What An Odd Year

I know, the year isn't over yet, but my goodness, this year, so far, has been anything but routine. We started out by finding we were expecting. That was odd, as I usually cannot get a home test to tell me anything but know, even when I know I am, until I am 2 months or more along. We knew at 4 weeks this time.
Then the home renos started. It was just going to be new floors in a couple rooms, moved to most of the first floor, moved to added things being done since so many things were moved anyway, taking far longer than planned, and meaning I missed out on time spent enjoying one of my favorite times of year because we were living in the basement, one of my least favorite places to be. We are still working on things-I mean the guy coming to fix some of the work that was done so very improperly it can't be lived with (read: doors that were replaced because they were leaking and we were afraid they'd ruin the hardwood, LEAK. Argh.) is starting today and will most likely be here at least a week.
The money that I insist we rarely tap into has flowed out of that account far too readily.
We reconciled with family we had been parted from for years, and rather happily so. I think it is easy to forget how much we care and miss someone until they are gone and return. That has added a new dimension of making time for them again, too, which hadn't happened for quite some time.
We took a vacation states away. The furthest we had ever taken the kids was to Minnesota. We loved the adventure and are already trying to figure out how to work in a doozy like this one was ever few years.
After said vacation we did what I swore we'd never do (though it was partly my idea), and sold the camper to buy a new tent. That being said we aren't buying any tent, we are buying one bada$$ tent that can make it through near anything according to reviews. Like, we could live in it. Nice.
This pregnancy has been completely different from the other two. This kid was active far earlier. I actually love my care practitioner. Everything is going very well. We still do not have a name. I am actually hoping this pregnancy continues to go very differently.
Our schooling routine has changed as we have found that Pony Gal does better with more structure. We are using programs and books, and though most of what she picks up is from just being an inquisitive little girl, the basics are now being worked on for 30 minutes or so a day, and it is already going rather well. No longer what we consider unschoolers, I think rather we are relaxed eclectic homeschoolers.
Plans of making the farm highly productive are turning around, especially with my pregnancy, and aiming more and more as just a hobby with potential, as parenting, schooling and my marriage take the forefront, as they should. Priorities.
I have not canned or frozen one thing this year. Not one. Between being tired with the pregnancy and in the basement and working on the house upstairs, it just hasn't worked. I am starting to put meals in the freezer for when the baby comes, but most of the produce we are getting we are eating or giving away. Just not enough hours in the day.
The weather-wet at one part of the season and hot, hot, hot later made most of our summer spent indoors. Totally not the norm here, but necessary on most fronts. Now things are nicer, my allergies are starting to kick in, which is normal, and usually the time I "move" indoors. So little time spent outside has me all out of whack.
I am already starting to feel that end of the pregnancy lack of comfort, with 10 and 1/2 weeks yet to go, which means I am already slowing down and doing less of what I need to be doing because carrying things and bending over just leave me feeling yucky.
I know there is more, but it just seems this year keeps doing things backwards for me. I am curious to see what the rest entails. In the meantime, we keep focusing on family and getting the house in order so that once Number Three shows up, I can be ready to relax, something I find very, very difficult to do.

Nearing the End of March

It's been awhile since I've taken the time get on the computer for too long. We have been busy-starting seeds, bottle feeding farm babies, making lots of plans for improvements on the farm, Spring cleaning/organizing and one of the biggest reasons is that we, as a family, will grow to number 5 in November, so I've been dealing with morning sickness and fatigue the last couple weeks. Things are starting to lighten up now, and just in the nick of time, as the real Spring work is starting to pick up. We will be cleaning up the yard and starting some landscaping projects, tilling and planting the Spring garden, mowing paths for our wildflower walk/pasture and seeding that in, shearing sheep, planting Spring trees and the new strawberry bed, prepping decks for staining, all on top of the usual daily milking goats, feeding animals, gathering eggs, cleaning house and schooling the kids. I'll try to get back in the swing of picture taking to keep you all posted. I just needed to get past those first daunting weeks of pregnancy. Here's to Spring on the farm!

Tractor Parade

You never know what you'll when you live in the country. I was loading the kids into the truck to take them into town to attend a festival with Dad while headed west to teach the apron sewing class, when I saw this.

I quickly unloaded them and we stood and watched the tractor parade. I still haven't figured out who they were or where they were headed, but we were all pretty excited to stand and watch the impromptu parade.

How I Spent My Evening

take note: I am trying to avoid sugar right now. Does crazy things to me in the summer. But the kids last night...)

Next time I'll jump for the hard stuff :) Maybe even this weekend.

Thoughts from the weekend

1. When eating barbecue, wouldn't it seem better to have a heavy duty, dark colored cloth napkin rather than a stack of thin paper ones? At least, would it not be nice to have a stack of napkins on the table rather than having to ask for them? If it weren't for the place we were going being closed (more on this in the next thought) we would have never ended up at the large but not that great place in Toona Town for barbecue. Not impressed, as usual. Guy Fieri should come to Iowa. (Yup, I just totally said which state we live in. I never was happy with hiding anything).

2. If your coffeeshop has been closed for two years, take it off the sign of your giftshop. Serious disappointment. I won't be going to your gift shop, no matter how cute, as I was pretty upset about the lack of responsibility in letting us know your food was no longer available. All I wanted was a good cup of coffee.

3. McDonalds is not my first choice in anything, but when I NEED some stinking coffee, theirs is not awful. That being said, put a sign out SOMEWHERE when you manage to RUN OUT of coffee. I was so disappointed on the coffee front yesterday.

*Note, I even smuggled coffee into church in my water bottle. Wasn't insulated, though, so I never got to drink it as it was too hot to hold. I did finally get coffee after church at the coffeehouse I used to play at in town there. It was good, and much anticipated. I made coffee first thing this morning so as to not repeat yesterday's misery. :)

Sometimes you just find it is time for a change, for any number of reasons. I was wanting a change and felt like just starting over in a new blog home. I was frequently confused with the other farm of the same name in the state (didn't realize when I registered the name that they only checked the county, not the state, for places of the same name, though we do have our own creek of the same name running through the back yard). I will be moving some of my old posts over here, as there are certain things-recipes and such-that I would like handy.

New home, a few new rules, same us

Due to some difficult issues at the old blog home, an executive decision was made to start over elsewhere, under a new name, and to guard the most specific of details about our family. That being said, welcome, I will still write just as much, and about the same topics, as I did before-just using nicknames for people and places. It isn't fair for me to limit my love of writing or myself in order to avoid some difficult people. I am slowly importing all the old posts from the old blog.
So, if you want to comment, please don't use any of our names. You will catch on who is who fairly quickly, and that biggest town we live near (not the small one our address points to), that's the big town. No mention at all. We live somewhere in the middle of one of the largest, least self-dependent ag states in the union. My family is a small one, bent on living a simple life, raising my kids, myself, schooling them at home via pretty laid back methods, raising a bevy of animals, both for fun and profit, and constantly connecting with the awesome friends we have gathered over the years, spending time with our fr-amilies and family that loves us.
New beginning! Don't worry, I won't be keeping the layout the same. I just need time to tinker with it, and with what is basically a small, pregnant petting zoo in the back yard and beautiful, wild babes in the house, well, it puts a little damper on having free time, ya know?

Seriously? Seriously???!!!???

My week, starting last Thursday:
Thursday: Awoke to the chicken coop burning to the ground.
Friday: Insurance agent calls to say coop isn't covered, do we want her to fight it? Um, YEAH. Gah.
Saturday: No husband most the day as he was off at a man, er, swap meet.
Sunday: The flippin' outdoor clothesline broke. Looks fixable at least. But isn't fixed yet. So I am down to the indoor rack, as the dryer has never been fixed, because I had the clotheslines. Now my skivvies are spread across the back deck.
Monday: Ran errands and spent time with friends, but shoulder hurt like a son of a gun on the way home leading to incredibly crabby evening and rare super spat with hubby, which was resolved, but anyway.
Tuesday:Fairly uneventful. Really. Just drained all day, and we didn't get to see our usual Tuesday friends, though, we did have other close ones come out for a bit.
Wednesday: My house got broken into tonight while we were in town. The house was actually unlocked, but the doofuses/doofusi? went out through the front window, leaving the screen off and leaving footprints. Big, manly footprints. We called the police, they looked around (they happened to be two houses down on a call about rowdy four wheelers) told us it was good to call, but none of us could see anything we could do. Nothing we could see was missing, which creeps me out. What did they want? Just snoopy teenagers (there seems to be a lot of them on this road). I have been pretty good about keeping the place locked, but left in a hurry this evening as I was running late. *Shiver*
So, hoping this is the end of a week of crapola. Seriously. I rarely have runs of nasty luck like this. Oh, but wait, there are the coyotes that keep getting closer and closer each night. I suppose they'll be the author of the next thing I have to whine about. We'll see. Hrumph.

Labels

I recently was talking to a new share member in the farm and was asked why weren't on the list of organic producers that they had picked up at the downtown Big City farmer's market. Our main reason, to be honest, is money and paperwork. I don't have the time or the funds to pursue it right now. As long as I don't gross more than $5000, I don't have to, legally, and can still call my farm organic. It would be nice to someday make more than that, though. I have no intentions of getting too big, though as I like knowing all my shareholders personally, and seeing them each week. You lose that with too much growth. If I lose that, I am not much more than a subscription farm, and that is not why I got into this. But, that is not what I was on to talk about...
I think labels are just that-labels. Not tangible. Sometimes handy, but often times more of a hindrance than is necessary. When the government took over the use and regulation of organic labeling, a lot of organic farms were upset. In doing so, the USDA opened the grassroots movements that so many were passionate about to the big boys, and really disintegrated the meaning of "organic". To we who were passionate about it before the big guns got in on trying to make a little more money, it doesn't hold the same value. Yes, I can now go to the big grocery stores and buy produce or such and know if it has that green label, that there were no chemicals involved, but too often there is more to my food I want to know. Big chicken and egg producers, for example, whether organic or not, grow pretty much the same. The organic ones simply feed organically grown grain. Free range just means the birds aren't in cages. Doesn't mean they get to go outside. They may only have a couple square feet of space per bird. No grass and bugs available. That doesn't sound really appealing. Commercial sized organic growers don't see the necessity of preserving a great bio-diversity so their livestock and seed are generally still hybrids-made for look and ship-ability, not for flavor or permanence. Small farms see the importance and run with it. We are some of these. I only grow open-pollinated and heirloom varieties. That means I can collect the seeds from my veggies and get the same thing the next year, or hold on to them. It means I have a huge wealth of history to choose from each year when planning what to plant. My birds are not hybrids,but varieties our great-great-great-great grandparents grew as well. So, our meat may be smaller than that you get at the store, but the quality-wow. I used some chicken last night, and it was so tender, right off the bird, that it was falling apart before I ever cooked it.
So, the labels-I don't think I have any intention to be labeled. My focus, rather, is on doing things the way I know they should be done, and have honest communication and relationships with my shareholders so they know, whether the gov agrees or not, that I am "organic"-actually more than organic-I just refuse to pay someone to use a word. That is how silly it is in the end. It would be like the news announcing the gov passed a new law that in order to call something "pink", you now have to pay $40 a year. I can see wanting to certify that the object was pink, but not paying to do so....

Grrr

I thoroughly dislike that blogger asks me if I want to be remembered and yet it never remembers me. Why bother?

Errr

For those of you who blog regularly, don't you hate it when you have something you really want to talk about, but by the time you make it to the computer long enough to get it out, you cannot, for the life of you, remember what you wanted to say? Yep. Going through that. AGAIN. I think I have what some call mommy brain right now. I am pretty sure I would get lost on my way to the bathroom on a regular basis if I didn't just manage to walk past it frequently.