Vintage Home and Farm

We've been taking our dog for a walk around the barn regularly, so she gets some exercise (and we do too!). The spring flowers are so gorgeous this time of year! Daffodils were in full bloom the other day, so we decided to capture some pictures of them. The cherry and apple trees are also blooming. There's a sweet fragrance in the air from all of the flowers. It smells like spring! I love looking up into the branches of the flowering trees at the blue sky beyond. Here's a close-up of some of the daffodils. Our homeowner's association planted them years ago and maintains them every year. They do a great job, and the whole community enjoys the beauty. Can you believe how long a line of daffodils there is? It wraps around two whole sides of the barn and horse field!  

It's about time for another update on what's new around the farm. Lots of growth as spring comes along! Paul refilled the bird feeder recently. The birds love it, and deer like to graze on the seeds that fall underneath it. We cleared out the weeds and old plants from a few rows in the garden recently. It made such a difference! We recently got an enormous pile of bark dust delivered! Now we get to distribute it among all the blueberry rows and in the garden. We got a couple rows done, but we still have much to do. Eventually, all five rows will be covered in bark dust. It has a good pH for the plants, and it helps control weeds and keep moisture in. Patch the donkey says "Hi!" He must be very happy to have a freshly graveled pen, especially as the weather gets nicer. Spring is coming! What better way to tell than the hundreds of daffodils around the barn coming up? We planted our Christmas tree! We ended up digging two holes, since the first one was too close to the ...

A good friend of ours, Nina Cesena, is a wellness coach, and she recently helped us plan an anti-inflammatory, low glycemic load diet that specifically targets our family's health needs and goals. Since then, I've been cooking from the recipe booklet she created. We're enjoying the new flavors and ingredient combinations she recommended so much that I wanted to share about her services here.  Before working with Nina, I had been repeatedly cooking the same basic recipes for a long time and was in desperate need of inspiration to help us stay on track with eating healthy. If I don't have ingredients ready and a plan for the week, it's exceptionally hard to stick to our health goals of eating home-cooked anti-inflammatory and low-glycemic meals. Nina was even able to offer options for each meal to account for my long list of food sensitivities. I especially enjoyed the salads, salad dressings, and soup recipes that Nina included in the booklet. We eat homemade soup re...

We recently attended a wild bird workshop that discussed creating and certifying a property such as our yard as a wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. The intention of the wildlife habitat certification program is to encourage people to make adjustments to their yards to benefit not only wild birds but also many other creatures, such as frogs, toads, bees, and butterflies. The program also results in increased species biodiversity and the support of native plants.  We've seen all kinds of wildlife on our property, but some are not visible during the full spring-to-fall growing season, and when they are present, they are not in great numbers. So, we're looking forward to adding a few elements to our property to attract and keep more wildlife around. I'm especially interested in how we can make our yard, fields, and garden more attractive to frogs, toads, and gardener snakes. As you may recall, we had a mama gardener snake and her babies hanging around o...

About a month ago, we were contacted by someone with PAIR (Pawsitive Animal Impact Rescue) about two kittens that needed fostering. We quickly said "YES!" and the kitties came to stay with us. Meet Crumble (the orange kitty) and Cookie (the black and white kitty). The kitties stayed in the Corral, a big TV/game room in our house with its name etched into the interior door window (the original owners did that back in the 1950s). The photo above is taken from outside the house, and as you can see, the kitties loved to sit in the Corral's big front windows. Crumble is a very lovable kitty who seeks affection, and so he was quickly ready to go on to a forever home. Even though we knew he'd find a great home, we were still sad to let go of him. Cookie, meanwhile, is timid. His ears go down if you go near him, and he runs away if you get too close or if he's startled. So, shy little Cookie is still with us. Meanwhile, we now have another kitty joining Cookie in the Corr...

After picking most of the apples from our heritage apple tree (I picked all the ones I could reach with our pole picker), I realized there were not as many as we originally thought. But we still had a good harvest! This was enough apples to put four little pies into the freezer for enjoying this fall and winter, and can 8 pint-sized jars of apple cider along with 12 half-pints of applesauce. The scraps went to the deer this year since we didn't eat the apple-cinnamon jelly and apple-pepper jelly I made in previous years well enough to bother with making jelly again.