It seems that life happened and this blog DIDN'T for the past two years! I can't believe it's been that long!

I'm not even going to pretend I can think of everything that's happened around here...but here's the short list off the top of my head....

My husband and I painted the house. The TALL house. By ourselves. Scaffolding can be really high. And somewhat wobbly.

That's better!

Then we took down one of the old unusable chimneys. Did I mention the house is tall? Soooo worth it for the view from up there though. I may have done more picture taking than helping on this project.

I've come a long way with my gardening efforts, this past summer I was able to do some canning, fermenting, and enough freezing to fill an entire freezer. I was even able to buy a little greenhouse which has been so much fun and I can't wait to get out there again (winter is starting to seem loooong!)! I still have lots of goals in that area, including finding another spot for an additional garden because I ran out of space in the existing ones last year and didn't get to plant everything I wanted.

We have a freezer full of our own farm-raised and (mostly) grass fed beef, and more cattle currently in the pastures.

We did a few meat chickens, but we had a little trouble there (bad planning on my part) so mostly we have layers and had a crazy overabundance of eggs over the summer! Working on a better plan for this coming season (hopefully!).

                                             Gardening with chickens...always a challenge!

We've done lots of remodeling/fixing up inside the house. Some of those projects are still underway.

You can't really tell in the pic, but those walls were a (old, dirty)  seafoam green. And old green carpet EVERYWHERE! Green also happens to be my least favorite color.

The thing about living room pictures is...I don't post pics of the family on the blog, but I don't have a single picture of the whole living room without someone in it! So I had to settle for these pics of my favorite part of the room, the woodstove, and one that just kind of sums up how cozy it is!

I got a pretty good start on an orchard with apple and pear trees, grape vines, strawberries, and raspberry and blackberry bushes. I'm hoping to add a few more fruit trees this year.

But it's going to be awhile....

I had Mono and some complication from that over the fall and winter which really REALLY slowed me down, but I have high hopes for Spring! I already got my first seed order, have fresh new herbs started in the window sill, and a new canner just waiting for a successful harvest! Of course, this is Nebraska, and we currently have a winter storm heading for us and probably a few more to come before Spring is a reality, but I'll be dreaming of it while I watch the snow fly!

A Busy First Summer On The Farm (Part 3)

Happy New Year everyone!

So here we are on January 1st and I'm finally getting the last post of my Summer updates done!

I promised an animal update....so here we go...
Our little Holstein grew a lot this summer eating all that good grass.

We spent a lot of time with him so he's very calm and such a nice little guy. He is getting bigger now though and we have to keep an eye on him!

We've lost a goose and a few chickens to coyotes over the summer.

I love the sound of the coyotes at night (when the chicken are safely locked up!) but they've been  hard on everything from poultry to cats around here.

However, we do have a new batch of guineas! We thought a coupe of our guineas had been eaten because they disappeared for awhile, but then they turned up with twelve new babies!

We also really enjoyed having the Angus herd in one of our pastures.

Our hope is that we can rent the pasture out again this year and use that money to work on building our own herd. Not of Angus though...I would love a jersey or two, a short horn...still thinking about what we would like to have.

There are a few other animals we hope to add (goats are toward the top of the list, and my husband really wants a horse!), this summer was just a bit too busy with selling our old house and adjusting to our new place to get everything we wanted done! 

Well, that's about it for my summer updates! 

Are you a fan on our Facebook page? If so, you may have seen a pic I recently posted of a nice, warm fire...that's our new woodstove and the last piece of the living room remodel! We'll talk more about that next time!

Wishing everyone a wonderful new year!

This post was shared at:

http://www.myturnforus.com/

A Busy First Summer On The Farm (Part 2!)

In addition to all the garden/preserving work I mentioned in Part 1, we also dove into the house remodeling. I love living in an old house. I like that is has a history and (crazy as it sounds) I feel like there's a certain warmth and comfort from past years that stays with the house. I like to think about the fact that in a house over a hundred years old, anything we go through, this house has probably seen it before. Other people got through their troubles, and had lived their happiest times, and loved their families within these same walls. I'm not the only one who feels this sense of warmth in this old house.  The first time my Dad walked in the door he said "this feels like home". We've had many family, friends, even my kids teachers come to our house and immediately say that it feels like "home" or reminds them of wherever home is to them. (Which often leads to their childhood stories of Mom's pot roasts and pies, climbing trees, or playing in old barns!) I would like to take credit for that and just say that I've made my house very comfortable and homey somehow....but I know that's not it!

Anyway, the other side of having an old house is that there is much work to be done to fix old damage and spruce it up a bit. We are doing all the remodeling ourselves so it's kind of a long road. But I think we've come a long way in just a year!

The first thing we really needed was a shower on the main floor for my parents (who live with us) to be able to access easily. We actually did this last Winter. We built an area onto an existing bathroom by pushing a wall out into another room.

 Existing (but showerless) bathroom.

Room commonly known as my sewing room although it's more of a multi-purpose space!

And walls going up for the new shower area to be built.

When we get around to remodeling the whole bathroom I'll have an"after" picture.

We also completed the sewing room, but then we started the living room and had to move everything into the sewing room temporarily (sigh) so pictures of that will  have to come later too.

Next up was the kids rooms. They have great oak floors that didn't need much work, and other than a couple new windows, most of what needed to be done there was cosmetic.

Before....

 After. 

The kids chose their own colors and this one wanted a wilderness/cabin feel. I was a little concerned that all these deep colors would make the room too dark, but it actually looks great!

We added some antlers and lots of framed pictures of the Rockies. 

Here's another bedroom before....

And a very girly after! 

Last,but definitely not least, is our current project...the living room. We knew there was some old damage to the floor we would have to fix,but we didn't know how bad it would be until we got the carpet pulled up....

 ...ands saw this! Hello, basement!

Long story short, we ended up taking out the entire floor,

 replacing many of the floor joists...

...and putting in a whole new sub-floor.

 This project is still underway, the sub floor is complete, the new wiring is hooked up, new heating system installed, and walls patched just waiting to be mudded this week. We have a new wood stove coming next month, I'm sooo excited about that, last winter was our first winter without one and we really missed it! Then paint, flooring, and finally done!

So, that's what's been happening inside the house this summer. Next up....animal updates!

A Busy First Summer On The Farm (Part 1!)

Hello! I'm back! :) I never planned to take a "summer vacation" from the blog, I just never seemed to get a spare moment! Well, I did, but it was 1 AM and I was TIRED! I'm soooo looking forward to catching up with all of you now!

Our first full Summer here was very eventful and productive, although somehow we're always left feeling like there was more we wanted to accomplish.

One of the big things to start out our Summer was that we sold our old house.

This was something were so anxious to get done because it allowed us to pay off the last of our student loans and FINALLY reach our goal of being debt free! We made this goal and started working toward it as soon as we got married. There were times it didn't seem like it would ever happen, so getting this close was both exciting and stress-inducing...just hoping the house would sell for what we needed to put us where we wanted to be financially. 

We had completely gutted and remodeled this house, so it makes me happy to think of the person who bought it hopefully enjoying it!

Once we got that out of the way, we settled in for a Summer of crazy weather. It wasn't so great for the gardens, but it did make for some beautiful skies.

It also brought enough rain to wash out fences, turn our road into a river, and bring lots of snapping turtles down the creek and into our pastures with the cattle!

What plants didn't get washed away, destroyed by hail, or blown away with the wind, did manage to produce enough to keep me busy canning, freezing, and dehydrating! I wish I had taken more pictures of all this, but with fresh produce piling up on the counters, floor, and porch, photography didn't seem like the best use of my time!

We were also blessed to be surrounded by some stunning flowers, some we planted, some just turning up on their own.

I have so much more to tell you...but I'm thinking you have have other things to get done today besides reading my blog....so we'll pick this back up soon with animal news, house remodeling, and and some small town summer fun.

Can't wait to catch up with you all! What was the highlight of your Summer?

Apricot Jam

Our apricot tree didn't produce any fruit this year because of the very late freeze we had. We were all pretty disappointed about that! However, we've been very fortunate to be able to go to our cousins' house this week and get some from their tree! I may freeze some later, but first I wanted to make some jam. I've made one big batch today and am planning to make another this evening, but I thought I would take a few minutes to share the recipe with you in case you are lucky enough to have apricots this year and want to give it a try!

This is a simple old-fashioned recipe, so be warned....there's a lot of sugar in here!

First you will need to peel your apricots (very briefly dipping them in very hot water will make this much easier) and take out the pits. Farm Kids are great at pitting the apricots!

Next, you'll crush them, I used a potato masher for this. For this recipe you'll need two quarts of the crushed apricots.

Put them in a large saucepan and add 1/4 cup lemon juice, then add in 6 cups of sugar (I warned you!) and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Heat slowly until it boils, and then boil rapidly and stir frequently, until it gels. Once it has the desired consistency, pour into your hot jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace and put the lid and ring on.

Then just process in a boiling -water canner for 15 minutes.

If you are new to boiling-water canning (or canning in general) the Ball preserving books (check our Facebook page for a link to one of my favorites) are great for great step-by-step directions. Anytime you're preserving foods you need to be very careful to follow directions exactly, so refer to a canning guide for more detailed instructions if needed.

Well, back to jam-making!

What is your favorite fruit for jam or jelly?