What a wonderful day filled with a beautiful sunrise and wonderful family time this morning!  The bible has been read, gifts are opened and the Lord Reigns! Merry Christmas to all our family and friends

One of our goals here at the farm is to raise as much food as we can for ourselves.  That can be difficult when there is just over an acre of land so we have done as much here as we can and gone to other farmers for the rest. We are able to raise all of our own chickens for fresh beautiful eggs.  If you don't think there is a difference between farm fresh and store bought you would be sadly mistaken.  Ours have been on "strike" for a couple of months so we have had to purchase our eggs.  Even with buying the cage free ones we notice such a huge difference.  Besides there is nothing like going to the hen house and getting breakfast (or dinner) fresh! We also raise meat birds that we butcher ourselves.  We did two different batches of breeds this year to experiment.  Our usual Jumbo Cornish X Rocks are the typical "grow quickly" bird.  They are bred for that with the bonus being that you spend less on feed.  The first year with ...

I have found myself so busy lately that I am slacking on blog posts!  We spent a lot of time in the past couple of months preparing our home and taking classes to get back into the foster care system!  Yes, we hope to add one or two (or however many God will give) more little rugrats to our brood.  Hubby and I did this almost 13 years ago now and decided with the kids being older it was time to jump back in before we get too old;)  We have completed the process and now are just waiting for that piece of paper to come in the mail to make it official. It has been a busy farm month also, as I have done a few craft fairs without much luck, but my online selling seems to have picked up as of lately so I am thankful for that!   The girlies were able to have their annual gingerbread house building party for friends.  Even though they are all older now they still enjoy it and I am amazed at the "structures" that come from graham crackers and frosting. ...

 

Is insanity for farmers a normal thing?  I received a message from my dear friend Maple at Northstar Alpacas a couple of weeks ago.  She was getting some alpacas brought to her farm.  She wanted to know if I wanted two of them.  For free.  Did she say Free? Yes!  First, anyone who knows me, knows I am always on the lookout for cheap (free is better). After processing the fact that I could get two more gorgeous fiber animals, for FREE, I had to stop and take a breath...and bat my eyes at Hubby. I had questions for Maple that I needed to know before I jumped at this.  I wanted to be responsible.  First we have a very, very, small farm.  Would it work?  I found out in researching and asking Maple that they don't need a lot of space.  Second, how much do they eat?  What kind of care?  Remember, we struggled to get hay this year because of the drought.  I found out that they will probably be the cheapest animal we have o...

Remember this garage sale find?  Well look at it now!  I am amazed at what a couple cans of paint can do for antique wicker furniture.  Now I have my "nook" corner in our bedroom.  I had to shear a lot of angora rabbits this summer due to the heat. I usually don't like to spin cut angora, we pluck most of ours for our homespun yarns. But, when I have to, I usually dye it and then run it through the drum carder.  Which is what I spun this week.  Here it is on my ball winder:  This is after I plied it:  (I used the one ball above and plied it into 2 ply)  Here it is on my needles.  The scarf should be done and in the shop today.  It is beautifully soft and colorful!

It has been over a week since we took our fall trip to Mackinac Island and I hadn't even downloaded the pictures yet!  We had a wonderful time as usual.  The weather even cooperated for the most part.  We were looking at rain and snow for most of the time we were there, and really only had one day of on and off rain.  We biked and hiked for MILES and still, after 6 years of going up there, we were able to find new places that we had never seen.    We saw snow going up and coming back, I have a feeling that winter is going to be much different than last year.  I can't wait!  We are all set here at the farm with extra hay that I never thought we would find due to the poor weather this year.  I did pay double for the bales, but I know that people in other parts of the country are paying so much more than that.   School has been in full swing and I am trying to keep it that way until Thanksgiving.  The Eldest has extra time off...