Vintage Home and Farm

About a month ago, we decided to sell our extra eggs.  We thought about putting up a sign at the end of the driveway, but instead my husband simply placed a post on Nextdoor, a social media site we've been reading to keep in touch with neighbors.  We were surprised at the response.  Soon all our extra eggs were gone and we ended up starting a waiting list for neighbors who wanted more. We've collected a number of egg cartons to reuse for this purpose, and one of our friends gave us a giant stack of cartons.  Today I made a fun label to begin putting on the tops of the cartons.  I thought people might enjoy knowing the names of the hens who laid their breakfast. All ten of our girls are listed on the label, along with the rooster who protects them (he deserves a little credit, too!). I love the sizes and colors of eggs we get from our hens.  Each hen's egg is a little bit different. My husband started putting the egg money into a milk jar.  ...

Can you believe we made it through a whole year at our vintage home and farm?  We arrived on Labor Day Weekend in 2017, and since then it's been project after project as we've made the house livable and inviting once again and put in a small farm.  Of course, there were many times, especially early on, when I kicked angrily at cardboard boxes (I'd kick the wall, but then that would need fixing), threw a hammer into the yard, and cried like a baby, wanting so badly to just "go home".  But we'd left our prior home.  We'd taken that leap and had to live with the consequences. Cleaning this house was a monumental chore.  After ripping out all the carpeting and linoleum, I had been scrubbing for weeks -- floors, walls, windows, doors, bathroom fixtures, appliances.  Everything was so dirty from years and years of neglect. Then one day when I was scrubbing the bathroom ceiling, my fingers grazed a light fixture and I felt an enormous jolt of electricit...

About two weeks ago I pulled all the onions out of the garden and decided to try curing and braiding them for longer-term storage in the cellar. I had heard that curing the onions would help them to store longer, as it causes the outer layers to become dry and crispy (just like the outer layers are when you buy onions at the store).  The long tops of the onions also become dry.  This helps to prevent the onions from molding while in storage. I would have to say that curing and braiding onions was much easier than I thought it would be. It was probably the easiest task that I've accomplished on the farm.  And it's so rewarding to see the onions now hanging down in my cellar. I can now go down a few steps to snip off my week's worth of onions.  You can see in the photo where I've already snipped off a few onions on the left one. Of course, the first step is to dig out the onions from the garden.  Most onions pulled out easily enough with a gentle tug. Some o...