Beauty Farming Life

Here was my surprise anniversary gift over the weekend.  I know, I know, who knew a utility cart could be an awesome gift? But it is!  This is the John Deere 10P "Utility Cart".  It's designed to be hooked up to the back of my Big Green Zen Machine (i.e. mower).  This will be an asset for doing things around the property. It has a carrying/hauling capacity of 600 lbs!  It has slots on the edge for railing and slots inside for dividers.   I'm thinking of figuring out some way to carry water tanks to make it easier to water the trees and (future) landscaping that are far away from the length of the hose and faucet. And here's the best part.  It's a DUMP truck!  You get your stuff to where you want it, you push a lever with your foot and it tilts back and dumps out whatever you have it loaded with.  This will be a nice feature when loaded with dirt, compost, rocks, wood or whatever. OK, I couldn't resist this photo. You...

Well, yesterday I came home and was going through the mail...junk mail, junk mail, bill, catalogs, magazine renewal, and, wait!  What's this ??  MY SEEDS!!  These are the seeds of the month that I got in a contest that was sponsored by the always awesome Prairie Cat over at her wonderful blog,  Back to Basics . But I won, by way of Granny, also known to everyone as Annie's Granny, from her amazing gardening blog,  Annie's Kitchen Garden .  She gave instructions that if she won, she wanted me to have the seeds.  She won, and so I won.  But it wasn't just her generosity, it was also 3rd Shift Man/Cloud from his blog The Stay at Home Gardener , and Jenny from her blog  Simple Garden Made Easy .  They both also said that they wanted me to have it if they won. The world of blogging is so cool. So, every single month, for the next year, I will get a shipment of seeds from Mike the Gardener and the  Seeds of the Month Club .  It's...

After yesterday's Persimmon Fail post, I thought we should post something fun.  Recently, we needed to get a gift for 2nd Man's Grand Nephew, who is now 3 yrs old.  (Aww, he's just a little guy).  His Mom told us he loves to build things and so we immediately thought of Lego's.  Of course he's too young for regular Lego's but they do make DUPLO for the younger crowd.   When we went to the store, we saw this and fell in love with it.  Duplo Big Farm Set It's the Lego Duplo Big Farm set.  It has a farmhouse and chickens and cows and a horse and a barn and all sorts of farm related things. While we were standing in the long line (this was a couple of weeks before "Black Friday") we had time to kill and so we made the observations below:   Duplo Farm set We could give everything a name based on our own farm, LOL!  (told you we had too much time on our hands). We got ours at the local Target but of course, it can b...

Recently, I received a wonderful book for review.   Taming Wildflowers: Bringing the Beauty and Splendor of Nature's Blooms into Your Own Backyard   by author Miriam Goldberger.   Living in Texas, wildflowers are a way of life here.  In fact, as I read this book, the wildflowers are in bloom all around us, a riot of color and texture.  We also have some newly cleared areas on the property and the thought of a wildflower garden is high on our list.   Needless to say, this book was perfect timing. The book is smallish in size (dimensions) but the author somehow packs a LOT of information into that footprint.  It is over 200 pages long and is divided up into 8 chapters.  Miriam takes the reader through all aspects of wildflowers, their relationship to us, how to care for them, propagation, and so on. As many as 60 different wildflower species are referenced in the book.  Is this the definitive book on all wildfl...

The size of this snake is hard to know in this picture, could be 8 feet coiled up under the bushes...or it could be what it is, a small snake I found under one of the landscape timbers recently.  Of course, on first reaction, it might as well have been 8 feet long, scared the crap out of me for a brief moment. So it made me realize we need something to learn the good snakes from the bad snakes. Snake guide for Texas Having 11 acres of land, much of it still covered with trees and brush and a large area with a pond/swampy spot, we reluctantly share our space with snakes.  Even though I'm not a big fan of them, I'm also not the type to just kill anything that slithers if it's not dangerous to us.  For example, 'Texas Rat snakes' eat large quantities of rats and mice and if that will help keep the mouse population in check, we're OK to have them there.   Snakes of Southeast Texas But like the picture at the top of this post, I stil...

2nd Family gave us the neatest Christmas gift and we just had to share... It's this cast iron vintage (reproduction of course) twine holder.  The ball of twine sits around a post in the middle... Cast iron twine holder ...and because the post is hollow, it has a pair of scissors stored in it.  "J" said when they saw it, they just knew our little farmhouse needed it.  For those new to the blog, 2nd Family is what we call the family that lives at the property attached to the front of ours.  They are "Ma's" daughter, son in lawn and granddaughter, and they have lived there about 20 years.  They helped take care of Ma until she sold the land and house to us and moved to Florida.  We call them 2nd Family because they are like each of us having a second family in addition to our own families.   We think it's a wonderful gift and we appreciate them so much!  We just wanted to thank them and acknowledge them...

We're late on this post but wanted to share.  2nd Man and I spent the long Christmas weekend together instead of with family.  We had a good time and just being together in the quiet of home, no worries about work, was gift enough.   Of course we DID have to get a visit from Santa, I mean it WAS Christmas after all, ha.  We usually try to just get two or three items each so that we have something to open.  We also try to be practical in things that we can truly use.  For me, almost always something related to the farm and gardening and for 2nd Man, it's almost always cooking related. 2nd Man remembered that during the Spring/Summer, when I'm mowing in the sun, I tend to get the back of my neck sunburned.   So he found a fabulous hat for me: \ OK, so it's not THIS hat...though this hat IS indeed fabulous! Instead, he found this one!  It's awesome, has a wide brim, mesh around the head to let out heat, vent holes an...

My coworkers got some neat things for my birthday and I promised I'd show them on the blog. Of course by "me" they actually are really giving them to both of us to enjoy and always ask me to let them know what 2nd Man thinks.  Burlap farm life wreath First up, a very sweet person, "T", at my office made this wreath to use either in town or at the farm.  She makes and sells wreaths for all sorts of occasions and sports teams (and is really good at it) and she wanted to make one that was good for us at either place. She found the cow wall hanging and worked around that.  She used burlap and a cool ribbon with a chevron pattern to fill out the wreath.  We love it! It's on the door at the apartment now but we may move it to the farm.  Not outside of course, we'd end up with birds (or worse, ha!) nesting in it.  Barbed wire star Then another very sweet coworker, "S", gave me this really neat vintage barbed wire "star" ...

Got an early Christmas gift from some dear friends... X320 Lawn Tractor This is my real life "zen machine", our John Deere X320 lawn tractor... 1/16 scale replica of X320 ...and this is my gift.  A 1/16 scale die cast replica of my zen machine!  Yeah, this is a small model, not the real thing. It's kind of crazy that the detail is amazing, right down to the cup holder!  I love it and it now has a home on my desk at work...so I can daydream about the farm. Don't you love when you get something so unexpected but so perfect? Thank you!  I love it! Four days until Christmas!   Is everyone ready?

A few months back, a very sweet "friend of the blog" gave us THIS  nice treasure.  We found a special place for it and it means a lot that someone from across the miles, that we've never even met, would think of us and give us a gift. Today, another friend of the blog, gave us this. It's a star shaped ceramic box, done in a pretty blue and white design... When you take the lid off and open it up, it's filled with wax and has a wick.  It's a candle!  I'm assuming once you've burned the candle and the wax is gone, then you can use it as a little trinket box.  So another big thanks to another "friend of the farm".  Your thoughtfulness touches us more than you could know.  

Here is another fun, thoughtful and definitely useful gift from 2nd Man. A couple of seasons back, I was clearing some old cactus (!) from around one of the trees in the front yard and I hurt my back while walking around and around in a circle all bent over chopping and digging.  With me about to start working on the raised beds and then having to go up and each row once they are growing, 2nd Man remembered that and thought I might could use something like this: Image courtesy of Northerntool.com It's a rolling garden cart/seat.  Here is the link from Amazon if you are interested in reading more about it: Rolling Garden Seat with Turnbar . It has a turnbar on the front so as you roll, you move the handle and it steers the front wheels.  The seat is a tractor style seat (so it's comfortable) and it swivels to make it easier to move around while using it.   Now, as the Amazon reviews say, I will have to admit the assembly instructions were lacking to say...

Here is the last of my gifts... What is this you might ask?  It's a  metal detector !  Yes, I got a metal detector.  Let me back up...ever since I was a child, I have wanted one.  I was a treasure hunter wannabe from way back, always reading about buried piles of silver, gold doubloons from shipwrecks, and treasure chests full of jewels and coins. Sure it was the stuff of childhood fantasy but as I grew older and I had a developing interest in archeology, and digging up 'other treasures' came to mind as well...relics of old civilizations, weapons from past battles, etc. Alas, as my career path went away from archeology and down the route of boring insurance, my treasure hunting dreams faded away.  But I've always talked about never getting that metal detector and 2nd Man remembered the stories I told of my youth and so on Christmas, he gifted me with this one.   It's pretty nice, I can plug headphones into it, it tells me the d...

I mentioned in one of my pre-holiday posts that we were making several of our gifts.  Well, since the gifts have been given, I thought I'd share some pictures of what we did.  I'm sort of known among my friends and family for the mix in a jar recipes.  Most of the ones we use are our own recipes that we have tried out and made to use just for the jars.  Here is the dessert jar we made, it's a jar of chocolate chip cookie bar mix...dump the jar in a bowl, mix with some wet ingredients and you end up with a giant chocolate chip cookie/brownie hybrid. This one is our version of I guess what you could call something similar to hamburger helper.  This one is actually a goulash mix.  Just add hamburger, some tomatoes, water and this jar of mix and you've got a great meal ready to eat.  The one with the bow tie pasta in it was a special request from a dear friend who loves it, it's a turkey pasta dish. Once we got them done, we go...

A little seed love! Anyone who follows the blog knows that I love when I get my "seeds of the month" shipment in.  Imagine my surprise when I got home recently and found an unexpected package of seeds! But these beauties came courtesy of "Bee Girl", Melissa, author of the always inspiring blog, Sky Minded & Ever Growing .  The fact that these were hand gathered and even hand packaged in homemade seed packets by her, means more to me than any seed I could ever get from the store.  So now, I'll have some more great seeds to use in planning our garden in the Spring. She sent organic and even heirloom varieties of the following:   Radishes - Cherry Belle Kale - Red Winter and Red Russian Turnips - Purple Top White Globe   Beets - Early Tomatoes - Yellow Taxi When we (hopefully) eat some fabulous meals featuring these veggies, we'll have her to thank for it.  In exchange for her seed love, we're sending some blog love...

reCAP lids Here is a great new product I recently discovered. They are called " reCAP Mason Jars ". It's a wonderful invention that I didn't realize how much I'd use until we had them.  I got two, they are made in two different sizes, one for the standard size opening of a jar and one for the wide mouth opening. reCAP lids on jars We are experimenting with making our own salad dressings in a jar.  It's a great way to just put our ingredients in and then screw on a standard lid and ring and shake it up.  Nothing wrong there, but then when you unscrew that ring and pop off the lid, it's a mess to pour.  This eliminates that. Here is a batch of mason jar dressing we made up for dinner. It's our  "Farmhouse  Vinaigrette ". reCAP jar dressing before mixing First I put in the olive oil, then some red wine vinegar, and then a batch of seasonings and screwed on the reCAP lid. reCAP jar dressing after shaking ...