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!

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. 

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

Lemon Balm

Lemon balm is a great plant to have around. It grows well in containers, pots, inside, outside, herb gardens and any spot outside you have some dirt! :)


The plant can grow two to three feet high and makes a nice green clump of leaves among other herbs or flowers in the garden. And unlike other mint, it does not send out underground runners and become invasive. It is so easy to grow! Just give it a little water every now and then and when it gets too big, trim it up. But be sure not to waste those awesome leaves!


It's fantastic planted on or around your patio, porch, or deck because the delightful lemon aroma attracts beneficial insects such as ladybugs and pollinating honey bees and actually repels mosquitos and annoying gnats! Smells nice AND keeps the bitters away?! YES, PLEASE!

Ancient Herbal Folklore

It was used in ancient Greece and Rome as a topical ointment to treat bug bites and insect stings.Lemon balm was traditionally utilized to uplift spirits and to enhance memory. It was utilized in spells to heal broken hearts and attract love. It was also believed that a bag of fresh or dry lemon balm leaves under one's pillow promoted sleep. In ancient Middle East, a bath in lemon balm leaves was said to promote heart and skin health. Lemon balm is a particularly soothing herb that will help bring relaxation to most people. 

Culinary Uses of Lemon Balm

Lemon balm is a member of the mint family yet smells like sweet lemons! I love fresh lemon balm leaves in my ice tea, cocktails, steeped in hot tea or just floating in a mug of steaming honey-sweetened hot tea. In the summer, I love to take a pitcher, add lemon balm (and or mint leaves), a few lemon slices, add cold water and keep in the fridge. More flavor than plain water and so refreshing on sweltering hot summer days! Alternatively, freeze fresh-washed leaves into ice cubes for use in any beverage. The leaves are delicious chopped in fruit or green salads, is the perfect herb to season fish, and is a great accompaniment to roasted or grilled chicken. Lemon balm enhances any culinary dish! Here is a link to an easy chicken recipe with lemon balm.


Like many fresh herbs, lemon balm will lose flavor in cooking so it is best to add near the end of cooking a dish. Use up as much of the fresh leaves as you can during spring and summer (growing season). When dry, the lemon balm leaves lose much of their flavor but are still very fragrant and so make a wonderful addition to potpourri.

Herbal Remedy & DIY Uses for Lemon Balm

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

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

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

Cacti & Aloe (30 Days & Counting!)

There are only 30 more shopping days until Spring!

During the first week – likely the first day – of Spring, I plan to do a little cactus and aloe repotting and surgeries! There will be a bunch of cacti and aloe babies available come Spring! My cactuses are older cuttings from cacti my mom grew that were cuttings from her mother’s cactuses and she even recalls this same type of cactus in pots at her grandmother’s house (my GREAT grandmother – who would have been 126 years old on February 9!) It thrills me that there is that kind of legacy connected to these plants, isn’t that amazing?! 

My three cacti are all approximately 3 to 4 feet tall and all need some of their extra arms removed for stability – those are the babies! Those cure for 7 days then you plant the arms and voila! Baby cacti. It is a cactus miracle. In addition, I want to get the primary cactuses into larger more permanent pots. In NC and GA these favored plants go outside in the spring and summer and are moved indoors before the first frost. 

Without going to count them all, I think I have 20 pots of aloe vera. (Is that excessive?) I love them. (Is it wrong to love a plant?) They, like the cactuses to which they are related, are like members of my family! Most of my aloes are descendants of my mom’s original aloe collection plus I inherited most of her aloe plants (and super cool pots) when she moved. When we moved from NC to GA, I was saddened to realize we left a slew of plants and pots on the back porch. Some of which I was able to adopt out by cajoling my friends go by the old house and “steal” the forgotten plants from the porch.

All the aloes need attention this spring. The big three plants that I lovingly refer to as the mama,  grandmamma, and big mama plants need to have the older longer stem severed and their younger inner portion of the plant repotted. Most of the aloe pots have several pup plants that grew from the root buds under the soil. These can be gently removed and potted by themselves for a brand new little aloe plant! 

We use aloe straight from the leaf to heal burns, scrapes, minor boo boos. Fillet open a leaf and lay the gel side onto your face under your eyes and you can almost instantly see and feel it tighten up the bags and other skin on your face. It gives you a younger fresher glow! I also peel the leaf (including the yellow layer inside the skin of the leaf – it has a stinky bitter odor and taste and is reported to have laxative qualities. I stay away from that.) Anyway pare the green leaf off the clear gel and run it through the blender to liquefy the aloe gel. We use it in our homemade body wash and soaps for added natural moisturizing and skin healing properties. Read here for more information on aloe vera.

Check out other articles on this blog on aloe:

• DIY Bath & Body Products
• Aloe Surgeries 2014

Are you living your best life? This is YOUR life and the only person in charge of it is YOU. The only person who can make changes to your life is YOU. Take charge of your life today!

Cheers,
Ramsey

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.

Garlic! The First Glimpse of Our 2016 Garden

Chief Farmhand Chris planted 50 cloves of garlic on December 28, 2015


By January 8, 2016, the garlic had sprouted!


January 14 shows the garlic taller and fuller. We've been trimming the garlic scapes (the green stem) to use in cooking. They're like a scallion only more garlicky than onion flavored, yet a very mild, fresh garlic flavor to use in salad dressings, sprinkle on salads, toss into a casserole or soup, roast with other herbs on pork or chicken. Plus by trimming the stem, it allows the garlic plant to focus on the bulb production rather than the stem.

Hoping for a good crop of 50 heads of garlic later this year! Garlic harvest generally is late August to November. I cure the bulbs so they store nicely for use for the whole next year!

Nothin' tastes finer than somethin' you grew yourself! 

Spring is in 48 days! What are you doing in preparation? How do you celebrate Spring? It's in the 70's today outside, so that's how I'm enjoying the anticipation of my favorite season!

59 Days Until Spring

The winter cover crop is lush and green in the garden. The last food crop, beets, has all been picked, pickled and put up. The garlic is in the ground and we’re already eating scapes (the little green scallion-like stem). My dried herb supply is dwindling. I’m hoarding jars of homegrown pickles like they have special medicinal properties in them! The seed catalogs have been arriving – it’s way better than the toy catalogs when I was kid! Chief Farmhand Chris tilled and built my new raised bed herb garden. I squeezed three quarts of fresh Florida grapefruit juice. A 50-pound burlap sack of tators is sitting in a chair at my kitchen table. The finishing touches are being made on the garden plans. Tomorrow we’ll cut up the seed potatoes. Sunday and Monday we’ll plant the Pontiac Reds. Next week we’ll send off our soil samples for analysis.  I need to design the layout for my herb garden and order some “special” herb seeds.  My nose is cold and the sun is too far away! Spring is in 59 days. 

“Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with the dream.” -Josephine Nuese

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.