Ramsey Farms Ranch Dressing

Since Sonja asked for it, here is my Ramsey Farms Ranch Dressing recipe! Like all my recipes, it's really very easy to make! (I don't have time for fancy, hard-to-get ingredients or time consuming processes!) It'll taste even better if you grow your own dill and herbs! ❤💗 Farmer Chris won't touch bottled ranch dressing from the store anymore and there have been threats of eating it from the jar with a spoon! It's great on salads, for fresh veggies, even pizza crust or whatever you can put it on to eat it! It's that good! 😋

Ramsey Farms Ranch Dressing

Makes about one pint - mix it all up in a pint size mason jar. We save the plastic mayo lids to wash and use to close up the jars. Will keep in the fridge until the expiration date of your sour cream. This is a great base recipe, you can add your own ingredients, spices, herbs to get the flavor you like best. Be cautious about how much garlic you use, otherwise you'll be up all night with heartburn! You can find my original post of this recipe here. Thanks to The Pioneer Woman for the foundation for this recipe! 

Ingredients

• 1 cup (real) mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup sour cream* (see below for how to make your own quick sour cream!)
• 1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp+ sugar
• salt to taste
• dill (fresh or dry), to taste (I use about 1 tsp fresh or 2 tsp dry)
• a splash of buttermilk* (or lemon juice or vinegar) (I use about 2 tsp of the sour cream liquid mentioned in the sour cream recipe below)
• other herbs I use interchangeably: parsley, thyme, oregano, rosemary, cilantro, chives
• Optional: paprika and or hot pepper flakes and or cayenne pepper and or hot sauce

Directions

1. Mince your garlic and chop the herbs very finely. 
2. Mix the garlic, sugar, salt, herbs into the mayonnaise. Stir well.
3. Taste frequently and adjust seasonings as desired.
4. Add the sour cream; mix very well.
5. Chill for at least 30 minutes or up to a few hours for best results. 
6. Thin with buttermilk (or vinegar) or milk if needed.
7. Eat and enjoy!!

Make Your Own Sour Cream

This makes a thinner cream than the weird gelatinous stuff in a plastic carton from the store, but it gives a much more authentic flavor to your dressing! We very rarely buy the sour cream in the store anymore since this is just so easy to whip up in a minute and feels healthier to me without the additives. 

1. In a glass mason jar, add one cup milk. (Note the milk's expiration date, this is when your ranch dressing expires too.)
2. Add 1/4 cup white vinegar.
3. Place in coolest part of the fridge for 20+ minutes.
4. This makes approximately 1/2 to 3/4 cup of sour cream.
5. Scoop the cream of the top to add to your dressing!
6. The liquid that is left in the jar can be used as buttermilk!

You can check out all the recipes on my blog here! 

"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." ~Henry Miller

The Pre-Spring Herb Garden

The bare herb garden ready for spring and new seeds. You can see the lemon balm, cilantro, some dill, the thyme and the tea tree (in the middle).

The biggest ant hill you've ever seen moved in right smack dab in the middle of the chocolate mint plant! What you see there is grits - yes, dry grits - coating the entire mound. Within just a few days, the ants were gone!

The view from the other side. Thyme, cilantro, dill, the tea plant in front of the lemon balm then at the far end the chocolate mint topped with grits.

Spring officially starts tomorrow morning at 5:28! We will celebrate!

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

Hang On...Spring's on the Way!

It's been warming up for a few weeks. I can hear birds singing before the sun rises. Farmers have tilled their land. Many seeds have been planted. A great deal of seedlings have emerged from the soil. Trees are budding! The Spring Equinox begins about 6:48 am on March 20 this year in the Northern Hemisphere. Just 24 more days until the official first day of Spring! REJOICE!

Farmer Chris has planted a good deal of the early crops. So far we can see the potatoes, snow peas, lettuce, carrots, spinach, radishes, green onions, and the stems of our "We Ain't In Vidalia" Ramsey Farms sweet yellow onions have all made their way from the soil to push through and face the sun!

Potato Seedlings 2/13/17

Check out our Facebook page for a cute video showing the newly emerged seedlings and plants and more!

Remember to put a smile on your face and love everyone you meet today! Your's may be the only kindness they receive or see all day. 💗💗

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. 😁

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

Summertime Pickles

Pickles! Sweet pickles, sour pickles, bread 'n butter, dill pickles, lime pickles, frigerator pickles (that's short for refrigerator if y'all didn't know that word!) There are so many different varieties, types, and flavors of pickles out there! There are even pickled ocra, pickled green beans, pickled eggs, and my favorite, pickled pigs feet! (Nah just kidding, I wouldn't eat pigs feet fried, boiled, grilled, steamed, or pickled. No thank you ma'am.) Maybe we have a pickle obsession?!

Our cucumbers did not yield as much this year as we saw in 2015. I think I was only able to make about seven jars of cucumber pickles. I also made squash relish and spicy squash pickles! My mom fell in love with the cucumber lime pickles (made from lime the mineral, not lime the citrus fruit) during one of her visits here. These lime pickles are sweet yet not syrupy, and the crispest, crunchiest pickle you've ever had grace your mouth! Plus they stay a really lovely bright shade of green, not the dark overcooked sogginess that some pickles get.

Different pickles have different seasonings. When I first made the cucumber lime pickles, the instructions on the bag of lime said to use "pickling spice". So of course I had to google it to see just what this was and how I could make it at home (right now) to continue forth with my summer pickle fiesta.

To make your own pickling spice, here are your necessary ingredients.

Pickling Spice

• 2 tablespoons whole mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon whole allspice berries
• 2 teaspoons whole coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more to taste
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 bay leaves, crumbled
• 2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
• 6 whole cloves

Place mustard seeds, allspice berries, whole coriander seeds, and red pepper flakes into a small glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake to combine. Add ground ginger to seeds and shake again. Sprinkle crumbled bay leaves over spice mixture and place cinnamon stick halves into the jar. Seal and shake to combine. Mixture can be stored in the tightly sealed jar for up to 1 month without loss of flavor.

Check out all the recipes on this blog here!

If you have never tried making your own pickles, I encourage you to try it! Come on over and we'll do 'em together! If you grow cucumbers or can get your hands on some fresh, homegrown cukes then by all means - do it! Even if you've never canned anything before, you can make pickles! Start out with a fairly easy refrigerator pickle that requires no canning - just make the pickles, put them in the jars, and make room in the fridge!

We have cucumbers growing in the garden right now, so I hope the fall season will produce many more cucumbers and many more jars of pickles in my pantry!

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time."

~John Lubbock, "Recreation," The Use of Life, 1894

Make the most of today!

Cheers,
Ramsey

Marigolds

Thousands of marigold seeds! Our marigolds grew like gangbusters next to the pepper plants this year. I harvested the dried flower heads and separated the seeds from the flower. We have more than we need for 2017 planting and to share with our friends! We were also able to save a ton of basil and dill seeds and sand‘andy peas for next year and have enough seed potato to grow a full crop!

I love saving seeds. We brought potato, basil, pepper, mint and a few other seeds with us from North Carolina. We actually dug up potatoes from the ground the day we moved, carried those with us to Georgia, planted those seeds in our first fall garden in Georgia, saved seed from that batch that we planted in 2015 and saved potatoes out of that crop to replant in the spring of 2016. Those are our Ruby Lane Whites and we will plant those same seed descendants in our spring 2017 garden. Not only is it economical to save seeds by not purchasing new seed, but the seeds that came from healthy plants grown in your own garden are custom made to grow and thrive right there in that soil under those same conditions. Those are the things we “brand” as Ramsey Farms produce – the foods that grow from seed that was raised successfully in the previous season.

You can also use dried marigold flowers as a food coloring and light-flavored herb. The marigold flowers we didn’t harvest for seed (as well as the seed pod and dried petals) went to the chickens for a fun snack! They’ll eat up those dry flowers like candy and recycle them into great garden compost. The chickens love marigolds, blackberries, muscadines, strawberries, and pears! Acorns, apples, dried bread, and veggie cuttings are great snacks too, but they sure do love their fruit. 

Egg Score & Pears

Just a quick update! It's early so the girls haven't come out of their coop for the day yet (so I haven't yet checked for eggs). But so far, our beautiful birds have given us 12 eggs!

1. Loner Bird is in the lead with 7 eggs so far!
2. Baby Bird has given us 3.
3. Pretty Bird is on the board with 2.

Monda,y my friend Teresa and I headed over to Jeff Davis County to do a little pear pickin'! We only picked about 50 or 60 pounds of these golden tough fruits and hauled 'em home. So far Chris and I have put up ten jars of pear butter (like apple butter, only with pears) and now nine jars (quarts and pints) of just good ol' canned pears. And there are still more to go! What shall I make today?

Leaving you with a picture of the full moon rise back in June.

 

Be sure to enjoy your day, we only get so many of them!

Cheers,

Ramsey

Canned Goods & Eggs

The photo shows some of my canning work this summer! Everything was grown right here with our own hands, except the strawberry jam. We drove about 50 minutes to another farm to pick the red lucious berries to make our homemade strawberry preserves! It goes fast, but we have a few more jars left that I'm hoarding for winter. Nothing better than the taste of fresh Georgia strawberries in the dead of winter!

We (grew) and canned potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce, salsa, peas, squash, two types of cucumber pickles, spicy squash pickles, corn, and squash relish! We were able to also freeze a lot of our farm produce. Our freezer is full of onions and more tomatoes, peas, green beans, and corn. I was also able to dry several jars of dill and basil so far!

There's nothing better than a meal with a table full of your own homegrown veggies, herbs, bread, and now...eggs! YAY! YES! The girls (or just one) started laying Thursday or Friday! We believe the one we call Loner Bird laid one on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Baby Bird made a deep cozy nest in one of the nest boxes and about two hours later, there was an egg in there! The one we call Pretty Bird made a nice little nest in another nest box this afternoon and I thought for sure we'd find another one, but at last check around 7:15 or so there were no more and it was getting dark.

Progress on the run section of the Chicken Cottage

Chickens lay eggs about once every 25 hours unless it's dark outside. So we expect at least three more eggs tomorrow and hopefully one of the other girls will start laying tomorrow as well! The first three we found were in a corner of the coop, two were pushed under the straw, and one was actually cracked (probably from laying on the floor and got stepped on or kicked by a bird). The broken one looked more white, but all the others have been a light, light brown nearly pink. One had white speckles like splatter paint. They were all very small in comparison to the large grade-A eggs from the store, but I suspect the eggs will grow larger as the girls get more proficient (and bigger themselves).

Anyway, it's so egg-citing (lol) to finally have a few eggs from our girls! WOW! It's exactly what I have been dreaming of...a little piece of dirt in the middle of the countryside, a garden, some chickens, and farm fresh eggs! Here's to dreams! Keep dreamin' them and keep reachin' for them!

Dreams to Goals to Reality! You can't there without a plan...dream it all day long, but until you set solid, actionable goals it'll always stay just a daydream! 

Have a beautiful day,
Ramsey

Aloe: Nature's Healing / Soothing Ointment

This past spring, the aloe garden (okay the collection of pots filled with aloe) had some surgical procedures and pot rearrangements. Aloe and cacti surgeries are always on the first day of spring or just thereafter, then the succulents are moved outside to a nice shady spot to live out spring, summer and fall in the tropical heat.

The plants winter inside as they do not like temps under 40 degrees.
During the transplants and surgeries, in which bad leaves (the thick arms) are removed so the plant can focus on new growth rather than trying to heal the old, I was able to harvest nearly a gallon of aloe gel.

It's a little tedious job. The spiky sides of the leaves removed, the leaf is filleted and the gel scraped out. I run all the gel through the blender to make it smooth and liquidy, so it is usable in bodywash, handsoap, lotions, or just using as is. I then poured my pureed aloe gel into ice cube trays and froze them. Once solid, I dumped my aloe cubes into a freezer bag and bam! instant sunburn / burn cooling cubes. These are the perfect size for unthawing to use in recipes or just grab a cube and apply to the burned, irritated or bug-bitten skin.

If you're at my house and get a boo-boo, don't ask for store bought creams, ointments, lotions or potions...but I do have plenty of aloe!

Other posts like this one: Cacti & Aloe and Aloe Surgeries.

Today, I am going to smile more and worry less. Cheers, Ramsey

Ode to the Muscadine

Muscadine

Muscadine, sweet nectar on the vine.

Muscadine…Southern gold, wine, and moonshine.

Sweet muscadine, you are so fine. 

Wild muscadine.  

The taste of pure sunshine.

Sweet muscadine, it’s almost picking time!

~RBP August 14, 2016

Lemons, Romas, Beefsteaks, Muscadines & Chickens...Oh My!

The Meyer Lemon tree my mom gave me for Easter is doing well! There are about five or six green, golfball-size lemons on the little tree right now! Though I don't expect to actually get any edible fruit until next year. I need to transplant the tropical tree near to the herb garden just to get it out of its plastic pot.

The garden is slowly waning in the 110-degree summer. We still have some potatoes and onions in the ground that will all come up in the next week and plenty of roma tomatoes There are a few sandandy peas drying on the plants as well as basil seed drying to a crispy brown on the plant. A few rogue overgrown cucumbers will delight the chickens plus they will get a ton of dried marigold flowers sometime soon as we prepare to till under the front garden for the next planting.

We've canned or frozen what feels like a ton of tomatoes! We've enjoyed them fresh cooked or raw, fried green, roasted, stuffed, baked, grilled, sauteed, peeled and sliced for jars or freezer bags, pureed, made into salsa, pasta sauce, and ketchup! Next up will be some tomato soup to can for the pantry to enjoy later this winter.

Only a few more weeks and it will be muscadine season round here! The chickens are already enjoying lots of fallen grapes as snacks, but they do prefer the softer raisin-like texture or purple ripe texture as opposed to those green ones. We pick them off the ground by the bucket full for the birds to enjoy! A raccoon and other little animals love to eat them too so hopefully there will be plenty left for us. Last year I think we made about 20 some jars of jelly. To make at least that will be nice and feels like "free" food when you didn't even have to plant it and grow it!

Speaking of chickens, check out the Ramsey Farms Facebook page tomorrow for more construction-stage photos of the deluxe chicken cottage. They gals are 17 weeks old tomorrow, but so far no eggs. We placed two golf balls as egg decoys in the nesting boxes in the back of their coop as helpful hints. They could lay at any time now, but it may still be as many as seven weeks before we get fresh eggs. Stay tuned on that!

...Until then, smile as much as you breathe, wear sunblock on your face, give generously, and dance like no one is watching!  

Cheers,Ramsey

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dear sister today! She's such an inspiration in my life and I'm glad we have one another for when we need strength, craziness, live musicals, tears, ideas, inspirations, or memories. Love ya MSP! 

Winding Down the Spring Garden Season

The spring garden is just about done for the season. I picked the last cucumbers last night save for a couple gourds left for seed saving and for dinner sauteed the last few pieces of squash and zucchini  that we'll get from this planting. That went nicely with our braised pot roast, creamed potatoes (grown by us of course), gravy, homebaked bread (by my daughter), creamy cucumber salad and even potato salad simply because we have a million potatoes and Farmer Chris LOVES my potato salad.

The pantry is packed with row upon row of jars of canned dill pickles, cucumber lime pickles, spicy squash pickles, squash relish, tomatoes, salsa and even potatoes. I have tentatively put the pressure canner in the box, but not yet asked the tall people of my house to put it back in its spot at the top corner of the pantry.

We have onions and potatoes curing in the mud room for fall / winter storage. The freezer is full of garden peas, green beans, and even strawberries we picked elsewhere last spring and in the fridge are multiple jars of refrigerator pickles. I'm hiding the last few jars of that delicious sweet necter of strawberry jams so I can taste spring in the cold, bare winter.

There are tomatoes ripening on my kitchen counter next to the dried marigold flower heads for seed harvesting, basil leaves drying on paper, zucchini seeds drying out, and a newspaper full of dill seeds recently harvested and drying for storage for next year's garden and a parcel of dry sandandy peas for shelling. I can see the red droplets of roma tomatoes dripping off the vines from my office window as I write this post, so today I'll pick more tomatoes and make tomato sauce to use later this fall or winter and save some for our taco dinner tonight.

But dear garden and fresh veggies, this is not goodbye. for here in the deep south, land of honey and cotton we get a second chance! We get a summer garden do-over, another opportunity to plant and gather more veggies for preserving and eating tons of yummy fresh produce! Farmer Chris is anxiously finishing up the coop portion of the chicken's huge Chicken Condo so that he can get back to focusing on the farm. It's mid-July so time again to plant green beans and soon beets, carrots, cucumbers and even a short window of time for summer squash and tomatoes before we look to our fall garden. And we wait and watch for eggs! The chickens are 15 weeks old today so it can happen at any time! (EXCITED!)

Other posts you may enjoy: Slow Pace = Hard Work & Canning. Check out the garden photos on the Facebook page as well as pics of our sweet chickens.

Do more of what makes you feel happy and content. Rid your life of the negative and toxic. Breathe deeply of gratitude, love, and freedom. Pray, laugh loudly, and enjoy this day! (Philippians 4:6-7, 4:11-13.)

Cheers,
Ramsey

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.

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

What's Happening at Ramsey Farms

I love it when a brand new tiny seedling unfolds and pops forth from the soil! THAT is exciting! This is my baby broccoli seedling that popped up just four days after seeding it. The next picture is just three or four days later! We’re using our own potting soil mix of sandy soil, compost, manure, and mushroom compost to start some seeds indoors this year to get a head start on the garden.

Spring is in just 25 days and there is a lot of new growth to celebrate!

Beefsteak Tomato Seedlings Unfolding from the Soil

The ginger continues to grow and appears to be quite healthy. The photos below show it over a ten-day period. I hope to transplant this ginger to the new herb garden next to the Satchi tea plant.

The garlic and potatoes were planted in late December and late January respectively. (Click the links below to see my earlier posts on these!)

• http://ramseyfarms.blogspot.com/2016/01/59-days-until-spring.html
• http://ramseyfarms.blogspot.com/2016/01/garlic-first-glimpse-of-our-2016-garden.html
• http://ramseyfarms.blogspot.com/2016/02/whats-happening-at-ramsey-farms-37-days.html

The English garden peas have been planted along with their trellis system. Farmer Chris supplemented the field garden with dolomitic limestone in addition to the compost and manure to decrease the acidity of the soil in the upper field and boost magnesium.

We made a super bowl feast (even though we didn’t watch the big game)! Homemade crescent rolls made perfect pigs-n-a-blanket, artichoke cheese dip, and fried chicken topped that weekend’s menu of junk food!

Spring symbolizes birth, life, renewal and hope. All things have been scrubbed clean by the cold bareness of winter and now are reborn and fresh and happy. Forget about new year's resolutions! What are your Spring promises to yourself? How do you give yourself a Spring cleaning or a reboot? As we enter this time of renewal, consider your life. Are you living the life you dream of or stuck in somebody else's dream? 

Cheers,
Ramsey