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. 💗💗

Pears!

 My sweet friend and neighbor, Teresa and I ventured over to the next county to pick pears at her mother-in-law's house in late August. We picked about 55 or 60 pounds of pears, which doesn't sound like much, but wound up giving me a fulltime project for the next week or two.

Gorgeous homegrown pears

Makes me think of marble or granite. Edible artwork!

Pears peeled and ready for slicing & coring

Pear peels used for pear vinegar and feeding to the chickens as treats

Canned Pears in light syrup!

We made about sixteen 8-ounce jelly jars of pear butter

Put up about 18 pints & 7 quarts of canned pears

The pear butter has been a huge hit. My son will even eat it directly from the jar if you don't watch out! The canned pears look absolutely perfect. I cannot wait to have "fresh" pears this fall and winter and into next year for making pear-cheddar cobbler, poached or braised pears, pears flambèed in rum, pear salad, pear cinnamon oatmeal, pear pan cake, pear butter spice cake, or just plain ol' pears warmed and buttered or just cold, straight from the jar!

Do you have a favorite pear recipe?! Please share in the comments below.

“Don’t shake the tree when the pears fall off themselves.” ~ Slovakian proverb

Bruce or Caitlyn?

Big Bird July 13 @ 14.5 Weeks Old

You all remember the pretty yellow chick? The only one we weren't sure on its gender? Originally that chicken's name was simply "yellow bird" that morphed into Big Bird. But for awhile, Farmer Chris contemplated calling her Bruce / Caitlyn since we were not sure of the gender (reference: Bruce Jenner). My friend, Caroline (the woman, not the dog) refers to this bird as Gertrude.

The Red Ranger breed of chicken was selected by my son. Because he wanted a yellow chicken, not the black ones Mom was picking out! The Black Stars are genetically modified (is that the right word?) so that at hatch, the female chicks are solid and the male birds have a black dot / star on their head. Saves those chicken sexers some extra work and saves those that do not want roosters from getting cockerels.

5 days old, she didn't have a name yet!

So for nearly 23 weeks, we watched. We wondered. We waited. Was Big Bird a boy or a girl? (What about on Sesame Street, I'm not sure that Big Bird was gender specific either, was he / she / it? Hm. Anyway!) So now whatever name you want to call this big, beautiful, size of turkey, can-imagine-it-fried, docile friendly bird...you can call her "ma'am" as I literally saw an egg coming out of her body!

Big Bird at 16 weeks, July 15

And let me tell y'all, about every third egg she lays is HUGE. The egg from yesterday barely fit in the egg carton with the lid closed. My seven-year-old must hold this super egg in two hands! She's given us one double-yoker already and I have a feeling that jumbo egg from yesterday has more than one yolk in it too. I'll find out this afternoon. My son (the junior farmhand / chief ditch digger around here) declared that he wants to eat that egg for snack after school. It's his chicken, he said, he is gonna be the one to eat her eggs. How's that for a pretty awesome pet?!

Big Bird starred in her own little show that depicted this chick's faster growth from week old baby to a teenage pullet. You can check out that fun little minute-long clip here. I know, I'm personally a little obsessed with these awesome little cute feathery food producers but if you wanna see all the chickens in all their glory, be sure to visit our Facebook page for all the fun photo albums. I even have an album just for the chicken cottage construction photos too. :) Enjoy!

My personal note for today:

You can either curse the rain or search for rainbows! ~Ramsey Penegar

Make the most of what you have & love with all your heart!

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

We see or hear a plethora of wildlife around the farm. Armadillos, beaver, coyotes, dogs, elephants...ha! just kidding on that last one, but I was enjoying the alphabetical game...all sorts of birds, lizards,frogs, snakes, turkey and lots of deer. 

I caught a stealthy picture of this guy through my fogged up window. At first I thought this was a woodpecker of sorts, but after doing my own internet sleuthing I believe this is a Belted Kingfisher. They live near rivers, streams, creeks, marshes and swamps to eat fish and other animals living in or near the water. They make a cool rattle sound when they call and we hear this noise all the time, just never knew what it was! 

So nice for the locals to come up on the porch and introduce themselves. I watched this one for a good ten minutes before he (or she) flew back to the riverside woods. Now the coyotes, feral hogs, wild dogs, and bobcats, they need not come over for a visit. Though there is something eerily beautiful about the song of coyotes late at night by the light of the moon.

To sit and listen to the night sounds of tree frogs, cicadas, crickets, coyotes, bull frogs, owls and other night birds while a planetarium of stars and planets sparkle and dazzle overhead is one of my favorite summer treasures. 

Wildlife abounds in, at, and near bodies of water. Read my recent, highly popular post on Childhood Creeks.

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

The Chicken Coop

See the 8x8 sandbox behind Chris in the run?

Farmer Chris sure has been working hard on the chicken coop for our girls. Our five Black Stars hens hatched on April 3, we feel pretty sure that Big Bird, our Red Ranger is older by at least a week. We picked up our birds on April 8 and didn't even have a coop yet! The baby chicks stayed in a brooder box with a heat light in an outbuilding for a couple weeks.

The little coop ordered from California arrived and was set up around April 17. The girls loved playing in their new home, but it was still a tad chilly for baby chicks at night so, in the evenings, we'd gather up the chickens and carry them back to the brooder box until morning. Eventually, the birds feathered up and the heat turned up outside and the little sweet birds moved out of the brooder box on May 1.

Construction on the big chicken coop and run began in May. The 16-foot by 8-foot run or play yard is completed. We placed the small coop inside, built a nice big roost, hung their food, and viola! The hens moved into the big house a few weeks ago. They love it and definitely needed the space - these birds grow so fast that by now the little coop would likely comfortably hold only two hens. They even have their very own sandbox! You should see the screen door Chris built too - amazing!

The coop construction is underway to give them chicks secure housing in which to sleep, hide out from the sun, and to lay eggs. It is four-feet by eight-feet and same as the run, tall enough for people to walk in for cleaning. The coop has a cute little barn door

from the run for the birds and a nice big, screened window for ventilation and so the chickens can look out into their run. They are such curious little creatures! The coop also will have plenty of roosting space and four nesting boxes off the back with a hinged lid for easy egg collecting.

The chickens are nearly 15 weeks now (with Big Bird being at least one week older) so the egg watch begins this weekend. Egg laying has been known to start with the lighter weight Black Stars as early as 15 or 16 weeks. Based on my research, average egg laying time starts around 18 or 20 weeks, whereas larger framed birds like my Big Bird may not start until 22 or 24 weeks. I'm encouraging them, but don't expect any eggs until August.

Farming Ain't Easy

Our girls are so beautiful! I've never been in love with a chicken before, but they are so much fun! They love to hear singing and will gather around at your feet (you'll feel like Snow White, I swear) and they just look at you like you're the best thing on earth! And to them, I probably am!! The chicken antics are fun to watch and we like to feed them green muscadines that have fallen off the vine. The crazy little chicks will chase each other around trying to steal one another's grapes! They love to eat my kitchen veggie scraps - zucchini, squash, and cucumbers chopped up into bird bite size pieces, tomatoes, lettuce, marigold petals, dill stems, even corn on the cob! And they love worms and bugs, beware to any flying bug that enters the run, those birds will chase you down!

"Regard it just as desirable to build a chicken house as it is to build a cathedral."

-Frank Lloyd Wright

Check out our Chickens! photo album on Facebook to see pics of chicks. :)

More Chicken Cottage pics here!

Want to read more about what's going on around the farm? Here's a few other posts you might wanna check out:

• Hard Work
• Can Work
• Team Work

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.

###

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