The Best Blog Posts of 2016

The Highest Rated Articles for 2016

I can't believe it's nearly March! Again! Time sure does seem to fly these days. Now is as good a time as any to look back at 2016 to reflect on what was in order to see just where it is we're going. Last year was our 2nd full year here in our little farm in South Georgia and the year of the chicken! Farmer Chris built that incredible chicken coop for our flock of six girls - Big Bird, Laverne, Shirley, Loner, Pretty, and Baby Bird. All the ladies started laying in late August / early September! We even experienced a mini molt with a few of them. I haven't bought eggs since August and that is awesome!

It gets more and more challenging to come up with content for the blog and have functional internet to post it! As a family without an iPhone by choice, we don't walk around with a camera in our hands to document every detail of our lives as it appears many people do (just scroll through your Facebook feed). We bake breads, cook meals from scratch, feed chickens, collect eggs, craft handmade items, manufacture soaps and shampoos, plow fields or plant nearly every day of the year. I'd love to hear from my readers - each post has a comment box at the bottom of the page - please feel free to leave comments, ask questions, let me know what you'd like to see or learn about!

Our little blog has had more than 5,000 since it's launch in late 2013!! Nearly 2,000 visitors stopped by to visit this website in 2016 alone! Wow! Thanks for the visits! Most of our readers are in the US, but also people in Russia, France, Portugal, and Germany have read our posts. I'd love to hear from more of you about what information you'd like to see more of on The Simple Life. If you see a blog post you just love, feel free to share it with your friends - don't keep it a secret! ☺

Here are the Top 5 blog posts from The Simple Life in 2016!

Ranked by Google based on the # of visitors. Be sure to check out each article & share your faves!

#5...Mmmmm! In Georgia, pecans are king so if ya got 'em, eat 'em! This post with photos and the recipe for my Georgia Butter Pecan Cookies got a lot of attention. Make these and you will too!

#4...The first peak of the 2016 garden was Garlic stems popping up! We learned a lot of growing garlic last year and in fact, planted the 2017 crop in late October of 2016 for a May - July 2017 harvest. The current garlic has been up and green stemmed for many months by now! 

#3...Canning! The first day of summer included a quick update about the chicken coop, harvesting potatoes and other delicious produce from the garden, and my canning work and plans. This year we sure hope to do even more canning! And we still have beautiful preserved veggies in jars to eat - the pantry is full but the cache is dwindling. 

#2...Our second most viewed article from 2016 is one of my personal favorites! Childhood Creeks captured images of our son (photo cred to my sweet friend & pro photographer, Dallas of Freckles Photography). A great memoir of those carefree summer days of childhood playing outside - a good read if I do say so myself!

And the top #1, most read post out of all the articles posted in 2016...

A Slow Paced Life outlines the beauty of a slower life spent outside, in the garden, in the woods, with less connection to technology and less hustle and bustle and fewer trips all over God's creation in the car. From my perspective, we live in a culture that glorifies busyness (and of course telling everyone all about on all the social media outlets). There is benefit and refreshment in slowing down, listening to the quiet of your own heartbeat, holding hands with the one you love, building something with your own two hands, watching the clouds, and just reflecting and thinking introspectively. Just slow it down, enjoy the moments, it'll all go by too quickly and it isn't a race to the finish line. ❤

The Top Three Blog Articles of All Time!

Because The Simple Life blog has been live on the internet for more than three years now, I like to take a look and see the top articles of all time! Here ya go:

#3...Cold Frame, published over time during the first months of 2014, this article won top post awards in 2014 and 2015. It's a pictorial review of Farmer Chris's building, installing, planting, and growing in a cold frame at the NC house. It is such a great project to help extend your growing season if you live somewhere with colder temperatures! Check it out and if you have a cold frame or similar project, I'd love to see it! Share in the comments at the bottom of this article.

#2...Childhood Creeks was one of our 2016 top five posts. Includes some beautiful photos from Dallas at Freckles Photography and a reminder of how our kids need to put down the digital devices and go outside to play. You only get this one chance to be a kid!

And the #1 all time most read blog post from The Simple Life is...

A Slow Paced Life, published here in 2016, beat out previous year's top posts. It's one of my all time favorites as well. A heartfelt, personal article lauding the slower paced country life. No matter where you live you can find a way to slow it down, stop rushing, and find a more satisfying way of life.

Please be sure to check out all this year's winners by clicking the link provided in the article (above). If you enjoy our blog, be sure to follow us so you don't miss anything and also use the comment boxes following every blog post to let us know what you like, what you want to see more of, and if you have questions, suggestions, comments, whatever - we'd just love to hear from you. 

Thanks for stopping by! ~Ramsey

We All Need a Good Listener!

I am working on a new post as well as our Top 2016 blog wrap up! It has been so hectic around here with work, weather, kids' sports and school, and Farmer Chris is up in the far fields right this very minute planting potatoes!!! 

But in the meanwhile, thought my loyal readers, friends, and blog subscribers would enjoy this laugh! I do talk to my chickens and dogs, don't you chat with your pets?! Every living being just wants to connect with another. 😁

Desperately Seeking Rain

Remember the post about Childhood Creeks? Go check it out to remind yourselves of the creek filled to capacity with flowing waters that our son enjoyed playing and splashing in. Go on, look!

Now this is what that very same creek looks like right now:

Drought is taking its toll all over the US. We haven't had rain since early October. The North Carolina and the north Georgia mountains have more than 15,000 acres in flames. We are praying for those people, homes, animals, even the trees. Some hundred+ years of vegetation burned to ash. I pray for the lives and safety of the firefighters attempting to battle these blazes.

Staring at the dry, empty creekbed brought to mind times in my life in which I experienced a drought. No maybe not a personal lack of rain, but a dry spell of life.

Life is meant to be lived abundantly with great relish, celebration, and thanksgiving. It's so easy to live so fast, in such a rush and give so much of ourselves away to work / career, education, church, organizations, friends, family, even to our own children that we find that we have nothing left for ourselves. Where did that other me go? You know the fun, spirited, creative girl with dreams of grandeur and a wild side?

We get so busy with the routine, to–do list, and errands and what we think we should be doing, that we can easily lose track of those little things that bring fulfillment to our lives. Sometimes we must make the time to nurture our inner child, our internal dreamer, and remember all those things that ignite our spirit and soul. 

What was the name of your imaginary friend as a child? When was the last time you lost hours of time doing something you enjoy? When is the last time you played? When is the last time you laughed so hard you fell out of your chair?

Don't let the world dictate what's important to you. Avoid the traps that throw you off track or make you forget those old dreams. It’s difficult to put these things into action. If you aren't intentional about doing these things for yourself, no one else is going to remind you. The kids aren't going to say "hey mom, take some time off of doing all those fantastic things for me...you go on and do something nice for yourself." Nope they will not say that (ever).

Purposefully set aside some time for yourself. Go on a picnic, run wild with your dogs, go find secret gardens or mysterious caves in your backyard, build a treehouse, climb a tree, seek solitude among rocks and trees in a wilderness or state park, go camping, wish on a star, eat cake, watch the leaves glisten in the sunlight, read in your favorite spot, get to know yourself, revive your inner dreams, wishes, and childhood ambitions. Remember who you were, who you wanted to be, and bring that back into who you are and have become. Harness the dreams you may have set aside or forgotten to inspire a life less busy, a life less empty, a life less dry. 

Invest in yourself to find your life's balance. The rains will fall again on the earth, in the mountains, into the creek just like your cup of life can be refilled with love, laughter, light and harmony. We can't be our best to those little kids, bosses, spouses, friends, PTA...unless we balance our lives to live with abundance and joy and remember the wishes and dreams of our authentic selves.

I'm thankful for the balance, the peace, the contentment in my life and the people in it who inspire me to be the best me I can be and that includes knowing who I am, what I need, and what my life means in my terms so that I can be the best in all my roles. Happy Thanksgiving! 

Cheers,

Ramsey

Like this one? Here's some other posts I think you might enjoy too:

• Childhood Creeks (yeah, read it again! It's good!) 😊
• Slow Pace of Life
• Teamwork
• Farm Heart
• Take Time to Smell the Basil

What is Temporary Will Fade Away

Y'all the sun rose this morning just as it did yesterday and a billion days before that. I am no different than I was yesterday; are you? The world isn't even any different. The sky is still blue, the grass is still green, the chickens are still laying eggs, and God is still in charge of this motley little planet. 

The world needs less fear, anger, and hate and more love, kindness, friendship, and compliments. Forget the election. Be sure you smile, laugh with your friends, hug your children, bring lunch to someone at your office, give out a McDonald's card to a homeless person, call or visit someone who may be lonely, sit on a river bank and breathe in fresh air.

Nothing is different; nothing has changed. Tomorrow the sun will rise again just like it will (hopefully) another few billion times.

-I've read the end of the book! Good triumphs over evil every time! Be good to others & be nice to yourself, Ramsey

If you enjoyed this post, check out a few of my favorites:  Childhood Creeks, Teamwork, Shelling Peas, Success, Refocus & Reprioritize

Take Time to Stop & Smell the Basil

Stop & Smell the Basil

Life is terribly fast and short. We live in a society that pushes us to rush through the days. I read humorous posts about friends running themselves ragged to work, hauling kids from lessons to practices to games to parties and appointments and activities or school, running errands, handling life, feeding the dogs, shopping. A life in which we spend two or three or more precious hours of our lives sitting in traffic on an interstate going nowhere - just to get home from work. Every. Day. (Include that time in your salary per hour and see what that does to your calculations!)

It seems we don't value our quiet time, our personal time, down time, and relaxation time anymore. It appears that we must go, do, conquer, and post it on Facebook for the world to applaud our busy hamster wheel accomplishments. How does all this rushing and running and being pulled in multiple directions all at one time help us?

If you’re feeling stressed, busy, harried, anxious, frazzled, exhausted, rundown or just plain ol’ tired. Stop for a minute. Take a deep breath. We usually feel those things when our life is out of balance. If you aren’t taking time to nurture yourself, care for yourself, rest, relax, rejuvenate or simply enjoy yourself and laugh for a little bit. Then stop what you’re doing, whatever else you have to do today – do you really HAVE to do it? (Yes? Okay well continue on, but come back when you’re done with that.)

As women, mothers, sisters, daughters, friends – as women we tend to care take for everyone else. All the time. The thing is if you never take care of your own self then you won’t be able to take care of those other people who count on you – the kids, spouses, clients, bosses, family, friends in our lives. What does the flight attendant tell us on the plane (do you pay attention to that boring lifesaving stuff?!) You have to put the oxygen mask on your face before you can help those around you.

Set an appointment with yourself. Take a time out or schedule a day or an hour later this week to just sit and smell some metaphorical flowers, go for a walk, dig in a garden, stroll through a cornfield or a nature trail, sit under a tree, perch in your backyard, lay back at gaze at the clouds or cuddle up and watch the stars, go for a bike ride or walk the dog. Write a poem, sing a song, do a dance, hum a little tune. Whatever. Put down your phone, turn it off, and spend an hour with you, yourself, and you! Take some me, myself, and I time to reconnect with the person you’ll spend your entire eternity with: You.

Be your best YOU & be nice to yourself,
Ramsey

Big Chickens Lay Big Eggs

We are so blessed with eggs here at the farm! Not only do we have plenty for ourselves, we get to give or sell some to our neighbors too. 

The picture with three eggs shows (from left to right) a white store-bought egg, a Big Bird egg, and another of one of our girls' eggs - very typical of the normal medium-sized brown egg we get daily. Except from Big Bird.


This big girl weighs in at more than 13 pounds of chicken meat. Her feet are huge! She towers over most of the black birds and seems to eat non-stop. 

And she's our only hen to have laid the mythical double-yoker! In fact, she's given us a few of them. Our seven-year-old son thinks it's incredible and declared that he only wants to eat Big Bird eggs from now on. Yeah. Okay. Sure. 


Every hen has a fairly distinct egg shell pattern and egg shape. They are quirky in that they like to lay their egg in the same place day after day. Loner Bird still lays her eggs in a little nest she remakes each day on the floor inside the coop. The other girls all have their favorite nest box. 

Each egg is facinating and unique - a tiny organic work of art. They are beautiful. And delicious! It's so exciting to grow your own food and raise animals that provide more food for our family!

Get on out there & find what excites you, ignites your spirit, awakens your passion! Live life as though it may end soon - because it might! Live your own life, don't worry with what other people say or think you should do. Live your best life. Be your best YOU! 

Love, 
Ramsey

The Finished Deluxe Chicken Cottage

Finally I have gotten to the photos of the coop! 

Construction / groundbreaking began on May 18. 


The girls moved into the run around June 18 and got moved into the coop side of the Deluxe Chicken Cottage about a month after that. 


We put all the finishing touches on the coop and it was officially complete on August 14! 

So here are the first released photos of the completed Ramsey Farms Deluxe Chicken Cottage! 

Remember you can see all the coop pics right here and also pics of our chicks and other fun stuff at the Facebook page.

 Thanks for dropping by the blog!

The Ramsey Farms Deluxe Chicken Cottage!

A Slow Paced Life Means Lots of Hard Work

We did trade in long, daily commutes, interstates, traffic jams, sirens, convenient stores, nearby hospitals and doctors, five or six Walmarts in a 20-mile radius for life in the country. A slower pace of life is how I billed it. Hahahahahahaha!

Though we don't spend hours commuting to city jobs on an interstate or wasting time idling in snarled traffic or awakened in the middle of the night to firetrucks speeding down a city street near our house. We don't spend hours running around from errand to errand, or activity to activity, heck, we rarely even eat outside of a homecooked meal. I haven't had a manicure in more than two years. However, I'm not sure it's quite a "slow paced life".

Farmer Chris jamming out with the old jam box keeping cool as best he can

We spend most of our days outside in a field (Farmer Chris) or a combination of writing at the computer and in the kitchen (yours truly). Though I do spend ample amounts of time outside working in my herb garden, planting, weeding, harvesting, and helping Chris in the gardens and he spends a good deal of time helping out inside or tackling indoor maintenance projects.

Temperatures in late April topped 100 degrees in the afternoon. But sitting indoors in the AC isn't an option when there are seeds to be planted, weeds to be pulled, trellises to build, chicken coops to construct, grass to mow, and gardens to tend. And the trash just doesn't get magically picked up at a curb either and the dogs won't feed themselves and the chickens sure go through a ton of water!

Life is much slower in many ways, but still busy in much more fulfilling and gratifying ways. Our children get to have both parents at home each day when they get home from school. We eat dinner together as a family every single night. We read, play games together, work together, enjoy one another's company, help each other, respect one another. We aren't hurried by the rest of the world or by outside schedules or demands. We are urged on by our needs, desires, and dreams.

Self-sufficiency, farm life, rural life is not easy. We didn't move out to the middle of nowhere to kick back and watch TV. We work hard to produce our family's vegetables, fill our table with home-baked breads and desserts, fresh veggies, and meats from the local abattoir. The hens just moved into their beautiful new chicken run and within a couple of months we'll add fresh eggs to our table. We make jams and jellies, pickles and relish, canned green beans and potatoes, 24-hour chicken and beef broth and everything we eat is homemade. I buy cans of tomatoes from the grocery store until we have our own stock, but other than that there are no cans or boxes in our pantry. Today I will make up new batches of bodywash, shampoo, and conditioner. I love concocting our own bath and body products using natural ingredients and herbs from my garden. If something needs building or repairing, we do that ourselves rather than calling in a plumber or contractor. It's amazing the things we've learned to do simply by trying.

Me, checking for green beans

We see the sunrise and set most every day. We all work hard, play hard, and sleep soundly. We are blessed with a clear, planetarium-like view of the stars and planets each night. Deer, turkey, and hogs run through our woods along with armadillos and opossums and we often have up close encounters with wildlife. A river and a creek run alongside our property and trees as far as the eye can see. The sounds that surround us now are bird song, cattle lowing, crows calls, crickets, tree frogs, bull frogs, river splashing and the wind rustling the leaves. Oh yeah and plenty of gunfire from hunters off in the distance of the thousands and thousands of wooded acres around us. Best of all, we have time to think, to reflect, to just be with one another and enjoy this life.

It's a long ride to the store, but I wouldn't trade this life for anything!

~

Photo credit: Freckles Photography

Other posts I think you may enjoy: The Beginning, You Can't Build Your Dreams Stuck in Debt, Childhood Creeks and the Top 2015 Posts.

Childhood Creeks

Do you remember the creek of your childhood? I sure do. Ours was in our backyard with a huge "jumping rock" and secret tunnels. Maybe your's was a creek or a river, pond, lake, swamp, or even the ocean?

I think that little stream that ran through a culvert and through our woods then through a couple of tunnels under driveways is called Avon or Duhart Creek, but to us, my sister and me, it was just our creek. We spent many hours exploring, jumping in, skipping rocks, playing in the water, creating worlds of magical mysteries and stories.

Childhood should be full of creeks. Fewer video games, more creeks and rivers. Our six-year-old son has loved water all his life, swam in the bathtub as an infant and now loves his backyard creek. You can bet that if he's getting his feet wet, he will "accidentally" fall in and be soaking wet within three and a half minutes. Besides when it's 102 degrees in the shade in April, a kid has to find a way to cool down and there are only so many cherry-cola popsicles!

There are sea monsters and hurricanes and shipwrecks in the imagination of a six-year-old in our creek. There is insane splashing, jumping, water dancing, and rapids riding. There is much laughter and squealing and giggling and hollering and smiling.

Could there be snakes or hidden dangers? Well, of course there are. Where are there not hidden dangers? But would our kids be better off stuck in their rooms watching a screen? Or outside playing in the creek amidst the sea monsters, pirates, shipwrecks and buried treasure? Those will be the memories on which they look back on fondly as adults. Those will be the moments of genuine, pure joy that will buoy them in life. Those will be the moments in which they learn how to live - full of joy, laughter, creek stomping, sea monsters and buried treasure.

We can learn a lot by watching kids play in the creek. Remind ourselves to do something simply for the sheer joy of it, to laugh out loud, to splash ourselves and our friends, to fall down, to play outside, to use our imaginations, to talk with our inner self, to get a little sand in between our toes.

This summer get outside, play in the dirt, take a hike, fly a kite, run through a field of wildflowers, splash in the creek, chase lightening bugs, catch frogs, float down a river, watch the stars. Maybe you don't have a creek, but find something outside to spark your joy, make you feel alive inside. Put down the phones and follow your children outside (or push them out the door) to find a little simple joy.

All photos in this post by my dear friend, Dallas at Freckles Photography who finds her joy in the stands of a ballfield and behind the lens of a camera.

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Other suggested posts: Slow It Down, Work Hard Play Hard, Teamwork, Shelling Peas, Ridding Your Life of Negativity

Canning

Happy Summer Solstice! Today is the first official day of summer, though we had 80 degree days in January and it's been well over 100 many days (110 to 112 degrees is not out of the ordinary here). 

Our family spent the weekend celebrating Father's Day for Farmer Chris. He's been busy building "The Big Chicken Coop" so our gals can move in before they really outgrow their little coop. We all hope that tonight can be the big ribbon cutting and move in ceremony! :) 

Farmer Chris in the coop he's building. Photo May 28, 2016

 The garden has still kept us busy (though Farmer Chris said no more big projects during garden season). We've been picking and eating and selling and giving away a TON of potatoes, squash, and cucumbers. We still have a good deal of zucchini, carrots, lots of onions, some green beans left and hopefully some more produce on the way! 

Dill

I put up squash pickles, squash relish, and dill pickles this weekend! I was excited to use my homegrown dill this time. It is so nice to stock the pantry for "fresh" homegrown goodness later this winter.

My next canning project is potatoes. I'm

80 lbs of tators dug from our garden

dreading the fact that I'll have to wash and PEEL 20 pounds of potatoes so I've been putting that off. Luckily you can put off potatoes when you've got summer squash as those tators ought to last a few months. 

One thing to say about staying busy from sun up to past sun down...you'll sleep soundly! Get outside & play!

Photos Around the Farm

My friend since the sixth grade, Dallas came to visit us a few weeks ago. She's an awesome woman, genuine, enthusiastic and in love with life! She's got a great husband and two active boys, a full time job and a passion for photography. I am so grateful she could make the time to travel four hours south to see me and enjoy a food-filled fun weekend at the farm! And bonus...did I mention she has a talent and a passion for photography. Photo-artistry actually! 


So I've only unpacked a few of the 77 final pictures of our weekend shoot, but they are awesome! We haven't had a professional family shot made with all four of us since...well since there were only three of us and those were made inside a Walmart photo center. (I.e. not photo-artistry at all.)

So here's a few of the "around the farm" pics Dallas took! This is the first "public" reveal, so enjoy them! :) Chickens, dogs, potato flowers, blackberry stained hands and all...

Photo Credit: Freckles Photography

https://www.facebook.com/Freckles-Photography-214368251931730/?fref=ts

New Blog Posts Coming Soon!

Yikes! Has it truly been nearly a month since my last post?! We have been so busy doing our simple farm stuff that there just isn't much time left to sit on the computer and write blog articles. I want to though, so I'll have to figure out a way!

We spend most of our days at our day jobs. I'm a writer and editor and Chief Farmhand Chris provides management consulting for a small grocery chain. Our afternoons are filled with farm chores whether it be in the garden, the fields, building a chicken coop, maintaining the well or water lines, baking bread, making dinner and now caring for chickens is one of our chores!

Many days I work as many as eight to twelve hours on the computer for my business plus making all our food and bath products from scratch takes more time than you'd think. (What else you gonna do if you aren't glued to a TV or handheld screen?!) We don't have a television or cable or even the ability to stream movies via our satellite internet connection, so to unwind we usually have a book to read, a craft project (I love making and sending cards), I enjoy writing (in my notebook as after work, I don't feel like hanging out at my laptop and my office desk!) and sometimes Chris likes to play a video game on his computer.

The kids get home later in the afternoon which of course brings about a new flurry of activity - chores, homework, conversations about the day, squeezing in some play time. It is nice to have Chris here in the afternoons rather than at work at a job some 60 miles away home around 6pm. It's nice to have him right here and he gets to spend more time with his kids than most working dads. In fact, he manages homework with our kindergartner!

Well I better go balance the checkbook, pay a few bills, get to work, bake some bread, pick and shell the peas, get dinner started, make a new batch of bodywash and sunblock and deodorant, feed the chickens, weed my herb garden....But first a fresh hot cup of coffee!!!!

I promise to write again soon!
Be good to yourself and be true to who you are.

All my best,

Ramsey

Slow It Down

Ready for the 2016 garden pictures?!?! We've been busy tilling and planting!! Click HERE to view the new, yet growing photo album.

The sunrise is gorgeous isn't?! We love sitting or standing and watching the sun show (whether it is rising or setting) regularly. Stop rushing around trying to be hurried and frazzled. Slow it down. Life is fast enough already, there is no race to the end. Slow down, take a deep breath, enjoy the ordinary simple moments. God's grace and majesty surround us, He pours blessings out on us every day. We miss this when we're moving too quickly, not thinking, not paying attention. I woke up excited to be alive and for the adventure of another day today! Smile, be kind, don't judge or try to control. Just be. Just BE today.

Cheers,
Ramsey

Easy DIY Bodywash

SIMPLE LIFE BODYWASH

I mean it's awesome to be able to whip up your own bath and beauty products, but I'm still pretty busy and have lots of other (fun) things to do so I don't want to spend all day making soaps or cleansers. The simplest bodywash recipe I use has only three ingredients. Sometimes I add something extra such as aloe gel or an essential oil for fragrance, but this I can mix up in less than five minutes and hop right in the shower! You can make a large quantity or whatever fits your bottle. I use 1/4 cup of each of these three ingredients because that fits perfectly into my plastic squeeze bottle, but you could make a smaller or larger batch depending on your needs.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 part Dr. Bronner's Castille Soap (any scent, I use the unscented baby mild.)
• 1 part oil (olive, avocado, jojoba, grapeseed, I use melted unrefined coconut oil sometimes with a little bit of EEVO.)
• 1 part honey (it's best to use locally harvested, raw, organic honey. Any honey will work.)

Optional ingredients include essential oil for fragrance (5-25 drops), baking soda to help gel the mixture (I use 1 tsp. if I'm making the 1/4 cup size batch), aloe gel, melted shea or cocoa butter, herb-infused oils. The options are limited only by your imagination, so have fun & experiment by adding a little bit at a time. I love growing fresh herbs to use not only in the kitchen, but for my hair and bodywash products too!

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix well.
2. Use.

It could not get much easier than that! Well buying it at the story may be easier but check out the ingredients in your store-bought bodywashes, soaps, face washes, lotions and shampoos. Visit http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/  to learn more about the products you use on your and your family's skin, hair and bodies every day. I want to avoid toxins, chemicals, and long sciency sounding words I cannot pronounce. Soap. Oil. Honey. Yep, I can pronounce those and know what they are. Do the quick research, try out your own recipe, you may realize it's pretty easy and much nicer to just do it yourself. 

Be sure to check out my other DIY natural bath & body products.

Do something extra nice for YOU this week! Spring is only 18 days away! What are you growing this year?

What's Happening at Ramsey Farms?! (37 Days & Counting)

You know that I am absolutely wildly in love with Spring. (The season, not a person!) Spring is only 37 days away and there is a lot to do in preparation!

The pieces I cut from my grocery store ginger that I purchased before Thanksgiving sprouted and has grown a beautiful 12” tall plant. I cannot wait to transplant this perennial into my new herb garden and harvest fresh ginger root when I need it! You harvest pieces of the rhizome when you need it, and leave the rest of the plant to continue growing! It will be a nonstop supply of fresh ginger! YUM! I use it in cooking and hot teas. Ginger is one of my all time favorite aromatic herbs.

Below is an image of our design for the herb garden I did using our garden planning software. At the very end of January, I started parsley, chamomile, lavender and lemon balm seeds indoors. These will all (hopefully) grow big, strong and beautiful and get transplanted into the herb garden later this spring and growing season. 

We also started the beefsteak and roma tomatoes, several varieties of mild and hot peppers and broccoli in our homemade potting soil mixture in our greenhouse. Well the greenhouse is a rack next to the kitchen windows, but you know – same thing. Our six-year-old son also decided to plant a peach pit he had washed, dried and saved several months ago. (You know what they say about the peach not falling far from the tree? This kid so wants to be a farmer when he grows up!)

Outside in the garden, Farmer Chris is prepping and working hard. He added eight new rows to the front garden. He planted the garlic at the end of December then the early potatoes went to ground on the last day of January.

We also got our soil analysis results this week! (Woooo! Such exciting times are these!!!! Did I mention that Spring is 37 days away?!? YES I AM YELLING!) I love the science behind farming. I’ve been doing calculations and organic fertilizer research. The field garden soil show a moderate acidity which it did not in 2015. Overall, phosphorus, Calcium, Magnesium and pH levels all dropped while potassium and zinc increased. 

The soil needs amending to produce a healthy yield. Farmer Chris has been enriching the soil all along with compost, mulched leaves, ground egg shells, fish emulsion and our “green manure” cover crop, crimson clover is still growing. We’ve also incorporated organic fertilizer to this old weathered soil. This year we still need to bolster the potassium and magnesium. These nutrients along with nitrogen leach very quickly from sandy soil and need more frequent replacement. We will also incorporate dolomitic limestone into the field garden to neutralize the acidity and boost magnesium. We will use Epsom salts in the front garden for a little spritz of magnesium needed there.

Did I mention I am so ready for spring?!?! What’s your favorite part of spring? How do you celebrate this glorious new season? What are you going to grow this year? Leave your comments.

Top Blog Posts from 2015!

2015 was a great year for our family and our first full year here on our farm in Georgia. So many new things we’ve seen, done, experienced, tasted, learned. And much more to come in the years ahead. Thank y’all for being a part of it. I hope to spend a little more time in 2016 writing and posting articles for this blog. What do you want to see? More food recipes? DIY bath and body products? More photos? Personal articles? It’s tough for me to decide what to share, it’s my regular ol’ ordinary life – what in the world is of interest to the readers? I’d love to hear from you. Please share your comments on this article about what you’d like to see more of on the blog in ’16. Comment on the other articles as well so I know what’s interesting to you.

Since it’s inception in late 2013, this little blog has had more than 3,100 visitors! At least 800 just in 2015 alone. That’s crazy amazing and I thank y’all so much for stopping by! I hope you find something of interest on here. The majority of our website visitors are in the USA, however, we’ve had a great many guests from Russia, Malaysia, France, and Germany and a few from other places around the globe as well.

So without further adieu, below are your top five blog posts of 2015:

#5…Herb Beginnings posted April 6, 2015 – this was just a simple quick post showing a few pics of my herb seedlings. It makes me a little hungry and a lot ready for planting seeds! Though I’m not sure why it was so popular to be honest. It beat out Muscadine Jelly by one visitor! J Could be those awesome, recycled items I used for planters? Who knows.

#4…Summer at Ramsey Farms posted August 28 –
this article covered our busy summer season here at the farm updating you, our readers, on the late summer plantings, the muscadines jelly processing, the solar clothes dryer, a photo of some pretty roma tomatoes and a profound quote from yours truly about life and your perception of your own skill.

#3…My Favorite Biscuits posted March 11 –
this didn’t even contain the recipe! But I guess including the words “biscuits” and “Grammaw” in the post title was the trick to this post’s popularity. The third most visited post of 2015 shows some pics of delicious, homemade, mouth-watering biscuits and gives a prelude to our fave biscuit recipe. There is a link to that biscuit recipe that I added later. More people read this “teaser” than the actual recipe so go check out this #3 post here and be sure to follow the link at the end for the actual biscuit recipe! 

#2…The Top Posts of 2014 published on February 3, 2015 – Tons of people during the course of the year have read this summary of my 2014 blog posts! Go check out the links to those articles. I think 2014 was a good year for my blog, a lot of posts, pictures and more heart-felt personal writing. We had high-speed cable internet that worked 99.99% of the time and no data limits, I had more internet time for blogging in 2014 when we lived in the city! J I do hope to post more in 2016 and look forward to hearing your – the readers’ – feedback as to what you want to see more of on this site. There is even a link to the 2013 top articles! I love a good review!

And the top-read, most visited article on the Simple Life blog spot for 2015 was….

#1…Teamwork posted August 21 – I loved writing this article. It’s one of the few “in-depth / personal” works published on the blog in 2015. Teamwork is a top quality to achieve goals and dreams. Even loners have teams, so remember that next time you accomplish anything that there was probably someone else on your team. Are you a team player or do you hinder the attainment of objectives? This was one of my favorite writings that even summarizes some of our teamwork of buying a farm and moving to another state. This post reminds me that regardless of how we feel, we’re really never in it alone. This article has links to similar articles,  more of my favorites on the blog.

Since the blog has been around more than two full years now, I decided to also show you the top 3 blog posts of all time, just for fun! Be sure you check ‘em out if you didn’t when it was new or just to read them again. 

 #3…This Week at Ramsey Farms March 16, 2014 – I miss writing these weekly posts that outlined our days of digging through worms, cleaning up messes, making salsa, seed exchanges, homemade lotion, ranch dressing, ketchup, baking, cooking, eating, tilling, harvesting, and celebrating our daughter’s birthday and life!

#2…is a tie between two articles, Last Week at Ramsey Farms from May 2014 and Teamwork from August 2015. The Last Week article from 2014 was truly one of my favorite articles to write (and revisit to read from time to time). It was a stressful time in our lives as our NC home was on the market without any real interest and we had found the farm we wanted to purchase down in Georgia. We were stuck in a stressful time of waiting and I needed to help myself take a deep breath, slow it down, watch the sun set and intentionally set boundaries and time for reflection & rejuvenation. 

And our top visited, most read article of all time….

The Cold Frame! This was a continually updated, time-lapse photo album of the building, installation, planting, growing and eventual harvesting of our cold frame at the NC house. Photos show the progress of this planting project from January until July 2014. Then, we moved! There were blog updates every week and it is an awesome project. We loved our cold frame but have no plans to build one here in South Georgia, our growing season is longer than in the Piedmont of North Carolina.

Thanks for reading! Keep on reading and let us know what to post!

Make the most of the time you are given...laugh as much as you breathe and remember that only YOU have the power to make the changes you want in your life. 
~Ramsey


Check out the top posts of 2014 and 2013 here.