Guess What's New?

Baby chicks, that's what is new.   On Saturday when Joel went down to put the chickens to bed for the night, he heard a little "cheep, cheep, cheep" coming from just outside of a nest where a hen has been faithfully sitting on some eggs for a couple of weeks.   It was a baby chick!   He/she jumped out of the nest and couldn't get back in and mama was still sitting on some eggs.  

Well, actually, there were three little chicks.   He scooped them up and brought them into the house since it was an especially chilly, damp night and he was afraid they would die of hypothermia overnight since mama didn't appear to be budging from her perch.   We quickly put together a little pen for them with straw in the bottom and some water for them to drink.  And of course we managed to clean up the heat lamp for them to keep them warm for the next couple of days while we determined if we could put them back into the coop with all the other chickens.  

Well, by the time we went down to the coop on Sunday morning, we had another and then another baby.  All yellow and fluffy and cheeping as they tried to wander around on the straw on unsteady legs.   Joel had to run into town quick Sunday morning to buy chick food for the wee-ones since they need a special diet when they are first born.

Doesn't she just ooze cuteness?   Well, this morning(Tuesday) we took the makeshift pen down to the coop and reintroduced the babies to their mama.   You see, she hatched more chicks over the last day and a half and now there are 8.   And since she is done sitting on her eggs, we decided that it was safe to have all her babies in one place.....where they belong....with their mama.    Joel has gone down to the coop several times to check on how the chicks are doing and he said mama is proudly strutting around the inside of the coop with little chicks flopping and tumbling around behind her.   Just.  Too.  Precious.  

We'll keep checking on them to make sure none of the other chickens pick on the babies.   But, so far it appears all is well in Chicken Land.   Ahhhhhh......

We've had a lot of rain this Spring......it seems like almost every day we've had drizzly, foggy, or rainy conditions.   When we got a break in the weather yesterday, we loaded our caffeine up in our mugs and jumped in the Polaris to do some work in the orchard.   We had planted quite a few trees last Spring only 2 months after arriving here on the farm.  Unfortunately, six of them didn't make it thru the harsh weather this winter.    We've pulled them up and now it was time to do some orchard maintenance.

This is our crabapple tree in full bloom.   And the blooms smell incredible.   We put new tree rings around the base of all the trees in hopes of making our job of mowing around each and every one a little easier.   Then I trimmed up a few of the branches and we took stock of what new trees we would like to acquire in the next few weeks to round out our selection of fruit.

 

Our McIntosh apple tree has blooms popping out all over its branches.   I sure hope we don't have a freeze this year after the blossoms drop so we will have a harvest.  Last year, it snowed on April 15th and it cut our harvest down to almost nothing.   And since the fruit comes on the tree where the blossoms are now, it's important to  not have a freeze from now on this spring.   Keeping my fingers crossed.

I also decided to put some of my own personality on the outer edges of the front yard.  We have an old stump that is slowing decaying.....not especially a pretty sight.   Until now, that is.   I picked up some flowers at the store and used potting soil to create little pockets of posies on the sides and top of the stump.   A few larger blue-eyed daisies and red geraniums around the base completed the picture.   After dumping a bag of mulch around the perimeter and watering, now all I have to do is wait for the petunias to drape down the sides of the trunk and the eyesore is now something fun to look at.   I think I'm going to paint a sign that says something like, "Just plain rotten" and stick it in the dirt around the trunk.   Ha!   That should get the locals talking.

Anyway, lest you think everything on the farm is clean and pristine, think again.    This is what the front seat of the Polaris looks like on any given day.   Plastic coated wire, bug spray, eggs and work gloves....all these items are part of our daily work outside.  We may not be a big farm, but we're doing our best to be a "real" farm.

Wouldn't you know it, this morning as I was all set to take Molly outside for her walk, I spotted this big turkey strutting around the back of the potager garden.  Do you see it?   It's the dark grey object with it's head down eating bugs behind the garden off on the right side of the pic.   Well, as soon as we went outside the turkey high tailed it out toward the back of our property and the tree line.

And so that is how I started my day today.   A little bit of light fog, some drizzles, and lots of birds singing to one another from tree to tree.   And then as I looked up I saw the light clouds skimming the far away top of the mountain again.   You can see the grey mountain looming up behind the tree line.   Ah, yes, it's good to be here, even in the fog and drizzle.

Grateful for our first live births on our farm,
Debbie

Mud Room Reveal

 One of the blessings of having an enclosed 4 season porch is that it gives us a place to store things.....one of the problems of having an enclosed 4 season porch is that it becomes a dumping ground for anything that doesn't have a permanent home.   As my friends and family know, I like to keep things organized.....from my Tupperware filled pantry to the boot tray where we drop our muddy shoes and boots.    I despise piles!   I feel that any and all items in a home should have a place to store them.   You know, a place for everything and everything in it's place.

Well, for over a year now, we've been using our enclosed porch for everything from a sewing porch(until we finished off my new studio) to a holding area for coats, hats and mittens dumped on an overused clothes tree.   As we continue to find "homes" for all the loving items we brought up from our much larger home in Florida, I feel more and more satisfied that we are not living in total chaos.   Building a mud room cabinet wall was a natural in our progression toward that end.

So this is what we built this week:

Nothing fancy, this space just to the right of the kitchen entry door is all about function.   With a little country cute thrown in to make me smile.  We bought 2 pantry cabinets from Lowe's and installed them first with the amount of space we had available between the kitchen door and the 2 meat packed freezers.

My only request was that this fun vintage wire shelf fit in between the cabinets.   Now our coats have a designated place from which to hang, and there's plenty of space for hats, and whatever else we use on a daily basis, depending on the weather outside.   I love this shelf and have been waiting ever since we moved here to find a permanent home for it.   I think this space suits it just fine, don't you?

We took the extra shelves out of the bottom of both pantry cupboards and reused them in the upper section, which gave me a safe place to finally store my platters where they won't get banged around and chipped.   My electric griddle even fits up there.   Yippee!  Another big kitchen item finally has a home.

As these cabinets were meant to have shelves in them and not hanging coats, we had to come up with a solution to attach a bar for the coats that would be secure enough to hold a bit of weight.    Ta-da!   Joel came up with the idea to use 12" wide melamine shelving and it worked great!    And I'm so happy we can hang our winter coats out of sight until we need them again next year.   I also had extra door knobs from our kitchen project and we used them on this project so as to make it blend in with the new kitchen.

All winter long we three would drag our muddy boots into the kitchen so we could sit down on a chair to put them on before going outside.   You know what that meant.  Yup.   Caked on mud always ended up all over the floor as we walked around.   Joel put together this really sturdy bench seat in between the cabinets so now we have a place where we can pull out our boots from underneath the bench, sit down and put them on before going outside.   Problem solved.

Unfortunately, my flash washed out one of the details I just love about this project.....we put vertical slats of beaded boards on the wall behind the bench and wire basket.   I'm sorry it didn't show up in this shot, but trust me, it looks really farm house-y.   You know, my kind of decorating look for our house.   The basket on the right is from Joel's Aunt Ruth and I use it to bring in flowers and veggies from our gardens.   It's just so much more satisfying to me to use pieces with a history while going about my daily chores.

As for the bench, well, I used the stain from our step into the kitchen and then sanded it in between each of 3 coats of polyurethane to make sure it will stand up to years of use and abuse.  Joel made sure it is good and sturdy with 3 supports underneath the 2"x8" bench boards.    And now there is a load of space beneath the bench to store our boots and shoes.   One thing about living on the farm, we track a lot of mud, dirt and grass into the house.   A lot!   I'm hoping that by pulling our mucky shoes off and placing them under the bench we can eliminate tracking so much dirt into the rest of the house.

When we were at Lowe's yesterday, I purchased 2 of these solid boxes and organized our hats, gloves, mittens and scarves in them.  Now they won't be a jumbled up mess when we go to use them next winter.   I still have plenty of room to install another shelf above the mittens and I'm sure I'll fill that space later today as I unpack yet another of the few remaining boxes in storage on the other porch.

I know what you're thinking, who knew it would take me over a year to finally finish unpacking?  I've always been the woman who was unpacked within two weeks of a move....pictures on the walls and everything!   But in my defense, it's kinda hard to unpack when we have such small closets and no garage.   Now we're finding more and more ways to be creative in our storage solutions and this mud room fix is awesome.

While I had the stain and polyurethane out, I decided to finish up the butcher block we installed last Fall in the butler's pantry.   It sure looks a lot prettier stained dark and all smooth from multiple sandings in between coats of the poly.

  Oh, yeah, this is much better now.   And, it's also easier to wipe the counter clean since it's a smoother surface.   This little space packs a lot of function into one narrow room.   The washer and dryer are behind me in the photo and the repurposed old kitchen cabinets provide tons of storage for Ball jars and canning supplies, large kitchen electric appliances like blenders and extra staples such as flour and sugar sacks that are large and heavy.

While I was in the mood to clean up our messy enclosed porch, I asked my guys to bring the old wash stand down there.   We removed the shiny brass handles and replaced them with drawer pulls that match the kitchen.   Ahhhhh, I see a theme developing here.    Dark handles against creamy white painted cabinets.   Yes!   It's all coming together now.

And since Spring is officially here to stay it was time to bring out a sweet little nest with 3 little eggs inside it.   I love to stack plates inside the huge glass cloche and layer the whole thing on top of a cake stand.   That's how I decorate for Spring!

So, there you have it.    Our "little" project of the week.   Oh, yeah, in between all the construction, we spent 6 hours mowing for the first time this year.   It's been raining so much we had to take advantage of the one day when the sun was out and the grass was dried out enough to mow.   Soon it will be time to plant the gardens.   And our muddy boots now have a new home......

.....in the mud room,
Debbie

Violets Everywhere

I know it's Spring now, for sure, as the wild violets have begun popping up all over 2 separate areas of our yard.   Last year when they bloomed, I was so surprised to see them and simply admired them each day as I walked around outdoors.   But this year I knew I'd be doing more than only admiring them.   This year I am harvesting them. 

Yup.   Harvesting violets.   For what, you ask?   You see, you can use violets and their leaves to make tea.   Isn't that interesting?  Ok, maybe you don't think so, but I do.

It took about an hour to collect enough violets and leaves for the few yummies I wanted to make.   First, I pulled the stems off the flowers and placed the flower heads and leaves on one of my dehydrator trays.

I simply put the tray into the dehydrator and turned it on for 12 hours at 95 degrees.   The lower heat is used for herbs and delicate flowers.   By morning they were nice and crispy and ready to be put into a Ball jar for storage.  

By putting 6 dried flowers and 3-4 leaves in a teapot and adding boiling water, in 5 minutes you will have a lovely light blue shade of tea.   This recipe and many more for teas and tisanes are in a book by Cassie Liversidge entitled "Homegrown Tea".   I've grown many of the plants she suggests in the book and have enjoyed the tea from them over the winter.   This year I plan on expanding the teas I grow in the potager garden.

 And then there was one last item on my list of "try something new" with the violets.   First, the recipe required 2 cups of dark violet flowers pressed down in the measuring cup so as to make a dense and copious amount of violets.   That took a lot of violet picking!

The two cups of pressed violets were doused in 2 cups of boiling water and left to sit overnight to steep.   By morning the water was a beautiful deep shade of purple.   I squeezed the flowers so as to extract every single drop of purple water from them.   The violet water was put in a pot on the stove and I added 1/4 cup lemon juice and 4 cups sugar and brought the whole thing up to boil, stirring the whole time.   Once it boiled I added 3 oz. of liquid pectin and brought it up to a boil again for 2 minutes.   Then the liquid was ladled into canning jars and processed for 10 minutes. 

Voila!   Violet jelly!    Isn't it pretty?   How lovely it will be to bring this out to use for a tea party.  Can't.   Hardly.  Wait.

Just one more "food" to be found on the farm,
Who knew?
Deb