Welcome Jack

We have a new face on our farm!! Our Nubian goat, Isannah, finally had her kid on Thursday. We were hoping for twins but we are happy for a healthy new baby and a birth with no complications. Whew! This is our first experience with goats and I was praying for an easy birth. We named him Jack.

Here is the proud momma and Jack looking for his first meal. We are enjoying little Jack so much. He is very soft and cuddly. Mom and baby haven't ventured out of their stall yet. It must take a few days for the kid to get enough strength to go out to pasture. We are learning.

Isannah has become an extremely protective mother. She is always on the look out for danger and becomes very aggressive if she feels her little one is in harm's way which is so out of character for her. Kinda reminds me of human moms!

We are looking forward to some goat milk soon. My boys have milk allergies so they can finally have dairy products in their foods again. I was fortunate to find a yogurt maker at a yard sale recently and I can't wait to try it out. Hopefully I can get the hang of milking. Brandon is excited to give it a try. He will think it is fun for a few days then I am sure it will become just another chore. Oh well, such is farm life!

Blueberry Picking

The younger two boys and I finally got to go blueberry picking! We have been patiently waiting for the blueberries to be ready and wouldn't you know it, when we got the call to come picking we were so busy at home that we were afraid we might miss our opportunity!!

Aren't they beautiful berries? They were so sweet and delicious. I couldn't believe how good they were!

The picking was very easy as you can see in the pictures and the morning was perfect. We finished just as it was beginning to get hot. The berries are grown in the barrels because of drainage problems on the farm -just in case you might be wondering-I was and had to ask :-)

We also bought some "bakers" frozen berries from here for only $5.00 per pound! What a deal for organic blueberries! They are very ripe which makes them perfect for jams, syrups and even pies!

I had more pictures to share but I am having trouble with placing pictures on my blog for some reason. All in all it was a great day. My younger guys had never been blueberry picking before and they had a blast. Can't you tell by Bryce's (black shirt) face? This IS his happy face...really. He is just a serious guy.

We will definitely be going back to this farm to get more berries.

Brent's Basket of Love and Prayers

This past week has been Finals Week at the college where Brent attends. The school sent out order forms for Stress Baskets and Energy Baskets that parents could purchase and the school would put them together and deliver them to the students during Finals Week. Well, I decided to make my own and make a family project out of it, I like to think of it as brotherly love. Hey, this needs to be encouraged whenever and wherever possible!!

The brothers and I went shopping for Brent's favorite goodies. There was bubble gum, Boston Baked Beans (candy), lollipops, vitaminwaters, apples, bananas, sunflower seeds and lots more. We also included his "special someone," Natalie, when making up this basket. Half of the basket was for Brent and half of the basket was for Natalie. The boys even added a stress ball and a water worm for fun.

Of course the gift wouldn't be complete without some homemade snacks! We made banana nut muffins and a special caramel-coated cereal that I normally only make at Christmas time.

I think the project was a success. Bradley and Brandon delivered the basket to Brent at the school on Monday. He was surprised to see them and even more surprised that they had a special delivery for him. Now if there were only someway I could bake up something to get all those correct answers to the tests into his brain!! Best Wishes to you Brent and Natalie!

Looking Good!

We have been enjoying squash and green beans fresh from our garden for the past week. It seems the yellow squash and zucchini almost grow right before our eyes! I don't know if you can tell from the photo but the zuchini toward the back is about 14 inches long! I didn't mean for it to get that big. I guess I overlooked it while picking the day before.

This pile of contender green beans is from one day's picking and from only one row! This will be enough for two meals for my guys. I spent the day processing these beans. I am freezing them because my family prefers frozen green beans over canned green beans. I put them in boiling water for 3 minutes then immediately put them in ice water to stop the cooking process. After that I air dry them on the counter top. Then I seal them up in my Food Saver. It is so easy and inexpensive to do and we get to enjoy green beans year round!

I will get more picture of the garden soon. Everything is growing so beautifully! We can see teeny baby cucumbers coming so I will be pickling soon. I wanted to use my own dill to make pickles but I am still waiting for my dill seed to break the ground. Oh well, I may have to buy a dill plant or I could make sweet pickles until my dill plants begin to grow. Decisions, decisions....

Oh, and I believe the tomato seeds that I planted back in February ALL came up!! I have never had so many tomato plants!! In fact, we are in the process of clearing out the grass on the side of our house so I can plant more tomatoes there. This is not the best planting location due to the shade part of the day but I am all out of room in the garden. I'll have to get some pictures of that as well. Trust me, I am making garden notes of all this so I will better prepared next year. My plan was to have enough tomatoes to make my own sauce and have canned tomatoes. However, I never expected such a success rate from seeds. And to think that I have paid dearly for my tomato plants in the past! The expense of growing from seed is a fraction of the cost I normally spent for a plant! Hmmmm....somebody is making some money....unfortunately it ain't me! Ha, Ha! I'm just trying to hang on to what we have :-)

Until next time!

Our Homemade Grill

The good Lord has made it possible for us to have this property and we love to share it with friends and family. Several times a year we have gatherings here. Sometimes it is just another family invited for a meal and other times we have a churchwide function or a family reunion. We enjoy the guests and we always manage to have a great time!

In the past, we always had to borrow a grill whenever we had a large crowd over. After a few times of using a grill graciously loaned by my brother-in-law, Monroe decided to build his own grill. My talented husband tweaked the plans a bit and came up with his own model and I must say the results are mouth watering!! Here he is welding the inside of the grill.

Here is the fire box for the grill. Actually, you might say this is a smoker because Monroe puts the meat on and leaves if for 2 to 3 hours to very slowly cook.

His speciality is ribs but I think my favorite is the whole chicken. If you think you like rotisserie chicken you should try this!

And here is the finished grill. Yes, that is a rifle welded onto the handle. Our friend welded one of his own rifles on as a finishing touch. I like the little pig welded onto the top! When Parker (our 2 yr. old grandson) saw this grill parked in the front yard he said, "I want wide choo-choo!"

I guess the smoke stack made it look like a train to him ;-)
I forgot to mention that this little black mobile grill is the second one he made. Here is a picture of the first one. It is much bigger and stationary. Once in a while we do need both grills going when we have a large crowd like the antique car show we had just a couple of weekends ago. It isn't quite as pretty but boy does it cook some delicious meats!!

We are ready for the big Mathews family reunion in July. I am sure we will have both grills going for a couple of days! When you have 9 brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren coming plus aunts and uncles it makes for a HUGE gathering!

Annual Car Show

Do you love old cars? Well, this is my father-in-laws' passion. He has, in the past 10 years, collected over 30 antique cars. He restores them inside and out and they are truly beautiful!

He shows his cars locally at car shows several times a month. It is a nice hobby for Pop and he has made many new friends with the same interest.

This past weekend Monroe and I hosted a car show for Pop at our house. Now we have had many large gatherings at our house in the past mind you but NONE compared to the number of people that came out for this car show. I stepped out my front door and this is what I saw:

Our barn is 40 x 60 and it was filled to the max! We estimated between 250 and 300 people! These are fellow car collectors from a couple of different car clubs in our area. We even had live music! My sweet hubby once again out did himself with the delicious ribs and chicken he cooked up on his home made smoker/grill. (I will post about that later.) I made 15 gallons of sweet tea! Everyone brought a covered dish and what a feast we had! There was nothing left of the chicken and ribs.

Everyone had a great time and they are looking forward to next year....yikes....we better start cooking and making sweet tea!

Gardens Teach Patience

I love fresh vegetables from our garden! The taste beats grocery store veggies by far!! Spring and summer harvests are my very favorite and I am so excited to see our little plants growing and looking healthy! The vines above are rattlesnake beans. This is the first time I have ever tried them. I was inspired after reading Tnfarmgirl's blog on how prolific and delicious they are. I am hoping to have enough to can.

Squash was planted the earliest in our garden and I can already see some teeny baby squash on the plants! I froze some summer squash from last year's garden but I think I should have used the younger and more tender squash for freezing. I am keeping that in mind this year!

We also planted blackeyed peas, soy beans, cream peas, zippers, okra, corn, cucumbers, watermelon and cantaloupe. Corn is another first for us. Our neighbor's corn was destroyed by worms last year. If that happens to our corn I will just feed it to our animals. Either way it will be useful.

The picture above is my experiment. I have always bought my tomatoes and peppers as plants. This year I tried raising them from seed. The right half of this planter is tomatoes. They look great! The left half is a variety of peppers and they are not looking so hot (no pun intended!). I don't know what happened with them. I may be buying pepper plants again this year! I have transplanted part of the tomatoes into the big garden. I am amazed at how few it took to fill up a row!! I hope to be able to get the rest planted next week. One other problem I encountered. I labeled all the different types of peppers and tomatoes on the white plastic spoons you see sticking up. I used a permanant marker to write with. However, the first rain just washed all those names right off!! Now all I know is the left side is peppers and the right is tomatoes! We shall see....

Anyway, I can't wait to sit down to supper with a big plate of peas with okra and a slice of cornbread....mmmm....mmmm.....hurry up garden!