Snapshots & Memories

A beautiful brisk day in the southern Piedmont of North Carolina yesterday - I got out of the house in the early afternoon and enjoyed some barn chores. Sometimes spending time with the animals is the most therapeutic form there is for a grieving heart.

Just over a week ago, just two days after Christmas, we laid to rest my childhood pony mare April. She was 38 years old. She had been in the family for 31 years.

April

Egg Count: 13

Hattie supervises feeding time

Roll in the mud much?

Gaston, the Rhode Island Red Rooster

Mr. Bunny

Sam Speaks

A lady to the end. 

What to do with your raised beds at the end of December

Of course it would be ideal to say that at the end of harvest, the raised beds were cleared and prepped for winter. Alas, if you're anything like me, they are not. So, what to do if you've procrastinated with the best of us?

First - dig in.

Clear all the debris you can see on top, removing spent plants and any leaves that might have blown in when fall came our way.

Now is a good time to get an assessment of your soil done, too.  Contact your local Cooperative Extension office for further instructions on how to get your soil tested for FREE.Ideally now is the time to do this, because when spring arrives, the offices will be very busy and your results will take longer to come back.Whether you intend to plant some early cool crops or wait to plant the main summer crops, the results of your soil test will determine what it may need if anything.

I was pleased to see this worm in the dirt!

The hardest part of this is cleaning up the piles of your labor. Currently mine are still where I left them. I had to come inside and devour a bowl of homemade version of pasta e fagioli soup leftover from yesterday.

And so dear fellow slackers, there you have it.

And, photo-bombed, bigtime, by Bob. Thanks, Bob.

And then, here came the dogs:

And this one, in particular, was very serious....

And another dog is not quite so serious....

Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt.
- Barbara Kingsolver

December-ful

Sometimes, it's nice to see the faces behind the computer screen...

Some friends from Farm Chick Chit Chat recommended THIS SITE for putting some photos together in a collage format, and I sorta had way too much fun.  Give it a try - you might like it and make a photo collage of your own! Be sure to come back and tell me what you think!

Hope your December is full of love, peace, mercy, and grace.

Love, 

Ed, Sheila, & Eddie Jr. of

'Tis The Season To......Dry Apples!

Apples are in season in many places, and they are beautiful this year. I had no idea up until about 5 years ago that the southern Piedmont of North Carolina had such wonderful apples.  In my farmhousewife head, I thought they all had to come from cold climates....

Of the many ways to enjoy apples, besides fresh, in pies and applesauce, one of my favorites is dried apples.

Golden Delicious Apples - from a local grower

A terrific snack for on-the-go, they fit nicely in a school lunch, backpack, pocket book or for a long car trip.

First, get some apples - for dehydrating, cooking apples are best.  Next, gather some supplies and tools.  You'll need:

• peeler-corer
• knife
• cutting board or mat
• fruit fresh, lemon, orange or pineapple juice (to prevent browning)
• couple quarts of water (2 quarts of water to about 1/2 to 1 cup of juice)
• dehydrator

A peeler-corer makes short work of slicing apples.  It's way too much fun!

So, after you get an apple peeled, cored, and sliced - cut the stack of apple in half.  Then place the pieces in your water with juice or fruit fresh (to prevent browning).

At this point, there is some snacking going on!

Let the apples get thoroughly coated in the solution while you peel/core several more.

I wish I could tell you that I have the manual to this.  I do not.
So, I did what I do best; I WINGED IT!

So, yeah, I had no real idea of the temperature of this dehydrator since it was a second hand gift.  And, I was too lazy busy at work to look up the manual online.  This one rotates and I left it on pretty much all night because I like a more firm, chewy apple slice - almost crispy.

They are so good, naturally sweet and can be used to make APPLE PIE!
Just reconstitute them with some boiling water and you can have seasonal goodness all year long.
Check out this recipe for further details.

Just one more thing - this book comes highly recommended.  I like to collect them every year just for their pretty covers.  It's how I followed the steps to dehydrate the apples.

 Keep calm and preserve your own food!

p.s. one really cool way to save energy by doing this is to hook it to the solar power!  I do this with my crock pot also.

Hope Farms has not been to the Montgomery County Farmers' Market in several weeks now, and we apologize to anyone who has missed us.

We do have a small amount of produce available.  If you are interested, please contact us directly.  Nine One Zero - Four Three Nine - Four Eight Five Four or email hopefarms1890 at gmail dot com.

Best,

Tomatoes.

I pulled almost 16 lbs of tomatoes this morning.  Just thought somebody might want to know.

All systems........GREEN!

This was way back in the spring, apparently not only do I have dust bunnies buffalos in the house, I have neglected-to-publish blog posts in Que, as well.

Back in Time, and Progress

Sitting under the maple tree with coffee and the sounds of the farm behind me; birds chirping and singing, cow-bell's ring-a-linging, and pigs squealing for their breakfast make the remembrance of city-life a long-ago memory.

While I always managed to hear the sounds of horses chewing hay, clip-clopping down the road, and the smell of leather close by, there were times when I longed to live in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of it all.  Now a traffic jam consists of two bluebirds angling for the same nest location and maybe the rush of Sunday church-goers at 9:00am trying to get to Sunday school on time. These ARE the good old days, indeed.

My husband says "for every modern convenience one eliminates from their lives, a job (or two) is created." As an example, I haven't turned the knob on a dryer in about two years now.  Out to the well-house goes the laundry baskets, to be thrown into the washing machine, and then to the well used three-strand clothes line they go.  Taken down, sometimes folded - sometimes not, they go back into the house for the third round of processing; either to lay motionless on the spare bed in the front room waiting ever-so-patiently to be folded, or to be just as patient to stay there until someone says, "Mom, where's my camouflage pants?"

It's true also, what they say, about wood heating you twice, only I think it's double that.  Cutting the tree down, to be loaded into the back of the back of the pick-up truck, then unloaded, to be split by the wood-splitter and then stacked, ready to be burned in the outdoor wood stove.

Just the random thoughts of a farmhousewife. Sitting under the maple tree.  With coffee.

When it's too hot to go outside.....

we stay inside and talk about......FooD.  With lincoln logs and the assistance of the internet - we discuss digestion. Fun times, indeed!

Garden of Weedin'

At this point in the summer, as in years past, the weeds have nearly taken over the garden.  The raised beds suffer less from the invasion of Mother Nature's misplaced flowers, although keeping them consistently watered has proved a challenge.

One of the raised "beds" - complete with salvaged headboard.
The pitchers hold water for various insects, hopefully mostly pollinators....

Every year we learn more about beneficial and unwanted pests, and continue the rather steep learning curve in regards to soil amendments, composting, and management of planting successive crops.

It seems as though we are in the mid-summer garden of weedin' blahs, though.  Not much is producing well, and although we've had ample rain and sunshine, the heat has taken its toll on many of the plants we'd placed our hopes for bumpers crops upon, and alas, one cannot begin to sell a tomato at the farmers' market - so we have taken to giving them away.

I had to laugh when I came across a freecycle post offering "homegrown tomatoes," as it reaffirmed my saying of "you can't give 'em away."

New piglets were born about a month and a half ago, mama & babies are doing well.  One piglet died, as this was mama's first litter, she inadvertently smothered him within the first hour of birth.  Sigh.

Hattie the family milk cow is doing well as are "Red" and "Pete" the beef cows (yesterday Pete was referred to as a 'beefcake' by a dear friend of mine, and I believe that shall be one of his nicknames for sure - if the shoe fits...) and because of all the blessed rain and sunshine, the pastures are thriving.

Spencer, aka: the skinned horse and April, aka: pistol Annie are tolerating the summer well.  What can we expect from 25 and 37 year old California-grown horses in this NC humidity?  They like their salt rock which makes me happy, giving me peace of mind that they are keeping their electrolytes in balance, which is so important to avoid dehydration.

The farm dogs are hiding in the coolness of the damp earth beneath the old farmhouse and the barn cat makes an appearance after his daily nap, tired out from chasing mice all night (which hopefully keeps the snakes at bay, which will eat our eggs!).

In other news, my dad is here from California, and we are enjoying his visit.

Dad relaxes while Farmer Ed milks the cow, "Hattie."