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.

 

5 Easy Tips to Start Using Essential Oils When You Don’t Know Anything About Them!

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Consult a Doctor for health advice! For the love of green grass, use common sense and all the health care professionals available to you (meaning NOT ME) when making healthcare choices for your family! Do you find essential oils and natural health care interesting, but totally overwhelming? (I did!) Do you want to get started but feel paralyzed by all the choices, recipes, and jargon? (I did!) Are you worried about having to buy all. the. things. to get started and every recipe or idea you see seems to include … 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…

One Week of Scotland Adventures…Part 1: The Highlands

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If you follow us on social media (Facebook or Instagram), you might have already seen some of our semi-real-time posting about our recent trip to Scotland. But here’s a more organized recap, along with some of the impressions that are still soaking in from our travel adventures. But first and foremost, I would say that one week is NOT ENOUGH TIME. Especially when some of it is spent on travel time. We felt like we were just starting to understand the area (and the traffic circles!) and get in a … 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 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…

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…

A Simple Garden Gift Box Tutorial…Sending Love from the Garden

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It’s the season-of-many-cucumbers around here. And while we’ve already made cucumber sandwiches, cucumber cream cheese wraps, cucumber salsa, and now creamed cucumbers, there are still so. many. cucumbers. Also suddenly an abundance of green peppers, blackberries and raspberries, tomatoes, and parsley. (Why did we plant so much parsley?!?) Much like our sudden spring abundance of eggs, we like to use what we can, and then share the garden goodies. So we’ve been sending out boxes of fresh, backyard goodness to co-workers, family, and customers. Here’s a quick, easy, and frugal way to … Continue Reading…

How to Make a Great Outdoor Space for Summer Family Time

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I’ve written before about how hard it can be to leave the farm for a vacation in the summer time. So we staycation a lot. And honestly, that’s probably more liberal than it deserves. We “staycation” a lot in the summer. On Friday and Saturday evenings. On our own back porch. After working all day. {smile} We’re blessed that the farm provides everything one could need to get a little rest and relaxation without having to go anywhere at all! It can truly feel like a “family vacation” with very little … Continue Reading…

How to Use Google Calendar for Farm and Home Maintenance Records

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So, in the crazy-busy season of summer holidays and all the end-of-school “festivities” (annual testing, awards ceremonies, field days, summer camp registrations, etc.) I’m reminded again how glad I am that we’ve worked out a maintenance record-keeping system that is quick, easy, and efficient when I don’t have the time (or inclination) to go through the piles of paperwork that need filing in our home office. We’ve developed a system for using Google Calendar to track certain important information and events in our farm management–backed up by paper and digital records–so … Continue Reading…

8 Tips for Carefree Flower Beds for Busy Moms

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I love having beautiful flowers blooming all around the house in the spring and summer, but I’m no green thumb! And a lot of the DIY garden articles I love to read and google do not have the same definition of “low maintenance” or “easy-care” that I do! I don’t even bother with indoor plants anymore and I have a long history of killing outdoor plants by neglect. I just get too busy for all the weeding, trimming, deadheading, watering, splitting and replanting. Besides, our vegetable garden takes up most of … Continue Reading…

How to Steam Farm Fresh Eggs for Easy Peeling

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Have you ever had this happen? You buy a dozen beautiful, rainbow-colored, farm fresh eggs and can’t wait to eat them! You have visions of scrambled eggs, quiches, cakes, and a lovely tray of deviled eggs at the family picnic with those brilliant yellow yolks…NOPE. By the time you peel them, all you have left is the yolk! NOPE. By the time you peel them, all you have left is the yolk! Peeling fresh eggs is always a struggle, but peeling farm fresh, pasture-raised eggs can be a nightmare! Both the … 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…

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…

When You Force Your Kids to Smile…Christmas Eve Pictures

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I make my kiddos take a lot of pictures. {smile} Sometimes they like it, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they come out feeling a little forced… Sometimes I get the “eww…I’m not touching him!” Or I get fake smiles and James Bond {sigh}… And sometimes you just have to let them be who they are… And eventually you don’t get the “right” picture… But you get the best picture ever! Is that just kinda like life? Sometimes you just have to let it be what it is, and enjoy the … Continue Reading…