My little kitchen helper. This girl loves helping me cook.

Sipping hot tea with my girl.

We recently moved Cecilia out of her toddler bed and into a twin so the toddler bed is currently in our room where Laura’s crib was. It’s nice to have as an extra nap/rest spot or for sick kiddos to sleep in when they want to be close to us. Steel has claimed this cozy little spot as her own!

Making fresh butter from our cream. So, so good!

It’s so fun to have a fridge full of milk – fresh milk, cream, butter, cheeses and yogurt from this goodness!!

The continual state of the kitchen these days – except there are typically at least 2 or 3 half gallon mason jars in the sink or on the counter too!

Weston shot his first deer of the season on November 16th. He was just tickled!

Paxton successfully shot his first game the same day – he got a squirrel!

These two guarding the homestead. When we go check the mail which is outside of our perimeter fencing, Copper (and sometimes Steel) posts herself right here and keeps an eye on us.

All the animals love Laura.

My sweet little garden helper. We’ve been working on clearing out the garden beds – we’ve finished the lower garden but have work to do in the upper garden still.

I found this cute vintage-y metal basket at a local consignment sale and it’s been just perfect for toting milk jars.

Our November Azure order. Apples, potatoes, carrots (lots of carrots – didn’t realize 25 pounds was quite so much!), corn seeds, dishwasher and dish soap.

We have lots of carrots but we also have lots of little mouths to eat the carrots. Laura ate one right away!

I stopped in my favorite local thrift store and found a box of 12 half gallon mason jars complete with a box lids and bands that had never been opened for $5!! Such a fun find and we needed more half gallon jars for milk.

We’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie book series this fall as part of our school work and all of the children love the books. My mom made both girls adorable pioneer dresses! Cecilia loves her and has already worn it several times. Laura wouldn’t pose for a picture but she is adorable in her little red dress.

Happy Thanksgiving!  We didn’t raise a turkey this year for our feast (hopefully next year!) so we had a roasted chicken that we raised and beef wellington with beef from a local farm.

Thanksgiving feast – beef wellington, roasted chicken, green beans (raised and canned here), homemade dressing using my grandma’s recipe, mashed potatoes (from potatoes raised here, cream and butter from our cow) and homemade cranberry sauce.

I’ve signed up for my very first seed swap and I’m excited! It’s the Save Love Seed Swap and it’s a Valentine’s themed swap. My seed packs are little valentines. The packet contains seeds and a little insert telling what type of seed it is an some basic instructions.

Play imitates life for children and these two have stocked their kitchen larder with home canned goodness. I love watching them play and imagine.

I love how their play kitchen looks with all the canned foods lined up on their shelves.

We ended the month of November making candles. The one on the far left is a beeswax candle made from combining two spent beeswax candles together and the other three are tallow candles.

November was a lovely month and we’re all looking forward to December and the Christmas season!

Okra, okra, okra. We’ve enjoyed our okra well into October.

Sweet Laura ready for church. She’s wearing her new backpack I picked up for her at a yardsale. It was $2 well spent!

Apples! I ordered a few cases of apples from Azure Standard and have canned a lot of applesauce and experimented with canned apples too. Looking forward to enjoying this applesauce – especially on sourdough pancakes this winter.

Laura loves helping her daddy care for Buttercup. She goes out with him every morning to help him feed her, brush her and help her get used to being in her head gate to prepare for milking.

On October 14th, our family and John David’s mom took a day trip to The Foxfire Museum in Rabun County, Georgia. We enjoyed a lovely drive and really enjoyed touring the museum. There was a sweet lady there who was a weaver. She gave us a wonderful weaving demonstration as well as showed us how to card and spin wool.

We ate a picnic lunch on Foxfire grounds and then travelled back to Blue Ridge and went to Mercier Orchards for some apple treats and apples.

October 16th garden harvest. It’s still such fun finding all of these treasures in the garden. I’m going to miss this so much once it frosts.

Weston with our barn cat. He was pretty feral when he arrived but with Weston’s regular visits and animal whispering skills, he’s getting less wild and is even allowing us to touch him.

Fair time!!

We entered several items into our local fair this year including baked goods, craft items, art and produce.

Weston placed first with his homemade bread.

Paxton’s biscuits placed first!

Cecilia absolutely swept the Primary Baking! She placed first with her biscuits, muffins, corn muffins, bread and cookies. She was excited.

I was tickled that my biscuits placed first!

With my first place fair biscuits!

My green beans also placed first! There were several green bean entries and I was excited to see the blue ribbon for these.

Laura loves helping in the barn with daddy – she even helps with some of the dirty work.

Serious little girl picking okra with her daddy. He took this picture – he said she was munching on an okra pod and telling him a big story.

On October 30th, Buttercup had her calf! It’s a boy! It was such an exciting moment to see a baby calf just after he was born.

Sweet baby calf. We haven’t named him just yet but he’s adorable.

John David milking for the first time. We’re looking forward to fresh milk, yogurt, butter, cheese, cream and all the  yummy things that an abundance of milk means.

We don’t make a big deal out of Halloween but the kids do enjoy dressing up. They attended a trunk or treat at a local church and at their Mimi’s school and had a party with the sweet sitters and kids who attend childcare with them when I’m at my small group Bible study.

This year we didn’t buy any costumes, they used what they already had.  Cecilia was Elsa (in her well loved, tattered dress), Paxton was an ESPN sports analyst, Weston was a cowboy sheriff and Laura was Cinderella.

I love them and the simple joys of childhood.

We bought a cow!!!!!

On September 3, we traveled to Middle Tennessee to pick up a beautiful jersey cow. She’s 5 years old, is bred and expected to calve sometime in October. We have named her Buttercup.

Sweet Laura spending time with the goats and sheep.

The first weekend in September, we took a little road trip to visit my parents at their property where they are building a house. We took some back roads to get there, driving through the town we lived in when Paxton was born and then went to Shaffer’s Farm Meat and Texas Barbeque for lunch. This was John David’s favorite place to eat when we lived in the area – they have amazing brisket. The kids all enjoyed their barbeque and eating in a restaurant (a rare treat for our family these days!)

We enjoyed our visit with our family – my parents and sister and her family were there with us Friday evening. Then my aunt drove up with my grandma and cousin’s daughter. We had a nice day visiting and enjoying a nice September day.

Laura wearing one of my favorite outfits. This one was Cecilia’s and this is probably the last time Laura will wear it. It’s such a sweet little outfit. I’m trying to remember to take pictures of my children in the outfits that are my or their favorites.

The okra has loved the September weather. We’re picking okra every other day and canning batches of pickled okra, freezing some and eating okra nearly every night with dinner. We still haven’t gotten tired of okra!

Canning goal achieved.

My original goal was 150 jars and once I hit that goal, I decided to go for 250! I reached that goal September 14th and still have apples to can.

My sweet little loves ready for church.

Our happy little flerd (flock + herd)! We’ve been running the cow, sheep, goats and pigs together. Everyone has been pretty content together.

We finally have cleared the floors of our shed and have almost everything organized and put away. Woohoo. So exciting to see this space looking so good.

John David’s tool wall – this was his idea. We have outlines of all the tools behind so everyone knows what’s missing and where it goes.

The biggest project of September has been adding on the milking shed. John David has worked very hard and spent very little on this thanks to salvaging most of the materials.

Buttercup in the head gate.

Letting the animals graze their way across the back yard to their new paddock. Love it.

August is a month I used to dread because it signaled back to school for so many years but now it’s a month I adore. The vegetables and the flowers are abundant and the days are long and full of summer charm. While we typically start our homeschool back in August, it’s often later in the month when we do and it doesn’t change too much of our routine – we just add in a few hours for lessons and reading.

We found this crazy beautiful zinnia in our front flower bed – it’s a zinnia within a zinnia.

I spent hours and hours in the kitchen canning – mostly green beans and tomatoes.

Filling up the pantry. Such fun to watch these shelves fill up with produce that we grew and preserved here on the homestead.

We didn’t take any kind of summer trip (and have no plans for any big trips this calendar year) so we have planned a few day trips for the next few months. Mid-August, we went to Red Top Mountain State Park for hiking, picnicking, swimming and playing in the sand. We had a lovely day together!

Love this sweet sleeping girl curled up with her babies.

We started our school year on August 28th. Paxton is in 4th grade, Weston is in 2nd grade, Cecilia is a Kindergartener and Laura is in Tot School (which means reading lots of good books!)

Weston and Laura wearing their crowns made from weeds.

August 29th was an exciting day – we starting ripping out carpet in the living room and master bedroom. We are going to be laying down hardwood floors. The carpet was in excellent condition – we just prefer hardwoods with dogs, toddlers and farm life. Since it was in such great condition, I posted it on Marketplace for FREE and someone wanted it! So great to give something away and keep it out of the landfill.

Our boys were very helpful with ripping up the old carpet.

Daddy having a breakfast date with his two girls.

Laura is a little farm girl through and through. She’s typically the first child awake each morning and she just loves going out with her daddy to do chores. He captured this photo when she was out with him one afternoon. He was working in the attached barn and she was just sitting in this box doodling.

This gal loves books. I love sleeping babies and books.

Beautiful garden harvest. It never gets old.

We started painting our upper kitchen cabinets in early July. We wanted a lighter look for the kitchen. We’re still not sure exactly what we’ll be doing with our lowers but we’re getting started.

We also painted the ‘attached barn’ a barn red color. It’s an awkward attached garage without doors on the house that we haven’t been sure of what it’s purpose is. We’ve called it the basement, garage, lean to and barn in the two years we’ve been here. We’re deciding to go with barn so we decided to set it apart with a visual distinction.

We both have a dream of a white farm house so we probably will be painting the house sometime in the future (maybe far distant when money is a bit more abundant!)

Our sheep started lambing on July 7. Mary was the first one to lamb – she had twins! Unfortunately the adorable little black lamb died a few days later and Mary passed about a week or so later. She was a sweet but older ewe. Her little white male lamb is doing just fine – we’ve named him Captain.

We were able to witness Weston’s ewe, Ginger, give birth to twin baby lambs and the week and a half when the ewes lambed was such fun. Each new arrival was so exciting for us all!

Our kitchen as it looked mid-July after getting all of the uppers painted. We talked about permanently taking off the doors but decided to put them back on. We really like the lighter and brighter look the white gives the kitchen.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes! July is one of the best garden months.

Our elderberries ripened in mid-July! We made elderberry jelly, a bit of elderberry syrup and froze most of our berries to make fresh medicinal elderberry syrup throughout the fall and winter.

My little green bean snappers. Several hot afternoons, we’d put on a movie or a show and have a snapping party.

Nursing Laura for one of the last times on July 18th. So thankful for the 2 years and 2 months of nursing this little gal.

First batch of pickled okra. Yum.

I sat a goal to can 150 jars in 2019. I reached that goal by mid-July!!

Since I reached my goal so early and there were lots of green beans, tomatoes and apples to go, I decided to see if I could get 100 more jars for a total of 250!

 

New pantry shelves. They’re amazing and it’s been such fun to fill them up with fresh canned jars!

We had horrible luck growing corn this year – we planted in several different spots with no success. These two volunteer stalks on the edge of the lower garden did great – we harvested a grand total of 3 ears!

This gal has been such a help with canning green beans.

Tomatoes ready to can.

7 quarts of tomatoes!

De-stemming elderberries to make elderberry jelly.

How I enjoy watching my children play and how play often mimics life. Laura was taking such good care of all of her babies. One was napping and she was feeding the other two.

Another example of play mimic-ing real life. Cecilia organized her play kitchen dishes. She called the arrangement her “set up”. Love.

We found these Calpurnia Tate Girl Vet books at our library and enjoyed them! Calpurnia and her brother Travis are the main characters, they live on a farm and love nature and animals. Nature study is incorporated into these books and we all enjoyed them. (I will add this disclaimer – if you avoid books that mention evolution, these may not be for you. We don’t completely avoid topics that don’t line up with our beliefs – we have discussions about what we do believe and why.)

–Rachel 

June was a full month – family visiting, gardening, canning, swimming, blueberry picking, Bible school and more!

My parents visited at the beginning of the month and we enjoyed a little day trip to Fort Mountain State Park. We enjoyed hiking and a picnic lunch with them.

Watermelon jelly – this is one of our family favorites – it’s so good and we loving cracking open a jar in the fall/winter for a little taste of summertime.

First little green bean harvest on June 6th.

And a bigger harvest on June 12 – time for canning!

There’s a new baby cousin in the family! On June 13th, John David’s sister welcomed her baby. He’s their very first, first cousin on their daddy’s side of the family. They were all quite smitten.

The upper garden on June 14th.

The lower garden on June 14th.

Snapping green beans with my helpers.

The first two batches (14 quarts) of green beans for 2019!

Even my littlest love enjoys helping with the green beans.

Weston is helping me cut up banana peppers to ferment.

Love these beautiful gladiolus. They’re such beautiful flowers and that shade of orange is just amazing.

Cecilia helping me make lip balm.

Blueberry picking at a local blueberry farm. Yum.

Love this man. Love that he mostly enjoys picking berries with me.

Someone enjoyed the fresh berries.

And so did this gal.

Canned blueberries and jam.

We started getting more summer veggies on June 21.

Cecilia helping me get the green beans ready to go in the canner.

The pond as it looked June 23rd.

We have been talking about adding a dairy cow to the homestead so we decided to give dairy goats a shot for a bit before committing to a cow. We purchased 3 dairy goats, two which were in milk. They are all sweet goats and fairly easy to milk. The boys even enjoyed helping with the milking.

Tomatoes started coming in on June 30 – a very happy day for this gardener!!

 

—Rachel

May was a full month of working in the garden, beginning to reap some harvests, caring for our broilers and butchering chickens.

May 2nd marked our second anniversary of living here! It’s hard to believe we’ve called this place home for 2 years now.

All of my children love being in the kitchen with me. I have intentionally taught them their way around the kitchen and how to prepare certain foods. I enjoy seeing their creations.

Paxton is quite the cook. He prepared this meal for his daddy – he boiled the egg, made the scrambled eggs which he topped with salsa and prepared the coffee as well. Notice his cilantro garnish – quite the touch for a beautiful and delicious breakfast.

I did a little soap making experimenting with activated charcoal. I just love how these basic lye soaps turned out – I especially like the charcoal swirl – so pretty!

The lower garden as it looked May 2nd.

The strawberries started coming in early May and all 4 children made it a daily habit to check the strawberry patch – they kept them picked clean!

We found a snake shed. Such a fun and scientific find!

Lettuce in the upper garden!

Laura enjoying an early morning strawberry when she went out to do chores with daddy.

All of the sheep enjoying the green grass.

Weston has found multiple toads already this summer – he’s quite the toad hunter/catcher.

Love this beautiful green view from looking out on the back pasture.

Happy Mother’s Day – I love being a mama to these 4 and like getting a decent picture taken with all my kiddos.

Laura turned 2 May 12th. We had a little party with family and she had such a fun time opening her presents. She received several gifts that are just perfect for our little farm girl – new barn boots, small garden tools and a little wagon.

First lavender cutting. So beautiful and fragrant.

Big lettuce harvest on May 14th.

Sweet little Laura. Love this baby girl, she is such a joy to us all.

Lower garden on May 24th. Green beans are growing – looking forward to our first harvest.

Our two tractors of broilers. We raised about 60 broilers this spring.

May 31st was butchering day for our family. We butchered all of our chickens together – just 4 of us – both boys were huge helpers in the process.

—Rachel

April is one of my favorite months. The days are warm, everything is blooming and getting green and we just want to be outside.

We leveled some dirt with the plans of turning this area into a little family garden with raised beds, a fire pit, benches and our picnic table. The kiddos are picking up the excess rocks.

I shared this picture on my personal Instagram with the caption “So thankful this is what 3:30 on a Thursday looks like. Hummus and pickle snacks while watching the boys baseball game. Staying home with these 4 is such a gift. Worth every bit of living the budget life, driving 15+ year old vehicles and buying nearly everything secondhand!”

I really am so thankful that I am able to stay home with these precious children and that we are able to live surrounded by plants and animals with a little bit of room for them to explore and play.

Laura adores her daddy and especially adores tractor rides with him.

The kids have their own space for gardening this year. Weston found several volunteer plants (we’re not sure just yet whether they’re watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin or squash!) He made a nice little rock bed around them.

Moving wood and enjoying a lovely spring day.

Our seed starting spot this year was upstairs. It worked pretty well and kept everything out of Laura’s reach.

Weston found his very first four leaf clover. Just a few minutes after he found this one and excitedly showed it to me, he found another one!

Our family enjoyed a picnic lunch and playing at a local park. They have these fun swings where the baby swing is connected to a regular swing so parent and baby can swing together. It was fun. Laura loves swinging!

Two of Weston’s new egg laying chicks.

A few of our egg laying chicks in our brooder pen.

One of our Salmon Favorelles. These are very docile birds with feathers on their feet – so adorable!

Our upper garden as it looked on April 13. All of the beds here had either been planted or were ready for planting.

Laura loves helping – here she is weeding.

Paxton turned 9 on the 16th! He’s such a fun kid and such a gift to our family.

He used leftover Harry Potter decorations from his aunts baby shower to decorate the house with for his Harry Potter party. We’ve been reading the Harry Potter books for the past few months and we’re all enjoying them.

We keep birthday’s pretty simple with family parties. We had grandparents, aunt and uncle over for dinner and cake.  Paxton chose sandwiches and chips for his birthday dinner.

Paxton’s cake. He and his Mimi made the cake and she supplied the frosting and Paxton decorated it with his Harry Potter minifigures.

Laura. Her papaw snapped this picture and I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite picture of her ever!

We went to the local FFA Chapter’s plant sale and bought tomatoes, peppers and a few herbs. We bought all of these plants for $25!

We celebrated Easter with church, lunch with family and then a little Easter egg hunt.

Laura loves to help ‘stir it’. Here she is helping me pound sauerkraut.

We planted our tomatoes and peppers on April 22. Planting is such an exciting time full of so much hope and anticipation of the gardening season ahead.

I made a batch of activated charcoal soap. I can’t wait for this one to cure and try it out.

Steel.

We put the meat birds out on pasture on the 26th. They are doing great and seem to enjoy all the green grass.

Love him.

John David and his dad picked up a couple of loads of wood for firewood. Now that we’re finished burning wood for the winter, it’s time to start stocking up on wood!

The lower garden on April 26th. There are tomatoes, peppers, green beans and cucumbers planted here. Looking forward to watching this space over the summer.

We’ve been using the sheep to help keep the kudzu at bay that is trying to take over on the edge of our property against the road. It’s been fun to watch them work.

Life on a homestead can be quite messy. Dirt, mud and even manure. Projects going on here and there. Plus boots that belong to 6 people that tend to get scattered everywhere. Our screened in porch was quite disheveled. It took me about 30 minutes to return things to where they needed to be, pick up trash, sweep and tidy up the space.

After. So clean and perfect for using this space to do schoolwork on these beautiful spring days when we just want to be outside!

—Rachel

 

 

March was a fun month – full of celebrations with two birthdays (mine and Cecilia’s), the first day of spring and baby chicks!

I always have a helper in the kitchen – both boys enjoy cooking as so do my girls. One of Laura’s often heard phrases in the kitchen is “me stir it”.

I’m at the point with the big kids that their kitchen knowledge has become very helpful. They can peel, slice, stir and all kinds of helpful things really make a difference.

Laura has loved being in the cab tractor while daddy fences but sometimes a little girl just gets sleepy in the warm sunshine and dozes off!

We started seeds in March. It’s such an exciting, hope and anticipation filled thing. These are mostly tomatoes, a few flowers like butterfly weed and lupine as well as some new to us plants this year – tomatillos, ground cherry and sunberry.

I love the month of March because it is my birth month, it’s the first month of spring and because of daffodils. I just love daffodils!! There are several daffodils growing around our homestead – some we planted and some that were here before us and my boys keep my kitchen with a fresh display of daffodils as long as they’re blooming.

On March 16, we got baby chicks! Such an exciting day. Weston and I both both several hens to add to our flock and Paxton bought one.

Our new baby chicks include 9 Ameraucanas, 4 Golden Sex Link and 3 Midnight Marans that are Weston’s. 5 California White, 5 ISA Brown and 2 Amberlink chicks that are mine and Paxton bought a Black Speckled Sussex.

The weekend we bought chicks, John David was busy converting a trailer with a roof into an egg mobile. He added in salvaged nesting boxes, reused roost bars from our former hen house (now the brooder) and made the entire thing basically from scraps of metal and such that we had lying around.

The finished product! It looks great and functions well. I’m amazed at his vision and skills to create things like this.

Paxton with one of the hens. He’s not as into farming as Weston is but he still enjoys it.

A small rainbow of eggs – a white, light teal, pink, brown and dark brown. Collecting eggs is such fun when you have a variety of colors!

All of our little farm kids. Excuse Laura’s pacifier – it’s only supposed to be used in the car but she snuck it out!

Laura has been a bit afraid of the chickens in the past couple of months but having the new batch of baby chicks has made her less afraid and she’s been wanting to pet even the big hens.

Cecilia turned 5 March 20th and we started her birthday celebrations with homemade cinnamon rolls. They have way too much sugar but they’re so very delicious! 

Our precious birthday girl designed and decorated her own cake with her Mimi’s help.

My helper. This one is always eager and excited to help.

One evening when daddy had to work late, we went to a local park to play and walk around the  pond. We spotted duck eggs and enjoyed watching the ducks in the water.

Steel likes to sleep when Laura sleeps. Most afternoon she curls up under our bed while Laura naps in her crib. This night I spotted Steel curled up right next to Laura’s crib.

Weston’s grandparents picked him up a Chick Days sticker from Rural King. It had the rural king logo on it and he promptly cut off the logo and stuck the remaining sticker outside of the brooder. It’s one of those sweet things that kids do that you just want to remember.

On March 30, we went to a friends skating birthday party (so much fun!) John David had to stop by the church to do a bit of work so the kids and I walked around downtown. It was such a beautiful day and I enjoyed making memories and snapping a few pictures.

We enjoyed March and all of the beautiful days and fun we had. We’re looking forward to spending even more time outside in April as we prepare for meat birds and gardening.

—Rachel

Once February arrived, we started working on a big fencing project. When we moved here in 2017, we talked about perimeter fencing our property for security – to keep predators out and to keep our animals in. Even if they get out of their electric fencing, they will still be contained within our property.

We set aside the money and John David has been planning and researching the best fencing materials. We finally got started and have made quite a bit of progress this month thanks to some nice days.

My big project for February was wood chipping around our pool. We have trees and bushes planted there and I spent most of my outside time laying down cardboard or newspaper and wood chipping.

On February 5th, we welcomed a new puppy to the family! Meet Steel, a Blue Merle Aussie.

While it may seem crazy to add another dog to the family, we’ve been talking about adding a second dog as a companion for our Aussie, Copper, for over two years now.

Steel is being cared for mainly by Weston who is doing a great job feeding her, taking her out and cleaning up accidents. He’s proving that he is indeed capable of owning a dog of his own.

Sweet Steel. She was 11 weeks old when we got her so she was already crate trained and the house breaking process had begun already. She’s been pretty easy as far as puppies go.

All of the kids are enjoying the new dog.

Just hanging out in our command center (the kitchen/dining room). The white board behind these two helps us keep up with our monthly goals and to-do’s here on the homestead.

Our two Aussies. Copper has done very well having an energetic puppy in the house.

The fence is really coming along and looking great. The long stretch up the road is completed and looks great.

Another view of the fence up the road. John David and his dad, David, have done an excellent job constructing this fence.

Chilly February mornings are best spent in the living room in front of the wood stove. This particular morning, the kids were playing church and Paxton was reading to them from the Bible. Love these moments.

My big ‘inside’ project this month was finishing our FFA t-shirt quilt/blanket. For a couple of years I have wanted to take our old FFA shirts and turn them into a quilt instead of just hoarding them in a box that takes up space in our attic. Several months ago, I laid them all out and cut out the squares and this month I finally made the time to sew it all together.

It’s far from perfect and professional but it cost very little. The backing and binding is from a queen size flannel sheet I found at a local thrift store. We’ve all enjoyed snuggling with this blanket and I love all the memories these t-shirts bring back.

It’s feeding time. The sheep are up in the barn for the winter and enjoying their hay.

Now that the days are getting longer and a bit warmer, we’re getting more eggs. The kids are enjoying checking for eggs each day.

Laura loves the tractor. While daddy and papaw work on the fence, she has been hanging out in the tractor. We found her like this one evening. Hard work makes a little gal tired.

We’re looking forward to longer days, the official beginning of spring and starting seeds next month!

—Rachel