Winter Farm Chores…Work Gear for Mild Winters
In Virginia, we have mild winters with occasional snow and ice. So we don’t have snow boots or pants, we just layer, layer, layer with our regular, hard-working chore gear.
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How To Use Pallets as Small Bridges on the Homestead
We’ve been knocking out several smaller projects around the homestead this summer, in between busy off-farm schedules and sports practices. It’s also been a really rainy summer around here. Normally we’re talking about droughts, but this year we’re talking about the never-ending rain. We haven’t had time to get big projects done between the raindrops! But we’ve finished several pallet projects with our scrap pile recently. Even little projects can make life easier or better on the homestead. It is very flat in our area. Very flat. And since water moves … Continue Reading…
Easy DIY Luggage Tags
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 Pack for Overnight Summer Camp (with FREE Checklists!)
Well, it’s summer camp time again! The time when I buy new socks and boxes of Ziploc bags and start the sorting and organizing for the kiddos to head out to church camp for a week. Do your munchkins go to overnight camp? Our kiddos head off for a week each summer with their church group. Sometimes the different age groups go at different times, but this year all 3 of our farm kids are heading off together–that’s a new stage for us! {smile} Our first year I did a … Continue Reading…
Great Football Movies for the Family
Well, we registered the boys for football this Fall. Practice doesn’t start until August, but we’ve started accumulating their gear. And they are so excited that they’ve started wearing it around the house and to do their chores, especially walking the dogs. You know, just to get used to it. {smile} Speedracer is particularly excited about it and has been filling all his extra summer minutes with football movies–which then inspire him to throw his gear on and run around the backyard like a gridiron superstar. When it comes to sports … Continue Reading…
How to Make a Great Outdoor Space for Summer Family Time
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…
Farm Life Makes Vacations Hard
We just got back from a short family vacation over the 3-day weekend and I’m reminded why we don’t all go anywhere overnight very often! {smile} The farm is hard to leave. And the work is hard to come back to! We spent some refreshing time with family at the lake and the crew got to do all-things-water-sports for a couple days. Kayaking, canoeing, boating, some fishing, swimming, even paddle boarding. They got to stay up late and sleep in (a little bit!) and not have to do any chores. … Continue Reading…
5 Tips for Raising Kids That Are Self-Motivated
We got a late night call from the sheep shearing about rescheduling our appointment due to rain on Sunday. You can’t shear wet sheep, so they had some cancellations from folks that couldn’t get their animals under cover. They knew we could, and asked if we wanted to bump our appointment up to first thing the next morning. It meant that Mr. Fix-It and I had to move the sheep from one side of the farm to the other and pen them in the tractor shed. In the dark. Without … Continue Reading…
Putting the Summer Cover on the Chicken Hoop House
Our busy Sunday this past weekend also included putting a new, summer cover on our chicken hoop house. Mr. Fix-It decided to try adding a little brown spray paint to the plastic cover to offer a little bit of sun filtering and shade. We also hang a tarp on the side to create real shade, but I didn’t object to the extra step because it’s a great opportunity to let the kids practice spray painting something they couldn’t mess up. Who knew spray painting was a life skill? Like everything else, … Continue Reading…
Building a Mobile Shade Shelter (Part 2) The Roof
Well, it rained all day on Friday. It was raining, soggy, and overcast all day on Saturday and we had some special events with the kiddos. So we were up with the sun on Sunday and got a lot of things knocked off the TO-DO list, including finishing up the rebuild on our mobile shade shelter. I talked last week about completing the structural rebuild and throwing a tarp over it until we could get to the permanent roof. This weekend we got the roof done. Building a Mobile Shade … Continue Reading…
There’s Nothing Wrong with Crooked Rows
We were having grilled chicken, steamed green beans, and salad for dinner the other night when Speedracer came over and asked me to make some broccoli for him because he doesn’t like green beans or salad. Now, he’s not known for liking broccoli either! But while planting the garden a few weeks ago he told me that “this year I’m going to eat this broccoli” and I guess he meant it. Not wanting to waste the opportunity to get my 5-item-eater to add something to his picky palate, I handed … Continue Reading…
Building a Mobile Shade Shelter (Part 1) The Structure
You might remember the twisted pile of mess Coal was always climbing on last Fall that was our mobile shade shelter for the animals. It had blown apart again and it was time for a real overhaul. So it sat around all winter as a pile of farm junk in the back of the field while we didn’t need it. Since we’ve had our first week of over 80 degree days, now we do, so we hauled it out of the field and got started on the rebuild last weekend. Building a … Continue Reading…
Spring is for Working in the Dirt
We’ve been busy planting, planting, planting around here since the weather improved. The crew’s gardening skills have really taken off this year and they’ve been doing a lot of independent work. It’s a new stage for us when they can manage the tools and plants with little or no supervision. We prepped the trellis fence line for beans and peas and set the seed potatoes out to callous. They should be ready to go in with the onions, beans, and peas later this week–as long as the rain hold off … Continue Reading…
Letting the Work Provide the Rewards
It’s no secret that our farm kids do a lot of work and chores around here. They are preparing to manage their own family and property one day and hands-on practice is the best teaching tool I know of. Our goal is to send self-motivated, diligent, hard-workers out into the world. But it’s easy to get into the daily grind and start to feel like all you do it work, work, sweat, and work, and then you start to lose motivation. I know–I feel it too sometimes! Much like our preferred … Continue Reading…
Letting Kids Be Involved in Every Step of Gardening
Do you have a flower garden or vegetable patch? Do you let the kids help you take care of the plants? Maybe occasionally plant one– after you dig the hole and carefully pull the plant from the store container? Or let them water–after you’ve done the planting? Or maybe you let them help with the planting after you bring everything home from the store? Each separate activity has value in and of itself, but this method lacks the big-picture view that lets children see gardening as a life skill they … Continue Reading…