This and That

Lots going on here at the homestead.  We are staying busy with the garden and the animals.  Here are some photo highlights from the last couple of weeks.

'The girls' (hens) have been laying for us regularly the last couple of weeks.  We started getting just one or maybe two eggs per day, and now we are up to five or six per day, which means about half of our hens are laying!  Considering that we eat half a dozen eggs per day, they are barely able to keep us in eggs, but we know it won't be long before all of the girls are laying, and we will be set!  Aren't they beautiful?

Official Hen Hollow Homestead Eggs in the pan!

 

Apparently, one of our layers has been laying double yolked eggs, and this particular morning, we enjoyed TWO with double yolks.  Making breakfast has become a treasure hunt, wondering what we will find when we crack the eggs!

 

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Natalie has been trained on the lawn mower and has been enjoying her chores.  She feels so big when we let her mow on the riding mower.  I remember feeling the same way when I first started MANY years ago, but it lost it's luster when I realized that even in the 105 degree heat, it was MY responsibility to mow.  Ha!

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As is typical of farm living, we have been clearing out underbrush and dead trees from the land, trying to keep things tidy.  We have amassed TWO large burn piles, but have been waiting for the perfect day to light them up.  The day finally came when everything was in place...perfect weather, no wind, and a weekend so Nathaniel was actually home to do it!  Here is a picture of the pile...it doesn't look as big in the picture as it was in real life...we made much if the pile using the tractor, if that helps with some perspective.  It was over our heads for sure!

A little fire starter and a spark, and we had flames!

 

The kids were fascinated...they never got to experience a controlled fire when we lived in town!

 

Mostly ashes now, after hours of burning.

 

Not bad for a day's work!

 

Now we are waiting on another perfect day so we can strike a match on pile number 2!

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In other news, the hens LOVE Natalie's muck boots.  They are covered in tiny pink rosebuds and the hens think they are tasty treats...it is funny to watch! 

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I have created a prayer wall in our dining room, where the kids and I can add prayer requests and people we want to pray for.  It is in a central location in our home, so when we walk by it a thousand times a day, we will be reminded to pray for those things.  I simply found an old frame I had in storage (from a garage sale, no doubt) and painted it red.  Then Nathaniel put chicken wire across the back, and we use tiny clothespins to attach the names of those we want to pray for.  This was only a few minutes after I hung it up, but there are more added here now, and the requests continue to grow.  I am hoping this will help all of us to pray more constantly throughout the day.  It is an honor and a privilege to pray for those around us, and I want the kids (and myself) to grow our prayer commitments!  Here is our wall:

Nathaniel made the shelf underneath out of some old barn wood...I am not finished accessorizing it yet, but for now, it holds our paper for prayer requests and a pen in an mason jar, and also our tiny clothespins.  It's a work in progress.

I also hung a few prayer quotes I printed off the internet...just as sweet words to read as we pray for those near and far.

 

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In the garden, we have faced some challenges, but we are working on them, and learning lots about organic gardening along the way.  Here is a picture of the huge horn worm that decided to feast on my tomato plants...all three of them!!  Ugh!

Well, consider that his last meal...we found him, plucked him off of there, and fed him to the chickens!  That will teach him to eat my garden!

The tomato plants seem to be surviving, and are growing some new green.  I am hoping they will pull through and produce a bountiful crop for us.  I have big tomato canning plans!

We also discovered that an animal had trampled a section of my onions, and broken them down.  Out they came, and I spent some time processing them for the freezer.  From the onions I had to harvest, I ended up with 14 bags for the freezer...7 bags of sliced (for fajitas), and 7 bags of chopped.  Not bad for a few hours' work.

 

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The end of last week, we had a little excitement here at the farm.  I had gone out to gather the eggs, and when I pulled open the door to the nesting box, a LARGE rat snake was there to greet me.  I have killed smaller snakes on my own before, no problem, but this one was HUGE, so I called in back-up.  I LOVE having my parents living just across the road...when Nathaniel is at work, I can call on them if I have an emergency.  I considered this an emergency!  Ha!

A quick phone call to my dad, and he grabbed the gun and came on down!

It took some looking to find the snake again, because after he had seen me, he decided to climb up into the rafters of the chicken tractor to hide, hoping we would go away.  Obviously, that snake had never met my dad, and didn't realize that he had met his match in the stubborn department.  My dad looked and then worked hard to irritate the snake making him climb down from the rafters.  Of course my dad won!  Ha!

Once the HUGE rat snake had climbed back down into the nesting box, we flung that crazy thing out onto the ground and it was over.  My dad shot it in the head, and that was the end of life for the slimy thing. 

Of course, once it was dead, we had to examine it and measure it!  We are rednecks :)

From what we could tell, he had not eaten any eggs, which was a good thing for us.  My dad pulled out the tape measure (which he ALWAYS has on his person) and measured the length...he was a little over 5 feet long.  Folks, that is just about as long as I am tall...craziness!!

Here is my dad holding it up...and my dad is TALL!

Once it was dead, though still moving because that is what snakes do, we decided to use it to do a little training with the dogs.  We want them to recognize snakes, and bark to alert us that there is one around so we can decide if it is a danger or not.  We took the snake up into the yard, and let the dogs sniff it and then got them wound up a bit by shaking the snake at them and hissing.  Of course it worked, and they began barking like crazy and alerting on the snake.  They kept getting more and more brave, and eventually were picking it up a little in their mouths and shaking it.  Good dogs!

Giddy-Up checking out the snake.

CowPatti decided to get in on the action, too!

 

Both of them going crazy, barking at the still-moving snake.  They didn't know it was dead!

 

Apparently the training helped because we have since found GiddyUp chewing on a tiny snake that she had killed.  Hooray for snake-catching dogs!  Ah, farm life :)

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Sadly, we live in the middle of lots of tragedy lately.  First there was the West explosion, which we felt all the way here at our home.  We didn't have damage, but we did feel the blast which made the pictures on the walls hang crooked.  And now, over the last week, the spring weather has reared it's powerful head, and tornadoes have been all around.  One evening we spent hunkered down in the hallway with our emergency packs and the dogs.  There ended up being 16 tornadoes in our area that night, but thankfully, none of them hit our home.  Unfortunately, many around us were effected, enduring lots of damage to their homes and property, and even some lost their lives.  Devastating.

Then again yesterday, there was a threat of severe storms, so I placed our emergency 72-hour packs in the hallway again, along with my purse, some extra bottled water, dog leashes and a small supply of dog food,  and other emergency supplies.  I decided it would be good to be prepared, especially since Nathaniel was an hour away at work.  Here is a photo I took of our hallway stash.

Thankfully the storms did not get as bad as they were predicting, and we never had to hunker down in the hallway that day, but it was so good that we were at least a little more prepared for the possibility of something happening.

Please continue to pray for all those affected by the storms...people in Cleburne and Granbury are still trying to recover, and it will be a long road to rebuild all of the homes that were destroyed.  Please also pray for those in Oklahoma who have endured tornadoes as well...those in Moore and surrounding towns, who lost everything.  So many lives forever changed by the human loss that occurred that day.  While so very sad and challenging, losing homes and materiel things does not compare to those who lost children and loved ones in the storms.  God be with them all.

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Well, that just about covers it.  Lots and lots of things going on here at the farm, and this is a snapshot of a few of those things.  We continue to feel blessed to live here, and are taking each new challenge as it comes, learning much all along the way.  We are so very blessed!

FINALLY!!

After feeding the sweet baby chicks, and watching them grow, and waiting, and waiting some more, we FINALLY have our first egg.  One of our Black Austrolorp Beauties laid us an egg today.  VERY exciting evening here at the homestead!

Around the Homestead

Some photos from around the homestead!  We have been busy :)  The garden continues to grow and thrive and we are super excited for the day we can begin harvesting the bounty and eating from the land.  I also have my work cut out for me, as I need to educate myself on canning and storing up all of this delicious food for the winter!

Carrots

Green Beans - There is a whole row of this growing!

 

Romaine Lettuce - apparently lettuce is not my gift...I only have three heads growing!

 

Okra - can't wait to dry some in my dehydrator.  MMMM!

Squash - Delicious!

 

This is the kids soon-to-bee sunflower house.  We planted all of the seeds in a large rectangle so when they grow up big and tall, the kids can play inside like a playhouse!  So far so good :)

 

Cantaloupe peeking through!

In other news, we have been cleaning out the back of the chicken yard, where trees and vines were taking over.  It is dangerous work for sure, and here is why:

Why yes, that is a Copperhead snake.  We actually killed two of these venomous creatures in our clean-out.  Where there are two, I am sure there are more.  Alert eyes becomes the name of the game when you are out and about around the farm.

Natalie thinks life is sweet because she got to help mow the yard for the first time on the RIDING mower!  Talk about feeling big!  She loved every second.

In our quest for low-carb and sugar-less eating, we have found a delicious little treat!  They are called Papadums...an indian food and they have less than 2 grams of carbs each.  That is LOW.  Straight from the package, they almost look like a circle of cardstock, but 3-4 seconds in the pan with a little coconut oil, and they puff up like a tostada.  We really enjoyed eating them that way, topped with lots of yumminess like seasoned beef, lettuce, tomato, grilled bell peppers, sour cream, and avocado.  A tasty low-carb treat for sure!

I stumbled upon a fantastic deal at one of my favorite secret grocery spots!  I purchased this entire crate of sweet potatoes (around 40 pounds) for $5...including the crate.  Awesome!  We have enjoyed baked sweet potato fries, and will also be using some on the garden, as well as the flowerbed hoping for some sweet potato vines.  We will see how it goes!

 For those of you from Texas (which is I am sure all 3 of you who read here!) I am sure you heard about the terrible explosion tragedy in West, Texas.  So very, very sad.  While we do not live in West, we do live close enough that we heard the explosion, and it really shook our home, leaving pictures hanging crooked on the walls.  We are all fine, as we are far enough away that there was no damage, but it was certainly alarming as we did not know what had happened for about an hour.  It wasn't until they began showing it on TV that we realized what had really happened.  Our hearts are broken for the community of West, and we know that it will be a long road of recovery as they grieve and heal and rebuild.  Lives were lost that day, families forever changed.  We pray for the community there, and for those ministering to them.

That tragedy, along with the B0ston tragedy, really spurred me on to begin working on a project that I have LONG wanted to take on.  I have done quite a bit of research about emergency preparedness, and have finally started on 72-hour kits for our family.  Should something happen that would cause us to need to evacuate, like terrible weather or some other tragic event, we can grab our backpacks and have everything we need to self-sustain for 72 hours.  Our kits are not complete yet, as it can be a bit expensive to put them all together at once, but they are started!  Once complete, they will include food, water, shelter, communication tools, first aid supplies, and other items we might need.  Yes, somehow it will fit mostly in our four little backpacks.  It was amazing to me how many of the items I already had around the house, but they were not useful in an emergency because they were so scattered and there might not be time to gather in the moment.  Now they are gathered together and we can grab them easily.  The beauty is, we could even use these packs if we needed to stay here in our home, yet had no electricity or water.  Over the coming weeks and months I will continue to add to our packs until they are complete.  We have even put together a pack for Nathaniel to keep with him on his commute.  Since he is an hour away from us, in an emergency he could grab his pack and walk home.

It may seem silly to others for us to think about preparedness, but we feel like it is a wise move for our family.  We believe and have no doubts that God is in control, but we also believe that preparedness is something God would have us do.

Here is a picture of our bags in progress:

So that's a brief recap of the happenings around the homestead.  Check back soon for more fun pictures!

 

Seven

Saturday, Levi turned the big SEVEN!  For some reason, seven is a big year for me.  I guess six still sounds like a little kid, and seven feels so much bigger, I don't know.  Odd, but true, seven feels SO big to me!  My youngest babe is seven, and with each year that he ages, so do I!  Yikes!  I am getting older.  Sigh.

For his party, Levi wanted to have a Duck Dynasty theme.  We are HUGE fans of the show, and of course we decided we would go BIG or go home.  Well, we had the party at home, but we definitely went BIG!  I knew the party would have to be budget friendly, so a few weeks ago I started gathering things from around the house, and also picked up a few items at the Goodwill.  Ha!  Y'all know I love me some Goodwill!  Anyway, I gathered and collected lots of things that fit the theme...items like ducks (of course), camo, and outdoorsy.  The morning of the party, we blitzed the house in a cleaning frenzy and then I set about decorating our Duck Dynasty Empire.  So. Much. Fun!

I will let the pictures do most of the talking, but boy oh boy did we have a great time.  I had enlisted my mom's help to make up some beards, and she did not disappoint!  The beards we all wore were fantastic! 

I displayed all of the beards by hanging them from jute twine, and added a fun sign that said "Keep Calm and Grow a Beard".  Everyone could just stop by the beard station and choose their facial hair!  You can see there is one missing in the picture...Levi couldn't wait any longer!

 

This was the cake and gift table.  I hung up a sign that said
"Happy, Happy, Happy", which of course fit the mood of the day.  My mom made Levi's requested chocolate cake, two tiered and round.  That boy is specific...he knows what he wants!  Ha!  I used some camo fabric to accent the table...it is actually the fabric they sell in the hunting supplies that is 3-D, with leaf cutouts to make it look realistic for use on deer/hunting blinds.

This was the food table...complete with a homemade "Quack" banner.  We enjoyed taco stack salads and lots of fresh fruit.  We would have loved some of Ms. Kay's fresh squirrel or frog legs, but I haven't figured out how to get some cooking lessons from her yet!  A girl can dream, right?  And yes, we just might eat some of those goodies if I knew how to cook them.  Ha!

This was the centerpiece for the dining table.  I put nerf bullets in a mason jar, and added a beard to the jar for fun!  I just kind of layered in things I thought would work...burlap, long grasses, guns, ammo, duck head from Goodwill, rocks...anything that was appropriate for the occasion.  I think it turned out pretty cute!

After our meal, it was time for some yummy cake and gifts.

Levi posing with his camo cake...so proud!  I made some cupcake toppers thinking he would like camo cupcakes, but he was adamant that he wanted the two tiered, round, chocolate camo cake.  I improvised and stuck my cute toppers in the cake instead...turned out cute!  The toppers said things like "Happy, Happy, Happy", "Physically and Metaphysically", "He Gone", and "You can't fix stupid!".

Blowing out the candles!

 

If you know Levi, you know that when it comes to receiving gifts, he the MOST demonstrative and thankful kid I know.  He goes on and on with squeals of delight over the littlest things!  I am so thankful he expresses his excitement and gratitude.  There is nothing worse that a half-hearted thank you when you have worked so hard to bless someone with the perfect gift.   In this picture, he was opening a new alarm clock...it is camo and to turn off the alarm, you shoot the target with the gun.  Perfect for my little hunter!

More Legos...the way to his heart!

 

A new pocket knife/pocket tool.  It has all sorts of tools, including a tiny say, scissors, pliers, a knife, a file, and more!  He is all boy, so this gift fit him perfectly!

He got duck bookends from my sister and brother-in-law, as well as a hunting light!

 

I don't have a picture of the other gifts, but they included a skeet shooter with electronic gun, a Duck Dynasty t-shirt, some money, an Amazon gift card, and of course some more Nerf gun stuff.  He is a blessed boy, indeed!

Once we had eaten, it was time to beard up! 

This is my dad as Si.  He LOVES the show as much as we do, and thinks Si is the funniest guy ever.  Really, my dad is just as crazy as Si, so he sees something familiar!  Ha!  Anyway, we made him a nice gray beard to wear so he could play the part.  His t-shirt even says "Si is my role model!"  Perfect!

 

Natalie wanted to be Jace.  She loves that Jace is always getting onto Si, and has perfected saying "Si!" and "No" just the way Jace says them on the show.  This outdoor girl dreams of one day driving over to meet the Duck Commander family.  Maybe someday  her dream will come true...until then, she will continue to watch and re-watch every single episode she can find!  She also thinks it is super cool that they are Christians, and they aren't afraid to share that.  We also attend a CofC congregation, and Natalie feels a special connection with the Duck Commander family because of that!  Forever in Heaven with the Robertson's?  Yes, please!!

Here is Nathaniel sporting his beard.  He could really grow one of these with a little time.  I wonder sometimes what he would look like with a beard...I guess now I know!

 

Here is most of the gang!  I was taking the picture, but I was sporting my apron, just like Ms. Kay!  My mom is also missing from the picture, but we often call her Ms Kay for a plethora of reasons.  She is a great cook, but she also has some hoarding tendencies just like Ms. Kay!  Love ya, mom!

We spent the evening watching some Duck Dynasty on the iPad, and then having Nerf Gun wars on the backyard.  I took a large box and turned it into a duck blind for Levi.  I used the same camo fabric and wrapped it around the box.  I cut a slot for him to shoot through, and also added a door on the back so he could get in and out of it easily.  HE LOVED IT!  It turned out great, and the kids are enjoying using it every day...definitely getting some good use out of my hunting blind!  We were too busy having fun to get pictures on the day of the party, but the next day we were able to get some good pics of Levi and his duck blind. 

Levi, aka "Willie" hanging out the front of his duck blind, holding his double barrel nerf shotgun!  Is he the cutest or what?!

 

Standing next to his blind.  He insisted that he be the one to dress like Willie...no one else could have the flag bandanna or the face paint.  Ha!  He made a cute Willie!

 

I wasn't able to purchase a real duck call (that crazy budget thing!) but I did find some toy duck calls for super cheap.  The kids really enjoyed them, and spend time every day down around our tank 'calling' the ducks.  They are hoping they can get some ducks to move in, and then we can hunt and eat them!  I'm game!  As much as he is loving this toy duck call (that sounds pretty good if you ask me), he hopes to someday have his very own REAL duck call!

 

Another pic of him calling the ducks.  He even moves his fingers up and down, just like the guys do on the show.  He loves it and feels so grown-up!

As you can see, a good time was had by all.  Wonderful family memories were made, and a we had a grand celebration of Levi's life.  When Levi chose Duck Dynasty for his party, I truly couldn't think of anything more fitting for him.  We love watching the show together, and we love laughing together.  We love feeling a small connection to the Robertsons because we, too, are just 'Jesus Lovin' Rednecks'!  As for me, well of course I would love to meet the family and maybe even enjoy a meal together, but more than that, I would love to sing with Missy.  As a singer, and someone who loves to sing praise to the Father, I think it would be grand to spend some time with the Robertson's singing old hymns together...4 part harmony!  Yes!  It just couldn't get much better!

Levi, seven years ago, God sent you to us.  He used your precious life to bless us beyond our wildest dreams.  We love you, sweet boy!