Soap Making/Quilt Sewing Day

Decided to try out a new soap recipe/ technique.  Crock pot soap was a little different than what I've made in the past.  We'll see in a few weeks how it turns out!!

Mixing it all together. 

After a few minutes,  it comes to "trace". Looks like pudding...

What it looks like after cooking for 50 minutes. 

Got it in the molds to harden overnight.  Will pop them out tomorrow and let them cure for a few weeks.  I added lavender essential oil, so we'll see how good they smell....

Spending time getting the quilt top sewn up today and also planning to make homemade tortillas for supper tonight for the first time.  Fingers crossed,  been wanting to try doing this for a while. 

New Quilt

Been a busy week around here. The girls went back to school, I've been working on taxes, and just various other farm chores. We went up and banded Little Red's bull calf yesterday and wormed Maggie (our milk cow). She's been looking a little rough lately, so thought we'd give her an extra dose of wormer.

Started working on another baby quilt today. Hopefully I've got enough squares cut out; it just seems to take me forever to get them cut out and almost no time to sew them up.

I'll post a picture of it when I finish it. 

We are expecting some really strong storms tomorrow night, hopefully we won't lose power! Have a great rest of your week. God Bless and stay safe!

Bread Making Day!

Decided to bake a few loaves of bread today.  Haven't tried baking bread in awhile and had actually lost this recipe. 

 The dough ready to rise for an hour. 

Fresh out of the oven! It smells amazing in here! And almost a whole loaf eaten with supper says that it tastes awesome!

Seed Starting Day on the Farm

We usually start the tomato seeds and a few others right after the first of the year. Decided this year to wait a little longer on some of the warm weather crops like the cucumbers and squash. I planted 48 cells of tomatoes: Big Red, Amish Paste, Pink Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, Roma, and Abe Lincoln. Each cell has 2-3 seeds and when they get 3-4 leaves, I'll separate them up into individual cells. I can't stand the thought of just snipping the extras off, so I give each of them their own pot to grow in! Praying God will bless us with loads of tomatoes this year!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year  from Our Farm to you! We had a really blessed evening with our friends Leslie and Brent. Jeff made homemeade chicken and dumplings, yeast rolls and cinnamon rolls. Brent bought LOTS of fireworks for the grandkids and they enjoyed shooting them off so much! Roxie on the other hand, didn't like them one bit, poor baby.

Our youngest daughter and her girls moved in with us yesterday until her husband is able to find them a place to live. So our household doubled in size overnight. We are blessed to have them here even if only for a little while.
Been trying to get some of our beeswax rendered out for a few days. Finally got it done a few hours ago, now onto getting it added to chap stick, lotion and soap, etc!

This is what the wax looks like after Jeff squeezes the last bit of honey out.

I put it in an old pot, add water and boil it until it all becomes liquid.

I then let it cool. The wax becomes a really pretty yellow and floats to the top of the water. The brown is all the trash.

The flip side- it looks to me like cooked ground meat. I try to scrape as much of it off as I can, then put it back in the pot to heat again, watching very closely due to it being just straight wax this time.

I then pour it through cheesecloth to catch the last of the impurities.

Then it gets poured into my 1 ounce bar molds to cool.

And now it's ready to use!

I also made homemade blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning. Used the pig mold my mom got for the gkids, turned out sooo cute!

Have a safe and Happy 2020!!

Hello from the Farm!

 Hi! We realize that its been a VERY long time since we've been on here and we have chosen to make a change to that!! Our plans are to be much more active on here starting this New Year and to begin sharing more of our daily lives and happenings on the Farm!

 When I think back, I guess the biggest change in our lives is that we were able to move back home a little over two years ago. So glad to be out of our camper after five years and very thankful to God that my mom is well enough that we don't need to be there on site! And a little over a year ago we purchased 2 lots in High Island, Texas just over a minute from the beach!! So we are living a dual lifestyle - farmers and beach bums. We love it!! So I'll be posting farm and beach photos from time to time.

 So back to today..... Jeff's been at the wood splitter  quite a bit today. We were given a huge tree from an Aunt and him and Jordan have been working on getting it split up and ready for the wood heater. I worked on getting the Christmas tree and decorations down and packed away. I know, lots of people keep theirs up until after New Year's, but it was time for it to be put away. I set up the incubator yesterday and put 16 eggs in it this morning. Our hatch rate was pretty good last year, so figured I'd give it another shot. Plans are to get these hatched in 21 days and then maybe set another dozen or so in to hatch in February.

                                                                 

We are expecting a cold front over night which we really are looking forward to. It's been warm here, I even have a few Spring bulbs blooming. I always try to get our tomato plants started around the first of the year. Don't know yet how many we are going to try to grow this year. We both are having lots of trouble with our backs, but the tomatoes did better than anything else last year. Also started the sweet potato slips today, usually start them around Thanksgiving but totally forgot about them this year. Hopefully they will catch up and grow alright.

Spring Farm Update

Thought it was about time to jump on here and do a bit of an update.....

My Fairy Garden-isn't it cute?

Ok-now on to some pictures of the garden-our potatoes are up and growing-some are still coming up almost daily and are the prettiest ones I think we've ever grown. Just hope as much is going on underground as above!

This is our new adventure this year-wheat! We almost gave up on it-actually plowed under 2 rows of it when we started on the garden, but decided to leave one row and now it has lots of heads. Gotta do research now and find out when its ripe.

Cabbage! Think I might let the grandkids help cut it tomorrow when they are here...

Tomatoes-We started all of our plants from seed this year-only Heirloom varieties.

Cucumbers-Can't hardly wait for fresh ones!

Squash-we planted these from seeds-yellow crook neck and yellow scalloped varieties

Our Pear tree out front was just beautiful this spring and now is LOADED with baby pears!

We thought we were going to lose the Orange tree, but it is starting to blossom-they smell so good!

We have 2 Meyer Lemons that have done absolutely nothing the last 2 years-but now are fixing to blossom!

We took 3 of the cows to the Vet and all 3 are bred! YEAH! We can start looking for calves the end of July-we can hardly wait! The milk cow is finally bred and we can look for her to calf around the first of September.

We filled up the Hummingbird feeders Thursday and started seeing hummers the very next morning. Haven't seen many today-but its been cloudy and cool today.

And the best for last----We have a new grand daughter! Emma Grace was born on February 20, 5 weeks premature-weighing in at 8lbs 1 ounce. She spent a few days in the NICU, but has gained over 2 pounds and is doing awesome! Thank you Lord!

Wishing everyone a wonderful Easter!!

God Bless!