It has been a while since I have posted, and that has been a good thing, but I’m sure you were wondering if we had been eaten by the coyotes out here on the prairie. We are still here… just really plugging in to this farm lifestyle and working on so many things. Little by little, we are tackling projects. The garden is never-ending work, but so rewarding. I figured a little photo montage would be a nice way to update you on some of the goings-on around these parts, and I would love to answer any questions if you want to pop them into the comments section.
Projects we have done… in the past few years since moving to the farm…
November 2018 – escape the suburbs, First Thanksgiving out on the farm (just kidding, we went from 2400 sf into storage and a near-one-hundred-year-old 2 bedroom farm shack – we had our turkey at a restaurant without extended family that year)
December 2018 – lost a suburb cat to a bob cat or coyote (I love wildlife, but I would totally have shot whatever ate my cat if I had seen it happen), raccoon breaks into the house through a window and scares us all from the top of the kitchen table (that was exciting – can’t blame the little dude, it was 18 degrees outside)
January 2019 – Bathroom renovations (way more expensive than we ever imagined, rotten all the way to the beams needing replacing), repave the country driveway with gravel – pull my back out
February 2019 – Empty the carport of mountains of junk left here by mom and relatives, add a lean-to greenhouse to the back, enclose carport into a metal garage, add gutter and barrel rain system, continue bathroom number 2, endless amounts of cleaning, construction mess, mud tracked into the house, shuffling of junk to empty out the storage units, and trying to find a homeschool groove when you can’t even find all your books
March 2019 – Enjoying our homeschool co-op even thought it is a 50 minute drive, begin collecting and purchasing old bricks for my greenhouse floor (this required trips out of town), pave the greenhouse floor myself with the boys’ help, shelves go up in the bathroom, electric pole replaced, wiring and new electrical panel, roof re-screwed to stop leaks, boys tear down the old pool shed
April 2019 – Plant some trees, try our hand at growing blueberries (that was a flop), washing dishes by hand for a year after we moved in, constantly battling the fire ants
May 2019 – Grandma’s lilies pop up… I hate the chickens for killing them.
June 2019 – Our first BBQ grilled on the farm… brisket is my spirit animal. The pumpkin vines took over the back of the house and things got scary – snakes like to hide in pumpkin vines… Kev said NEVER AGAIN can I plant a ground covering squash (which is why we went vertical), I ate my weight in poppyseed kolaches at my husband’s family’s reunion
July 2019 – Emptied the boxcar storage unit in the heat of summer and they came to pick it up. I sweat a few pounds off. Pulled out carpet, rolled black paint on the plywood floor of the den. Painted mom’s cheap bookcases, dragged home a Craig’s list bookshelf to paint, sorted a gazillion homeschool library books.
August 2019 – Fixed busted pipes behind the house
September 2019 – Fed my uncles cat for months after he passed away, instagram friend sends me a plant in the mail, walks in the woods, frog plague from all the rain, plant peach trees
October 2019 – Grouting the greenhouse floor with concrete and pretty marbles, dryer breaks – hang dry in October until a friend donates their old dryer to us (clothes really do smell best line dried), raccoons tearing up the greenhouse and opening our garage door together as a team, opening the refrigerator in the garage and pillaging for food!!! TRASH PANDA BANDITS ARE SO SMART!!!
November 2019 – Tear up the linoleum in the kitchen because it had snags that kept grabbing my socks (realize afterwards there’s no money in the budget to fix the floor – oops, add that to the renovation list!)
December 2019 – Fell the spooky tree and burn the logs. RIP Spooky Tree. Baker’s Creek seeds arrive. I catch Covid before it’s cool.
January 2020 – Kev starts work on the chicken coop and compost bins. I start the seeds. Grandma’s paper whites bloom. I dig out the brick path that grandma and grandpa laid which was covered in grass and weeds. Kevin builds me a few raised beds and we put up a garden fence. We get a sprinkle of snow and a new kitten (who is really just a tiny cat).
February 2020 – Frost. Busy gardening in the greenhouse and planting out a few cold hardy seedlings. Harvesting asparagus from our new plant the neighbor gave me. Plant out a fig tree and some red ranunculus from Walmart (Gosh, I love them. I need to plant them again).
March 2020 – Raise chicks. Add a vertical hoop or two in the garden. The world goes crazy. Kevin makes window coverings for the coop. Chop the china berry trees down. Dig the entire side of the garage up into a huge flower bed for the garden. Begin plant start sales.
April 2020 – Harvest the cabbage. Become a cattle farmer. Become a dairy farmer. Learn to milk by hand and purchase a milking machine. Grow my first head of broccoli. Transplant more tomatoes than I ever have in my life.
May 2020 – Fall in love with Borage and Sunset Runner Beans. Success with the butterfly pea flower vine.
June 2020 – Begin making kombucha, jungle growing in the garden, visit the longhorn show with the boys to see how to show cattle, try quail eggs, find a farmer that sells cheaper alfalfa hay
July 2020 – Chickens won’t quit pooping on my deck and digging and eating my plants up. The eggs begin to come in! It’s so unfair having to feed a chicken six months before you get eggs. Farm eggs are NOT free for farmers.
August 2020 – Boys meet friends in town and go fishing, begin egg sales, make prickly pear jelly (boy, that’s a lot of painful work), begin cow shares.
September 2020 – Pickle peppers, crack pecans, vote, hatch out a slew of barnyard mix chicks (too many roosters), new longhorn bull calf
October 2020 – Co-op Farm Days, Wildseed Farms field trip (buy seeds, duh!)
November 2020 – Christmas lima beans to harvest, visit a local dairy farm for ideas, feast with friends and family, sell our Wyandotte rooster
December 2020 – The guys go hunting, our first Jersey F1 Cross calf is born on the farm, ferment beets, do all the Christmas things except visit family – because we are milking (first time we’ve missed since we got married in the early 90’s)
January 2021 – SNOW, Kevin fixes the dishwasher
February 2021 – SNOWMAGEDDON, pipes bust in the boys’ bathroom wall, tile and walls damaged… back to the drawing board (have you ever lived in a two bedroom house with one bathroom and five people?)
March 2021 – Cull the roosters (chicken broth and smoked chicken), plant apple and pear trees and hundreds of garden plants, move the plants out of the greenhouse before it turns into an oven, Kev begins welding metal gates for the garden and pasture, Kohen rides a horse for the first time
April 2021 – Another longhorn show, buy a new set of pullet chicks, trap and relocate three raccoons we caught eating the chickens (lost 9 babies in one night), boys perform in their first play
May 2021 – Forage for dewberries, visit the local airport and watch them tinker with rebuilding a small plane, second calf born on the farm – F1 cross Guernsey and Longhorn
June 2021 – Boys attend longhorn show camp, we visit the longhorn museum, sell our first dairy calf to another homeschool family to become their family milk cow, learn how to make Lumpia
July 2021 – baby ducklings join the zoo, get two new bull calves from a dairy that are very sick, spend tons of money trying to keep them alive, my favorite one dies
August 2021 – Give up coexisting with free range chickens and fence in a chicken pasture, put up a gate on their side of the garden (“YOU SHALL NOT PASS”), “dried up” the older Jersey milk cow so she could have a baby… (tests are not always truthful) – but she never had a calf!
September 2021 – Donate a full storage unit to the fire station because we got tired of paying the bill, employ some homeschool labor to weed the garden and clean the chicken coop
October 2021 – Nashville to see my daughter, discover rose-lingonberry kombucha on accident and start using up all my roses for bottles of deliciousness, buy a gardenia bush (have wanted one since we left Houston in 2004), lose the other bull calf – RIP Grievous.
November 2021 – All the plants back into the greenhouse, third calf born at the farm – Jersey-Guernsey F1 Cross, replace a fence
December 2021 – Garden still going strong, still putting up tomatoes, beautiful first head of cauliflower, tiny Christmas tree on the table – no room in our little cottage camp house for a full sized tree
January 2022 – New Years BBQ Shoot-em-up Shindig with best buddies, install automatic chicken door, go help my daughter move home from Nashville, really bad respiratory stuff (kicked my butt)
February 2022 – Second TeenPact experience (still recovering from the croup), renovate the boys’ bathroom AGAIN
March 2022 – another set of chicks in the brooder and incubator (have to keep on top of the predators’ appetites and replenish the egg layers)
April 2022 – only ONE of my expensive eggs I purchased from a breeder hatches, end up buying a few chicks at Tractor supply so it has friends, join the bee club, level the house
May 2022 – New septic tank put in, “The Year of the Tomato” seems to be the theme of this year’s garden thanks to volunteer plants in nearly every bed, boys get fitted for bee suits
June 2022 – Begin the sourdough journey again (this time I didn’t give up), continue studying medicinal plants, Kefir soda, experiment with kefir yogurt
July 2022 – Drought takes its toll and we lose our older milk cow – RIP Big Mama, paint faces at the local farmer’s market, fig season, put up tomatoes with a friend – make enchilada sauce with home made tomatoes for the first time (Yummm), Loofah sponge vine begins to be ready to harvest, arugula everywhere, put in the ductless air-conditioning and heating system
August 2022 – Still no rain and a hundred degrees in the shade, Texas ranchers sell and slaughter their herds, no hay to be found and what is available is double the price
September 2022 – first time growing cucamelons, tomatoes begin their come-back after we get some rain, bakin’ that sourdough a loaf at a time… (I should add “gain weight” here, but you probably already noticed)
October 2022 – Get a new bull calf for Jessie-Lou and move her steered big beef ball into the adjoining pen (no more milk for you, chubby), peel the loofah, first time to harvest pumpkins and butternut squash on time!
November 2022 – Butcher the two longhorns for grass fed beef, skull art, and hide pillows (ask me about it if you are interested!), Rain… rain… rain, finally lose most of the tomato plants to a cold snap, praying for my girl – who is having some serious gut issues
As you can see, we’ve had a very eventful last few years of farming. This Thanksgiving will be our fourth year of living here. It feels like it has gone in slow motion, spanning a short lifetime, and we couldn’t imagine life in the suburbs again. It is much, much busier, a LOT more work, and soooo much more rewarding than I can convey to you on a blog or instagram post.
Oh, by the way, I do check in on Instagram again every week. I gave it up for a year when they changed their creepy privacy-less policies. I really hate the Meta brand, but I haven’t been able to find a good alternative to Facebook, even after the past year has seen them turn into more of a reely “Vine” vlogging app. As a photographer, and someone who seeks still photos out as a therapy after a busy homeschool and farm day, I am NOT happy with scrolling through video after video on there.
I remember when I started blogging… back in 2005… with my tiny “big kids” who are about to turn 26 and 24 this winter. I remember just writing and not worrying about stats or seo. I would love to see a refreshing, backwards trend in the online world towards real content, minus algorithms and trends. I know I follow people who are down to earth, who aren’t trying to do a whole lot of how-to, who are just sharing life with you. People today are seeking connection… because often, life is busy and they can’t find people of like mind in their local circles.
Even out here in the country, it can get lonely… especially when we are so busy and everyone else is also. The internet offers you a little glimpse into someone else’s life that you would get if you were sitting down and having tea with them. I hope I can convey that feeling with you when you stop by my blog.
I’m going to try and check in more often… just be myself… not worry about any stats and monetization. Heck, I quit worrying about that long before we moved from the suburbs. I never have really made much money blogging, because I was too busy with real life to put my all into it. I didn’t want to jump through other people’s hoops chasing those dollars, and be tied up with it and miss my kids’ childhoods. I’m glad you have stuck it out with me even though I am not consistent with posting. Thanks for letting me have my “day job” and keep first things first.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2022! We have so much to be thankful for.
Signing off from our little shack on the prairie at the Tiny Texas Farm,
Heather