Daddy's Birthday

Today was my "Idaho" dads 76th. birthday, we had a party at our house with all the family.
Even though they aren't my real parents, Chuck and Arlene have been in my life for the past 20 years. Mommy and Daddy have been such a constant in my life, I am definately the person that I am today because of their love and support. I am so glad I adopted them so many years ago!

We enjoyed a great dinner of lasagna, salad and garlic bread. We have the best parties when our family gets together, my sister, husband, son & new baby boy, my oldest daughter and her fiance, and my #2 daughter came up from where she lives an hour away.

Alyssa lighting the candles and we are all singing Happy Birthday...

Mommy and Daddy have been married 50+ years, the are an inspiration to us all.

Daddy after blowing out the candles and the smoke clearing, enjoyed cake and ice cream.

We definately are party central at our house and I am the party queen. I love every minute

of our family time, in such a busy world, a party is a great place to be.

Spring Seeding

Spring seeding has begun on Four Seasons Farm. I try to start the peppers and tomatoes during the middle of February. We need that much time to have them the size to sell for our first Farmers Market, the first Saturday of May.
This is my seeding table, with my seeds organized and my planting chart.I usually try to have 3-4 varieties of one vegetable in each tray.

These are the flats when they are seeded and setting on the heat mat, there is enough room for 4 trays. I started 9 varieties of tomatoes, 4 varieties of peppers and basil.

As you can see our garden area is almost completely free of snow, we just have a bit to melt, by this weekend, it should be all gone, not to say we won't get more, but at this time of the year, it won't be here for very long.
I am hoping to plant the cold frames with spinach on the 1st. of March, hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Early spring is definately here on the farm, I am hoping this weekend or next to clean the goat barn, we have babies coming...

Every fall I am so happy for the break, to just hang out at home and work on my house projects and to visit with friends. I love the winter months because the kids play basketball, which is uninterrupted from farm projects. But then, the snow starts melting, the goats are getting rounder, I see green sprouts in the pastures and I just get so excited for a new year of farming.
Every year is a do-over, to correct your mistakes from last year, to add a bit more to this year.

I never thought I would love what I do so much, definately wasn't what I thought my life would be, but now, wouldn't change it for the world!

Puppy Love and Old Man Winter

Meet our newest addition to our farm family, Millie our corgie/heeler cross, she is about 10 weeks old and totally adorable. We have had her for a week now and she is behaving very well.
Her training has been going very well also, the whole family absolutely adores her, and hopefully this spring we will train her to herd something. Just not sure what yet!

Yes, the weather guessers might be right, we could be having the worst winter in 55 years, with this La Nina weather pattern. Spokane has already beat the winter of 55 for snow totals. Are you getting this, 1955, worst winter in 55 years, we are in the year 2010, you do the math and grab a snow shovel, lol. This is our house in all its snow glory, of course I didn't get the corn stalks and pumpkins picked up from our fall decor display before the snow came, might have to wait till spring for that.

My #1 son, Alex, (my only son) is doing an awesome job of plowing us out. He works so hard, so when his dad gets home, dad doesn't have to plow us out, since he has just plowed for the county! My boys work very hard this time of year, hoping they get a bit of a break soon.

Productive Day

So today I was cleaning the kitchen for Thanksgiving, I had started cleaning in July, got too busy to finish, so now I have started over. Normally when I clean I take everything down from each wall, wash and put back up. But since I had done that just a few months ago I just had to dust and move on.

Got the three walls re-done that I had completed in July, now I am starting on the last wall, which also has my dishes cupboard and the sink area. Tomorrow I hope to get quite a bit done, but will probably have to finish on Friday since I have plans on Thursday. It wouldn't take so long if I didn't have so much stuff!

When my honey and the kids got home from work and school today, we decided since it wasn't raining to go outside and get some more clean-up done. Moved some stumps I wanted for decor in the yard, then we moved to the garden.

I had to still tidy up the greenhouse and packing shed, also had pots and hoses to pick-up, my honey and the kids helped me get it all done, so even though the rows aren't clean (can do that in the spring) I won't be freaking out at the first snow.

A few more small projects and let the snow begin, and even though we are done with this years garden season, got my first 2011 seed catalog today, no rest for the weary.

Sorry no pics, forgot to take the camera to the garden.

Fall Finale!

We always finish our fall clean-up with the burning of the brush pile! We add to it all spring and summer and when we are done for the season we burn it and have a little party. Sometimes we have people over to celebrate but this year too much was going on so we decided to torch it on Sunday. I didn't even have hot dogs so it was a snack food and beverage party.

Ron & Alex trying to get it going and then Ron all excited when it starts to burn. Like you can't get something to burn with a propane torch!

Here's Alex adding some branches we just cut.

After we get the pile going, the kids decided they wanted to have paintball wars in the orchard area. Here's my kids coming back after alot of running and shooting. What an awesome family day on the farm.

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!