Beauty Farming Life

Got the property mowed today, but alas that was all I got done.  It took a long time because I haven't mowed in a few weeks.  I have a feeling though this might just be the last time this season.  I mowed it pretty short, so we'll see what happens over the next few weeks. Sour cream cake with ice cream But when I got home, we had dinner and then this for a fabulously delicious dessert...sour cream cake and vanilla ice cream.   YUM! Hope you had a great weekend!

Off to the farm today...the weather is BEAUTIFUL this weekend.  Next week, we are expecting rain, which is OK with us because it is much needed.   Green farm Very soon, the yard and property won't be this green...the colors will change, the leaves will drop, and it will be barren for months. Store firewood display with Halloween decorations Of course, the last couple of weeks have been in the upper 80's and several times, low 90's...for October!  It is October and Fall decor is out but even in this heat and humidity the stores are stocking up on firewood bundles. Sadly, we don't have any place that we need firewood for. The farm is all electric and along with the house in town (and soon to be apartment), none have fireplaces or cast iron stoves. Hope to get the garden cleaned up, CLICK HERE to see what that job entails, and have some things to plant, or at least prep the areas for planting.  We hope you all have a g...

Such a nice weekend.  Sunny, clear, cool, low humidity...just lovely.  Yesterday was so successful getting the garden cleaned up.  Post coming tomorrow morning with pics, the horrible before and the wonderful after.  It's such a weight lifted from my (gardening) shoulders.   When I came home after being there all day, 2nd Man had this wonderful pasta dish prepared.  He knows I love pasta (I think I must have been Italian in a previous life, I could eat pasta every day).  This is pasta with a mushroom, pepper and pork cream sauce.  We also had some wonderful bread and a glass (or two) of wine.   It was a good day!   Today I did stuff around here, to get the house closer to being ready to move when it sells.  Tomorrow we're having stew (cooking today) now that the cooler weather is, sort of, here.  

The weather people were wrong...today's forecast was for sunny and clear with a chance of rain...instead it rained, not heavy thankfully, ALL day long. So I went to the farm while 2nd Man stayed in town to prep something for today's  "open house".  When I got there, standing water was everywhere.   The driveway was wet and muddy and the skies were gray and overcast.   Just generally depressing, ha. The neighbor's property was VERY wet.  I guess we sit a bit higher than theirs, at least on this adjacent property anyway.  With all the rain last weekend, the ground was supersaturated, and now it won't hold any more water.  Since I haven't been able to get back into the garden for the last couple of weekends, look at this...the grass is already coming back!  ARGH! Hoping this weekend is rain free but the forecast again looks kind of iffy. This is what 2nd Man had to do for the open house...some freshly...

We had a cold front move through...I always find it fascinating to see weather like this...yes I woke up at 1:15am to check it out!  It was a straight line of storms that rolled through, they didn't linger, and then moved on.   The winds shifted to the North and the cool air started moving in behind it. Of course, they called it a "cold" front but it's more like a "cool" front....hey, we'll take it.  Temps dropped to 51 last night, and today they are in the beautiful 60's.  Slightly overcast but still cool and nice.  I'm off to spend the day at the farm, doing what I can.   Rain is coming back though, Monday and Tuesday could possibly be severe...no flooding rain, thankfully, but possible tornadoes and high winds.  I figure I better get done what I can get done but there is so much to do, I don't know where to start first, LOL.  Probably weed whacking the grass coming back in the garden and then working on the raise...

OK, so I couldn't resist.  We rarely buy scratch off lotto tickets but when I heard these were coming out, well, we just HAD to get some when I stopped at a store on the way back into town.  And since it's on tonight, why not... The Walking Dead Scratch Off Lotto tickets Of course, they are Walking Dead themed .  I'm not sure how many different photos there are but I picked up three.   We scratched them off during The Walking Dead, hoping for some luck...while we didn't win $30,000, we did walk away winning $10 total.  Since we spent $6 buying them, I'll say we're ahead of the game.   As Kenny Rogers would say, you gotta know when to fold 'em.... The weekend has been good!  Weather almost as perfect as it can get for us...got some stuff done, also took some time to just do nothing, after weeks of weekend rain, it was kind of nice to take a break.  Though I did feel like I wasted some time but we need that on occas...

It's a beautiful day today,  clear, sunny, cool, low humidity...it's going to be a good weekend for work at the farm.  On the shortlist is getting the raised beds layered and filled and topped off with soil, then covered, and then edge everything inside the garden area.  That's my singular goal.  Then if I have time, I need to pull some weeds in the flower beds, and do some general moving around of stuff in the yard.   If I have time, I want to start organizing inside the house...we spent all Summer bringing stuff from the house in town to the farm...a little at a time.  Little by little isn't so bad..until suddenly you step back and it looks like someone broke into a hoarders house, ransacked everything, and left without taking it, LOL.  But that is something that can be done on the rainy days later in the Winter.  The garden is the priority so that it's ready for jump starting in the early Spring. I titled this post "A Beautiful...

It was a race against the storms...this whole line was moving toward the farm and of course, ultimately, all the way into town (the red pin is downtown). I unloaded the plan ts (post on that tomorrow). First thing to check, the bees... They were still coming in and out.  Not as much activity as I've seen before, but I did remove the top super and there were lots of bees.  Hopefully it was just the early morning, the weather, and the fact that they are still working to repair the damage from the tip-over last week. Fingers still crossed!  So far so good! I also wanted to check the raised beds, make sure I didn't have a greenhouse of weeds going on under there... They were clear, the soil still looked good, so we can say so far so good .  The good thing is, if there are weeds that pop up, with us checking on them once a week, it'll be easy to pop them out before they get out of control.   Everything OK...

It was a beautiful blue day, clear skies and fairly cool.  Got to the farm and it was about 52.  Jacket weather for sure.  I unloaded a few more things that wouldn't fit at the apartment... Then I went exploring to check on things.  It was very wet, our last rain was a few days ago but the temps have been so cool and it's been so overcast, there was very little evaporation or drying out.  The trees are sufficiently spooky this time of year... ...but the grass trails are still green. Go figure. These are the trails through the dewberry patch. ...and best of all, the bees, the surviving hive that was tipped over in a mystery incident, seems to be thriving.  It's been long enough that if the queen had died or left, there would not be this many bees in and out.  So fingers still crossed, all is going well.  

We have been having problems with our ATT Uverse all weekend.  Ugh.  So I haven't been able to post anything new or reply to comments.   But then late today, we discovered that our apartment building has free Wi-Fi downstairs in the morning room area.  I came down here to put up a post for tonight and schedule one for tomorrow.  Wish we had known that earlier!  They probably told us but in your head you think "well, we will have our own internet connection..." and so that doesn't register.  At least now we know for future problems, though hopefully we won't have these problems regularly. Didn't go to the farm this weekend, took a well deserved weekend off to try to finish up here in town.  We've had rain on and off most of the week so everything was watered and 2nd Family checked the bees, from a distance, and they are still going in and out with lots of traffic so hopefully that's continued good news for our beekeeping adventur...

I love this stylized image of a farm, if only it could be this colorful and orderly Off to the farm today.  2nd Man is staying in town.  I refuse to let him see the farmhouse in such disarray, er, unorganized.  He'd look at things and just say "let's get rid of everything we don't need".  Um, we took it out there because we wanted to keep it for future use!  It just isn't in its final resting place (wait, that sounds like something died? LOL).   So I'll spend the day, in cool weather with windows open, a breeze blowing, through the house, sorting through a couple more rooms of stuff.  More pictures (before and after) coming soon. I'd like to do some outside stuff this weekend but we'll just have to see how it goes.  The outside can't really be worked over a weekend if we can't get to a bed to sleep, or a couch to rest, or a table to eat on.   Hope your weekend is off to a great start! DON'T FORGET TO ENTER T...

So yesterday, I was at the farm and it was a beautiful day. The mesquite trees still think it's Winter.. . ...and the  grass  weeds also still think it's Winter... Fruit tree blooms ...but the fruit trees seem to think Spring is here...they  are all starting to bloom, including the ones I haven't gotten in the ground yet... Roasted chicken with broccolini  When I came home, 2nd Man had roasted some chicken breasts over a bed of broccolini and we had that with mashed potatoes and gravy.  It was a great and satisfying meal to come home to.   I got the kitchen done (yay!) it was mostly an all day job.  I will have a post tomorrow with before and after pictures.   We have some errands in town today so it will be a quiet but satisfying end to the weekend.

More tomorrow, busy weekend but I found this weekend that I'm learning to be BUILT FARM TOUGH , ha!  Found this on clearance for $3.50 and couldn't resist getting it for the house.  It came true this weekend, but more on that later. Got the dining room done, and most of the mudroom, also got the yard mowed, trails done, edging done and started clearing a new spot.   Came home Saturday night to grilled steak with a side of asparagus pasta alfredo...nothing like meat and carbs after working hard all day! And came home tonight to chicken breast, greek peas with butter and sliced roasted potatoes.   It was a good weekend!  Hope yours was too!

The weather was wonderful.  It was 60's (50's when I got there) and a very strong breeze was blowing...  Breezy curtains I opened the windows to let the house air out and the curtains were flowing with the breeze... Mowed yard I got the yard and driveway and trails mowed.  I just love the satisfaction of how it looks when it's done... Flowers There were flowers blooming along the fences, albeit wildflowers and weed flowers but it's all beautiful... Steak dinner And I came home to grilled steak, peas, mashed potatoes and gravy.   It was a good day! Since I had so much mowing and edging to do, I used yesterday to work on the yard and today will be focusing on the garden area.  I need to edge around the raised beds, mow between the beds and just generally clean up the area. 

It was a very productive weekend.  Saturday I got everything mowed and edged (see Saturday evening's post HERE ).   Sunday I went back out and worked in the garden. I had an audience of course...the neighborhood cows...I gave them some grass clippings, they were happy. Above is the garden before.   The storms last week played havoc with a few of the raised bed covers, and the rains made the weeds and grass grow.  Sigh...but I borrowed 2nd Family's push lawnmower and mowed...then edged around the beds, then started pulling weeds that had grown back in the beds. And above is the end result of the garden after.   I still had a few weeds to pull when I took this picture but it's all done.  Next is putting down weedblock of some sort...cardboard is ideal but I'm not sure I have time to gather up that much.  We might have to do the cloth again and put down deeper mulch than last time. We are running out of time to get...

Ah, breakfast... Farmhouse Biscuits and Dewberry Jam HAPPY DANCE! HAPPY DANCE! Off to the farm today, after this wonderful breakfast of course.  Homemade biscuits, fresh butter, and the last jar of dewberry jam I made two seasons ago. We had another 2 inches of rain on Thursday, so it  will  be wet I'm sure.  Today's agenda includes finishing the raised bed weed pulling, porch clearing, and cleaning out the empty beehive in preparation for the new bees coming in a couple of weeks.  Hope your Easter weekend is off to great start!

So today was up and out to the farm after that awesome breakfast (see this morning's post).  I knew when I left though that it might not be a full day because I was starting to get a headache.   But I pushed through... Got to the farm and a neighbors goat had gotten into the yard through the fence and chewed off a branch of the pear tree... I chased it back through the fence and then had to do emergency barbed wire repair... Cleaned up the empty beehive and had to fend off curious bees who were attracted to the old beeswax... Started weeding in the garden, got stung by fire ants... Didn't finish all the beds in the garden... Didn't work on the porch... AND... Black Widow Spider SHE'S BAAAAACK!!!!! (but this time I got a much better picture with the brilliant red hourglass...) I came back home early for the day... Update later with pics of the day...

SO...I woke up Saturday to a great breakfast but had the beginnings of a headache.  But things needed to be done.  So I drove to the farm.  Got there and saw the neighbors goat...I thought it was on the other side of the fence until I saw the pear tree bend over as it ate off one of the lower branches!  BAD GOAT!!!!!!!!!!! I ran over there when I realized it and chased it back, it ran back through the gap in the barbed wire fence and started grazing like it had never left.  J from 2nd Family said they got out in the road the other day so she called the sheriff who came and got them back in and warned the owner. Barbed wire fence The picture above shows the gap where the old wiring was bent down.  It's a quarter of a mile (or more?) long if we wanted to have it all replaced.  The neighbor is not inclined to do that and so we'd have to pay for all of it.  Not going to do that, right now anyway.  So I got R from 2nd Fami...