Summer on the the Farmstead

Summer has arrived here on our little farmstead. The signs are very clear.

Song birds twitter and sing in the dusky hours of the early morning. Soon after, sunlight filters through the stand of pine trees on the east side of our little cottage and hits the bedroom curtains.

I can usually tell time by the brightness of the sun on those curtains. When sunlight first hits and wakens me, I get up to check on baby girl and make sure she's still covered with a light, muslin blanket.

And then I drift back to sleep until it's time to start morning activities.

The summer sun is warm when I step outside the front door, and chubby round bumblebees can be seen collecting nectar and pollen from the blossoming plants around the cottage, with our honeybees joining in on the activity.

Instead of foraging all day long, my little flock of ducks are seeking the shade by mid morning to escape the heat.

One of the hens has even gone broody and keeps trying to hide her eggs in the gardens.

At first, she had a nest in the corner of our berry patch. After I took the eggs several times, she create a new nest in my patch of liquorice mint. Just yesterday I discovered she made another one in the vegetable garden!

As I was weeding carrots and onions yesterday, I listened to the quiet, mothering noises she made as she approached the nest. And suddenly, I started feeling like an old meanie.

Maybe I should just give her eggs and let her try hatching her own babies. If she cares for them, it really wouldn't create extra work on my part...

My man gave me the go ahead, and so I think I'll give her a chance.

Gardens, honeybees and ducks. That's about all we have going on 'round here this year!

Fact is, my man and I are intentionally planning a low key summer.

Since having baby girl, my Lyme disease has flared up. I'm struggling with fatigue, inflammation and brain fog. So we're hiring help 2-3x a week.

My man had to change employers so he could work different hours and shorter days.

And I have to be painfully realistic about what I can do in the cottage, kitchen and farmyard. So here's how it's going down for our family this summer!

In the Cottage

When we first built the cottage, we focused on setting up the kitchen and pantry. There's the old saying that "the kitchen is the heart of a home."

And it's really true. Especially when you cook farm-to-table style and preserve food all year long. I felt it was absolutely crucial to get our kitchen up and functioning.

I still love so much.

But that's where our efforts ended.

Nearly every other room in our home has been ignored. Plain old, flat out ignored.

Over the past few years, my man has been working a very busy job (thank goodness that's over!). And I've been busy blogging and tackling outdoor projects. So I didn't realize how undeveloped the interior of our home was, until we had a baby.

Since then, our home has been overrun with baby blankets, baby clothes, tiny shoes, books, toys, diapers and more!

I'm something of a minimalist at heart, and I was feeling very overwhelmed by all the stuff. So I ruthlessly purged our home but somehow, I still felt overwhelmed with our belongings.

I came to the realization that our problem wasn't stuff; we just didn't have places to keep it! Most of our rooms and closets are still quite void of cabinets and drawers and hanging rods.

So I recruited my man to work some of his handyman magic around here.

It's been a while since we focused on the inside of our home. Now more than ever, I need order and places to keep things if I'm going to continue cooking good food, growing gardens, doing treatments and caring this little family of mine.

In the Kitchen

I'm toning things down in the kitchen this year.

I love canning food and stocking the shelves in my pantry. I get immense satisfaction from seeing rows and rows of home canned food sitting pretty on the shelf.

But this year, I've decided to primarily focus on freezing the harvest.

Freezing the harvest isn't as romantic as stuffing jars, but it gets the job done. And this year, I just need to get the job done!

I'm mentally adjusting my brain so when I have something to preserve, I think "freezer bags, not jars."

Like when a friend dropped off 40 pounds of asparagus a few weeks ago?

I told myself "freezing, not canning. Just freeze it."

It went very fast!

Want to freeze the harvest this year? Grab my cheat sheets that tell you which foods need blanching and which ones can go directly to the freezer!

On the Farmyard

We chose to say 'no' to raising our own meat this year. No pigs. No meat chickens. No meat ducks, rabbits or anything else!

My man might still hunt this fall, but we just ordered half a beef from one of our local farmers.

It's easier this way.

With my health taking such a down turn after baby girl's birth, we don't really have a choice. Rest and healing is the most important thing right now.

And we're trying to create more down time in our lives.

Of course, I still have my beloved little flock of ducks. We love their eggs and I always feeling so happy inside when I see them waddling around the yard and gardens.

They stay (and I even want to add to our number of hens...too many ended up being drakes!).

But everything else goes. Except for the orange kitty we just got for baby girl. I'm not particularly fond of cats, but this one is growing on me.

He's quite cute, isn't he?

In the Garden

Gardens are one of those things I just can't give up, regardless of how poorly I'm feeling!

This spring, I put work and effort into replanting perennial flowers along the east wall of our home.

We had an exceptionally bad winter last year and lost grapevines, roses and most of what I had planted in the eastern flower beds.

And then baby girl dumped 3 trays of seedlings I had started and we lost them all. But in spite of the setback, I did manage to get snapdragons and lupines in, along with some irises.

I love my herbs. I love my flowers.

I'm falling in love with herb and flower gardening. But I do still love my vegetables.

If no other unexpected medical expenses come up, we are putting in a root cellar this fall. As a result, we primarily planted the vegetable garden with root crops.

Carrots are a favorite and I love having a supply of home grown potatoes on hand. Onions and garlic are always a staple and I planted shallots this year too.

The ducks ate my beet tops, so I hope they'll return. And the parsnips...well. They were lost in the mess I tell you about down below.

Cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and a few peas and cucumbers make up the gardens this year.

And even though I was late doing so, I planted pole beans on the south wall of our home. You can see the pole on the right hand side of the photo below.

Our gardens feel like a helter-skelter mess this year. I know you can't see it in the photo. But my man mulched the beds with hay that wasn't fully rotted and as a result, I have pigweed, mallow and grass coming up everywhere.

He's been working hard to pull it all out, but getting a mess of weeds isn't the idea behind mulching a garden bed...!

In the future, we'll only bring straw and dry lawn clippings into our gardens.

You can hold me to it!

In Mama Land

Part of the reason I lowered my expectations for this year's farmstead activities is because of baby girl.

She's still too small to join me in my activities for more than 5 minutes, and I don't want to be so busy there isn't time to watch her play and discover this tiny outdoor world we have for her.

One of the reasons we were so intent on moving to the countryside was because we wanted to raise kids in the outdoors.

Eight years later, it's happening before our eyes.

I get to watch her chase the ducks around the yard, then trip and fall over her own legs. After a moment of looking stunned, she gets back up and resumes the chase, her little feet pounding the ground in that out-of-control manner she has when she runs.

On rare occasions, I see her frozen in place, staring quite intently at something on the ground. It might be a bumblebee collecting food from a flower or a black beetle digging in the dirt. Or a worm wiggling its way across the bare earth.

I've seen her dancing because she stepped in a nest of tiny black ants (we have an overabundance of them here) and of course I have to swoop in and save the day.

I see her packing our new kitty around in her chubby, suntanned arms with a delighted grin on her face, while Dip-Dip the cat (I can't figure out why she calls it Dip-dip) generally has a face that is anything but delighted!

I'm trying to teach her how to nicely handle a kitty.

As soon as she gets up, she wants to go "ousside."

After a day of sliding down the dirt pile we excavated for our new root cellar, throwing rocks, pulling the red wagon around, eating chicken feed (we're working on that one too) and getting into everything she possible can, she's filthy by the end of the day.

A bath before bed is usually needed.

But I don't care. I get such a happy feeling inside when I watch her explore the outdoor world.

I can't put it into words. But it's the same feeling I had when we brought her home in our arms for the first time.

We sacrificed so much to save money for this land. And we gave up everything to build our little cottage. We did it so we could lead a simple life and grow good food, but also so we could have space for kids to play. And 8 years after we started the journey, we're finally seeing it all come 'round.

Watching her enjoy the outdoor world is sweet to my soul. And I don't want to miss these moments.

So yes. This year we keep it simple. We finished setting up the cottage. We grow a basic garden. We buy meat. I freeze most of the harvest.

And we get to be a family who is living, working and playing on this little piece of property that has finally become a playground for a tiny person.

I don't care if she eats dirt. Or if she gets tree pitch in her hair. I don't mind if she gets little bruises and scratches on her chubby legs from falling on uneven ground. She wouldn't have it any other way.

And neither would I!