Saturday BlogRoll call

It is still cold out! UGH! No outside work today if I can help it. I plan on tatting today. While I am off doing that, why don't you visit these blogs;

the World According to Ollie, is written by a fellow BookCrosser. This is a personal blog with Adopt a pet posts, and she is stitching something. . . hmmm. . .

Urban Agrarian Is currently talking chicks. Go check out her backyard flock.

WeSnLaNi is a personal blog. This one is the highest energy blog I have on my list. Very happy and bubbly, you just can't help but to fall in love with the entire family.

Wheel, Abbagirl has been with me for awhile. This is a personal journal that I enjoy. And yes, I do like coffee.

Happy Easter to those of you that celebrate! Make it from Scratch Sunday will be posted later tonight as I will not be able to post tomorrow. I might even tell some of you what tattting is.

April Snow Showers

It was in the 80'sF on Wednesday, then yesterday arrived with snow. Good thing I mulched all my tender plants when it was warm.


My poor bushes, they were trying to bloom
I wonder if I could just shatter the grass instead of waiting it to thaw before mowing?
My first snowman of the year. The snow fall we had this year hasn't been snowmanable.

The boys and I ran out and made this fellow. We even gave him a heart.

Snow in April, though not unexpected, is a rarity here. We got almost 2" of it sticking.

A long long long long time ago, before the rain, before the snow. . . Cheryl from Free Range Living tagged me. She wanted to have a look inside of my fridge. Now that I have found a crucial camera element, now she can!

Also, some of you have asked about different types of kitchen herbs, I am trying to post the different types, and their uses {as well as some recipes that include them} over on my other blog Naturally Food. Keep an eye out on my side bar to see if the herb you want to know about pops up. If there is one that you want to know more about, let me know, please.

Good morning Jack!

Frost, that is. Good thing I went and picked up some heavy mulch for my tender plants.

Nostalgia time

I grew up in a small town {it became a suburb as I grew} We had the second largest grain elevator in the world. I remember how it was the center of tales and lives of the farmers around the area. Besides just using it, they were able to take time to talk and joke around with each other. Sometimes they only got to see each other during harvest. Then on June 8, 1998 there was an explosion, killing 5 workers. It was devastating to my community.

Fast forward to today, the local co-op shut down a few years ago, and the grain elevators are only open during season. so when I saw this story in our local paper, it warmed my heart. And since it is freezing out there today, I thought you could use a little warming as well.

Be nice

The above is a very badly drawn orchard, my orchard.

My father is going less frequently to the VA, so yesterday we went and wondered around the farm store. We ended up buying a pear tree {no partridge} and 2 more apples, as well as a blueberry, blackberry and 2 more grapes. Now I need to figure out were they should go. I don't want to put anything on the bottom of my drawing, under the waterway. The apple in the above scene might not be able to stay there due to the new house. The green and yellow represent open field, there is were we want to keep live stock, all this is on about 2 acres of my 5.

decisions decisions. . .

The Milk and I

Once upon a time, in a far far land. . . Alright, so an hour north from me is not that far, but to some of you people living in Kansas is a strange concept. {I think that is my favorite state insult, People actually live there?}

I gathered my semi clean 3 year old and we took off in our truck. After a week plus of e-mail tag with the KSMilkmaid, I was finally on my way. The drive was quiet and the scenery was gorgeous. I know, most of you have been on one highway or the other that drives straight through Kansas to the next state, oh how boring Kansas is! Here's the problem, you don't live here, you drive through during one season and it looks bland. Trying driving that same strip in each season, everything changes. If you don't know you're landmarks, it is easy to become lost. We are just now recovering from winter, and there is so many colors erupting. It's a sight!

I digress, KSMilkmaid has better dirt roads than I do! And she is further from civilization than I am. I arrived at her home around 5pm and got a quick tour of the Fuller Family Farm. Bad timing on my part, but I got to meet some of her wonderful children, saw her free range chicken, get a glimpse of some milk cows and met a dog named Hank. She showed me the dairy, the old one and the new one. I took close to the last of her milk, 8 gallons. She insisted, even though I said I could cut the amount back a bit, but this is to last 2 weeks.

The KSMilkmaid is great, I am glad to have met her and looking forward to getting to know her better. Plus this milk and butter are delicious. Now I need to try out the flour.

Stephanie, your cheese is clabbering now, this will taste a lot better than my store bought milk batch.

If you have access to a local dairy, I highly suggest checking their products out.

Problems

My computer is acting up. I keep getting thrown offline, so no stories or tips today. {besides the garden has kept me very busy this weekend}