Storm Season

This week we had a pretty strong storm blow through our area. We had a few nervous moments watching the sky turn black, the wind start to blow, severe thunderstorm warnings and then tornado watches issued for us while we waited anxiously for my husband to make it home from his job site.

We even ended up spending a little time in the basement as we listened to reports that a strong storm system was headed our way. Our power went out, but fortunately we had someone watching out for us and texting me with the latest storm updates! As soon as the lightening and wind calmed a bit we switched our generator on and were back to normal. The worst of the storm ended up going to our South and we only had some branches blown from some of our trees. 

Not everyone was so lucky. Two of the tiny towns to our South had a lot of damage (though, thankfully, no fatalities). The next morning when the Farm Kids heard about the trouble our neighbors to the South were having they immediately wanted to go help. With buildings down, metal grain bins shredded, and power lines down everywhere, it wasn't a situation where small children could really be in the yards and streets working on clean up. But there's always a way to help and it's so important to me that the Farm Kids know that. So we decided that since it's hot and humid out there we would pack up our wagon and buy a load of water, sports drinks, and juice boxes and head into the towns to hand out cold drinks to everyone working on the repair and clean up. We parked in the middle of town where it would be easy to go back to our SUV to reload the wagon as needed, and then headed out to walk through the town.

The damage was significant.

 These piles of metal were grain bins like the ones standing behind them.

                                            

These were not run down buildings, this is all damage from this storm.

 The vast majority of homes looked like this. This is damage from baseball size hail and very strong winds. The storm seemed to come from all directions and most houses have damage like this on all sides as well as many broken out windows.

 This tree was in the front yard of one of my favorite people we met today, a very lovely 82 year old lady who already had nearly her whole yard cleaned up (by herself!) as she had been out working on it since early morning! She was hauling loads of brush into her big pickup truck and hauling them away, had already boarded up her 11 missing windows, and was getting ready to start cleaning out the remains of her many flower beds. She showed us where each of her treasured bushes and flowers had been (nothing remained) but then happily showed us a planter of bright pink flowers that had been safely in her garage when the storm hit. They are now the only bright and colorful spot in sight! She was happy and optimistic, telling us that she was just fine, her insurance would cover the windows and she was just glad her house hadn't blown away with her in it! We will definitely always remember her and her wonderful outlook! 

By the way, we don't know where the top of this big tree went, it was nowhere to be found!

While we were out handing out our (very appreciated!) drinks, we saw others come to help as well, some of them just walking up to strangers and saying "What do you need? We can help."

It's always upsetting to see this kind of damage that people have to deal with, especially knowing that many of these folks don't have much money to work with. But it is also so uplifting and inspiring to see that every single person we encountered was smiling, telling us how happy they are to have their families safe and their homes (if maybe not their garages and barns!) still standing. They know they can find a way to fix the damage and are just thankful to live in a place where they know they can count on their community to be there to help them.

I am so very thankful to be a part of this community and to have the chance to watch my children learn from these wonderful people.

Are you having a stormy Spring? As I write this we are in another severe thunderstorm warning!

This post was shared over at:
http://www.homegrownonthehill.com/
http://www.livingwellspendingless.com/2014/06/05/thrifty-thursday-week-63/
http://www.myturnforus.com/
http://www.thejennyevolution.com/
http://www.lilsuburbanhomestead.com/2014/06/06/farm-blog-hop-ask-farm-girl/
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/
http://www.heritagehomesteaders.com/
http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/

Repurposing

It's been busy as usual here on the farm! 

Our last frost date has passed, yet we had a Freeze Warning AGAIN last night, which has pretty much halted planting, so work on the garden has mostly amounted to keeping the weeds at bay lately!

We're anxiously awaiting the cattle coming to our pastures, and have been finishing up fencing another pasture we hope to have calves in this year. We are also in the middle of remodeling the first room of our new (old) house! It seems like there's always so much going on, which is wonderful because we love to be busy!

This morning was pretty chilly outside so I was admiring all the little plants still under grow lights and in windows inside the house. I had quite a few herbs that really needed to get transplanted into pots. Unfortunately, I ran out of flower pots (the problem, of course, is not enough pots, it is NOT too many plants!). So I was considering running into the second hand store in town to see if they had any I could pick up for cheap. However, with all these other projects going, the budget is even tighter than usual right now and I felt a little guilty about spending anything. I went walking around outside to see if there were any empty flower pots I had overlooked (nope) and eventually ended up by one of the old barns...in my experience, you can always find something great in the barn!

Sure enough, plenty of treasures in there! I found a couple of old flower pots (chipped, but we'll call that "character"), an old enamelware bowl/pot, and an unused tool box. 

After a little scrubbing....

Great new little herb gardens!

It's warming up out there now, so I'm off to work on some of those weeds in the garden! Have a beautiful afternoon!

I love repurposing, what do you repurpose?

This post was shared over at:

http://www.heritagehomesteaders.com/heritage-homesteaders-hop-12

http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2014/05/clever-chicks-blog-hop-87-with-chicken.html

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com

http://thehomesteadinghippy.com/strawberry-piefrom-farm/

Unbirthdays

Hello all! Hope everyone is enjoying a beautiful Spring day! We've been having some great weather, and finally even a little rain. The garden is coming along and the balcony is filled with herbs and tomatoes! It's such a wonderful time of year!

We also have something extra to celebrate here on the farm today. It's an Unbirthday! 

We have a few Unbirthdays each year and every year I'm so very thankful for them. Because, you see, an Unbirthday for me is the day I got one of my siblings. They came into my life as foster children and the day they came to our house is their Unbirthday. They were actually part of our family before I was born, and I can't imagine life without them.

I can't even imagine how scary it must have been for a child to be driven down this road by a social worker to a house full of strangers and an unknown life.

Little did they know they were being taken to a family who was waiting with open arms to love them and care for them. They were about to get a set of parents, grandparents, and siblings.

Not to mention chickens, cows, horses, and other assorted farm animals!

But what we got was even better. We got the amazing opportunity to have these beautiful people in our lives.

I got  to have a sister to read me stories at night. And one to make me laugh and bake cookies with me.

And a brother, whose Unbirthday it is today. He is one of the most amazing, awe-inspiring people I have ever met. He is kind, generous, smart, brave, full of life, so many things, and every time I'm with him I think that I hope I can be even half the person he is.

If he were writing this I know he would talk about all the things he learned with our family on the farm.
 

But for me, it's all about everything I've learned from having him in my life. Like how much we can overcome if we are full of faith and love, and hope. And how one person can light up a whole room. And how hard I can laugh sitting around telling stories with my family about the adventures of our childhoods.

 Mom used to hold his hand to help him along the rocky roads of life, now he holds her hand, and all of our hearts.

Happy Unbirthday, Big Bro!

This post was shared over at:

http://www.myturnforus.com/

http://thehomesteadinghippy.com/

http://www.homegrownonthehill.com/

http://thehomesteadinghippy.com/strawberry-piefrom-farm/

More Planting....

After lots of cutting, clearing, and mowing we've finally gotten another area ready for planting! Here's what we were dealing with before...

This space will now be our orchard/edible perennial garden. We've gotten a few things in over the last few days and today's project was strawberries and grape vines.

 I plan to do a couple different strawberry varieties, but we started with Berries Galore for this first bed. These are an everbearing plant with big beautiful white flowers. You can also get this variety with pink flowers.

I ran out of daylight to get a picture of the finished bed, but you get the idea!

Next, Concord Grapes. We had these when I was growing up and I loved picking them from the vines and eating them. The skins can be a bit tough so we used to bite into them a little and then squeeze the fleshy part out of the skin into our mouths!

                                             

Last but not least, we did a  little more work on the new fence. 

So far, we haven't had to buy anything new for it, we've salvaged everything from stuff that was left laying around the farm over the years before we got here. One of the things we found was some very old barbed wire. I love old barbed wire. I had an Uncle who collected it and had hundreds of different types. Odd hobby, right? But it really is kind of cool....(or maybe that's just me?)

\

 I feel that often I can judge how good my day was by how dirty my hands are....today was a great one! 

                              

What are you working on this weekend?

This post was shared over at:
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/

Good Friday Planting

I've always been told that potatoes must be planted on Good Friday. This is apparently something that has been passed down from the "old timers"-aka people who know what they're doing, and my parents have done it for as long as I can remember. So today we continued the tradition and got all of our potatoes in the ground!                
                             

This year I'm most excited about our Purple Majesty potatoes. This is the first time we've planted these.

They probably won't be as good for winter storage as some of the others....but they're purple! Love that.

Another first this year, is that my Dad spent the afternoon passing on his potato planting wisdom to my oldest Farm Kid. I overheard some general how-to-live-a-good-life wisdom in there too while they were planting.

I love that even more than purple potatoes.

We also got our first shipment from The Arbor Day Foundation delivered today.

We had Dawn Redwood, Colorado Blue Spruce, and Walnut trees to plant.

We also had the cutest little lilac to get in the ground.

They all have orange tape tied on them to try to keep them from getting run over with the lawn mower when the Husband forgets where they're planted!

It's such a good feeling to get these things planted, to start putting our own touches on our new place. 

Do you plant potatoes on Good Friday? 

This post was shared over at:

http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/

http://beingfrugalbychoice.blogspot.com/

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/

http://back2basichealth.blogspot.com/

http://www.backyardfarmingconnection.com/

Mending Fences

Hey there! It's been so nice to able to get outside a little lately and the forecast for this week looks great-finally! One of the outdoor projects that we want to get completed in early Spring is to fence the North pasture.

The people who lived here before us had kept horses there, but it has obviously been awhile because it's very overgrown and the fencing is all down. There are many spots where trees and branches have fallen across the fence line also, so all of that had to by chopped up and moved. After a lot of clean up, it was time to start putting in the fence posts. Of course, like everything we do, we have a very small budget for this project so we started searching the old buildings and walking around the property looking for old steel posts that had been left behind over the years. Fortunately, we found a LOT of them! Enough for the entire fence. We also found a lot of the wooden posts we need to put in between the steel ones.

We loaded them up in truck and took them back to the pasture. The fence on the North side needed to go on the other side of the creek, so we started hauling the posts across by hand. Actually that's why I took this pic-I needed an excuse for a quick break! Then to put in all the posts...I will have to admit it turns out the Husband is far better at this than I am. I mostly helped sight the fence line and carried about a thousand posts to where they would need to go in and he followed and put them in the ground. Putting the wooden posts in with a shovel and an old-fashioned post-hole digger was a a bit tough and we ran into some spots where the ground was still frozen, making it even harder. Yes, this would be much easier with a gas-powered auger, but again, there's that budget issue!

I also had to make a couple journeys back to the house when one of the Farm Kids got a little to close to the creek and fell into a huge mess of mud. (Don't worry the creek is very shallow at the spot they were playing at and it was just a matter of getting dry boots and clothes and washing off a few layers of mud later! So worth it for all the fun they have!)

Even though we had a lot of land to cover and were doing everything the old-fashioned (slow) way, we really enjoyed being out there in the warm weather and sunshine, working together, and watching the kids enjoy being outdoors!

 Next we have to see how much old fencing we can find around the property and then purchase however much more we will need. It will be great to see the completed project and even better to see animals back here eventually!

What's new at your place?

This post was shared over at:

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/

http://www.heritagehomesteaders.com/

http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/

Can We Save The Kitten?

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that when we went to get eggs from the chicken house last night we found one of the farm cats had three newborn kittens in one of the nesting boxes. We didn't get too close, but could see that she was cleaning her kittens and appeared to be taking care of them.

Things had changed by this morning when we went to the chicken house. One of the kittens was dead. We weren't sure if the mother cat had killed it or one of the roosters or what, so we decided to keep checking back every little bit and see how the other two were doing. After a little while we found that the kittens had been moved to the floor of the chicken house. The mother was not there with them, but we hoped that she would return soon. The next time we went out there was only one kitten. We couldn't find the other. The mother was also not there and it soon became clear she had abandoned them. We would eventually find that the missing kitten had died as well.  

But that still left one little gray kitten in the straw in the chicken house. We decided to try to save it ourselves since it was obvious the mother cat was not going to. It was not moving and at first we thought it was already dead, but after holding it to warm it up for awhile, it started moving!  We put it in a box in the house, wrapped it in a dishcloth, and filled a jar with warm water for it to lie next to to keep warm. I went out to the next town over from us, which has a small farm store, and bought some milk replacement and a dropper to try to feed it. It took a couple attempts, but we did get it to talke a few drops of the milk replacement. It's still very, very weak, but I'll try to feed it again in a little bit, and we'll see what happens. I think it's chances of survival are fairly small, but we'll do what we can. It's quite a learning experience for the Farm Kids and they are really hoping we can help the kitten pull through. 

I know you can't see him very well in these pictures, but with all he's been through, I'm trying not to traumatize him anymore by moving him around too much.

If you haven't already liked us on Facebook, come join us and I'll post updates on the little guys condition!

This post was shared over at:

http://www.handymancraftywoman.com/

http://www.weliketolearnaswego.com/

http://blackfoxhomestead.com/

http://katherinescorner.com/

http://thehomesteadinghippy.com/