These Two Hands

They’re only 8 weeks old. In a factory they would have been harvested already. They also would’ve never seen the sun or eaten grass.

Well, nearly done anyway. We now have a huge pile of firewood to stack and arrange, plus a pretty epic cleanup down by the pond once that’s all done. We also ended up with quite a little stack of logs that were way too long for the splitter (how we cussed those lazy tree guys!), […]

The log splitter arrived at our door promptly at 8am this morning, so after a big breakfast of bacon and eggs it was time to get to work. Some amazing (beautiful! wonderful! beloved! can you tell we’re grateful? -laugh-) friends of ours volunteered to come over and help us slave all day. The log splitter […]

Today I was in one of those sort of slow, sad moods where just walking forward feels like it takes too much energy. Where it feels like if someone looks crossways at me I’ll burst into tears. From experience I know that when that mood hits, I need to either take a nap right away […]

I got some more pics of the woodshed yesterday but neglected to post them. (What’s up with springtime and all this super-busyness on farms anyway, sheesh!) See? Totally not ghetto! (Those rafters are strong. I swung on them like monkey bars. I have the splinters to prove it.) From this:  to this: I think it […]

It seems like it’s been a-project-a-week around here for some time now, with no end in sight. Because next weekend is all about log splitting (with a rented splitter! Thanks mom and dad!), this weekend was perforce all about creating wood storage. This is how far I got by this morning – my fault for […]

Not long after I posted that entry wailing “can I get these huge chickens out of my house yet?” I got to work on an honest-to-goodness chicken tractor. See, OhioFarmGirl had inspired me months ago with her post on her new turkey hoophouse. It looked so simple! And hers looked so svelte, so well-constructed, so […]

I just got in my shipment of perennials, and it is really starting to look like Spring out in the sunporch. Peepers going in one corner, this in the other: All my seeds started so far (man there aren’t nearly as many of them as last year – every time I notice that I start […]

I finished this morning’s (ok “MID-morning’s” for most of you) chores and then started to laugh at what I saw on my counter. All lined up and tidy. A silent paean to slow, real food the slow, old-fashioned way. 1) Dry beans soaking with a touch of vinegar for tonight’s frijoles cocidos; 2) buttermilk culturing; […]

This chick thing just gets more interesting every day. See, the farmer I got the eggs from had a ton of chicken breeds, and let her chooks go pretty much free-range. So these chicks are all mutts… ahem, cross-breeds. The breeds the farm had are (for the most part) good laying breeds, so I’m not […]