my business logo. Looking pretty cool if you ask me! 

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Posted in Farming, Our dogs, Projects completed | Comments Off on The sun is shining, what a great spring day!

Happy Easter! 2016

Posted on March 27, 2016 by farm2011

Happy Easter!

With the kids busy today, Daryl and I had a pretty uneventful day on the farm. I was pleased that no bandits raided our chicken house again last night and like I said – it was pretty uneventful.

I was really happy that I had gotten the kids Easter baskets made and shipped the other day. I wasn’t sure if the Easter bunny would have their plates filled with candy on their kitchen tables when they woke up, so they got a box from us just in case. Below are their Easter cards with something extra added in each card for them to spend on the weekend. I really didn’t take a very good picture of the cards – kinda blurry… sorry!20160323_060523_resized_1

Check it out – I think they made out pretty well. And yes, I did share Ma’s cookies with the them (the orange bunny box) 🙂

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Trouble in the coop!

Posted on March 26, 2016 by farm2011

When I went outside this morning to give some apple treats to the cows and to check on the chickens I noticed that there was a dead chicken  beside the chicken coop. It kinda caught my eye because it was one of the younger chickens, but still you just never know. See we don’t butcher our chickens when they get older. We just let them hang out until they die. So when I saw this chicken I wasn’t too concerned and into our cremation system (fire barrel) it went. 

I checked in the coop to see if there was anything else kind funky going on and thank goodness I didn’t see anything. Well that was until I stepped out and headed back to the house. By our water hydrant there was a pile of eggs there that were broken and all the eggs insides were gone. DSCN8816My first thought is that Daryl found a pile of eggs in the hay barn and tossed them out. With our chickens loose on the farm, you just never know where they might put a nest so I didn’t think much about it. Well until later when I asked where he found the eggs and he had absolutely no clue what I was talking about.

Now normally we lock up the chickens at night, but lately we’ve been kinda lazy and haven’t done it.  And what we’re guessing is that some mysterious  animal came in during the night, gathered up the eggs, took them outside and ate them. OK, I know that this sounds pretty weird, but what I know is that one chicken in dead outside and there is a pile of eggs that are eaten by the water hydrant. 

Well that’s enough evidence for me that something went down in the coop last night and for tonight? Yup, everyone was locked in at 8:00!  

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Good Friday Traditions

Posted on March 25, 2016 by farm2011

Well by now you probably know that traditions mean a lot to me and keeping them is as equally important.

So when Good Friday rolls around it can only mean one thing – RED LOBSTER!!

See we have this tradition in our family that we only should go to Red Lobster once a year and that is on Good Friday. Okay it might sound kinda weird to some, but when you have small  kids growing up you don’t normally go to restaurants and let them order anything they want – but on Good Friday that’s exactly what it means. They could order absolutely anything that they would want – no matter of the cost. So you can imagine how much we looked forward to it and we always have the best time too! 

Well this year we once again made the journey to the restaurant, but the kids weren’t able to go with us. Hopefully they’ll be able to go next year though. So making the trip with another couple, we checked out the menu and made our selections. And how did it turn out?  Well take a look at our plates. Yum! 20160325_193725_resizedYup, not thinking about anything but lobster and steak tonight!!  I just Love Traditions!!

Posted in Family | 2 Comments

Ice Ice Baby

Posted on March 24, 2016 by farm2011

You know the feeling when the weather guy has made the wrong prediction with the weather and you secretly mock him? OK, I’m sure that I’m not the only one who does this! Anyway, when he says that we were supposed to get a terrible winter storm or very severe weather and when it doesn’t happen you are: 1. Very relieved that he’s wrong 2. Can’t believe he can get paid to be wrong but are secretly smiling inside!

But when they get it right? Well that’s when I turn into the person who thinks why can’t they be wrong more often? Kinda a two edged sword don’t you think? So as you can guess we did get the winter storm that they had predicted last night and for our area it was mostly rain, then sleet, then more rain and then some thick ice pellets on the top. Yup, they called this one right. You can always tell that it’s not going to be a fun drive to work when the front door is literally frozen shut. So after Daryl busted the ice out of the way to get the door open, my drive actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I only ended up looking southeast once when I should have been looking south, but all in all not too bad.

But these ice storms take such a terrible toll on trees and ours were literally covered with a layer of ice that is still on them tonight. If they can’t get rid of the ice off of the branches, it’ll literally kill the trees. But at least we didn’t loose any major tree damage from broken branches that we can tell yet. There was a lot of reports of trees that were having to be cut down in the area because of the damage the ice caused to them. That just literally makes my belly hurt.

So here is a picture of our pine trees in our front yard. DSC_0353And if you’re wondering if they are supposed to be on the ground? Well the answer is no. The ice is so heavy that they are usually about 5 or 6 feet above it.

This is our apple tree. I’m not sure how this is going to impact the spring blossoms. DSC_0359and our little red oak tree. DSC_0361

Finally here is a the picture of the day. DSC_0358The only one who really uses this bird bath is the cats and dogs and I’m guessing they found another drinking fountain for the day.

Posted in Picture of the day, Pictures | Comments Off on Ice Ice Baby