You know you are a farmer when…….
you are excited to get a box of seed potatoes! š
Tag Archive for Farm Stuff
A Note to My Politicians by Rachael Brown Lee
Love this poem by Rachael Brown Lee. One little paragraph about beer was edited out due to my personal preferences since I do not drink alcohol, nor do I promote it.
A Note to My Politicians
Hear me now:
Your pursuit for safety is as false as your concern for our health.
While you shake hands and lie in bed with chemical producers
and drug distributors
you cry out in the name of food safety,
to pasteurize, bleach, boil, package and inject
everything which passes our lips.
You canāt serve it raw
because it is too dirty and dead.
You have never worked in real soil.
You have never washed earth off your food before preparing it.
You have never shaken sleepy bees from dewy blooms early in the day.
You are afraid of people who eat from their garden,
because their minds
are still their own.
Subsidize.
Pasteurize.
Sanitize.
Kill the small farmer.
Then sell us drugs
and flu shots.
Give us antidepressants.
Tell us to wear sunscreen and never go out into the sun.
Eat from a bag
or box
thatās sealed and clean.
No I wonāt vote for this.
I have cast a different ballot,
and it is waiting at the end of my fork,
seared rare,
and dripping with unpasteurized cream sauce.
My hens will continue to lay warm eggs right into my fry pan
without your permission first.
I will give what little is left of the diminishing American dollar to my neighbor
in exchange for pastured pork
and raw milk.
I will spend time collecting seeds.
I will use butter liberally.
I will go out in the morning to harvest.
I will not drink your corn syrup.
I do not want your sterilized meat.
I donāt want your drive-thrus and chains.
In the name of all that is patriotic,
I will drink milk straight from the happy cow.
Keep your red #40,
your food safety modernization act,
your myths.
Smoke your cigars and drink your scotch.
Sign your papers.
Legislate.
Your āsafeā food
is a life lived behind bars.
If this is safety
keep it.
What you need
is some real food
my dear,
fear ridden
politician.
What you need
you will find
in raw milk cheddar
melted over homemade sourdough.
You will find peace
in slow roasted root vegetables,
dipping your crisp
thick-cut
pastured bacon
into your poached fresh egg.
Slurp a raw oyster
fresh from the sea.
Pass the butter.
Smell the herbs.
Drizzle the honey.
Break the bread.
I welcome you
to my renegade table,
my hungry politician.
But be prepared
to become
blinded
by the light.
Rachael Brown Lee
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Compost – Wordless Wednesday
I know, this is disgusting. Our boys are in charge of taking the compost or kitchen scraps out and one day during the winter this is how we found it. We need to add more brown to our compost pile. Sad state of affairs. That’s why I am considering recruiting some worms to do the work or at least help. Just call me a worm farmer now. š Not really.
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Going Green with The Gigglin’ Garden Gang #GoGreenNGiggle #Cbias
As you all know, we are all for going green and living a healthy lifestyle while making use of the earth’s resources in a responsible and sustainable way. We desire to be good stewards. You are also familiar with our farm journey. That’s why when we were introduced to The Gigglin’ Garden Gang we were excited because it was right up our alley!
In recent years our family has enjoyed planning, preparing and planting our garden. This āGo Green and GiggleāĀ® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set fits perfectly with our fun family activities, but first I had to buy it.
Shopping Online for the āGo Green and GiggleāĀ® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set
First I went to GigglinGardenGang.com. They have some fun music playing that my little guys zoomed over to the computer to “see” being so use to music videos we watch. The website is very easy to navigate and very pleasing to the eye.
To order the product I had to click on their Amazon link to the left side of their home page:
Once I clicked the link it took me to The Gigglin’ Garden Gang’s Amazon shop:
From there is really was a piece of cake, click add to cart:
Amazon will then confirm that the item is in your cart:
After that just click to place order:
Completing the order was a matter of imputing credit card info or editing personal information. I really did not have to do much because we do have an Amazon account so most of my information was already stored. It really is that simple and took less than 5 minutes to do! I love shopping online, can you tell? š
Green Children-Friendly Activities
If you are looking for sustainable activities to do with your children on Earth Day, which is only a month away, the āGo Green and GiggleāĀ® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set is the perfect one to choose! Our children loved it! Of course, I only bought one so they all had to share. It contains the āGo Green and GiggleāĀ® Book, the tote, the greenhouse with six soil wafers, sunflower seeds, a sticker, a coloring sheet of Sunflower Suzi and a CD featuring Sunflower Suzi singing cute little songs – a Theme song and a Go Green and Giggle Rap & Instrumental – my children loved listening to it! We played it a few times while doing our planting activity and they just asked again as I was typing.
The kit unpackaged.
My four year old holding the greenhouse.
Individual components of the kit. The sunflower seeds were tucked safely on the back page of the book by Sunflower Suzi after all she is providing them to us, right? š
The soil wafers up close.
The sunflower seeds.
We added warm water to the soil wafers. The children took turns and actually did very well pouring the water! Very little mess, surprisingly! lol!
Each of the children planted a seeds. We actually had 7 sunflower seeds in our package. Our oldest did not participate. She was on her laptop!
As you can see from the greenhouse tray there are actually 12 cells in which to plant. The directions recommended taking it off, but we kept it on and decided to plant the extra sunflower seed as well as some snap peas. My daughter experimented last year with seed saving and these are actually seeds she saved from our snap peas. We hope to do more seed saving this year! All a part of stewardship and being sustainable.
Baby even helped!
Ta-da! All done with the planting!
We really had fun. I read the book to the children, then they sat and read it. Very cute illustrations and funny little jokes that made us giggle! We hope to get permission to use those in our farm newsletter in the future!
What a great rainy day activity too! I was glad to be able to keep my children busy this morning since they couldn’t go outside!
Connect with The Gigglin’ Garden Gang Online
To connect with the Gigglin’ Garden Gang on their social media sites, please visit:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/GoGreenNGiggle (@GoGreenNGiggle)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sunflowersuzi
This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for
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Preventing Mold on Berries
I had a friend of mine sent me an email about preventing mold on berries.Ā Not sure if it works, fresh berries don’t stay in our house very long.Ā They are usually gone before any molding sets in.Ā Here’s the tip:
Prepare a mixture of one part white or apple cider vinegar and ten parts water. Put the berries in the mixture swirl them around.Ā Drain, rinse (if desired) and pop in the fridge.Ā The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the fruit.
I can see how the vinegar would kill the mold, it works great as household cleaner.
Has anyone done this and does it work?
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Organized Days & Seed Update – This Week’s Monday Motivation
There is always something to do around our home, whether it’s housework, work or whatever. For this week’s motivation I want us to work on organizing our days better to get more done across the board, especially once we have the garden and chickens. It’ll be easier once summer comes, I think, but for now we need more organized days as not everything is getting done that needs to be done lately. It doesn’t help that all the children have been sick the past week, but still when we get behind on things it is time to pull up our boot straps and get back at it. I may blog less this week as we catch up, just depends.
Seeds and Veggie Plants
On Friday afternoon I was able to get onions, kale, parsley, leeks, spinach, cabbage and Swiss chard planted. You should see the children’s seeds! They are no longer seeds, but little plants! It’s amazing how they sprouted and grew in the last week!
And here are the seeds I planted on Friday, March 16. Again, as you can see I used what I had to save money, instead of buying seed flats I used the big foil roasters and lasagna pans. Hey it works as I got 40-45 seeds planted in each! I did buy 4″ pots to replant everything into and we’ll reuse the egg cartons and pans to plant more seeds for succession planting.
Fun! š
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DIY: Chicken Coop Ideas & Ordering Baby Chicks
I’m in farming mode this week as the weather has been in the 70’s and we have tons of stuff to do if we are going to get anything accomplished! I ordered baby chicks online yesterday and was even able to schedule their delivery date. Yes! The chicken breeds we wanted were not available for several weeks.
Different Chicken Breeds
Here are the breeds we ordered:
25 Buff Orpingtons, a gentle brown egg layer. This is the flock my little ones and I will manage.
6 Black Australorps, a docile breed that is heat and cold tolerant and lay brown eggs as well. This is the breed that my two daughters chose for their little flock.
8 Arcuanas, another docile breed but they lay green/blue eggs! This breed will be cared for by my two older boys.
We ordered them from Murray McMurray Hatchery. We’ll be sure to take photos of the chicks when the arrive in about 6 or 7 weeks.
Do-It-Yourself Chicken Coop Ideas
We ordered baby chicks and now we need a place to keep them! The whole idea behind our farming is to not only grow our own food but to allow our children to experience different things and learn new skills. That is why my husband plans to build our own chicken coops with our boys and why I am chief researcher in getting ideas. We are doing this ourselves to save money and to teach our boys how to do it.
PVC Chicken Coops
We are interested in a moveable chicken house, which allows the chickens to scratch in new areas and not be confined to one place. We would like to try to make a chicken coop that is light-weight, which is why we are considering making one out of PVC pipe. We’d need to get PVC Fittings, like Schedule 80 PVC fittings for the corners and such. PVC also seems like it might be more economical than wood, and wouldn’t rot.
The one disadvantage I thought of in regards to the PVC is we get a lot of high winds and what if the whole coop just up and blew away…..whooosh! There goes our profits and meat supply!
A-Frame Chicken Coop
My daughter wants an A-frame chicken tractor/coop like the one at this website. However, I am partial to different moveable coop, but a modified version for laying hens.
This should be a fun project once I finish researching, deciding and figuring out the costs of each one. And yes, I intend to take lots of pictures and videos as we build our coop.
How about you, do you have any DIY projects on the go? If so, what are they?
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2012 Wildflower Reference Guide
This is great for you and your kids.Ā I can see two plus’ to this already!
A)Ā You need to be outside to use this reference guide
B)Ā You and your kids are learning and it’s fun!Ā Kinda like a treasure hunt!
Go an get your Wildflower Reference Guide at http://shop.wildseedfarms.com/inforequest.asp
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How to Shoot a BB Gun – The Joys of Living in the Country
Our oldest son has challenged us more in homeschooling than any of our girls ever did and in order to get him to read we had to come up with certain incentives that were of interest to him and made him want to read for the end result. For him it was getting a BB gun. Even the promise of a $50 bill did not motivate him! He had to read a certain amount from January until his birthday in February then he could have his BB gun. He made the goal and on his birthday or the day after my husband took him to Farm & Fleet to buy a BB gun. However, he could not shoot his BB gun until he finished a certain amount of books….let’s just say he kicked his reading up a notch because this past Sunday he (and the rest of the family too) got to shoot his BB gun. The joys of living in the country affords us new experiences we would never had if we still lived in our townhouse subdivision and I have to say our children are happier for the change!
The Target – Nothing fancy mind you, but it worked for us!
The Master Teacher – An awesome Dad! (a must-have!)
The Students – Eager boys (and girls in our family’s case)
Teaching Safety – Especially to our younger crew (and NO we did NOT shoot at the target with them behind it! That’s why we were teaching THEM about safety as cute as they were trying to hid behind the box!)
Ready, Aim, Fire! – The REAL fun!
That about says it all! My husband was the only one to hit the target. Our two sons and one of our daughters hit the box when my husband decided that might be an easier target to start with. The rest of us missed!
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Starting Our Seeds: Motivation Monday
Daylight Savings has begun, the days are growing longer and warmer. Signs of spring. Ahhh….the change of seasons is so refreshingly sweet, isn’t it?
It was so nice yesterday and we our box of seeds (Mike the Gardener’s and Johnny’s Seeds) came the other day that my girls were begging me to start planting. I did not have our seed flats or other containers, but we did have plenty of egg cartons that we were saving for when we had our laying hens, so I told the girls to go ahead and use the egg cartons to start the seeds. They went to town and got a lot planted. Then again when you have 5-6 pairs of hands it does not take long to get a job done. They planted veggie seeds and flower seeds.
My motivation this week is to get the rest of our seeds planted that need to be planted so they are ready to put into the ground at the right time. What the children planted yesterday was for their individual gardens, not our big one! We have one table set up in our living room and will probably need to set our other one up once I get my seeds planted. I am hoping it is warm enough and light enough in front of our big window. (Dreaming of the day we have a greenhouse or hoop house!)
We also have to get the tiller serviced so it is ready to go when we start planting outside. I have asked my dear husband to do that job!
Chickens will be ordered but we will plan for them to arrive in April and May. Pretty exciting stuff going on here at Loony Acres!
