Weekend Farming

Monday again. Spring break is over and the kids are back in school. I hate packing lunches. The weekend was a super ending to a lazy break. Can you believe that I hadn't gone further than the end of my driveway for an entire week? We piled into the family vehicle (yes, a minivan) yesterday to get more food to feed all these kids and tarps for a chicken project. It is April and the coop gets its spring cleaning plus a few improvements. I'm thinking a small hay/straw loft, insulation board, and feed storage bins.

The tractor was on the property this weekend cleaning out winter's worth of chicken nasty. The good news about small family farms is that this gross stuff is never too much for our own land to handle. Chicken bedding makes its way from the coop over to fertilize the garden every spring.

Blake's dad has been wanting to teach me to drive tractor but I refuse. Yes, this is where I draw the line. Dig fence post holes and identify edible weeds, check. Milk a goat and scrub out disgusting cow waterer, check. Butcher chickens, double check. Drive tractor? No way.

While Blake was outside handling the big jobs, I was inside starting the second round of seeds. Not too many this time, just some paste tomatoes, herbs, marigolds, extra peppers and some more broccoli. We get the soil from behind the house, in the woods. This stuff is black gold for our little seedlings.

Confession: during planting I was also eating a yummy raspberry amaretto coffee cake still warm from the oven and a cup of coffee... but don't tell... This is probably the real reason I won't drive tractor.

And then a fitting tribute to starting this years garden is consuming last years harvest. I can't tell you how excited I was to sit and enjoy this meal.

Garlic-lemon green beans

Beans and greens (with frozen beet greens)

Butternut squash soup

Brown rice

Lamb roast (Blake's mom's contribution)

and...

a glass of homemade red wine

dessert? the rest of the coffee cake...

Being able to eat a meal where I have seen most of its ingredients from seed to table can be described in only one word: satisfying. I have to find satisfaction in providing for my family's most basic needs as any real homemaker would but it is an exhausting and sometimes hard place to be. The tasks are made easier when I just accept that these are my shoes to fill today so I'm going to do my best. Of course just minutes before writing this I swore to collapse as soon as this post is published and give up for the night, but this minute to myself puts me back on track. Thanks, blog friends, for holding me accountable.

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Oh, and just to keep you in the loop, my mailbox was hit again, this time we suspect it was a metal pipe. To do this kind of damage they would have had to actually gotten out of the vehicle and smashed the box... sigh... silly people.

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Does anyone else think it is funny that weekend activities at both Lauren's blue house and mine included plowing the garden and starting more seeds? See, just another way our lives are strangely parallel.

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And we joined up for the Homestead Barn Hop. If you are new welcome and please come again. For our regulars be sure to check out all the great blogs linked up.

Hosted by:

Homestead Revival
The Prairie Homestead
New Life On A Homestead

A Blossoming Homestead