Welcome October!

Wow...October is here! Fall in the PNW can be a wet muddy affair on our little farm. This first week of the month has been decent. The last couple of days have been warm though, so that's okay. 

This week I pulled up tomato plants in the garden and removed the tomato hooks and set aside the veggie clips. Afterwards I got my Little Buddy Zeke into the garden first, without the rest of the swine, so he could do clean up on his own. Sorry no photos...He got the weird corn that grew and first pick of the leftovers before the younger swine joined him as well as little momma. After she showed up he decided he was done. They did a pretty good job with clearing the veg and some of the plants. All I have to do is gather up the stuff they didn't eat and dump it on the compost pile. Then try to clean up the weeds that I let go out of control. The plan is to get some raised garden beds for the 2024 growing season. More on that later. 

This week the last thing from my Territorial Seeds order arrived! Garlic!!!

After a poor harvest of this year's garlic I decided to order a different variety of garlic. After a checking out all that Territorial has available I landed on this variety. It's a hardneck variety and seems to grow well in different climates. The next thing I needed to decide on is where to poke these into the ground. My plan is to put a cover crop in the garden before tarping it for the winter. My current garden boxes are not big enough so I decided that I would plant as much as I can into the hoop house and if I have leftover, those could go into one of the 4x4 garden boxes. I'm excited to try out a new variety, just because I had been growing the previous garlic from cloves that I kept from a sampler that I purchased and grew a few years ago. 

The other thing that happened this week is this....

After watching a homesteading family explain what these are - Egyptian Walking Onions - I decided to try them out. Evidently, this allium is very forgiving and does alright in a variety of conditions. Early this week I went to spray some water on the bed and saw that they sprouted! So very exciting. I'm a learn as you go type of person, so I'm not sure how this is going to go, but so far so good. 

Besides these two things I've been busy getting ready for an event at our church and running errands and doing all the things. Today I plan to take it easy and do some stuff around the house. If it weren't for prepping for the event a couple of days and picking up stuff that I had on order I think I would have a better attitude. I'm just feeling run down and tired lately. It could be fall, but then it could be living. I'm usually pretty good at balancing my time between home and other activities. It just seems that the running around activities are increasing when all I want to do is hang out at home. Life is supposed to slow down a little bit right? Meh, I just need to adapt I guess.

Here's to the first week of October! May life start to even out, just a little bit. 

And Just Like That...

Summer is over. 

Yep, summer is over and the temps have plummeted into the 60s and 70s as is usual here in our part of Washington State. Not only that, we had an Atmospheric River/Bomb Cyclone come through this past week HERE. Fortunately the rain wasn't too bad, mostly at night and into the early morning hours. I suppose there was a day that we had constant showers throughout the day, but even so, it wasn't terrible.

This past week was quite busy for me. I like to have one day a week to do all my errands, maybe two days. Most of the time I like to spend my days doing stuff around the house. Whether it's in the kitchen or out with the critters...my happy place is being home. Mon-Thurs was going here there and everywhere. So today (Friday) I'm going to spend the majority of the day at home doing the things that I keep putting off. Later after Tom comes home from work we'll head out and run a couple of errands. At least I will have the majority of my day to do stuff around the house. 

Not a lot happening here at the farm, so this is a brief post. Here is a cute pic of the two itty-bitty pigs that we sold a few weeks ago...

Ya'll!!!

OH

EM

GEE

SWEET POTATOES BAY-BEE!

I have tried for the past couple of years to grow sweet potatoes - this was year three in my quest to grow these things and I finally got something that we can eat!!

My understanding is that sweet potatoes like warm weather to grow...we have warm weather, but I don't think it's warm enough, LONG enough to get a decent harvest. By decent I mean 4-6 good size tubers.

The first year I tried was in 2021. I may have started the process a bit on the late side. I think I thought about growing slips when spring hit so the slips weren't ready to plant until summer. That year I successfully grew vines with a few itty-bitty fingerling tuber. This gave me hope that if I started them earlier then I might get something more than just a bunch of vines and itty-bitty sweet potatoes. Last year I tried growing them in the hoop house. Slightly better, but not much. I started the process earlier in the year and probably got the slips into the hoop house before June. The plants thrived and I had plenty of vines, but still itty-bitty tubers. I think they may have been bigger, but not much. 

THEN...

This year I got my sweet potato into water way early (February I think)  and by early March I had a few slips growing and buy the time I decided to start getting my garden planted - in June I had so many slips! Before I planted I did get some of the slips off the tuber and into a pint jar of water to root. Some of the others that I was able to include roots from cutting were placed into pots immediately. 

My thinking for this year was to go ahead and grow them in the crop garden and do a kind of raised bed situation. Also, I thought hoops and some green house plastic would help the plants to grow better. The plastic would give the plants a perfect microclimate and it was easy enough to water from one side after lifting the plastic. Unfortunately, the winds can get a little crazy in the summer so the plastic eventually tore and I ended up taking it off of the hoops and just hoped for the best. The temperatures here in SW Washington state have been consistently in the 80s and low to mid 90s. So maybe the time the plants were under the plastic helped them to establish.

 Now I'm thinking about how to do even MORE next year :) So much to consider - how many plants to grow, should I create a special place for them for next year or ???? I do know that I'll be getting more green house plastic and figuring out a more permanent area to grow them. 

But first, it's time to cure them. We'll see how that works out. I don't have a very good place to cure them. So I hope that they will cure okay in the hoop house. I have them in a small storage bin with some water in a mason jar to keep the humidity up and covered with my plastic rain poncho.

More on that later!

Other than that, the week has been not as busy. Last week was totally spent in the kitchen processing peaches and tomatoes. There still is evidence in the kitchen and the dining room that I have been canning food. Since I'm planning to go to Long Beach to get more cranberries in a few weeks, I'm reluctant to store away my supplies.

It was also my week to take care of the Food Pantry Garden at our church. It's the end of the season and the plants are pretty much spent, so my goal will be to go and clean up all of the tomato plants and other plants that are languishing. The green bean plants have made a come back - some of them did at least, so those will stay just a little longer. Earlier this summer the team and I were talking about possibly doing to fall crops, but I haven't got my fall stuff in my garden yet, so I don't think that I'm going to get fall stuff in the pantry garden done. Overall, I think the garden was a success, just for a summer garden. Next season we'll start up again in the spring and plan to go into the fall. I also have another fun idea to get people involved in providing food for the pantry. More to come later.

There have been reports of an Atmospheric River coming to our area in the next few days...oh boy. It's going to get wet around here. I might have to get my garden work done sooner than later.

It's been long enough....

So, my last post was waaay back in January. At that time I decided it was time to take a break away from posting and from this blog for a short while. Here we are in August and the Pacific Northwest is in the midst of a Heat wave. So much fun. I was really hopeful that we would actually not get into temperatures in the 100s. The heat arrived over the weekend and Sunday was day 1. It's been 100+ degrees since then. Yes, I'm a whiner, leave me alone!

The problem with temperatures over 90 degrees is that our old, old house holds the heat and it is downright miserable. We do have a couple of window AC units that we keep in key areas. One being the TV room and the other in the bedroom. Once the house heats up, it takes several days for our house to cool down to make sleeping or general living comfortable. Also, being a woman in menopause I'm experiencing sweating in brand new ways. It's awful.

Anyway, since the day is shaping up to be hot I'll be spending time inside today. Yesterday I was all over the place running errands and joining in on a prayer meeting for Operation Christmas Child. All good things really, but then I had to come home :( The rest of the afternoon found me in the TV room playing a game on my kindle and watching miscellaneous shows on Prime. Oh and I baked up some rustic bread - that doesn't help the kitchen that much.

What have I been doing up until now? Besides trying to get my head straight - I had the opportunity to go to Global Connect in Orlando, FL. It was an amazing time of fellowship with our OCC brothers and sisters from around the US AND world! That cool time was at the end of March and into the first of April. Afterwards, my friend and I tagged along with our OCC Area Coordinators on a little road trip to Savannah, GA. That was a fun trip! We spent three nights in an Historic Inn located in the historic part of the city. It's been said that one of the floors is haunted.....Okaaay. 

Some of the things - 

Took a Trolley Tour

Shrimp & Grits on the water front.

Ice Cream at Leopold's. I guess it pretty popular. which I can believe since the line went down the block and our wait OUTSIDE was around 45 minutes.

I wanted to go to Sweet Potatoes Kitchen. Waaaay back earlier this year I was watching Jolly on YT and the guys went to this restaurant and it looked so good! 

On our way out of Savannah to the airport we had time to stop at Waffle House. 

So that was the biggest thing that happened this year! Other than that, the regular farm stuff keeps happening. Piglets, garden, and piglets... OH and we also processed another 25 meat chickens and had a couple of hogs processed. 

In my last post I had lamented about my sewing machine and how it has been acting up. It was disappointing to see things not working like they should - especially since it was just serviced. So, I still worked on some projects despite some things not working. After a few weeks of sewing my machine really started to go haywire. It started to make a clunking noise while I was sewing. This is unacceptable! I continued to sew for a few more days, but it was not getting better. After some searches on YouTube I landed on a video that went through how to take apart a Viking Sewing Machine. Thank you YouTube University! Over the course of a weekend Tom and I took apart my sewing machine once together and I found that there was a lot of thread wound around the part where the thread is taken up and and down (I'm not technical). It seems that after all of the times that the thread has broken it got stuck inside the machine. Something that never occurred to me. I spent quite a while cutting away the thread and clearing it out. Once I was finished I got the machine back together. Afterwards I turned it on only to find out that even MORE things went belly up! This is when I decided to take my machine apart by myself and investigate what might have happened. As it turns out, the plug that goes into the circuit board was not properly seated. Whew, I thought we might have really ruined my machine.  This is what happens when simple things go fancy. Stupid circuit boards!

Anyway - machine is up and running again and I was sewing again, like crazy! Here are a couple of quilt tops that I finished. Over all I finished three quilt tops and made a tablerunner. 

My Stash Buster Quilt

Another Stash Buster that I pieced together on National Quilting Day. 

I also made a few tote bags for Operation Christmas Child, but that task is on hold until I go through my fabric again and set aside more fabric for more bags.

Also, in this year, Tom was laid off from the company that he started with last November. To be honest, I wasn't terribly saddened by that. The company had created the position for him because they were excited about what he had to offer, so he was hired to be a Design Engineer/Inspector. Well, he did a lot of work on a project that is a little bit of distance from here and it wasn't in the best shape overall. The job was a train wreck and Tom was able to identify some issues that should have been caught by past inspectors, but wasn't. It was up to him to get the people involved in the job to understand what needed to be done. In the end, some people were unhappy that Tom was doing his job and that was kinda rude. Fortunately, he didn't work on that project for the last couple of months he was with them. In the end, they didn't get contracts that they hoped that they would and wound up needed to cut a couple of positions. Yep, not sad about that place.

That was at the end of April. Since then Tom applied for quite a few jobs and got a couple of interviews. The first one I didn't have good feelings about and I'm glad that they went with someone else. The one that he did get is a small company that is located not far from where we live and the atmosphere of the office is super relaxed and everyone (that I met) is so nice! Before he started work there we were invited to join the team at a Portland Thorns game - we aren't soccer people, but thought it would be a fun outing on a Friday night. He is in his second week with them and he really is enjoying working there. He has his own office and has been working on a few different projects and even went on a field trip yesterday. He is fitting in and is enjoying the other people in the office too. The good thing is that they have quite a few projects that need to be worked on and the timeline for the projects is pretty relaxed. Kind of a get it done when you get it done kind of feel. I have visited for lunch once and got the tour and talked to a couple of people. Once lady is a quilter :) She invited me to go to a Clark County Quilter's Guild meeting. Ummm, that's too social, no thanks. She said that they also do a thing called sit and sew on Zoom. I could do that one! Anyway, I'm feeling really positive about this company!

It's a little bit of a process getting used to being home alone again. I guess partly because since I retired Tom has had two jobs and was let go from both of them after a few months. So, I guess part of me is trying to get into a new routine (again) and trying to be grateful that Tom has a new job that seems to be a good fit. For now Tom is still taking care of the animals in the morning and after dinner. At some point I will take over the care and maintenance of the piggies and the chickens/water fowl. Oh and Carl too. 

Going forward I will be posting a little more often. I think I'm over my major funk that I was in earlier this year. 

Taking a break

This week I am going to take a break from posting here and focusing on getting things done around the house. 

There is a bit of a problem with my sewing area. Not so much the area, but my machine. It seems that the straight stitch setting doesn't want to work anymore. Then I figured out that my 1/4" seam allowance setting wants to go in the opposite direction. Which means the seam allowance is a perfect 1/4" on the left side of the needle. So it still works, but it also is on the "wrong" side. I mean I could probably get used to it, but it would take a lot of mental gymnastics for me to unlearn doing seams on the right side of the needle. I would rather not have that happen. 

My initial sewing cabinet set up

The kitchen island now cutting table

Final Set Up

So, my sewing machine is a Husqvarna Viking Lily 545. I have really enjoyed this machine. A LOT!

Honestly I can't remember when I got this machine. It has been at least 20 years since I bought it, possibly longer. 

This machine has been so great! I'm just sad that I didn't get to use it nearly as much as I would have liked to. For the first several years after I got this machine I could only sew occasionally. Weekends and sometimes after work. Even then there were more times that I had other things to do than to sit down and stitch some fabric together to make a quilt. Now that I'm retired I made/finished a few quilts and made a bunch of tote bags for OCC. Even then, I only sat down  to sewing during the cool months - when outside work was not as desirable. 

The idea that this machine has a couple of problems, minor ones at that, makes me feel like my days with this machine are numbered. Sure I can use a couple of tricks to make so I can keep this machine, but when do I call it quits with this machine? When more things break down? The reality is that I don't use hardly any of the stitch functions on this machine. Although I have used a couple here and there for fun. 

I'm torn, but I might have to give this machine up. The one good thing is that I can take it to Montavilla Sewing in Portland and have it looked at for free. If the circuit board isn't the problem, then maybe I will opt for a trade in. I've been researching sewing machines and checking out prices. I'm not interested in paying over $1,200 for a new machine - this one cost that much. What I need is something that offers the basics and a couple of Special Features. Unfortunately the special features on machines is mostly standard. I've landed on the Juki Exceed F300 Home Deco. I might make a trip over there tomorrow. I'm not 100% sure yet. Portland is not my most favorite place to go to. 

So, I'll be "away" for a the next few days. Maybe a little longer, I still feel like I'm catching up around here and need the extra time to get things in order.

January 13, 2023 - Day 43

Today started off with a walk. As some point I hope that I am getting out early to walk at least 3 days during the week and once on the weekend. That's all I can manage right now given that my sleep habit is really messed up and I don't get as much sleep as I would like (or need). My other goal is to start running again, just a little bit. Maybe work up to a 5k distance again. We'll see...my mind is willing, but my body says slow down lady...why are you thinking about running again?!

This morning after dealing with the critters I got some blackberry whacking in again. This time I moved over to the old barn foundation. It's been overrun by blackberry vines for a few years. It's time to do something about them and try to reclaim the foundation. I started to whack the blackberry vines back during late summer last year - while little Zeke and his sisters were small enough to go underneath that mess and find fallen berries. 

Before

After

It's hard to tell the difference of the work that I got in this morning. It was nice to work on something different, but not far from the big shed. 

I would like to repurpose this area into some sort of animal area. I'm not sure yet. It has been so long since I last saw what this area looks like without the brambles, so I'll dream once I can get the canes all cleared out. Also, I'll need to find a way to keep the blackberries under control. 

The rest of today will consist of picking up my Azure Standard order. This will consist of 25 pound bags of grain ingredients for my DIY Chicken Feed. Probably should make a trip to the grocery store too. I haven't cooked much this week, but I am out of fruit and we need some milk. Maybe next week I'll get into the kitchen and bake some bread. We'll see.

January 10, 2023 - Day 40

Tuesday!

Another not so exciting day, but very productive :)

Filled the morning with laundry, because that's fun. Then to the feed store to buy more piggo food. This week's trip I decided to buy another Giant Rubber feed pan to use for water for the "free range pigs." The last time I bought one - about a month ago or so I was having a terrible time getting ONE pan out of the nested stack. This time was no different. I'm pretty sure that I was the one who bought the last one. So I took the stack (of four) to the register and said "I only need one!" I didn't want to injure myself trying to get one unstuck, because that would happen. So I let one of the ladies works there try to wrestle one out. It took her a good amount of time, but she did it! I would have applauded her, but felt that would be too much. So then I placed my order of two Champion Hog and two Alfalfa pellets. 

We all know what comes next - having to wrestle those bags out of the car, but I waited until I fed Big momma and the boys to get those out and loaded into the bins. UGHH...

I'm happy to say that I was successful once again! I didn't immediately hurt myself, but that came later after I was finished with chores and hanging out after dinner. So much fun. I have to say that as I write this I am feeling tired and ready for the week to be over! Actually no, but I am feeling a little sore. 

I guess I better stretch more ;)

January 10, 2023 - Days ????

Not gonna lie, I've been struggling a little bit the last few days. 

As much as I want to create a routine that makes sense, I find that it falls apart the moment I have a mental moment and think that something is not right. Seriously I second guess myself all of the time! I guess I want to do so much I forget that there is a lot of days in a year and I don't have to do EVERYTHING in one or two days. 

Also, yesterday (1/9) I went to the Driver's License office located across town :( only to leave with a replacement driver's license and not a Enhanced Driver's License. I don't even want to get into that whole thing, it's just too irritating. I basically drove all the way across town (10+ miles) from our home, just to go home without doing what I set out to do. My trips are basically no more than 3-5 miles from our house and anytime I have to be in traffic in a part of town that I don't drive in on the daily I'm annoyed. Mill Plain Blvd from I-205 to NE 136th Ave has a million traffic signals and about 2 million drivers. Have I mentioned how much I dislike driving? Anyway, that set the theme for the day AND my appointment was late morning which cuts my day short and man I hate wasted time. 

The weekend was alright though. We got all sorts of things done - and by we I mean Tom. 

Here are a couple of the things that were done. First the drakes (Lewy & Uncle Gordon) needed a new roof tarp for their rickety shelter. Those tarps were purchased on Friday from Harbor Freight. Of the three that I bought this is the only one that was installed.

I like that the new roof doesn't stand out like a bright blue tarp. That would definitely make our farm look janky. The other two tarps can wait until this coming weekend. 

Project #2 was to replace the bottom step going down to the basement. Actually the whole staircase could be replaced, but that would be a giant project. So, since the bottom step totally busted and everything around it was crumbling away. Actually, I'm surprised that the steps have held together for the 25 years that we have lived in this house. They really are not great. So here is that repair...

It works, but the distance from step to step is slightly different and that will take some time to get used to. Just a side-note. This step was made from an old piece of lumber that was a homemade waterbed frame many years ago. A bed that we replaced with a regular mattress not long after we were married. 

Today (1/10) I am planning to hang around the house to do inside chores. I think I probably will have to leave and go to the feed store at some point today, maybe around lunch time. By that time I'm pretty sure I'll be over doing laundry. 

However, this is the one project I did this morning, removing the compost ring in the garden and freeing what little compost I have. The hens will enjoy the brussels sprouts that I tossed on the pile a couple of weeks ago. The only reason why I composted them is because I knew the pigs wouldn't eat them and I wasn't sure that the hens would like them either. Well, they do, so I set the compost free and the hens will have something to do today.

This year I'm going to slap together a different compost "bin" with a few of the pallets we have laying around the farm.

So I suppose I should continue with my chores for the morning. 

Enjoy the day wherever you are!!

January 6, 2023 - Day 35

The end of the week. By the time Friday rolls around, I find myself a little over the critters. As much as I love the pigs, I get tired of their pushing me around bit by bit, day by day. They are food motivated, but that's a given, they are pigs. I know this, but dealing with this on the daily gets tiring. So by Friday I'm ready for Tom to do the chores on the weekends.

So, the one critter that REALLY irritates me would be our Tom Turkey - Carl. I don't know if all tom's are like Carl, but when I am outside he is constantly gobbling. It is not subtle. He is loud and it's so freaking annoying.

I'm extremely sensitive to sounds. Any little thing that I can hear in the background can distract me so much that I cannot concentrate on whatever I'm trying to do. Someone eating very crunchy food is a big distraction - Carl's gobbling is just as bad as someone eating crunchy food. So my desire to do work outside is low. Sometimes just walking out the backdoor sets him off. I've tried all sorts of things, locking him back into his house, that works, but it takes so much effort to get only him back into his house. I've crouched down and given him all sorts of attention, that keeps him quiet, but then I can't be productive. I think the only thing I can do is just go out to work and jam earbuds in and listen to music or a podcast just to drown him out just a little bit. 

I have noticed that if I walk away to a part of the property that is further than where he would normally go I can find some peace. So earbuds, working at the back of the property has to be my new routine outside. That will only work for so long. At some point I'll have to get into the garden and that will set him off for sure. 

In the afternoon I was able to get out and work on cutting back a little more of the brambles on the big shed. The loppers that I chose are a little on the heavy side, but I'm determined to make them work! It's worth it though, I'm clearing more space around the shed and that gives me a sense of accomplishment. 

I did run some errands in the morning. Back to Harbor Freight for more tarps. Tarps are our favorite thing you know! I have a camo theme going here. I figure camo is better than bright blue. It doesn't really blend in, but at least it's not like a beacon during the day - seems like they might glow at night too. The outside duck shelter, the turkey house and the pallet shelter that Aquila and Priscilla go into each evening will all get a new covering. Hopefully we'll be able to get those onto the shelters on Saturday.

Happy Weekend everyone!

January 5, 2022 - Day 34

Well, we thought that the high winds were behind us.

NOPE.

This week I ended up waking up around 3 a.m. because of the wind and started to worry about the ducks and their house. They have the worst shelter of all of the shelters we have slapped together around here. Surprisingly they were just fine. This is what I found when I was out doing chores...

Poor Skinny Momma, she was probably sleeping pretty soundly when this happened. This was the only thing that happened, the tarp over Big Daddy's shelter was blown off, the zip ties were torn apart. Not only that, the big ol' door to the big shed was blown over again. 

It was an eventful morning so far. 

After I saw the shelter I texted our neighbor Bobby, mostly because his is the number that I have and Brian was at work. Within a few minutes he was on his way over on his little tractor and he was able to get the shelter back over the fence without hardly any effort from the forks that he put on his tractor. So good! We chatted for a few minutes and then he went back home and I went back to work. 

So the next thing I thought I would do is get the tarp reattached on the Big Daddy Shelter. When I first took a look at it I noticed that the pallets were askew so I grabbed my drill and some screws and fixed that before getting the tarp secured. 

The last thing was the giant door - that was down on Skinny Momma's hog netting. It's huge and I wasn't 100% sure that I could do anything, but it needed to be moved. With my luck she would have gotten brave and decided to escape and run over the metal door. So, slowly, but surely I was able to scoot the door over and off the netting. Then it took another couple of minutes to get the netting nice and tight again. No sagging anywhere.

There is a reason that we call our place Windswept Farm. Wind is a constant here. However, the wind usually doesn't blow things over other things or end up busting other things. 

This winter has been stinky so far. Ice, high winds/rain and then more wind. What else could possibly happen? There's a lot of winter left and I don't even want to imagine what else is in store for the Pacific Northwest.

January 4, 2023 - Day 33

Today was a quiet day. Only had one thing on my agenda - meet a friend at the Food Pantry so she could shop. 

Other than that I spent the day getting our living room back in order and tried to visualize a set up for my sewing area which will take less than half of the room. It would be the space between the dining area and the seating area in the living room. I have been needing a cutting table that is more counter height rather than regular dinner table height - so I wouldn't have to bend over so much. My back will be much happier. 

I found this online and ordered it. It will be delivered to Home Depot by the 12th or 13th and then that weekend I will put it together and have a space to store other quilting related items. I'm excited! 

Anyway, the day was quiet and I didn't feel the need to do a whole lot other than my living room project. 

As far as the critters go, I really need to switch up the order in which the animals are being fed. The boys and Big Momma just gobble up their food so fast! If I don't get on the ball then they are following me from paddock to paddock and then to the hens area. Not a good plan. My next evening chores day will see me feeding the boys and big momma THEN the hennies/turkeys/duckies. The other three pigs would be fairly easy and the "free-range" pigs won't bother me so much while I haul their food to them. 

We'll see. 

January 3, 2022 - Day 32

Yeah, there isn't a post for Jan 2. It was Tom's holiday, so we didn't do much that is farm related. 

Just as a reminder - I post the day after during this particular period of 100 days. So far it is working out alright.

January 3 - Well, it was a busy one and almost all of it was away from home. 

As per usual the critters had to be taken care of. However, since releasing Big Momma from the breeding pen, the feeding dynamic with the four boys has become a little chaotic. She's a Queen and the boys are the jesters. Still working that out really. 

The rest of the morning consisted of me running to the feed store because someone didn't think to replenish the pig feed...hmmmm... the person who went to the feed store as recently as the day before to get straw and hay. The woman who helped me says "Oh, yeah I remember seeing him here..." 

sigh

Then to the bank and then to the church. It had been well over a month since I last helped restock the food pantry. So off I went. That pretty much took the rest of the morning and saw me returning home around 1pm. 

I took some down time once I returned home, but not too much. I had feed bags to dump into bins and out of date dairy and bread to take care of as well. My goal is to only make a trip to the feed store once a week. I'm not sure that I can actually take care of more than 4 bags (40-50 lbs) AND the discarded food pantry items. This was an anomaly though, trips to the feed store should not happen on a Tuesday - unless someone doesn't say that the pigs need food. So, if needed I'll purchase more than need in a week and store it. However, until I can get the garage organized and a place designated for feed, we'll continue to go once (or twice) a week. 

By the end of the day, my body was tired and I was feeling the weight of the day on my back. Fortunately a good night's rest usually does the trick, but at the time of this writing I am a little sore. I really need to move more!

I did notice that big momma was in the pig shelter - so I figured that the boys wouldn't have a space to crash for the night. So, straw on the other side of the shelter under the tarp roof should do the trick...

Little Zeke got to settle in first. After I was done for the night, I saw all of them making their way over to their new space. They have each other to keep warm and they really do adapt quickly.

December 31 & January 1, 2022 - Day 30 & Day 31

We have some catching up to do here! Happy New Year! 

It's 2023 - wow 2022 went fast...for me anyway. The last year was a bit challenging, but at the end of the year we are back to a regular income flow and able to dream a little more about what we need to do and want to do here on the farm. 

So, the weekend...honestly, I don't remember what we did this past weekend. Oh, well the first was on Sunday so church was on the agenda. Then afterwards we were off to Harbor Freight to get yet another tarp for the momma's shelter. I hadn't really looked at it in the past week, but it was almost non-existent. Not sure who was the culprit with tearing it apart - I'm guessing Little Momma. 

Anyway - here's the after photo since I didn't take a photo of before....

I decided to get a bit larger tarp so that there would be a fair amount of overhang so that she (skinny momma) would have a little "privacy." She totally loves it and is a "single girl" now. We decided to move Fiona out of the "breeding paddock" and moved Little Momma in with Rexy. 

Fiona is enjoying her freedom and being the boss that she is and was not allowed to dominate with Rexy. The four boys each took their turns acquainting themselves with Fiona (sniffing girl part) and then immediately being reprimanded for even trying to be interested. I think now, a couple of days later, they have all settled down and are co-mingling fairly well now. 

So yeah, that was Sunday afternoon. Yesterday was all about trying to get Christmas put away and relaxing in the afternoon. The living room isn't back to normal yet, but then I will be putting my sewing machine and other sewing related storage into the part of the living room that is closest to the Dining area. I was able to get the couch and easy chairs in place. So at some point the rest will fall into place. Photos will come after I'm done rearranging. 

OH! I did start my new project for 2023 - a crocheted Temperature Blanket. 

Crochet is not my thing, I have tried to do some crochet projects - but never got far. I thought that I might try making hats for OCC, but I didn't understand how to get a hat started. Also, I am very proficient with the Single Crochet stitch! That's about it. So far, so good...I'm on track. For now. 

Here's to a new year and new possibilities. I think my #1 goal is to be intentional. I spend too much time not being around other people. In all honesty, I like to be home alone. However, with the retirement of my other longtime friend we have enjoyed connecting a little bit. I like it, I want to keep that up. So we'll be planning coffee dates with our other friend and truly connect with each other.