Green is Good!

The garden is coming along...we have garlic, onions, and peas sprouting through the soil and the potatoes should be breaking through any day. I am not sure why I have never tried to grow herbs before this spring. So far everything I've planted so far is coming up....for herbs that is. They include dill, cilantro, basil, chives, and thyme. I have started a handful of veggies that have not come up. John is the green thumb in this family that is for sure.

Check out these humongous tomato plants we started from seed in January, we have several green tomatoes. The 4th picture down is garlic, this is the first time we've grown it.


We hope to one day be able to do 4 seasons gardening....this is a start.

Happy Nurse's Week

I know what some of you are thinking...farm blog and nurses week how does that go together? Well this is a farm & family blog and I consider the people I work with to be part of the family. Considering that John and I are both nurses along with many of my very best friends I thought what the heck I'll torture some of my co-workers today and bring my camera in to work and write a quick blip tonight. They look quite distraught don't they? I announced a photo shot at 2pm. A couple of my co-workers were whining, yes I am talking about you Elaine, but before you know it we had at least half the ER crew posing and having a good ole' time! I work in 3 different ER's and oh yeah 1 college health center, all per diem working 20-36 hours per week depending on what I might be scheming to buy next. Some think I'm nuts but I think I am just ADD, self diagnosed, actually it just fits my personality. I love to float around and have great fun with my co-workers. I have tried working in other areas in nursing such as critical care and college health but I have always returned to the ED, I guess it is my passion... adrenaline junkie some might say. The people I work with are an amazing bunch! Working in the ED can be very stress full and we take things seriously but on our down times we love to have a little fun...how else could we survive? Here's a couple funnies for all you nurses, cheers to us! :)

"You Might Be a Nurse If..." *You can drink a pot of coffee and still go to sleep in the morning. *You believe every patient needs TLC: Thorazine, Lorazapam, and Compazine. *Your sense of humor seems to get more warped each year. *You think it is acceptable to use "penis" and "vagina" in a normal conversation. *You believe the definition of stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven´t fallen asleep yet. *You believe that if warm wine enemas were routinely ordered, patient complaints would greatly decrease. *You hope there´s a special place in Hell for the inventor of the call light. *You see stress as a normal way of life. *You have a tendency to laugh at your patient´s "big" problems. *You believe the problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. *Everything only happens all at once. *You´ve ever been telling work stories in a restaurant and had someone at another table throw-up. *You notice that you use more four-letter words now than before you became a nurse. *You believe all bleeding stops...eventually. *You don´t get excited about blood loss unless it´s your own. *You don´t hit patients or doctors....unless absolutely necessary. *You refer to motorcyclists as organ donors. *You believe Tylenol, Advil, or Excedrin provides a large part of your daily calorie intake requirements. *You´ve ever held a 14-gauge needle over someone´s vein and said, "Now your going to feel a little stick." *You can identify the "PID Shuffle" and the "Kidney Stone Squirm" at 15 feet. *You´ve ever had a patient with a nose ring, a brow ring and twelve earrings say, "I´m afraid of shots." *You think the ultimate cruel joke is get someone drunk, take them to the ER and tell them he OD´d on "some kind of pills." *You automatically multiply by three the number of drinks a patient claims to have daily. *You can keep a straight face when a patient responds, "Just two beers." *You stare at someone in utter disbelief when they actually cover their mouth to cough. *You have encouraged obnoxious patients to sign out AMA. *You believe the government should require a permit to reproduce. *Your most common assessment question at 2 a.m. is "Why is this an emergency now?" *You don´t believe 90% of what you´re told, and 75% of what you see. *You´ve ever had a patient look you dead in the eye and say, "I don´t know how that got stuck in there."

Sunny Days

We had an eventful day as always. I started my day off with chores as usual, it takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour. I could probably do them quicker but most days I do them leisurely. The first thing I do is get the goats bottles ready and the kids feed them. They are finally at once a day bottles, not bad compared to 5 times/day when we got these babies at 7 days old. The weaning process has not been too bad, the hardest point was discontinuing their night time bottle. They now spend their days out in their pen but I still bring them into their area in wood room at night, we will soon have a place for them in the barn for nighttime. After taking care of them I refresh all of the inside animals: feed & water the cats, chinchillas, dog, parakeet, and I have 8 chicks still in the house soon to be out. Then I feed and water the broilers, partridge, bantams, quail, ducks out at the pond, and finally our laying hens that aren't yet laying.(should be by the end of June) Yikes... I never realized how many animals we had until we went away on February vacation and I had to write it all my special instructions out for my neighbor to come and feed all the animals and that was before goats. Regardless, it is a lot of work but we enjoy doing it and it is a great experience for the kids. Our friends and family enjoy as well. When we first moved to this town, which is about 12 miles from our hometown, we really did not have much company. We were "too far out"! Now that we have this place and have started to accumulate some critters we have noticed an increase in visitors .
So after chores we went on an outing. Annabelle, Oreo, Maple, and I headed to Leah's school to show her classmates. We met in the park across from her school. The kids were all so excited! They took turns bottle feeding and they all had a chance to hand feed them grain. After that burst of excitement we took Maple, one of our bantams hens out and the kids had the opportunity to pat her and feed her some cracked corn, her favorite! It was a fun time for all!
This afternoon we planted our apple trees & blueberry bushes and made plans for where the pool was going to be placed, we will be starting on our ground work soon. No such thing as boredom here!

A recipe to share that I found on-line. I cooked this today and it was so easy and the whole family enjoyed. I used a fresh chicken (unfortunately..not farm fresh but in 7 weeks it will be) and I mixed it all together with about 3/4 cup of water and placed it in a crock pot on low for 8-9 hours. (also for mushrooms I just used a small can with the juice of regular mushrooms)

RECIPE BY: MizEmerilLagasse

1 (3 lb) frozen whole chicken (or a chicken that with just fit in your crock pot)

1 lb cremini mushroom or button mushroom,

halved 1 small onion

3 garlic clove

1/2 tablespoon dried rosemary

1/2 tablespoon black pepper

1/2 tablespoon salt (I like kosher)

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon onion powder

3 tablespoons butter,

softened 2 tablespoons honey

Cute little tidbit to end this post with. (he would kill me if I knew I posted this)

A few of Luke's practice spelling words this week, his spelling compared to the actual.

trkey - turkey
tish you - tissue
flaver - flavor
wild livf - wild life

Where were kids when they made up the English language - their spelling makes more sense then ours!

I had lots of pictures to post tonight but having problems downloading.......stay tuned!
Good night! :)

Flight of ideas

Does anyone have any ideas on what kind of tree this is? I have never grown much for flowers except marigolds, sunflowers, and dahlias and that is only because they are hard to kill. John is the green thumb in this family. I am the assistant, picker, and preparer. Don't get me wrong, I love flowers and often have cut flowers throughout the house in the summer. Actually I would like to sell cut flowers at our farm stand this summer and have asked hubby if he could till me up a spot just for planting flowers for that sole purpose. He did a bit of an eye roll but I think he'll do it.


We went to Lowe's today for fencing and we walked out with 2 dwarf apple trees (1 red delicious & 1 yellow ), 20 strawberry plants (so they say it's a small box I've yet to open), and 2 blueberry bushes. I am SO excited and sure we'll be planting tomorrow. We have never grown fruit before only veggies. We had some apple trees that we planted at our old house but we were not there long enough to harvest.







On to another topic ....I am looking for some type of canopy for my farm stand. Any suggestions? I was thinking about getting something like this white one if I can find something similar for a good price. Also below is a a web site I came across when researching farm stand info, which there is not to much of on the world wide web and there are NO books on the topic either. I told John if I was ever to write a book it would be about starting a farm stand and he chuckled and said it is not rocket science. Call me nuts....I just like to research things and learn from others experiences. Back to the web site, neat concept...community garden with a free stand to low-income individuals.

http://www.permaculture-sf.org/freefarmstand.html

Lastly I wanted to share a recipe I came across last year when we harvested our beets. I made it tonight with canned beets, it was still yummy.

Onion Beet Salad

• 12 whole fresh or canned beets (chopped and if fresh cooked)
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1large red onion chopped
• 1/2 cup balsalmic vinegar
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Mix ingredients together,chill for 2 hours and serve.

Despite the Rain

We had an eventful couple days despite the wet weekend. Saturday we had a visit from one of my friends from work, Shirley and her 2 boys. Her youngest was excited by all the animals. Although he had just met us he was ready to spend the day and he let his Momma know he'd be all set right here, it was cute. The funniest part of their visit was when it was time to go. He was out back playing with Luke and we yelled for the boys and he came running with a huge smile and an arm load full of "cow bones" that they had dug up in the garden. Souvenirs from the Achorn Farm.

We sold 16o of our 200 chicks in 2 days. Yeah!
We are talking about selling our partridge and quail as neither are laying eggs, not quite sure why and also we would like to free up some pen space.
Personally, I'd like to keep the quail, they are a beautiful bird, I hear their eggs are very tasty, and they are low maintenance in compared to some of our other critters.
Today was dreary as well, sprinkles to downpour all day. I did not figure we'd be very productive but somehow we managed to get a lot done. Initially planned to go buy some fencing which we do not ever seem to have enough of but then John had a brainstorm. As I was heading out to pick up some diet pepsi (I'm a bit of an addict) he asked me to pick up a burn permit and that is what we did in the rain. We burned lots of brush we had behind the barn which then led to another project. There was this one area above the shed that had not been cleaned in years. The loft area did not even have stairs or a ladder, my curiosity is how I managed to see this scary site. (shortly after we moved here) and 1 year later I decided to tackle this nightmare.
I knew there was some wood up there that could be tossed on the fire and that is how this project was started. It was beyond nasty with like 3 inches of pigeon poop. I had to wear a mask and shower immediately after this clean up project. Nurse John was dry heaving and only able to handle outside clean up taking care of the items I tossed out the window.
As you can see the pictures I did find a few interesting items. The best was a magazine called "Dreft" from 1955, I took a picture of an add before I tossed it. I also had a good laugh at a box cover I found with the picture of the nurse on it, check out her outfit.
Luke has already claimed the loft to be their "club house".


Looks much better now!

Raising your own

We received a shipment of Cornish Rocks. This is our first experience with meat birds. Like I have said in previous posts my goal is to get to the point that we are raising a good deal of what were are eating...we have a long ways to go! We bought 200 and have already sold 60 and someone is buying 100 sometime this week. We plan to keep about 20 to freeze. As you can see these chicks are very cute. When I went out to see them I could not believe how cute they were even compared to layer chicks. Their bright yellow color reminds me of the classic chicks you see around Easter time. A couple interesting facts on these creatures, they are ready to harvest at 6-8 weeks of age. Another FYI is for the first 5 days of their life you have feed available for their consumption around the clock but at day 5 of their life you take their feed away for 12 hours per night continuing this "minor feed restriction" program until the time of slaughter. Failure to follow these feeding guidelines may result in "heart attacks". Sudden death syndrome or "flip" as it is sometimes called can result because of the very rapid growth of the Broiler chicks. I'm glad John read up on that valuable piece of info.
We have had fun this Spring selling chicks. Not that we are making a killing, but our birds and some of their feed is paid for. We have met some interesting people, everyone has a different story to tell and if you listen closely there is a lot to learn from others. I look forward to starting our garden stand for that simple reason, I love people and think it will be a lot of fun to be involved in the production of our communities food supply. Today my neighbor told me was looking forward to having the convenience of getting farm fresh veggies just by crossing the street. I am excited to get it up and running and wonder how it will all work out. Turkeys and Pigs are the next potentials on the farm.

Gray's Animal Park

Today I chaperoned a field trip to Gray's Wildlife Park. It was a great day...just pictures tonight because I'm exhausted. Have a great weekend!