"Plans, Dreams, New Additions and New Adventures!"

We are so excited!  We have decided to diversify the farm and in doing so we have made a 5 year plan.  We are looking forward to sharing each step of the adventure with each of you!

Some of you may remember from posts on Facebook, that we had two rows of the old Christmas trees taken down across the front of our property.

Removed two rows of old Christmas trees

The other side of the driveway....two rows removed here too

The plan was to take down two rows, remove or compost the stumps and plant some murray cypress trees as a break from the road.

Well, we have moved on to the second step and had the stumps removed and the area graded and raked in preparation of planting the murray cypress trees!

We were blessed to have a neighbor who was having some landscape work done on her property.  Were we able to talk with Ricky Miller, who was doing the bulldozer and backhoe work, about removing our stumps while he was in the area. He quoted us a price and it was a bit over our budget, but he assured us that was the worse case scenario.  We took a leap of faith and told him go ahead, since we knew he would be honest and do a great job.  We were not disappointed! God is Good!  The final cost was right in our budget!!

The equipment that pulled those stumps right up out of the ground!

Left hand side of the driveway...all neat and ready for trees!

 We are researching and planning for when we will purchase and plant the murray cypress.  How many, what spacing, when to plant, etc.  We will keep you posted as we move forward on this adventure.

We were also blessed to add ten new chickens to our flock!  We met a wonderful man, Ira Whitaker, and his wife, Linda, who had raised some beautiful Golden Laced Wyandottes and were selling them.  We purchased three one and a half year old laying hens and 7 five month old pullets that should start laying soon.

The girls are all in quarantine for at least 30 days just to be sure they don't break with any illnesses due to the stress of being moved.  They are all settling in well and I can't wait to introduce them to the rest of the flock.

Special mixture for the new residents!  Scratch grains, fresh oregano, fresh lemon verbena, black oil sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, marigold blossoms, rosemary and mealworms.

"Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, or Do without"

This catchy phrase was one of my grandmother's favorite phrases. Now as a grown woman, mom, wife and farm manager this phrase if repeated almost everyday in one form or another.

I am all about making a dollar stretch and my farmer often gets tickled about how I won't throw this away, or how I reuse that, but one of his and my favorite "freebies" is "Refrigerator Soup".

Yesterday, my son and his girlfriend came over to help us take down and clean up two trees in our neighbors yard.  We were just about finished cleaning up when the fire department tones dropped and my farmer man, aka the fire chief, had to leave to go help a poor soul who had rolled their vehicle.  Thankfully, we learned when he returned home after dark, that the driver was a young man and was fortunately not injured....can't say the same for his vehicle.  Anyhow, when he left we finished up cleaning up the limbs and logs, visited with our neighbor a bit and loaded up the chainsaw, oil and such in the bucket of the tractor and headed home.

I had gotten chicken out to make some awesome paprika chicken, but upon returning home I realized supper would after 8:30 p.m. if I started that paprika chicken. So we improvised!  I cut the chicken up, a skill a lot of people really need to learn, you can watch a video here to learn how to cut up a whole chicken and we fried that chicken.  My farmer man came home while I was cooking and I was able to provide a nice, healthy meal of fried chicken, green beans, spinach and homemade applesauce for my working crew.

In cutting that chicken apart, I removed the back, as shown in the video link above, and some of the skin from the breast. Now, going back to grandma's favorite phrase, you don't just throw that out! No ma'am!  You fill the crock pot with water and place the chicken back and skin in the crock pot.  Allow it to cook overnight to make some scrumptious, healthy bone broth. This morning I fished out all the bones and the skin and added about 3 cups of water to make about 6 cups of broth.  I also added two chicken bouillon cubes for some added flavor.

Yes, that is a crescent wrench in front of my crock pot. Remember grandma's saying....This is "make it do" ;-)  The crock pot is in great shape, but the knob had gotten cracked. No worries!  Every homemaker has a good tool drawer in the kitchen!

Now...to make it refrigerator soup, go to the refrigerator and pull out any leftover veggies you may have.  I had some peas and carrots and green beans left over so they went into the pot.  I like celery in my soups so I save the celery leaves especially for soup....those got thrown in.  I added a few more carrots just to give it a little more volume. Seasoned with a teaspoon of poultry seasoning, some parsley and some garlic. I may or may not add some noodle closer to suppertime!  If you have some left over rice that would be great too!  Add whatever veggies you have in the fridge....the sky is the limit! I personally LOVE cheese dumplings floating on top of refrigerator soup. ;-)

Just needs some noodles, rice, potatoes or dumplings!  What ever you have on hand or leftover.

This is essentially a "free" meal and let me tell you....the house smells heavenly!  The homemakers of the past always found ways to reuse, repurpose or recycle the items they had in their homes.  They were green before green was a thing!

I would like to encourage you to take a look at what you have, how you use it, how else you could use it or turn it into a totally new item! Learn a new skill and use it.  I would love to hear from others who are thrifty and reuse, repurpose and recycle.  Send me your ideas and we just might be posting a story about how we tried it.