Updated pics

Finally getting around to putting up the pics from the last post:) Here are a couple pieces I've been working on. I love the bird, though I did change several of the colors to ones I liked better.

This one was done as a Christmas ornament exchange. I think this is the first ornie that I've finished and I like how it turned out. If it hadn't been such a pain in the hiney to stitch (it was stitched on 32 ct, over one) I might think about making another for me:)

Here is a pic of my crocheting basket. Just various beginner projects, none of which I have finished.

This is the colonial style dress I made as a play dress/costume for dd. It is a little wrinkly here and it turned out too big on her, but it is cute and worked for her 'enrichment' class dress up day. This was quite a project for me as I hadn't made more than a skirt since high school (and then I had a teacher to tell me what the pattern meant:) Other than the zipper (which I could go back and fix, but won't) it turned out pretty good.

Lastly, this is one of our new cows. We have four, but I couldn't get them all to pose for a picture at one time:) This one was the closest and the best picture. They all have slightly different markings, but are pretty much the same. This one is named 'Spot' (for the spot on his rump). There is another that has a spot on his rump too, but has a black face and there-fore is named 'Black Face'. Another has a pure black back and is named (wait for it, we are so cleaver with naming cows;), 'Black Back'. And the last is named 'T-Bone', first because we are mean and second, because he has a big white 'T' mark on his back. We only name them because we need a way to tell them apart when they are little and get sick (that way we know which ones to watch and which ones need meds). We don't have enough to go to the trouble of tagging yet, so for now naming them will work:)

Nothing much new going on around here other than getting ready for Christmas. I am actually going to get Christmas cards sent out this year and got new pics of dd too:) I am also stitching some ornies for gifts and something for dd too, though she doesn't know about that yet.

Hope everyone is staying warm (we AREN'T!!!) and having a good holiday season:)

Been a long time:)

Okay, I know I said I'd do better and blog more;) I usually am waiting until I have pics to share before I write and well, I'm not good with remembering to take pics, and so I don't post.

Today, however, I'm going to just write a post with no pics so that I will at least get an update on here.

I've been busy, busy here lately, but for the next couple of weeks it looks like things are slowing down, which I really like:) I'm very much a 'home-body' and so lots of running makes me a little crazy:)

I've been sewing (a costume/play dress) for my dd, running to lots of activities for her, learning to crochet, doing a bit of stitching and looking at all the fun Christmas crafts I *might* get around to doing at some point. We also have taken our Jersey bulls in for slaughter and have 4 new (about 3 weeks old) Holstein bulls. They are really cute and I will get a pic soon before they get too big. I had forgotten how much work the little ones take though, as they get sick pretty easily when they are that young and aren't with their mommas. Between making sure they are all happy and well and bucket feeding a couple times a day (not to mention the 'clean-up' they require), they alone keep us busy.

I've also started helping out at our Awana meetings in the 'Cubbies' group (they are all the 3 and 4 year olds, and are so very cute:). That has been a lot of fun and as I'm already at the church with dd, it helps the time go by quicker too. Our Awana meeting is about 20 min away from home (as it just about everything else:), so it doesn't work out for me to come back home during the meeting. And this is much more fun anyway:)

Hopefully I can get some pics taken of some of the projects I've been working on and can then post them soon. No promises though:) hehehe

Wet!!!

We got a little rain a couple of days ago:) We really needed the rain but it seems like we either get nothing, or a LOT. We got a little over 3 inches and this is what it does to our place...
The above picture is of our river, I mean drive way. This isn't as bad as we've had it, but it's pretty close. All the water from the farmer's fields to the south and west of us (and maybe a river to the south of us, but we think it's too far away to be where this is coming from) flows through our place on its way to a river to the north of us. We know it's connected to a river somewhere because we get fish and crayfish left over after the flooding.

This pic is of our front pasture just to the north of the drive way (which is also still in the pic). About 2 acres of fast flowing 'lake'. Below you can see that at least the duck is happy about our new landscape:)

Yep, that's one happy duck!!!

Our drive way is now fairly dry with just a couple puddles left and the front pasture is mostly just extremely muddy, though some water is still flowing through. I actually like having the flooding (our house is safe, so I don't have to worry about that), because we have ducks (other than ours) and other water birds come to visit. And dd loves to look for the fish and crayfish and whatever else she can find in the water. She just wears her mud boots and stomps around in the water. We make her wear the mud boots because we don't know what is running off the fields (and we don't let her in the water at all if the fields have been sprayed within a couple days before the flooding).

I still need to post about some sewing and stitching I have been working on. As soon as I get that small quilt done and the small stitching project I am working on done, I'll post those:)

Progress

I think I've decided that, like gardening, I am horrible at blogging:) I have gotten some things out of my garden this year, which is an improvement over last year, but it is still very over grown with weeds (which is why you won't get a picture of the garden, hehehe). Here is a picture of the tomatoes and some volunteer sunflowers I picked yesterday. It is great that the sunflowers take care of themselves (and re-seed themselves) because I think I've proven time and time again that I cannot keep flowers alive!!!
I arranged the sunflowers with some 'wild flowers' I found during my morning walk. I think they turned out nice:) In the back ground of the picture is our dog 'Gracie'. She is a bit spoiled and lazy:)

I also have a new pic of our 'boys'. WOW have they gotten big (at least for Jersey bulls) and mean (normal for Jersey bulls). We are just about ready to send them off to be 'processed'. I thought that would be hard on me as when they were little I bottle fed them and petted them. However, the older and bigger and more aggressive they become, the more ready I am to have them gone, hrmm, in the freezer:)

I hope to have some progress pictures on stitching and maybe a small wall quilt to show off next time. I'm trying to get a few things made and ready to start up an Etsy shop. We'll see how much time I have though:)

New life

We'll I think we finally have new kittens for this year. I've posted before how my cats have all been letting their kittens die off, and I think that is still happening, but I finally have a momma cat taking care of a couple of her kittens:) We found several more that hadn't made it, but momma cat did take care of these two. And they are so cute:) I had to move them that first day as she had them under a tractor that was outside and clouds were moving in. I took the kittens and momma cat to the barn and set up a box for them. This way they stay dry and momma is closer to her food and water and can leave the kittens where they'd stay safe.

I never thought I'd say we'd want more kittens after last spring, but it just doesn't seem like summer without new little ones running around. So far these two are it for this year, much improved from the 21 kittens we had born last year!!!

These are much more welcomed out here:) These two hens shared a nest of eggs, and are now sharing the chicks as well. They had 7, but one died. After we moved them to this caged in coop I went to throw out the leftover eggs and noticed one was cheeping. So I kept it in a box with hot water bottles and about 1 1/2 days later, it hatched:) I then gave it a couple days and put it in with the hens and other chicks and they all took to eachother.

This was another hen that was sitting as well. I didn't know what to expect from her as I didn't know how old the eggs she was sitting on was (our hens are REALLY free range and I don't always know where they are laying at). I noticed the hen making some noises this morning and so I checked and sure enough, there were little heads peeking out. I counted 3 or 4 before asking dh if he thought we should leave her be for another day or two, or go ahead and move them today. He said to let her sit for a little longer to make sure they are all hatched this time;) I decided to pick her up to see how many she had and I counted 10 heads!!! After I took this picture I went over to the nest and another one was hatching so she's really going to have her feathers full;)

It is so great to have new life all around us:) I love watching the chicks learn to peck the ground and flutter around. And who doesn't love a little kitten (hmmm, don't ask my dh - who is sick and tired of having cats around;0).

A Stitchy Post:)

It's been a while since I've posted and I thought (okay it was requested:) that I'd give a little bit of an update. This will be the first in a couple of posts that I hope to get up within the next couple of days.

I've been stitching up a storm this past several weeks. This one is for a Quaker exchange I am doing. I still need to make it into something before the end of June for it to be ready. I think the hedgehog is really cute:)
This one I started about a month ago and then haven't done anything more with it. It is called "Bless Our Home" and is by Country Cottage Needleworks.

I have been mostly working on this one and like it so much that I ordered the other 3 in the set:) This is the spring section of "Saltbox Scriptures" from Little House Needleworks. I will post an update when I get it done.

And finally, after a full year of working on this one.... IT IS DONE!!! I need to look for a frame for it and put on the buttons, but other than that, it is done. I am suprised that I still really like this one;) I got it for my birthday in 2008 and finished it ON my birthday in 2009.

Well that is all for stitching. I have some updates on my garden and what I've been learning about herbs to write about later this week:)

New discoveries:)

I have, for a while now, wondered what kind of weeds we have growing around the place. I know that a lot of 'weeds' end up being useful herbs and wanted to see if we had anything useful growing around here. However, I really didn't know where to start to find out what these plants were, so this spring I've gone around and started tasting anything that looked like it might be edible (don't worry, I do know what the poison ivy, oak and such look like:). I know dandelion leaves are edible, so I started there. They are pretty bitter, but I think they should be cooked. I've tried a few others as well, but still don't know what they are.

Today my dd brought me a 'weed' and asked what I thought it was. The cats were eating it, and that is why she noticed it. So I smelled it and it smells like mint. I looked for a while on the Internet and found that it is either cat mint or catnip. Some sites say it's the same thing and some say they are a bit different. Both are from the mint family and perfectly safe for humans. Now to dig some of it up to put it in the garden so it is officially an herb and not a weed:)
I also saw the birds that I look for each spring. They don't stick around here long, but are really pretty and as we have very few trees, we don't get a lot of the pretty, colorful birds around here. Mostly we get prairie birds which sing beautifully, but don't have much color to them. I also looked these up and found them to be Yellow headed blackbirds. Not an original name:) And they are LOUD!!!

Here is our last discovery. I found this little one's momma while she was giving birth. She dropped her baby and walked away. I tried to get the momma to take some interest, but she had already let the first born die and didn't want to be anywhere near this one. I knew we couldn't keep it alive, but the other cats were a little too interested in the baby (which when wet and brand new looked much too like a dead mouse or rat), so I brought it in. Yes, the poor thing died, but we gave it love and care for as long as we could:( The poor little thing was so ugly that it was cute:)

That is all for now. I have several more pics of 'weeds' that I want to research to see if they are anything useful, I'll post what I find:)

Some stitching

I'm finally getting around to posting about the stitching I've been doing:)

This first one is just getting started. It is from Brittercup and will have a horse and a kitty on it. I'm doing this one for my dd, as she loves both horses and cats.

This one is getting pretty close to done. It is by Little House Needleworks called 'Heart of America.' I have been working on this since last June, so it's taking a while, but I just love it:)

I'm only working on this one on and off. I found this sampler at www.gazette94.blogspot.com and really like the red and white look. I'm doing this on 28 ct over one so it won't be as big.

This one I just started and finished. I love doing small projects that I can get done quickly. This one will be sent off as an exchange. Now my dd wants this one too:)

All turned out well after the storm. All the animals ended up safe and sound. Would you believe that we are getting snow AGAIN today?!?!? It isn't to amount to anything though, however the last snow isn't all melted yet. We do have the moisture we were needing though, so that really is all that matters.

More weather pics

Here are some more pics from the storm. I am thinking we are about done with it now. We have been lucky as a good deal of people are without electricity and we still have ours. The animals are fine and after a recount in the light this morning, it looks like we are only missing one chicken. She may still be in the barn, so I think we are okay.

These are not our cows. They belong to the man that owns the pasture surrounding us. They are okay, but looked misserable when I went out this morning. Poor things don't have any shelter at all out there.

Well, now on to clean up. You can see how high the snow is up to the shop. Dh is going to dig that out so he can get to the tractor and then he has to dig the blade out. Hopefully he doesn't get the tractor stuck before he can get to the blade. We are completely snowed in right now. I have no idea what the roads are like, but by the time we have our driveway cleared they should at least have major highways pretty good. Not that we are going anywhere. We are staying home!!!

Crazy Weather

We have had some crazy weather since yesterday!!! I took a few pics out our one window that we can see out of, and I'll take some more later when the snow finally stops.

This one is toward our lean-to. You can see that the inside is almost filled up with snow. I'm thinking that drift is about 5ft tall.


Can't tell much from here. Behind the trailor is the stock tank. Can't see it? That's because it is completely under snow now:) We are going to have to dig out the water spiket too to give the animals their water.

And here are our cars. They aren't going anywhere for a while. Our shop has snow up to the big door handles, so we have to dig the shop/barn out so we can get the tractor out to start moving snow around.

Not sure how the animals are doing. Everyone exept 3 chickens are where they should be. Either in the barn or coop. I went to put chickens away last night and only 12 of the 19 were in the coop. We found 4 more of them, half frozen wondering around and put them in the coop. They couldn't see over the snow drifts to find the coop!!! Couldn't find 3 of them, so I'm hoping they were hiding in the barn or in the lean-to.

Will put more pics on later when it stops snowing:)

Hope everyone is safe and warm.

Garden fun:)

I kept hoping to get a bit more done before posting, but I relized that there is still much to do before I'm going to be ready to plant, so I thought I would give an update for what we are doing. I've been wanting to play around with raised beds for a few years now, however it cost more to plant a raised bed than just directly in the ground, so we've never done it. This year we came up with the idea of using cinder blocks, so they will last and not draw termites being that this one is so close to the house. I am planning on putting my lettuce, carrots and herbs in this one. I'll be able to cover it on the cooler nights easier than if it were in our big garden bed too:)


Here is most of the cinder blocks with one of our cats finding the plastic wrapping quite entertaining:)


And here is our start on it, with more cats checking to see if it is level and straight (and if any mice are hiding in the holes:).

And here it is finished. It did take a lot longer to put together than I expected. I had not thought of the time it would take to level and square it. Actually, had it been up to me, I wouldn't have bothered, but those kind of things drive dh crazy:) So it is very level and square to the house, nice and perfect (until I go and plant in it that is).

No, it doesn't have dirt in it yet. This is the beginning of the things that still needs done before I can plant. You see, dh wanted a flatbed for his truck, and so far it has been far nicer than a regular bed for him, but it doesn't work for hauling dirt and such;) So he needed to get wood to build sides that will go off and on the bed. Then he decided that it would be great to have a sprinkler system for this raised bed, which he is right, but now we need sprinkler heads:) Then we need to go to his parents and get dirt. THEN we need to build an encloser for the chickens and not allow them to be so FREE (do you see the one in the pic trying to find something to eat?). But before we can cage in the chickens I have to clean a large area around the chicken coop so they have a nice place to be.....THEN we will need to get some T-posts (thankfully we have the fencing we need) so we can build the enclosure. I'm getting tired just thinking about it!!! At that point I'll be able to plant:)

But since I couldn't wait, I went ahead and started some seeds inside. They never do well inside, but I had to give it a try again anyway:) I planted these (ground cherries and sunberries) a little over a week ago and nothing has come up yet, but I'll keep waiting for a while. This is the 3rd year I've tried the ground cherries (they should be a little sweeter than a tomato, but in the same family), and if they don't grow this year, I'm giving up on them until I have a green house. The sunberries (just a bit larger than a pea, taste comparable to a blueberry), are new to me this year, we'll see if anything happens.

Hopefully in the next year or two I'll get my green house. We have some of the materials we want to use for it, but haven't had time to work on it. Most things we grow can be started outdoors, so it won't matter much anyway:)

I'll have a stitchy post in a few days:)

This and that:)

I have a bit of this and that to share today:)

First off is some stitching I've been doing. This is my spring bunny and the whole reason I needed a spring colored tuck. I have a red tuck that works for everyother season/holiday, but this one needed one of its own:)


Next is a beginning pic of my garden. Nothing going on here yet, but it does look better than it did a few days ago. My dh plowed this spot up and tilled it for me and now it looks nice and pretty. I don't know if you can see them, but there are a few chickens digging around in there looking for all sorts of yummy bugs for their dinner. If only they'd leave the worms:)



And lastly a pic of our boys. These are Jersey bull calves (how old do they have to be before they are not 'calves' anymore?). They are still very friendly and love to have their horns and ears scratched. We try real hard not to get too attached, so we don't have names for them other than 'dinner'. ;) They are obviously NOT doing their job of eating and getting fat right now, LOL!! Just a couple of lazy boys.

A stitchy post

Lots of stitching going on around here!!! First off, a gift. A friend saw my gardening plans and decided that I needed a 'good luck with the garden' gift:) So she made me a carrot pin. Isn't it the cutest thing? Monique (who made this) is the designer for My Mark Design. You can visit her blog at http://mymarkdesigns.wordpress.com/ and she has a link to all her very cute designs on her blog.


And this is where I put it, at least for now. I won't keep it there when I'm gardening though. Like all other things in my life, I tend to get messy when I garden:) I don't want to get my pin dirty, but for now it looks cute on my gardening hat.



This is a very bad pic of a project I am working on for me. We don't have much natural lighting in my house, so pics don't turn out very well. This is one I started in the beginning of January. I have been doing other projects in between working on this one, so it's going slow, but it is finally looking like I'm getting somewhere with it:)

And lastly, a tuck. I've been needing a spring colored one and couldn't find one that was already made that I liked the fabric, so I made my own. It needs a little help:) I should have got one corner punched out better and one of the straps it a little off, but all in all, I'm happy with how it turned out.

Happy Stitching:)

Happy Mail Day!!!

I had a good mail day!!! My garden seeds came today, minus the green bean seeds, they should be here soon. This is what came...

I also had a good mail day on Saturday. I had ordered a cross-stitch chart by Blackbird designs call 'Thank You, Sarah Tobias' and it came too:)

I love 'good mail' days:)

Goal for my garden

I just joined the 'Freedom Harvest Challenge' at freedomgardens.org

I'm really hoping that this helps keep me focused on our goals for in the garden this year. Since we moved to our 10 acres our goal has been to grow/raise/process as much of our food as possible. We are raising chickens (so far only for eggs as we have been too 'chicken' to slaughter any of them ourselves - we let the coyotes to that for us - YIKES), and we have 2 bull cavles that we'll take in for slaughter and processing when they are big enough. I did pretty well in the garden the first year, but last year I did really badly, planting more weed seeds than veggie seeds:(

So this year our plan is to expand our garden by more than twice the origanal size (I'll measure it when we get it all plotted out) and I am also wanting a couple 4x4 raised beds for salad greens and herbs. I figure the raised beds will be easier to cover when it is too cold or too hot. We would like to add some fruit trees/bushes as well, but so far haven't gotten to any of that. I did get my seeds ordered though. We order all of our seed from seedsavers.org because all of their seeds are heirloom and if I ever get around to it I'd also like to start saving seeds from my garden to use from one year to the next. One thing at a time though:)

I ordered....

green beans, broccoli, carrots, ground cherries, cucumber, cantaloupe, okra, peas, zucchini, pumpkin, spinach, watermelon, basil, chives, cilantro, cauliflower, sunberry, and several varieties of lettuce. I will buy potatoes, onion sets, tomato and pepper plants locally. I just can't keep tomato and pepper plants alive when growing from seed and I have a place where I can get heirloom tomato plants locally, but not the peppers. It'll have to do.

Anything else I've missed?
I'll be keeping an update here of my progress in the garden/kitchen.

A little about me

I am new to blogging and hope to be able to keep up with this:)

My dh, dd and I live on 10 acres with our 2 dogs, 20 chickens, 150 thousand cats (not really:), 2 bull calves, a guinea pig and a fish. I love to cross-stitch, garden (veggies), read and homeschool my dd.

I am also hoping to start stitching up some ornaments and other things to sell on esty. I'll post a link to that as soon as I get it going.

That's all for now:)