Giveaway at Farmama

Our family is honored to be offering a giveaway from our shop, Vermont Branch Company, over at Farmama's beautiful blog.

Warm wishes,
Tonya

Smores in the Snow

On the eve of April 1st, with a significant snowfall predicted for the next day, the children asked if I would go to the general store and buy them marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers.  They had a plan to to have a camp fire, regardless of the snow still on the ground, after supper.

How could I say no?  This has been such a long winter.  (And yes, it is snowing this morning - this April 1st morning - not an April Fool's joke - no.)

Happy April! 

Warm wishes,
Tonya

Yarn Along

Joining in again with Ginny...

Still so much left to do on the blanket for Sarah's birthday.

But, what I really want to share today is this fantastic book - The Dirty Life, On Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball. The author was a thirty something, single woman, and writer living in New York City who goes to a farm to write a story, she meets her future husband and most of the book is about their adventures of buying a run down farm in upstate New York. What I appreciate most is that they do it without lots of cash, and without the mind set of bigger is better. Their goal is to provide a CSA that provides many of their members' food needs - meat, syrup, vegetables, eggs, etc.

I want to copy a long quote from near the beginning of the book where the author is describing her future husband.

"He didn't like the word work.  That's a pejorative.  He preferred to call it farming, as in I farmed for fourteen hours today.  He did not own a television or a radio nad figured he was probably one of the last people in the country to know about September 11.   Still doesn't listen to the news.  It's depressing, and there's nothing you can do about most of it anyway.  You have to think locally, act locally, and his definition of local didn't extend much beyond the fifteen acres of land he was farming.  The right thing was to try to understand how you were affecting the world around you.  At first he'd been against plastic, but he was becoming suspicious of any metal that he coudn't mine and smelt himself.  In fact, when it was time to build himself a house, he'd like to build it with no nails, no metal at all, so that it could compost itself down to nothing after he was dead.  He had never owned a car.  He biked or hitchhiked where he needed to go.  He had recently turned against the word should, and doing so had made him a happier person.  He found the market economy and its anonymous exchange boring.  He'd like to imagine a farm where no money traded hands, only goodwill and favors.  He had a theory that you had to start by giving stuff away - preferably big stuff, worth, he figured, about a thousand dollars.  At first, he said, people are discomfited by such a big gift.  They try to make it up to you, by giving you something big in return.  And then you give them something else, and pretty soon nobody is keeping score.  There is simply a flow of things from the place of excess to the place of need.  It's personal, and it's satisfying, and everything feels good about it.  This guy is completely nuts, I thought.  But what if he's right?"

Even though our family's goal isn't to make our living from farming alone, I found the information and experiences could be applied to many of our goals of  working towards a more self sustaining food system on our small homestead.  It is also filled with humor and is fun to read.

I look forward to seeing your projects and learning of what good  books you are reading.

Warm wishes, Tonya

Weekend

We were mostly home this weekend.  There is always so much to be done.  The firewood gathering continued as the temperatures remained cold. 

I cleaned out the back barn to get ready for two doe kids (baby goats!).  This is the before picture.

This rough structure was here when we bought our little homestead.  It is a small barn/shack.  But I much prefer to call it a barn.

We had a wonderful offer over the weekend.  Our homesteading neighbors (whom I have mentioned here before) offered their barn to us - for us to take it down and then we will reconstruct it at our place.  This is such a blessing.  They no longer keep sheep and it is just several years old and a nice size, 14 x 14 feet.
So instead of having to work from scratch (which carpentry is just not Mike's strength - of course he has many talents, but this is simply not one of them), we will have a clearly defined system to build our barn!

While working in the barn, I looked behind to check on Isaac and his fire pit and look what I saw!  He told me that the trees were growing marshmallows. 

Yesterday afternoon Abby and Sarah made some butter from local organic cream to go with our biscuits at supper.

How was your weekend?

Warm wishes,

Tonya

Spring?

This is what it still looks like outside our front door.

The sap is running very slowly.  The temperature today is just 33 degrees F.

With all the snow still on the ground, it is hard to come up with many outside chores.  But today we are working on some firewood.  It is nice because you can walk right on top of the snow.  With sleds, we are all pulling the wood over to the pile.  The older boys are doing a bit of splitting - a perfect temperature for this.

Isaac decided he would like to start a fire to burn the brush.

The children don't seem to mind.

To add a bit of green inside, I glued some moss that we collected last fall to a vine wreath.

Yesterday my friend reminded me that in less than one month's time, we will be planting our onions and other cold crops.  That sounded good - real good.

Warm wishes,
Tonya

Yarn Along

Joining in again this Wednesday with Ginny and so many others to share my love of knitting and crocheting and books.

The weather is still wintry here - several more inches fell yesterday and there is not a warm up in the forcast.  This has left some time to for handwork ~

I am nearly finished with a pair of booties that I knit with recycled cotton yarn.  I just need to knit a strap and add our birch buttons.

Also off the needles came the Crossover Jacket which needs to be sewed up and I need to add one of our hemlock buttons to add the finishing touch.

Both of these projects came from the book, Vintage Knits for Modern Babies.

I am making progress on Sarah's crocheted blanket.  She informed me yesterday that there are 19 days until her birthday.  She doesn't know it is for her.  But that was a great reminder to get going on it.

I look forward to reading about your projects and current book selections.

Warm wishes,

Tonya

Spring Lambs

Not our own, but it was a lot of fun to be able to care for our neighbor's farm over the weekend while he was away.  One of the ewes had two day old lambs. 

Sarah is gifted with animals.  She can walk right in with the mom and babies, talk to the mom and hold the lambs without the mom getting upset.

She had two girls.  Can you see the other one in the background nursing?

It was nice to enjoy this springtime ritual of birth as we had even more snow fall last night and are practicing patience as we wait for the white to slowly turn to green.

Warm wishes,

Tonya