Another new adventure!!!

Ok, now that the offer has been accepted, we can share our exciting news! This moved a lot faster than we planned! We bought a commercial greenhouse! It's been a dream of ours for a LONG time! We passed one up years ago & have regretted it ever since. So we got an opportunity to buy another one & we figured we better buy it! This greenhouse is 30 x 60 and has WAY more room than we need...now. I'm hoping in the near future we can fill it up & run out of space! We bought the furnace to heat it year round and we bought the irrigation system and all the tables. We are so excited!!!

We had to disassemble it on the Nursery lot & move it to our farm. Thankfully. We are only 1 mile away. Whew! We also hired some great high school & middle school boys to help move things. They were a great help! Then even stayed & helped destroy the old hog barn. 

Years ago, the previous owners of our farm had cows, crops & hogs. When the market dropped out on hogs years ago and the owners got older, they quit raising hogs. So the old hog barn has been falling down for years & has been an eyesore & quite dangerous. It already had a concrete slab for a floor, so we decided to take the old hog barn down & erect the new commercial greenhouse in it's place. 

The new greenhouse has not been reassembled yet because we have so many field trips scheduled for the months of April & May. We love having kids out! We love to share our knowledge & see the kids play, have fun & learn about sustainable farming! 

This was the greenhouse before we disassembled it. It had been used as a storage facility for a couple of years before we bought it.

The picture above is the new greenhouse.

The picture above & below is part of the old hog barn.

This was a picture of the old hog barn before we tore it down.

Keep watching for updates!!! We'll post field trip pics soon too!

SPRING!!!!!

Oh how I've missed this time of year! I don't like Winter, but middle through each day, knowing that I'm one day closer to SPRING!!!! We are gearing up for our busy season. Well, maybe I should clarify, busy seasons! Spring, Summer & Fall are very busy! Winter is just a tiny bit slower, but farm life is always busy! 

We've had some opportunities to add some exciting new things to the farm! Once they are finished, I'll post pictures!!!

Guess what animal we are adding to our farm?!?! Goats! Have you tried goat roast? Goat pepperoni? Goat chops? Or my favorite, goat brats?!?! If you haven't, you don't know what you're missing! Don't knock it till you try it! Some of my kids are super picky, one will try just about anything. They all went back for seconds on the goat roast! AND, they knew it was goat! Ha! So, success! 

I'll be posting some recipes soon! We have done a great job with sticking to our no packaged foods and our eating out only once a week! It's going well! Plus, we've tried lots of new & exciting recipes! I feel most comfortable in my kitchen! It's my favorite room in the house! My family gathers around the bar in bar stools while I'm cooking or baking & they do homework, play games or just talk. I love it!

Here's a great pic I took recently of our farm! It's so pretty!

So...I may have an obsession...

As a mom, I rarely get to watch t.v.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I have plenty of chances to watch kids t.v. programs! I also get to watch a show or a basketball game at night as a family, but when do I get to watch whatever I want?!?!

We just recently got t.v., so I'm using the DVR to catch up! I DVR every single Pioneer Woman show! Then, when My Farmer is working all night long, I try to stay up to catch up with him for a few minutes when he comes in to warm up. So, while I wait on him, I watch the Pioneer Woman!  I sit here with my ipad in my hand to pull up her website & print off the recipe that I love.

Tonight, we had Glazed Apple Pork Chops (with yummy diced apples), green beans (that I grew & canned) with added jowl bacon (from our pig) to give it some extra flavor. I also fixed some Mac & cheese for the kiddos. My Farmer seemed to enjoy it too! I also made a loaf of white bread. For dessert, we had some Baked Fudge. Oh...my...goodness!!! Pure bliss!!! Wow!!! It's hard to describe, it's got a thin, crispy top layer, but the inside is a gooey goodness! Wow!!! I got 8 thumbs up! 😉

Farm updates....

It's been awhile since I've written a blog entry! Oops! Sorry! Things have been busy on the farm!

I must thank a dear friend of mine who has introduced me to the Pioneer Woman t,v. show! Oh...my...gracious!!!!! She is who I want to be! Haha! No complaints from my family! I have been prepping great meals, printing off tons of recipes & having fun making things for them to eat! Last night I made raspberry butter, for our Fench Toast this coming weekend. It looks amazing! I am really looking forward to trying it! I also made my homemade chocolate chip cookies this afternoon, with the help of my adorably cute 4 year old! I also threw in some southern style buttermilk biscuits, (frozen, not homemade), scrambled 1 & 1/2 dozen eggs, then fried up some of our pork sausage patties. So we had a big breakfast, for supper! Then, after cleaning up my kitchen, I look the leftovers & got breakfasts ready for the rest of the week! I combined soft shell taco shells, sausage, scrambled eggs & different cheeses, wrapped them up & threw them in the freezer. I wrote what Type of burrito each was on the foil, that way My farmer can grab one the night before, throw it in the fridge, then just zap it in the morning.

I'm finishing up my current semester in college, so have been taking lots of finals. I have a paper to finish for one course, then one last final so that I can enjoy a few days off before starting up my next semester. Whew!

Things have been super busy in the farm too! My Farmer has been working 80+ hours on his farming job off our farm. We have had a few baby calves recently too. We are currently shopping around for a new herd bull. My Farmer is lucky to have a large bull sale at his work & helps to take care of them, so he gets to interact with them frequently, watch their rates of gain, know their bloodlines, etc. We sold our last bull in December, so we are going to be syncing up our cows & heifers naturally so that we can attempt to have more calves at the same time. This seems counter productive, but is actually easier on us. Yes, it's round the clock work at times, but we find it to be better than having calves 12 months of the year. There are advantages & disadvantages to both of course.

All is well on the farm. We are really looking forward to the snow melting & Spring making it's way here, we are an outdoor family & love the breezes, smells, and activities outside!