As I enter the grouchy stage of surgery recovery (which is somewhere between exhaustive pain and the actual ability to function), I figured I would finally write a “little” post about what I’ve been up to. Because July was simply a whirlwind that I can barely even remember. From what I’ve heard, July is the hottest month of the year here in Vermont. And because June gave me miserable days in the 90s, I set myself up to endure a month of unending suffering. We bought AC units, I got all my yard work done, and we got set to spend

In past years, we have purchased an arsenal of land fireworks and set them off in the privacy (and safety) of our front yard and then watched the battleground of neighborhood fireworks go off all through the night, tossing and turning and cursing all things 4th as we try to fall asleep with Custer’s Last Stand going on outside our house. But it turns out Rural Vermont does things a bit differently. First off, there were no fireworks to be seen. No fireworks stands on every block. No towering display of explosives in every grocery store. There was one stand in Rutland,

Bear with me, this is a long one and ends with a bang. More and more, the critters are coming out of hiding around here. I still haven’t had a a lot of contact with the four legged world, but there have been some sightings of life. I have seen bear scat piles on my property but no bears. And the other day, I was walking down the road to the brook and a deer came bounding out, saw me, did a complete about face, and completely disappeared so much so that I wondered if it was actually a ghost deer. But

Last week we got the call that our last 3 chicks were ready for pick up. Earlier than we had expected! And this led to a number of fun issues for us to figure our way through. The past month, we have been working hard on our coop. In the milking section of the old dairy barn, we found a flap door that seemed perfect for opening up and letting chickens run in and out of an essentially secure enclosure. But the room is a rather expansive space and we didn’t exactly want the chickens running around the entire area, nor

Trigger warning: this post contains artist biographies and a butt-ton of flowers. If either of these things bore you to death, you may want to move on.As the days get warmer, I have been paying close attention to the flowers that seem to appear over night. From the wild flowers to the garden flowers, each day brings a new splash of color. The first to appear was the fiddleheads. This curly little plant marks the beginning of spring. And it seems to be a sight straight out of fairy lore. I can imagine the little fairies, hiding in their warm winter

The past couple days it’s been hot. Real hot. Intensified by the fact that it is rare to find AC in Vermont (because, ironically, it “doesn’t get that hot in Vermont”). So we’ve been opening our windows at night. Which is great except, we hear things outside far louder. Last night, at around 3am, we were woken up to the sounds of loud scrapes and crunches outside. We’ve discovered a bit of a raccoon “issue” around the property, which our pest lady, Shay, will be bringing live traps for this week. But because we have found several holes under our house

Well, we’ve done it. We’ve become chicken owners. This weekend, we received half of our chicken order. Because we ordered multiple breeds of chickens, and because apparently you cannot control the nature of chicken birth, it was quite a process getting them. We enquired about our winged friends after 5 weeks of waiting as we were told the waiting period was 5-7 weeks and we were impatient. We were then told that the Pandovana and the Maran were ready, the Serama and the Cemani were on back order, the Legbar wouldn’t be ready until summer because the rooster was being

You know those easy projects that should only take a weekend and end up taking an entire month? Okay, that describes all my projects. We wanted to go a little simple for our first project at the farmhouse. You know, warm ourselves up before we go in with hammers blazing. And we figured our garden was our first tackle. It was the right time for it and it’s not like we haven’t we have gardened before. We just haven’t exactly done in ground gardening. We’ve only used raised beds and the square foot gardening method. Which is a great, easy method,

Last weekend, after a long day of farming (more to this story but that’s for another day) I lay down on my bed, exhausted and in need of a nap. The weather was lovely so I had the window open and fresh air was blowing me into slumber. And as sleep was just about to take over, I heard a distinct CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP! My eyes shot open just as a horse drawn carriage passed by my house. I thought to myself, well isn’t that the coolest? and fell asleep. But when I woke later and asked the rest of

Our first Easter at the Farmhouse was everything we could have imagined and more. Holidays and farmhouses just go together, I think. Donovan spent the week stressing about whether or not the Easter Bunny would use all 16 acres to hide eggs. Even asking kids in class their egg-speriences (heh). Not sure who gave him the idea that he’d be searching the full acreage (it was me) but it had him worried. Saturday night, we dyed eggs. I ordered 3 different egg dye sets online that came with all sorts of decorations. None of which actually worked like they looked on