Welcome To Our Farm

Welcome To Our Farm

Welcome to our cozy farmhouse and farm. Grab a nice, warm cup of coffee or tea and make yourself at home on our lovely front porch. 

(Shhh… I realize that we live in a 1970’s ranch style home with only a tiny worm farm; but, if you don’t tell anyone, I bet they won’t notice. ) 

My boys and I recently visited a farm. It was the farm I have always dreamed of having. It had chickens running free, a pumpkin patch, and cute goats. When I walked into the home, I melted into a pile of coziness. The home had all the rustic charm of a great old farmhouse. 

Then I came home to our 1978 ranch style house.

In the spirit of “Look at what you are seeing, not at what you are missing,” I am excited to say that I can see that our home and land would make an awesome farm and farm home. I have always wanted to live on a farm, so instead of being upset and thinking I was missing out on something, I decided to SEE what I was really looking at.

Once I started reading about farmhouses, I realized that my home, even though it is a 1970’s ranch style, has a lot of elements of an old farmhouse. And there are plenty of things that we can have in our yard that will make it seem more like a farm.

 I also read the following quote from a blogger. “Farmgirls love anything to do with homesteading, keeping chicken’s (sic), embroidering, sewing, knitting, spinning, quilting, natural home remedies for health care and cleaning, horses, goats, cows, organic gardening and cooking, caring for their loved ones and friends and are community minded. Re-purposing and UP-cycling are high on their list of ‘fun things to do too’!”  

http://deborahjeansdandelionhouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/farmgirl-friday-blog-hop.html

I thought, “WOW!  That describes me and I don’t have to live on an actual big working farm!!!”

So if you feel the same way as I do, I encourage you to stay tuned as I post things about my life as a farmgirl living in our farmhouse on the farm!

 

Home

I am guest posting today at R16:16.
Click the link and check it out. 

Home

Building a log cabin.

Building a Log Cabin

 
The boys have decided that they want to build a Little House scene that can stay up all year. They started with Legos and made most of the characters into mini figures. They even made a wagon with their Legos. It looks great, but they do not want me to take pictures until it is finished.
They also really wanted to build a log cabin. 

They made up a plan for the cabin.

 They gathered the amount of wood that they would need to build the cabin. 

They started sawing the "logs" the exact size that they needed. 

After several hours they decided that it was a lot of hard work; but,we were able discuss how difficult it would have been for Pa to build a house. It was a great discussion! I am always amazed at what we can learn together when the boys decide to get creative.

 And they are always teaching me that just because our original plans do not come together like we had hoped, something great can come from what we had not originally planned.

They are now working on building a house out of Popsicle sticks.  Pictures will soon follow. They are also working on doing some Little House stop motion episodes. I will post those as soon as they are available.

Making Butter

Making Butter


This week we are still without a washer and dryer. I am learning some very interesting things. I will be writing a separate post just about our laundry adventures very soon.

The boys are loving everything about hanging the clothes on the line and taking them off the line. Do I really want that new washer and dryer?

We bought some cream at the store to see if we could make butter. I halved the cream between two glass canning jars and let the boys shake the jars like crazy. 

One of the boys decided to stop shaking once his hit a nice whipped cream stage. He said he wanted to use it later for hot chocolate. The other boy decided to shake until he started to hear a thumping noise in his jar.

He was really excited to find a lump of butter. 

We put the butter lump on a flour sack and squeezed out the excess liquid. 

That night we used our butter on roasted corn and piping hot biscuits. It was very good. It is always so exciting to be able to make things yourself!!!

On Our Prairie

On Our Prairie

Have you been curious about what is going on with our prairie schooling lately? I am going to try to catch up in the next several posts.  We have been having a lot of fun, but an interesting thing happened. In our second week of The Prairie Primer, when I was about to let the boys have fun learning about hanging our clothes out to dry, our dryer actually went out. So we are now hanging our clothes on the line for necessity instead of  for whimsy.

 

The boys have really enjoyed everything about hanging the clothes on the line.

  

We have a neat place in our area that makes homemade cracklings.  We went by the store one day and bought some to try. The only one of us who liked them was my husband. I let him finish the bag .

                                                 

 

Everyone acted like I was crazy for wanting to get an actual hog's bladder to blow up for the boys to play.  (Yes, they actually did that on slaughter day, according to Little House in the Big Woods.) I decided to just use a normal balloon and pretend it was a hog's bladder. :)  The boys played with it for a long time until it burst.  

That was our excitement this week. Follow along and see how we adapt without a dryer.