Whats in your suitcase?

Posted on November 18, 2016 by farm2011

I had a chance to go through a suitcase the other day and it really got me thinking – what would be in my suitcase if someone else was looking through it? 

See the suitcase belonged to my Aunt who recently passed away, and without having any children to pass her things down to, her things were passed on to other members of her family. 

I really like looking at older photo’s and especially ones that are taken way before digital cameras. And the instant photos back in the 70’s in my opinion was a terrible time in the life of capturing any type of photographs!! So my choice is definitely the ones taken probably with a little brownie camera.

So my Mom had the suitcase and asked if I’d like to look at the photos?  I would love to! So I eagerly put it in my car and headed home to see just what treasures that I would find in it.20161120_101148_resized

And was I disappointed? Absolutely not!

But what I realized was that in this suitcase held pretty much my Aunt’s whole life story. It held the times that she was growing up on her parents farm before she was married. It held her early life when she was just married and her ‘new’ home on their farm with their first car and the first pieces of farm equipment that they purchased. It also held the many trips around the United States that her and her husband traveled and even pictures of some of the 50 states they traveled to! There were pictures of what she loved to do which included sewing projects, pictures of flowers, and every kind of cake that you could imagine.

There was also some of the best pictures of her husband throughout the years standing at their doorstep either on their farm or in the later years at their house in town with a handful of flowers that he picked someone along the road home just waiting to surprise my Aunt.

I had a couple of pictures that I really liked and I’m thinking of having this one blown up for a wall hanging. It’s my Aunt and Uncle on a road trip in their old car going to an adventure somewhere. What a great picture! fullsizeoutput_80d

And what was the best saying on the back of these pictures in the suitcase? Well this one really caught my eye.fullsizeoutput_80f

The front picture is that of some flowers from their farm. These photo’s are what her whole life was made up of and who she was.20161120_101133_resized

So I’m wondering just what would be in my suitcase? Probably some soap I would guess 🙂

Posted in Family | 2 Comments

In the zone baby – in the zone!

Posted on November 17, 2016 by farm2011

Wow was it a busy night after work and did I get a lot done!

After doing quite a few errands after work, I finally got into our house around 5:00. Now the first thing to do was to turn on the stove so I could get supper started. But it wasn’t too much later when Daryl showed up and then I remembered that he was going to take his sister out for supper for her birthday. 

Well with the stove already heating up, I decided to put a pan of scalloped potatoes in the oven anyway and we can always eat them as warm ups later this weekend. 

So now that the oven was going, I decided to keep cooking and after baking a pound of bacon that would be ready for  breakfast, I then started to mix up a batch of brownies. 

I was on a roll. Literally! So while I had some cinnamon rolls raising on top of the warm oven, out came the marshmallows and a pan of Rice Krispie treats were now on the counter top. And while I was getting the box of Rice Krispie’s out of the cupboard, I decided to grab a couple of boxes of Chex Mix cereal and ended up with some Puppy Chow too! Finally I chopped up some vegetables for the refrigerator, cleaned the upstairs, figured out what I was going to wear literally for the next couple of days, worked on a brochure for a committee that I’m on in our town,  and then called it a night. 

It’s a good thing that we’re headed down for a visit to William and Jude’s this weekend. I’m thinking that I kind of overdone the food thing tonight 🙂

I still need to frost the cinnamon rolls in the morning

I still need to frost the cinnamon rolls in the morning

And look at my two helpers in the kitchen. They were supposed to be sleeping on the blanket in the living room, but I think they could smell the bacon so they wanted to stay close to the action in the kitchen. Do you have any idea how many times I had to step over these dogs tonight? A lot! 20161117_190119_resized

 

Posted in In the kitchen, Our dogs | 2 Comments

Smelling good

Posted on November 16, 2016 by farm2011

Do you know how many people seem to like Bath Bomb Fizzy’s? It’s more than I would have guessed that’s how many. 

Which is a good thing for me! 

So after I delivered a box of them last week to a store that is selling them in a local town, they asked if I would make another box full and bring it over as soon as possible. They seem to be selling like hot cakes. SCORE! 

The trick was that they wanted something for Christmas and if I had a nice scent that would be great. Now I didn’t want to make anything that smelled too much like Christmas because, well honestly do you want to smell like pine trees when you are in the bath tub? Yea, me neither. 

So I spent quite a bit of time figuring out just the right scent and then I went to producing as many as I could in a small amount of time. 20161116_193602_resized

I was pretty happy how they turned out and decided to name this scent – Be Merry. Not bad for a something that had to be done on a short time frame, if I say so myself. 

Well I was going to deliver them after work and if you ever want to make your car smell good, I found out how to do that. Put a couple of dozen bath fizzy’s in your car when the weather is almost 70 degrees and I’m telling you that it’s going to smell awesome! 

Now to get a couple more soap orders filled and call it quits for the Christmas rush. I decided that next year I need to be better prepared and have more soap made up in advance. I just would have never guessed that this many people would like my soap 🙂

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St. Albert the Great Day! November 15th

Posted on November 15, 2016 by farm2011

Now if you’ve never heard of St. Albert the Great Day,  well you must not have someone in your family named Albert! 

Our Dad’s name was Albert and on this special day once a year we celebrated St. Albert the Great. Now St. Albert is a German Scientist who was canonized and recognized as a doctor of the Church in 1931, by Pope Pius IX. He is the patron saint of scientists. 

OK so what did this mean for our family? Well it meant for some reason that we celebrated the day by having homemade soup. It’s kind of funny how different traditions come around in your family, but yup this day was known as a soup day. Now granted I’m not talking about any boring kind of soup. I’m talking my Mom’s homemade beef noodle soup. And you can’t get much better than that! But our Dad despised this soup and Mom would make him a pot of vegetable beef soup. Now I also like Mom’s vegetable beef soup – but my choice is still the beef noodle!

Well after we prayed twice at the supper table, which we would get some funny looks from our Dad, us kids dug in! And for some reason I can just visualize all 6 of us kids with this grin on our faces knowing that it was a special day and that we pulled one over on Dad by praying twice. Now we did this ever year – so I’m thinking it wasn’t a surprise for Dad but he seemed to play along.  Now did Dad really hate this soup that much? I’m not sure, but it was a tradition that still is talked about to this day in our family.

Which brings me to today. It’s St. Albert the Great Day! And after work I had a couple of errands to run in town and then I headed over to Mom’s to drop off somethings for her. When I asked her if she made noodle soup she said she thought of it but didn’t know if anyone would be around to eat it. Hello!! I would sure come over and have supper with her.

On the way back home from Mom’s, Daryl was still out in the field and I made a stop quick in town to pick him up some supper.

Now when I got home I sure wish I had some soup to eat, but no such luck. It was way too late to even think about making any, so guess what I had?

If you guessed a box of noodles cooked and then topped with butter and salt and pepper,  along with two small bowls of ice cream that finally ended up with me just eating out of the ice cream box while sitting on the couch – well you are right! I’m just guessing on this, but I’m thinking that I totally failed on my diet tonight.

All I can say is that next year I’m going to be better prepared and hopefully I can spend it with Mom eating some homemade beef noodle soup in honor of the day – St. Albert the Great!

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A little bit of everything

Posted on November 13, 2016 by farm2011

This weekend was filled with getting some housework done, groceries, making soap, making bath fizzys, and a whole lot of other things. 

One of the fun things that I had a chance to do was to hang out with Daryl in the field. I know – it’s Sunday Funday right? Well, when there is field work to do, there isn’t much time to do fun things off the farm so you better find some fun things to do on the farm.

So what did I do?  I brought dinner out in the field and then I spent some time riding in the cab of the tractor with Daryl. 

20161113_131241_resized He was using a disc ripper. Now what is a disc ripper? It’s a machine that breaks up the ground along with the corn stalks. (I had to ask too!)

20161113_130821_resized This isn’t something that he normally does in our fields, but with the heavy rain that we got this summer,  it made the fields so hard that he wanted to try it to see if it would break up the field a little bit. He was really happy how it turned out and now with the frost from this upcoming winter, it’ll help break up the soil even more before the fields gets planted again next spring. 

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Then after a couple of rounds, I came home and started to work in the yard. It’s about time  to get the lawn stuff put away for the winter and even though it’s not a fun job, it’s a job that needs to be done. I had to laugh when I was moving the porch furniture to the shed. The dogs took just one look at what I was doing and plopped down on the couch and wouldn’t move! I think they were protesting or something. But finally I got them off of it and drug it to it’s new home for the winter. I don’t think I’m on our dogs favorite list this weekend. 

20161113_154543_resized I guess they’ll just have to spend some more time in the barn or on their beds on the porch. 

And finally at the end of the night when I was talking to Mom she mentioned that the moon was the SuperMoon tonight. When I stepped outside it was everything and more than they were making it out to be. It was so huge and bright – just plain awesome. 

We Skyped with the kids to see what they’ve been up to and it’s time now to head to bed for the night. Another batch of soap is on the heating pad and all covered up, the dogs are locked up along with the chickens, and the dryer has the last load of laundry in it for the weekend. 

Now it”s time to think about what this next week will bring and did I start a list yet? 

Posted in Farm animals, Farming | Comments Off on A little bit of everything

Maybe the key is to ignore the flowers?

Posted on November 11, 2016 by farm2011

I was out doing chores tonight and with my slip on shoes, sweat pants,  and a sweater, I could hardly believe that it was mid November. OK, I know this sounds like a broken record – but how lucky we are to have this kind of weather in our area!

But now having said that there was definately a chill in the air tonight and even though there is no forecast for snow or sleet – you can tell that one of these days we are just going to get hit us in the face with really cold weather. So what do we do until then? Well you better be enjoying it that’s all I have to say. 

So like I said I was walking around the farm yard tonight and my flowers caught my eye. They weren’t looking too bad! Now how funny is that?! The reason that I say that is because around mid October you start the ‘protecting the flowers’ program. Once the weatherman starts talking about possibly frost warnings you go and take all your sheets out of storage and start the process of covering them up every night and then uncovering them in the morning. Or if you lived on our farm, all you had to do is to cover them up in the night and then the dogs uncovered them in the morning and drug them around the yard for the day. I had to laugh because I was fixing the kids bed the last time they were home with fresh sheets and I took a double take on the the one set for Kyle when I was putting it on his bed. It had a rip in the middle of the sheet.  Now I stood there and was trying to figure out just why in the world this would have happened and then I figured it out. Yup, it was probably these two! 20161031_175306_resized

Oh well, but getting back to the flowers, I went and grabbed my camera and snapped a couple of shots of them because I couldn’t believe that they have been surviving. I mean once the kids were gone from their visit a couple of weeks ago – well these flowers were on their own! And how are they doing? Just check them out. Too funny!! And I have no idea when the last time they were even watered. Maybe I should just ignore them more next year and see what happens 🙂

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Posted in Our dogs, Picture of the day | Comments Off on Maybe the key is to ignore the flowers?

My cupboards are ‘almost’ bare

Posted on November 9, 2016 by farm2011

I’ve been having really good luck lately with soap sales and tonight when I took a look of what soap that I have left on my shelves and well I decided I better kick it in high gear and make some more!dsc_0898

So a couple of nights ago I made some Lazy Lavender soap and decided to try a new trick. I’ve read that you can put the soap mold on a heating pad to help with the gel phase, so off to the dime store I go and pick up a heating pad. I mean if it doesn’t work I’m sure that we’ll use a heating pad right? 

I wasn’t sure how warm the heating pad should be set to so I decided to put it in the middle setting and after covering it with a couple of blankets it was ready to cure for the night.  dsc_0896

Well tonight I took it out of the mold and I’m not sure if it looks any ‘brighter’ but the soap does smell good. 

Lazy Lavender

Lazy Lavender

 

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Voting

Posted on November 8, 2016 by farm2011

20161108_174605_resizedTuesday was a day for everyone to get out to vote and honestly in our town I swear that everyone was doing just that!

Now you can talk all you want about the candidates and seriously I think that this has been done already – but it does bring out a good point.The point is that it at least have people active and engaged in the neighborhoods. And even though some of them are pretty vocal on their opinions – well at least they have an opinion. So many times people just sit back and then complain after the fact and for this election.

So when I was walking into the building where our town was voting, I could hear people talking that wasn’t too far from me but still not within sight. 

What I found out was that there were some people just around the corner hanging outside the local bar ‘discussing’ who they just knew would be the best president. As I was checking out where the conversation was coming from, I also noticed that almost all of our Main Street was full.  Now maybe for your town this is common, but our small town of around 400 people (and this is counting people not directly living in town) having this many people on a Tuesday night was not a common sight. So some were probably in the bar and a bunch of them were in our local restaurant. They probably all went uptown after they voted. Hum.. good idea.

So who would be the best President voted in 2016- Who knows right? But one thing that I do know, is that anything that brings a small town together on a Tuesday night  to discuss the local happenings isn’t all that bad now is it?

 

 

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Where is the chicken feed?

Posted on November 7, 2016 by farm2011

Daryl said that he was going to pick up some chicken feed yesterday when he went to the farm store and when he came home I noticed a bunch of sacks in the back of the truck so I just figured that they were for our laying hens. 

See normally we don’t feed our chickens ‘store food’ in the summer, but we decided to treat them with some this month. 

Well tonight after work I went out to check on everybody and as I walked by the truck I was going to grab one of the sacks of chicken feed. I noticed that it wasn’t in there so my first thought is that Daryl put it in the brooder house. So off I go to the brooder house. 

Okay it wasn’t in there either so I went back to the truck to see if I overlooked it. Now honestly there was only 2 bags of other feed in there and how I could think that I overlooked it – well it was a plan out of desperation. 

And guess what? Yea, no chicken feed magically appeared since I just looked 2 minutes before that. 

So I looked in the garage and then back to the brooder house I went again. I would have swore that there was some feed somewhere on this farm and I was going to find it! 

I decided to wait until Daryl got home to ask him where it went and in the meantime I went to snap a few pictures of the chickens. They were all worked up by now because I was just in there twice looking for that feed and by this time they about had enough of me for the night. 

So when I took this picture of this rooster – well it kind of says it all just how he was feeling with me hanging out in their brooder house tonight. Or maybe he just doesn’t like Daylight Savings time either! Yea, this is definitely a possibility why he’s looking pretty crabby. He also was trying to get around me when I was taking his picture and I kept stopping him from getting by me. Now maybe that could be the reason too! fullsizeoutput_7fe

But some of the chickens didn’t mind me being in therefullsizeoutput_7fd

And where was the chicken feed? Well Daryl didn’t have a chance to pick it up yesterday and was going to pick it up on Tuesday 🙂

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Daylight Savings Time

Posted on November 6, 2016 by farm2011

Do you know what I like about Daylight Savings Time? 

I don’t like ANYTHING about it!

So with that said I tried not to get too crazy today because these days never feel right to me. I mean I was up early yesterday before the sun came up to get some things done, but this morning it was way too early to get out of bed. So I laid in bed thinking about how much I despise when we change the clocks and what did I get out of all this negative thinking? One crabby Mama that’s what!

Well there’s more to do on a really nice day like today than be so crabby, so I decided I should paint outside while the weather was holding up. I mean have we ever had this type of weather in November before? I don’t think so!

With the idea that I needed some paint, I tried to brush my hair down and be somewhat respectable and headed to town to get some paint samples for colors. With town full of shoppers for the Open House for all the stores going on, I tried to get in and out with my little paint samples as quickly as I could.

Now with the samples in hand, I put them up to the porch to see which color I should pick. I even asked Daryl to stop what he was doing and see if he could help me with the right color. OK, we got it the one that I was going to have mixed up  and back to town I go. It wasn’t a perfect match,  but it would do for now.

The next thing that happened seriously was so quick it was strange. What happened is that I was hovering back in the paint section waiting for someone to help me and when I looked at the paint swatches I saw one that I thought looked good. And wouldn’t you just know it that’s when the person showed up. I grabbed the one swatch and without even hesitating I asked her to mix me a gallon of that one instead. Now I was still standing there with my one that we painstakinly picked out before hand and well I looked around for some reason to see if anyone was watching me and I put it back in with the rest of them. I wasn’t sure why I looked around other than if someone was watching me they would wonder why someone would only spend maybe a minute or two picking out a color before having a gallon of paint mixed up. 

OK I have to be honest, it seemed like a good idea at the time but I wasn’t so sure as I was driving home with the pail of paint beside me in the car.

And guess what? After an afternoon of painting with it, both Daryl and I decided that it looks really good. Hum, it must be fate or something. 

So here is a section of the porch that was painted today. It may not be a huge change in color, but nevertheless it’s a good subtle change.

Before picture of the porch

Before picture of the porch

After it's been painted

After it’s been painted

Check that off my list – oh wait I didn’t even have it on my list for 2016. SCORE!

And even though I’m not sure what time it really is, I’m going to bed for the night. 

Posted in Projects completed | 2 Comments