Category Archives: Farm Home

Mostly things about managing our busy, MUDDY(!), house and home, with a little bit about how we sit around on the porch and enjoy the flowers growing! {smile}

Key Topics: In the kitchen; kids and chores; cleaning; organizing and simplifying; crafting and creating; sending love; sewing; decorating and DIY; holidays; and flower gardening and porch sitting.

 

Canning Peach Butter

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Well, I took an unexpected blogging holiday! {smile} I got so wrapped up in enjoying the long weekend with the family I just didn’t even think to get on the computer. I did snap some pictures though. They all turned out a little…interesting…since it was rainy and foggy for a good part of our three days. One of the things on my TO-DO list for the long weekend was a couple of canning recipes I had been saving on Pinterest. I’ve done quite a bit of freezing, but I’ve never … Continue Reading…

30+ Mulberry Recipes for Wild-Harvested Berries

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We’ve been harvesting mulberries lately in the evenings. We have 3 big mulberry trees on the edge of our top field that get loaded with berries every spring. It’s a bit of a fight to get them before the birds do! Over the years we’ve used different methods to collect berries–from the kids eating them all without telling me, to focused foraging efforts. The easiest way is for someone to climb the tree and shake them all out onto a tarp. I’ve seen folks also use a sheet, but then … Continue Reading…

Sock Snakes and Paper Penguins

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My adventures with being SuperMomma this week are almost over! (Ha!) I’ve done fleece bats, sock snakes, paper penguins, and I’ve got to come up with 3 fish by 5 pm this evening, before I put my cape away for a while. To be serious for a moment, VBS ends tonight and while the kids have had a great time, it’s been a long week. We get up early around here and now they’ve been staying up late too. They’re tired. And I know all the amazing VBS workers at church … Continue Reading…

5 Days of Organizing Back to School…Simple Wardrobes {with Printable Checklists}

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This week is our first week back to school, and I’m joining 21 other bloggers in a 5 Days of Organizing and Cleaning series. Monday: It Starts at Home Tuesday: Supplies and Gear Wednesday: Food and Meal Planning Thursday: Simple Wardrobes Friday: Fresh Routines and Learning Lifestyles.   I’ve posted on and off all summer here and over on the Walking in High Cotton Facebook page about my frustrations with finding appropriate clothes for the Ladybug. Modest clothes. Clothes that let her express herself without exposing herself. It’s harder than … Continue Reading…

Farm Reads Book List for February 2021

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I’ve always been a bookworm. Really, from childhood. Those Pizza Hut Book It! challenges were my bread and butter growing up. (BTW, did you know Book It! is still around and runs a great summer reading program?!) I go through phases now where I have a lot of time to read, and then less time (or motivation). But I always have a book list to be read and usually stacked up on my night stand. I go through spurts where I’m reading a lot of young adult fiction to preview … Continue Reading…

Daily Learning Routine for Non-Homeschooling Moms

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Boy, the world is quite a mess lately, hmm? Our kiddos are home full-time until September and Mr. Fix-It and I are both Essential workers at our off-homestead jobs, so our house has been kinda reeling lately. A little bit of organization goes a long way! We have always done summer home-learning activities, but I had to look over my previous activities and make some adjustments for this new phase of Crisis-Schooling. It’s not really the same as homeschooling. I’m not trying to cover a complete school year or curriculum. … Continue Reading…

Using Up Extra Eggs With Breakfast Freezer Cooking

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This time of year the chickens really get down to business and each hen start laying about two eggs every three days–not quite one egg a day. Egg laying is related to daylight hours, so longer daylight hours this time of years leads to the start of the spring egg glut. {smile} With 15 chickens in our chicken house right now, we get about a dozen eggs a day! Yes, we do sell eggs. But as we’ve downsized the farm, we have reduced our marketing time and focused more on self-reliance. … Continue Reading…

Lunch Gear When You Pack Every Day! {School Days Series}

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We’re getting ready to head into yet another school year in just a few weeks, and I know a lot of folks are already in school or full-on back-to-school mode. I’m still sorting and organizing to get us ready right now, and I thought this little {School Days} series might help any busy mommas new to the school scene–or frustrated because what they’re doing just isn’t working. In addition to managing clothes, chores, homework, and school supplies, there’s this whole time slot of our daily life that revolves around lunches. Yep, lunches. … Continue Reading…

Easy DIY Luggage Tags

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As I wrote last week with our Summer Camp Packing lists (did you download your FREE copy?) our kiddos have been adventuring away from home a lot this summer. They visited my sister, my mother-in-law, and now church camp. This is Speedracer’s first year at church camp and we’ve developed several little rites of passage for the first year. One is that they get their first toiletry bag (or shaving kit bag for the boys) and one is that they get their personalized luggage tags. This is an easy and … Continue Reading…

How to Have Real Food for Dinner on Crazy Busy Weeknights

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We have been in the midst of a very busy season around here. The kiddos have a summer full of family visits, sports practice, and fun camp experiences, against a background of our two full-time jobs and managing the homestead. I’d love to be able to say that eating a healthy dinner in the midst of all that running around is our number one priority, but can I be honest for a moment? Our #1 family wellness goal in this season has become just not eating fast food every night! … Continue Reading…

Quick 1 Minute Mini Envelope Tutorial

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I love sending my kiddos lunchbox love notes all through the school year so that we can all stay connected while we’re apart for the day. So you know I had to come up with something for the Ladybug while she was away at camp for a whole week! I sat down to make up little notes to stick in her bag and remembered something genius I saw on Pinterest at some point. Mini envelopes made of hearts. Yep, jackpot! Quick, easy, versatile. I made up about 10 of them, including personal … Continue Reading…

Family Vehicle First Aid Kit…with Printable Checklist

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The first couple weeks of football practice, Speedracer got a nose bleed. He’s prone to them in hot weather. So the team opened up their brand new, 400+ piece, first-aid kit and got out…nothing. There were no tissues. No wet wipes without alcohol. No gauze pads, only a sterilized gauze roll (which they were about to open but I stopped them) and “non-stick wound pads.” Basically nothing we actually needed. So I got our family first aid kit out of our truck in the parking lot because I did have … Continue Reading…

How to Help Needy Families with Your Extra Eggs

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As I said on Monday, We have about 15 chickens in the chicken house right now and during peak egg season that amounts to about a dozen eggs a day! As we’ve downsized, marketing our eggs has been less of a priority and we’ve focused on using them up, or giving them away. Our last post talked about ways to save those eggs for your own family’s use. But farm fresh eggs can provide huge nutritional value to families that struggle to put food on the table! This post is about … Continue Reading…

New Babies, New Jammies, New Year…the Daily Farm Adventures {96}

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As you may have seen on Facebook, we started off our Christmas holiday with a new calf on Christmas Eve morning! The Cowboy found him out there with his Momma while doing the morning chores. Molly is such a good momma that she’s never needed any help–and always has boys! Good for the freezer, but I wish she’d throw a heifer because we’d definitely keep her. Her calves also always start out such a lovely fawn brown, but eventually turn gray like our bull Chester. We spent the rest of … Continue Reading…