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

Recipes

Now you can find all the recipes I've posted on the blog in one easy, convenient page!

CLICK HERE  or click the link on the right hand side of the homepage (under "pages"). 

From Lemon Bars to Tilapia Tacos to Sour Cream and all sort of things...Bon appetit! 

A Slow Paced Life Means Lots of Hard Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me, checking for green beans

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

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

~

Photo credit: Freckles Photography

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

Childhood Creeks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canning

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

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

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

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

Dill

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

My next canning project is potatoes. I'm

80 lbs of tators dug from our garden

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

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