August - 1 day at a time

A friend of mine posted a great idea on her facebook page that I wanted to try and challenge you try as well.

Each day in August, take a picture and post it.  It can be anything!  Just title the album "August - One day at a time".

I was thinking just earlier today, how quickly it all goes by and I can't believe it's already August!  So here's a great way to reflect on each day and remember.

Here is mine for today - a relaxing Sunday Afternoon, and watching the goats graze outside my bedroom window.

You can keep up with each picture via my Facebook Album throughout the month.

Home Office

Yup - this is my working spot today.  I love my life!

Note to self: buy a LONG extension cord.

Dreams can come true!

“Dreams are like stars...

you may never touch them,

but if you follow them

they will lead you to your destiny.”

I’m not sure when it started, but sometime in my early teens I decided that I wanted to live on a farm. I think a large part of it came from reading the books written by an old-school country veterinarian, James Herriot and his All Creatures Great and Small series. His well-written stories showed the hard work and pure love of animals.  At this point, I also considered becoming a veterinarian - until I realized how much chemistry was involved.

It became a dream to live on a minimum of 5 acres and have cows, pigs, chickens, etc. I wanted to live in the country on a big farm house with a wrap-around porch with a porch swing that I could sit on each evening. I would look through home plan books, and find the styles I loved.  I would imagine buying an old farm house and finding amazing treasures in the attic.

I wanted the simple life. To be surrounded by nature, the circle of life and to have it be JUST like all the books I read about life in the country. My family teased me about going to college in Southern Utah and marrying a farmer or cowboy. I even took an Agriculture class in college hoping it would help.

Didn’t meet any guys, but I did go lambing for my final.

While we all have dreams of our life, they do not always come to fruition. Often the simple realities of life get in the way of our idealized dreams.

Recently I took a psychology of motivation course and come upon a theory of motivation that basically relies on the premise that 'a goal without a plan is just a wish.' 

This leads to the question - what can we do so that our dreams become plans, and now just wishes?  What can we do to make them happen?

This weekend, one of my dreams came true.  I moved to a 5 acre piece of land.  It has a barn, a shop for the hubby, the old, original farmhouse and a run-down summer kitchen.  One quick look in it shows what looks to be an old, but in good shape, apple press.

And this was the view out of my bedroom window this morning:

I can't wait to bring you more stories, recipes and pictures of my farm life! 

Book Review: Back to Basics

Find on Amazon

All growing up I remember reading this book, flipping through the pictures and reading things I thought I'd never see in 'real' life (aka, skinning a rabbit).  The book edition we had was with a yellow cover, but the information is all the same and wonderful.

A few years ago I purchased this recent edition for my husband as a gift, because he used to have it as well. 

As we have slowly built our family farm, we have referred to it often.  Now, as we prepare to move to a 5 acre property, I know that we'll be using it more often.  Whether you're a small, suburban gardener or working on a more self-sustaining home, this book is a MUST HAVE!!

A Farmwife's Easter Egg Hunt

One of the most fun traditions of Easter is the Egg Hunt.  However, they don't have very many for adults (unless you happen to be brave enough and close enough to take on the crazy moms at Alpenrose Dairy in hunting for diamonds in their eggs - I am not).

On the farm, we get a daily egg hunt!  Here is what it is like for me.

Go outside, and get a big bucket of scratch (cracked corn, sunflower seeds and whatever other treat we mix in there this time)

Head out to the aviary / coop area.

Toss scratch out to the Lovely Ladies.

Some get too impatient and just come and get it from me.

Gotta give treats to the pheseants too!

Look!  Pheseant eggs!

Found one!  Lazy bird didn't want to go lay it in the nest.

Found some in the coop!

Today's Bounty

Happy Easter!

Granny's Fried Chicken

So, a couple years ago my sister-in-law started a great recipe blog to collect recipes from friend's and family.  My dad, ever the creative one, added one of his favorite recipes from his childhood.  Here is a direct quote, and a link if you'd like to find it.

Granny's Fried Chicken

As most of you know, I grew up on a ranch. Not the cool kind, like horse ranch, or cattle ranch… a chicken ranch. And let me tell ya, there is nothing romantic about a chicken ranch. But they do have chickens! We would get a few hundred chicks every couple of months. They were two days old and were supposed to be all hens, since my dad was an egg producer. Well along about 4 or 5 days old it was always apparent that they missed a few roosters. These were destined for the fry pan. Now I don’t remember how old they had to get before they became dinner, but here is the "recipe".


*Find an old galvanized pipe about 4 feet long.

*Grab your "dinner chicken" out of the cage and hold by both legs.

*Hike up your dress to just above your knees and spread your legs with one foot on one end of the pipe.

*Bend over and insert chicken’s head under the pipe so the pipe lays just across the neck.

*Place other foot on other end of the pipe, bending at the knees.

*Hold tight to the chicken legs, straighten knees, straighten your back, look up, and pull on chicken legs.

*When head pops off swear softly under your breath and toss chicken away about 5 feet.

*When chicken stops running around (yes, they do this) go gather him up.

*Cut around the "vent" and pull out the innards with one clean jerk (I think this is an Olympic event in some 3rd world countries).

*Toss the innards on a sheet of newspaper, pick out the gizzard, liver and heart and discard the rest.

*Cut off the legs at the knees and discard. (Except in Africa where they are saved for the cooking pot… yum, right Tyler?).

*Dip the chicken in a pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers and make it smell really good (NOT!)

*Pluck off all the feathers, even the little bitty ones. (Granny didn’t always follow this step very well).

*Cut up chicken in various pieces.

*Roll the chicken pieces in some whipped up eggs.

*Roll the chicken in some flour that you just kinda dump on the counter top.

*Fry the chicken for a while in some Crisco in an electric skillet at a pretty hot temperature.

*Salt and pepper to taste.

Now some suggestions: If you’re frying up white leghorns (pronounced "leg-erns") you will need about 1 chicken per person. There ain’t much meat on them, they are bred for laying eggs, not for eating. Second, and perhaps most important, don’t forget to clean up the flour on the counter right away. If you don’t, some young boy is likely to come along and slap it with his hand. This is very entertaining as Granny lets out a delightful yelp and chases the boy around the house. This could happen several times if you don’t clean it up right away. So be sure to do that. I’m not sure you will be able to find the boy to help clean it all up. He usually doesn’t come back until it’s time to eat the chicken.

That’s the recipe I grew up with. If I recall right, it’s mighty tasty. And Granny loved cooking it. Even the young boy part.

Pop J.

I love my Granny!  She was an amazing inspiration and role model for me.  I wanted to add a picture I put together composing one of her quotes.  Towards the end of her life as she was battling Alzheimer's, she had periods of amazing insight.  This is one of them.

Babies for Fluffy

A few weeks ago one of our hens started getting really broody.  She would protectively guard the eggs when I would go to collect them each day. Now, it wouldn't do her any good to guard those eggs, because we don't keep a rooster around.

This may sound silly, but I related her plight to those of many of my friends who have struggled to have kids and couldn't.  Here was a hen who wanted nothing more than to sit on a nest for weeks on end and have some cute little babies to tend and raise and tend.

So, I put an ad on Craigslist to see if anyone had some fertilized eggs that my little Fluffy could sit upon.  I got one response and picked up 5 eggs from her a few days later.

For three weeks Fluffy sat patiently in her little nest (we isolated her from the other hens), and kept those little eggs at just the right temperature. Yesterday we moved her cage/nest and set her up with her own private yard so the big hens wouldn't attack the babies when they hatched and I saw one cute baby fluffy face poking out from under the big fluffy chicken.

Today we head out to feed the chickens their scratch for their evening treat and out pops Fluffy with four little fluffy chicks following her.  It was amazing to watch her teach them how to scratch and eat, and she talked to them the entire time.

Then she climbed back into her nest and called and encouraged her little babies to hop into bed.  They listen a whole lot better than my kids! Soon they all hopped up into the nest and burrowed under the covers (mom) and settled down for the night.

We've been hatching eggs for awhile, but there's something just heartwarming about seeing nature at work - even if she is the adopted mother to those chicks. 

Now I truly understand the meaning of the phrase "Mother Hen"