Wind!

The apple tree didn't make it..

The smaller cedar trees didn't make it either.

The wind here yesterday was incredible! We had 60-75mph gust, the sustained wind was around 30mph all day! It was very interesting. We are cleaning up today, hopefully all that wind was blowing in spring!

~Lazy Days~

~Even Jewel has time to read~

~The hard life~

Warmth....

One of the daily chores that we have on the farm involves firewood. Wood heat is such a great way to heat! It keeps you warm while you are cutting up the tree, splitting the wood, stacking the wood, loading the wood and using the wood! How great is that! It also cleans up all the dead or unwanted trees in the woods! We love it! To an extent, it is free or at least very cheap!

Some of the other activities we do in the cold and dreary wintery days include reading! The kids love it, I, however, am starting to get used to it! It is nice to read while be kept warm with the wood heat!

We are also waiting for the spinach and lettuce to be ready to eat, the cold really slows it down, but keeping it covered helps a lot, more when the sun is out!

More snowy days!

That's how that stuff gets in my boots!

Sky's future farm.

More snow is heading our way, this is our back yard!

We have had about 20" of snow this winter!

This stuff really does matter!

I know that in the false ecomony we live in today, that many of us have been led to believe that economics is the basis on which we exsist as a country. If we take a short amount of time and look back at real historical events of the founding of America, we would be amazed at the findings! (http://www.wallbuilders.com/) That being said, and hopefully researched by the reader, leads me to why I am writing about this controversial issue. Why does is matter if our food contains genetically modified organisms, or why does it matter if our meat is raised in confinement houses, or why does it matter if our food is ripened on the vine verses being ripened by gases? I believe that these links have more than enough information availiable for the person that is interested in what's best for themselves and their families. So why did I bring up the "economics" factor? It's simple, good stuff cost more! We all know that, right? Cars, houses, vacations, employees, etc... Sometime in the early 1900's, I believe, individuals with politcal control motives ( I know, sounds c-theory-ish) realized that since we were founded on moral convictions that originated from God's law, and practiced by God fearing, Jesus believing, Holy Spirit having initiators, that power would never be able to be had by smaller groups. The power would be in the hands of the people, again, who had moral convictions that originated from......(same as before). How do you control moral convictions? Well you can't, unless your God, and this War that we are in is still proof of that! Terrorism is an idea or lack of moral conviction, you can't fight it. So what did they do? Focus on the money, economics! That's the key. Depression, rewrite history using biased deceptions, you know leave out what you don't want everybody to know! Well a good job was done, and our school system flourished because parents had no choice but to go to work, cuz after all "the farm wadn't payin' tha bills!". With the school system flourishing, they had the answer; get them while they are young, teach them what we want to teach them! After they got most everyone to believe the whole economics thing, out of fear might I ad, they now had the perfect scenerio. "Now we can control the food!" Sounds like a horror movie, too bad it's all true! "He who controls the food, controls the world!" Well in case your still wondering what this is about, or if its true, research for yourselves, it's easy to find! In case your also wondering why this is of interst to me, well...... read this again!

http://truefoodnow.org/campaigns/genetically-engineered-foods/

Spring is coming!

Last night as we were gathering around the dinner table to eat, I noticed that it was already 6 pm and it was still light outside! How exciting! The days are getting longer, which means spring is almost here! Apparently Cedar (in the pic to the right) is ready for both! Well our seedlings are doing very well and it is almost time to start some more.  The snow on the ground is slowly melting, and the rain is helping. There should definately be enough ground moisture to get the spring growng season off to a good start! Our new hotboxes have been filled with a great blend of hot manure (horse/sheep/goat/chicken) and some potting soil, and all topped of with some year old compost. We are letting the worms do their thing for a bit while we let the dirts combine and get ready to accept some early variety plantings! The spinach and lettuce in aother cvered bed is just about ready to start harvesting. I think that all of these slow winter days are going to be greatly missed by the middle of summer! I am very thankful to live in a plce that allows us to enjoy each season!

Jewel and Chino doing an art project

Uh, we are not sure what happened, but this is the birthday cake Treas. wanted to make! It was good, especially the "pour" on frosting! The cream would never thicken!?!

Matches create memories! She was very happy!

The boys being creative on their "big ol'" snowman!

Broccolli, it's going to be good!

Our seedling watchkeeper, it's warm in there.

Working hard, and other stuff

Mom and Journ wrapping soaps

Hey, that's work too

They really want the muffins to be just right

Check-mate, sorry Keaton

Treasure finishing dishes with Jewel (are you proud Sarah?)

"aadaaa" (baby for about anything)

A few good kids.

Biggest brother with littlest sis

Quality control making sure the muffins are ok

Journey and Jewel with new duds, thanks Grandma D.

Jewel-io

Journeycakes

More Snow!

Well it is snowing again here in the Appalachian Mtns.! Being from Tejas and Cali., the snow still seems "neat". The kids are having a blast. So far we have about 6" and it's still coming! Our new dogs, Chino (Cheeno) and Marley (copycat) are not quite sure weather the should eat it or bark at it or ?. Oh yeah, good news here on the farm, we were able to round up the escape cow and take her to a overnite stay at the butcher. We saved her from another grueling week in the snowy/slushy/rainy mess of a pasture. The "round-up" process, thankfully, went very well. Actually my friend Rex, who is about 75, and has been around cows for many, many years did the honors. It is an amzing site to behold when about 100 cows are in a 50 acre pasture and you need one of them to come to you, go into a confined area with gates, then enter into a shoot no wider than themselves and load onto a trailer, all within an hour! Amazing..The  rest of the story has some funnies but it might have only been funny or exciting if you were there. Young bulls are very crazy when confined-first lesson, and no matter how small they look compared to the "big daddy" bull, (you know the one that is about 2000 lbs. and looks like he could eat you in one bite), they are extremely powerful as i found out when we were "weeding" out the ones we did not want to enter the shoot. The gate is only there for my mental protection, the bull did not care that there was a gate with a bright young man on the other side, so needless to say, I will weezingly finish the story. Well Rex was very experienced and was on top of the fence with his "cow paddle" batting the other bull in the head to get him to stop charging the fence. It worked! But that only meant that I had to quickly recover and get ready to let another crazy bull out. This time he missed the gate and went for me! I soon found out he was only teasing me, thankfully! It was all down hill from there, our cow loaded, spent the night in the trailer and is now comfortable awaiting her date with the amish butcher man. In case your wondering about any of the validity in these stories, personal friends can confirm that I do not have an imagination, oh and the bruises say a little to! Did I ever tell you about my one and only 1/4 mile dragging by a scared horse at dusk in a new environment with an english saddle stirrup that didn't "give"? Yeah, that happened, however I am here and the horse is not!

Marley-5 mo. old Golden Retriever

Cheeno-9 mo. old Austrailian Shepherd

New hot boxes ready for lettuce

Kids/dogs exerting energy before the big snow

Normal Day!

Well today absolutely nothing eventful happened. Weird. We did, however, take our first young steer to be butchered, so by next week we should have some yummy steaks. The other heifer that we got with him, well that's for another day. She decided after 2 days of being here that she didn't want to be here. ? . Oh well, when it drys up we will round her up some sort of way, hopefully easily! We do occassionally see her and several of the cows from the heard she fled to in the field across the street, and believe it or not, we found tracks from several cows in our back yard and garlic patch just this morning, as well as other incriminating evidence proving it was definately cows. Allthough it is possible that it was not her, its fun to think that maybe, just maybe she is now giving tours to her new friends and we are just one of the stops! Maybe I'll stay up tonight and watch for her, but then maybe not, because as my wise wife said in response to that comment, "Then what?" !! (I would like to have had a picture or video to post as some of the people I have relayed this story to have requested, but as i told them, "I was too busy running through the woods pushing away the briars, just trying to keep up with her to see where she was going!"

Kid Wisdom

Treasure's Wisdom: (in response to the question from Fischer about why Skylar likes the biggest horse, but yet he is not the biggest kid) "That's because he is neck reigned.....or......because he is not neck reigned.....or something."

Wilkes County! Home of NASCAR!

Well yesterday was yet another great Wilkes County experience. We became "Cattle-Sale-ians". For those of you who do not know what i am refering to, I will try to bring you up to date. First of all, the most commom saying at this flea-market type sale is ; "I gave $45 for that, but you can have it fer $2.!" Right. Anyhow, we were neglegent and let our dog get pregnant, anyhow she had 6 cute little puppies, which every farm should experience at least once, the kids loved the whole process! Cool stuff. Well the puppies were at least six weeks, and weaned so since it is apparently my "responsibility" to dutifully take care of this situation, the boys, a couple of their friends, and myself loaded up the truck on a beautiful 18 degree frosty morning with 6 cute,lovable adorable, you gotta have one puppies! When we arrived, it was croweded with 3 people, so we went ahead and tried to break ties without crying, and give the puppies away to a loving, caring home. The boys jumped in the back of the truck, pups in hand, and began yelling to the crowd as he passed by "freeee puppppiesss!!" "Your bestest inside dog ever!". That was fun, and definately worth a picture, but no camera in hand. Anyhow all was going well, for about 2 hours (no one took any yet) and for lack of a better description, "Rainman" showed up with a buddy. It was extremely interesting! He was very nice and proceeded to tell us about how he "reallywantedtogetonebutiliveinaapartmentandwecanthaveadogyouknowwhatimeanmanireallywantonebutohtheyaresocuteandiwantone

buticanthaveoneyouknowwhatimean" . Whew, what a mouthful! After about 15-20 minutes of that he decided we needed help. "FREEEEEEEE PUPPPPPPIIEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!" Louder than I have ever heard. Everyone in town heard! It was pretty good. I couldn't leave Cory out of this excitement, so i called her up. "Who is screaming that ?" she asked! "We have some help!" I said. It was a blast! Anyhow, we walked around after that, no one was interested, so we ate lunch. After we warmed up a little, we were waiting on a friend, so Keaton decided to try one more time. Well, 20 minuted later, all the puppies were gone! Amazing! We shed tears, and headed home! What a day!

"I miss the little black one!" -Sky

Psuedo-fresh corn in January!

Jewel is very happy to be eating some homegrown corn! She loves it! We were able to save a lot of our corn this year simply by cutting off the tassles and freezing them in the husk. No blanching or canning, simple! This is surely a treat for Jewel, she was a little to young to have it straight out of the garden!

Tired?

I think Cedar is tired, maybe storytime should be in the morning! He is so innocent looking!