Farm Life
Polar Vortex Hits the Homestead
The much talked about “Polar Vortex” made its way into Kentucky Wednesday. While school was called off, farm chores never are. We’re surviving, the animals are doing well and hopefully warm weather will return before too long. We knew that the Polar Vortex was coming for a few days, so we had time to prepare.…
Read MoreChore Charts for Children
We want more but do we want another chore. With the New Year, we’ve started dreaming of adding more to our homestead. We want to grow more food. We’ve been pondering raising other farm animals too. While these thoughts have been exciting, they have me thinking, “How is this going to happen when it was…
Read MoreHomegrown Thanksgiving Success
Thanksgiving unlike any before. We sat at the table, a bountiful Thanksgiving feast laid out in front of us. The amazing spread of food was more than a reason to give thanks… it was the culmination of a year’s worth of work, sacrifice and commitment. It was a meal to feed the soul as much…
Read MorePersimmon Seed Weather Prediction
The first year we lived on our property, we discovered we had a few trees with small, orange, crab-apple sized fruits on them. We weren’t sure exactly what they were until, one day in the fall, we tasted one and then we knew exactly what we had- a persimmon. The next year, we worked on…
Read MoreBeauty in the Fade, Fall on the Homestead
Finding meaning in fall. The leaves swirled down from our persimmon tree with a wind rushing up our hill. The chickens have lost quite a few feathers, as a palette of various shades have been wind-blown lining the sides of the chicken run like a tossed feathered boa. Our majestic sunflowers with multiple heads of…
Read MorePreserving Eggs for Winter
Fresh eggs long after the hens stop laying. People ask all of the time, what do you do with all those eggs? You can eat that many eggs? The truth is, we don’t get tons of eggs all year ‘round. We think we’ve found a way to continue to have fresh eggs in the winter.…
Read MoreOur First Predator Encounter
Not a single predator… until now. A predator is going to come hunting for dinner when you have a farm, it’s just a fact of nature. We’ve taken every precaution to protect our chickens and have been very fortunate… until now. When Chris designed the chicken coop and chicken run, he designed the fence to…
Read MoreWhy We Candle Chicken Eggs
What’s going on inside your chicken eggs? We never needed to know what is going on with the chicken eggs we bring indoors to consume, until recently. In fact, we thought we had it all down-pat. I guess when you have more than a handful of chickens, there is a lot more chicken behavior to…
Read MoreGarden Fresh Tomato Soup Recipe
There’s nothing like garden fresh tomato soup. After a couple sessions of canning tomatoes from our garden, and a few rounds of B.L.T. sandwiches, we needed another way to enjoy them and boy did we find the answer with this tomato soup recipe. Our dining room table has become the place to unload our rolled…
Read MoreCount ‘Em? Never Before They Hatch
And now we know why you never count your chickens before they hatch. For the past few weeks we’ve anxiously awaiting the arrival of chicks. We’ve counted down… and kept counting… and counting. Nothin’. Nada. Zip. It’s been a bit frustrating and worrisome. The Black Australorp hen began sitting on eggs more than a month…
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