Crazy week!

This is one of our farm views in the fall, I absolutely love it! Even with all the craziness, I am so
glad to have views like this to enjoy!

This week was super busy, I spoke at a class on Sustainable Farming last Tuesday night in Sandpoint. I talked about what we do on our diversified farm, how long we have been farming and I also show pictures of our farm.

I have been doing these classes every year for a friend and fellow farmer, Diane Green of Greentree Naturals, in Sandpoint. She teaches the class and her students every year are awesome, some want to go into farming as a profession while others want to just learn for themselves and their families.

The rest of the week was busy with the usual family/farm stuff.

Friday was crazy, had to go to Sandpoint to Woods Meat Processing to pick up my beef, 8 boxes later, I was stopping at Wal-Mart for a few essentials. Then home to shove those 8 boxes into the freezers. I had to then run the kids to Newport for their dental cleaning, a stop to drop off Lissy's friend, then home to make a goodie for my Farmers Market meeting and potluck.

We had our Farmers Market meeting and potluck in Sandpoint, (yes, another trip) but it was great to see all of our market friends and to see what will be happening in the next season. Lissy went with me and we took a apple cobbler to add to the potluck table. Kind of looking forward to next seasons market.

This next week we'll be getting ready for Thanksgiving, we will be having family and friends over to enjoy our 27# turkey!

Things have been kind of quiet on the farm front, still need to do a bit of garden/greenhouse cleaning, I am hoping we can squeeze that in before the snow!

Steers and Halloween Fun

So it was time to load the steers to take to the processors. Always a bit sad, but it is great to know we will have awesome beef for ourselves and our customers without any recalls. They left the farm over a week ago, so it will be time to pick up our meat soon. They were very nice steers, always staying in our pastures and never challenging the fences, no fun chasing cows through the neighborhood, been there, done that. They also put on some good weight this year with all the nice grassy pastures we had, the rain throughout our growing season really helped.

So of course, the day after steer loading was our Pumpkin Party, we always have a night when all the kids carve pumpkins, the big girls even come home, even though they hated it when I made them help the little kids years ago! Of course now that we can have wine time while we carve that is probably what brings them home.

I always make cupcakes and this year the Great Pumpkin brought their goodie bags early, lol.

I also made a pot of soup for dinner with cheesy biscuits. Yum!!

My awesome kids carving the biggest pumpkins I have ever grown! Tried a new variety, will probably go back to the old variety, these were rather large. Lots of pumpkin guts for the chickens though.


Here we have our spooky trick or treaters! Hannah, Alyssa's friend has been coming with us since they were in the first grade, they are now seventh graders! Maybe one more year??

I just love Halloween, it is my 2nd. favorite holiday with Christmas being #1.

Hope to have some things to blog about since farm season is over, will have to talk about the holidays I guess. We are all decorated for Turkey Day and it is coming soon!

Best Laid Plans

So my honey was off of work for the last 5 days, we had awesome plans to take advantage of the nice weather last week and do more farm winterizing. Well, after taking the hogs to the processor Wednesday, we get a frantic phone call from Amanda in Coeur d'Alene, her car won't start!

So, Thursday we head down to check on her car, got it started, left my Suburban, and brought hers to up to our mechanic. We thought starter, plus it needed some other work she had been putting off. On Friday, did deliveries, got feed, checked on the car, and still no farm work! Picked the car up, but it still needed some things done, so my honey heads to the parts store to get the supplies for what he could do. Back home to do more mechanic work!

Saturday was a volleyball tournament for Alyssa, that took most of the rainy day, again no farm work.

Sunday was raining, and still a bit more mechanic work, after getting her car all up and running, went to Coeur d'Alene to deliver it and get my Suburban.

Gotta love those kids, thank goodness Ron was off for those days to get things done for her car,
winter is coming and we can't have her an hour away with a unreliable car!

So maybe between rain storms this week we will do the absolute necessities, and clean up in the spring, like we always do! Calling for snow in the mountains, WINTER IS COMING!!!!!!!!!

Barn Work Day

Another gorgeous fall day in Priest River, how can you not want to be outside working? Sunday was barn cleaning day, we cleaned the goat barn, trimmed hooves, and wormed everyone. Now I know why my arm is hurting this morning, since we have 8 does, 32 little hooves can be a bit tough to trim in one setting!


Here is Alyssa cleaning the brooders, working with her happy farm heart! We had 7 chicks delivered to us by our new layer for this year, she is a Speckled Sussex, and is obviously a good mom, they will be in the brooder for awhile though.
Ronald, my honey, and main farm worker is working hard, hoping to catch some afternoon football when we are done! We just cleaned this barn this spring, so not too bad cleaning.
Alex, my #1 son, has his very happy farm smile on, he loves farm work as much as I do, the goats are in the background, anxiously awaiting a clean home. Again, the weather is gorgeous,
the weather man said the nicest October in 5 years. No wonder I am enjoying farm work so much this fall. Hope everyone is enjoying their fall work as much as I am!

Garlic Planting

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day, thought about going to Coeur d'Alene to check out their farmers market since they will go on for two more weeks, but the practical farm side of me won out, and since we had to be back in town for commitments by noon anyways, we decided to get the garlic planted.

We decided to double our planting this year from 5# to 10#, and since I sell everything I grow, I figured it was a good idea. After breaking the heads apart, tilling and adding compost, we are planting, we ended up only using one row, since we added another hose in the center, our rows are 4' by 50', can't wait to clean it all next summer.
Another thing to cross off our fall list, yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Friday was bark day!

Every fall and sometimes when we have time in the spring, we go to Panhandle Post and get a load of bark. This year we only had time this fall because of all the spring rain we had.

It is really nice and shredded and totally cheap, $20.oo for a truck load up to the racks! And they load it! The animals all love it in their pens, it keeps the mud down to a minimum and looks and smells great. Yesterday we picked it up and unloaded on the most gorgeous fall day, kids were at school and usually they help, but pretty easy for me and my honey, couldn't have asked for a better day.

Fall Happenings

I can't believe I haven't posted since May, so much has happened. The farm has just moved along, even though our summer wasn't so great. We only have 2 more farmers markets left!
Produce deliveries are done for the season and we are starting to button up things for winter.
We already have 6 garden rows cleaned out, only 15 more to go, woo hoo! Have our last batch of meat birds, our Thanksgiving turkeys, our last butcher hogs and our steers all go to process in October. I am hoping November is a quiet family month. Kids are back at school so we have volleyball and football games to attend, along with farm work. Somehow it is all getting done, thank god for the good weather this week. Our surprise this week, a rogue hen who doesn't stay in the coop hatched out 11 babies, what a wonderful fall present. Already planning on changes to the farm next week, and getting ready to plant 10# of garlic for next summer harvest.