Long update: Stuck, little sewing projects, winter goings-on

Fair warning: this is going to be a long catch-up post, and is likely to be scattered. I'm on a business trip and have access to internet, which is a rarity. My workplace blocks this blog site (for good reason), so I just have to have extended access to unbridled internet to update it.

First, farm news. In early November Ryan was working on our drainage behind the house and into a kind of a creek we have there, and got stuck. And by stuck, I mean really stuck:

We ended up calling a neighbor to pull him out of all of the muck, the truck just wasn't even beginning to cut it.

He had a little helper working back there too (on a different day, a little farther up the slope):

Speaking of little helpers, I had one come with me on turkey deliveries too.

We ended up doing Ames turkey deliveries amidst fresh snow, and at that point in the season snow was still a fun novelty!
Last Saturday we did our business taxes, and only filed for a $200 loss for the business this year! That is awesome and means we're getting much closer to profitability. Without writing off our mileage and our depreciation, we did make about $6000 last year. Total sales are around $18,000 and were about 40% beef, 35% chicken, and 25% turkey. I usually like to tell you all how we are doing as a business, partially because I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we are a business. I feel like the business had a good year overall, and I'm optimistic as we settle into our new location.

For my sewing, I mostly worked on a bunch of little projects. First up, Ryan needed a new Dopp kit. He threw out his old one when he opened it up to pack it for a trip and found it covered in mold inside and out. I did some googling to find a tutorial, and sewed something up:

The purple bag on the left is my Dopp kit (purchased from Target). That sad, mopey creation on the right was my first attempt. Not so much a win. So I thought about it, changed some dimensions, and tried again:

Much improved. This one actually looks like something and functions (and doesn't make Ryan cringe when he looks at it).

I also made some table runners, here is one example:

The pattern is "Triangle Frenzy" if you're curious; it's easy and fun and involves cutting striped fabric into 60 degree triangles.

For whatever reason, I also seem to know a lot of people having babies right now, so I made another small baby quilt, this one is about 3 ft square.

It was inspired by a pattern called Hugs and Kisses by Tamarack Shack, but I didn't quite get it right. Ah well, it's done and when it comes to baby quilts, done is definitely better than perfect.

On the house front, we've continued to work on all of the finishing projects. We almost got the outside painted before it got too cold to work outside, so this picture doesn't have all of the trim done and I do know it. Sigh. I blame Iowa winters.

I do like the color a lot, and I will get the rest of the exterior done when it warms up again!

Recently I've been consumed with tiling our master bathroom surround. This was an all-consuming project and I am SO glad to have it done. We actually took our first shower in it this morning, so that made today a good day for me.

Most of the tile is just basic 6" off-white tile, but my one luxury here was these beautiful heron tiles from a company called Earthsong Tiles in Canada. It's a couple that does them by hand out of their home, and I just love them. Here's a closer look:

I also had a little helper working on cleaning grout with me a few days ago, she did a nice job helping!

My last house/crafting item doesn't classify well so it's going to go here. When my grandmother died a couple of years ago, I inherited a piece of needlepoint from my great grandmother. It's floated around my house in a horrendously ugly frame since then:

My apologies if this frame is your style, but it's certainly not mine. So I had it reframed and it's found a place in our bedroom.

I also had them frame it a little tighter to get rid of some of the awkward space around the embroidery, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

The kids are doing very well, and are happy and healthy. When fall color first started, we made some window decorations using clear contact paper.

The kids were much more into this than I expected, with H making houses and flowers and Z making storms and monsters (can you find them below? Some imagination required).

Then in October we took a family trip to Disneyland with my dad, stepmom, brother, and sister-in-law. It was a great trip and it was nice to all go somewhere together.

For Halloween we had a cowboy and a princess. Not a lot of creativity here, I'm hoping they forgive me when they're older. There was a lot going on in October.

For Christmas, we did our traditional tree hunt, which meant trekking into the pasture and chopping one down. It definitely had a very seedy look to it, but it worked! (and there's my ham of a daughter being a camera hog.)

H and I also took a ski trip in December where she had her first skiing experience. Here we are all ready to go:

And here she is at the end of her first day, tired but you can see the satisfaction and accomplishment in her face. She enjoyed it and did well.

And since this blog has been a little heavy on my daughter, we'll finish up with some pics of my son.
Z sandwich - Daddy, Z, Nermal!

And Daddy indulged him with a motorized toy train engine for his train track. It's like heaven for him. Those of you who know us well know that I have a general "no batteries" rule in my house for toys because all of their noises and lights drive me up the wall. I hereby pin this one on my husband and maintain that I'm still trying to hold the rule...

And finally, the last few days he's been sick and on Saturday morning we persuaded him to take a morning nap in our bed. We lured him in with cuddles and let him fall asleep, where I couldn't resist taking a pic.

Sleep well, little one!

Hawk, Quiet Book, Grow Chart, etc

A couple of weeks ago, Ryan came in from chores with a "You'll never guess what I caught in the raccoon trap." After many guesses, I was unable to come up with this guy:

Yes, that is an angry hawk. We were using a dead chicken as bait, and apparently this guy walked right in. It is illegal to shoot these in Iowa (possibly in the U.S.?), so we took him up to Ames with us and let him go. Hopefully 50 miles away is far enough that he won't find his way back! 

I've also been getting back to crafting and quilting some, so for a recent trip to California to visit my dad I made Hazel a Quiet Book. Some of these pages are more applicable when she's older, but I thought I'd take a shot at it nonetheless.

This page is for weaving

This one is for tying shoes and fastening overalls

This one is for counting beads (her current favorite page) and lacing

The back of the lacing page and braiding

Shape matching (her second favorite page) and a maze. The small pocket on the jeans holds the shapes when they aren't matched up. It's hard to see the maze, but there is path stitched in two pieces of fabric that a glass bead can travel through.

Close up of the maze so you can see the path.

I used almost all materials that I had on hand (I bought a lace for the lacing page, that's it), and the cover is from a leg of Ryan's jeans. The tan pages are also old jeans of his, actually. When I buy that man jeans, I'm really just choosing fabric for future projects. I've also made a slip cover from them and a couple of quilts. 

But back to recent quilt completion. I bought a Goodnight Moon panel online a few months ago because I couldn't resist it. I love that book! All I did with it was quilt it, no piecing or applique or anything. 

Yes, that is a green paint stain on my carpet that I forgot to photograph around. Toddler.

Close up of quilting.

I also finished Hazel's grow chart. This is custom fabric I designed on Spoonflower, and I really feel the quilting added something to it (but that's hard to see from this pic). 

Lastly, I made some tutus for my nieces for Christmas, so of course Hazel needed one. Here Nermal has found the tutu and is happily nested in it.

Lastly, some kidlet pictures. Here Hazel is decorating our Christmas tree with Daddy. Again, Ryan pulled a seedy looking cedar tree out of the pasture. When he first pulled it in, it was 12 feet tall and we decided it was a little big for us. So we hacked the bottom off it until we had something more like 7 or 8 feet tall. 

And Zane before we gave him a haircut. Yes, we cut off his hair at about 4.5 weeks because it was already threatening to become a mullet!

Since we had our first snow of the season today, Hazel had to try on Mommy's boots. Is it just me, or does this really make her look like a manga or anime character?

I think it makes her look like the main character from Final Fantasy 9. She even currently has the right hair!

Year End 2011: How are we doing? & Lamb Chops

I get this question all the time: How are you doing? And I don't mean psychologically or health-wise (although people are usually courteous enough to ask that too); I mean our business. So I feel close enough to all of you (and know most of you personally since that seems to be who reads this blog) that I'm going to share a little. 
It's been a rough year this year, as some of you know. We had 100% losses in our first two batches of broiler chickens and only about 5 layers survived from the 50 or so we started with. We also had TINY turkeys with an average weight of 8.2 lbs.

This is a picture of our milk crate hospital pen, there is a chicken in there in the middle of the shot, halfway into a cup holding feed. That's about as big as they got from that first batch. 
I know it sounds like I'm a little grim, sorry about that! I'm trying to be hopeful and look forward to this year when our brooder will be in our new chicken building!

This should help with the disease problems, which were a large portion of our losses. 


Ok, so now for some numbers. If numbers want to make you want to hurl, just scroll down a little for pictures of my first lamb chops and Hazel! 
2011 is the first year I was in charge of record-keeping and it's also the first year we're following the Schedule F form for taxes in our expense calculations. This is a HUGE improvement, so before this year's numbers I don't guarantee any of it (and I'm not really guaranteeing this year's either).
In 2008, our first year on this farm, we had $7800 in sales and $6500 in direct expenses for those sales. Then there's a bunch of supplies and fencing and capital stuff and all that rot for a net loss of $820. 
In 2009 we had $10800 in sales and $8000 in direct expenses. After all the other stuff including a $9000 fencing and water system (of which about half was reimbursed by Uncle Sam) we had a net loss of $8000. Actually, that's not too bad considering the capital expense.
In 2010 we had $17000 in sales and $13700 in direct expenses. After all the miscellany including $1200 for a tractor swap and $3000 in cows we come to a net loss of $4200. 
In 2011 we had $13300 in sales and $9500 in direct expenses. After all the other stuff including $5000 for the new building we have a net loss of $3000. 


So how are we doing? I'm not sure. I've never done this new business thing before. I know you're not really supposed to make money until at least year 5 if not year 7 or 8, but I certainly would like to be closer to breaking even than we are. Of course, this is without taking out truck mileage or accounting for labor (that's free, right?). This year I think we would have made money even with the building expense if our turkeys had been "normal" and our chickens hadn't died in droves. In the spirit of the end-of-the-year wrap ups, I'm going to try to put 2011 behind us and look forward to 2012!


Are you interested in this info? Or is it just TMI and everyone scrolled past it?


Now, as promised, here is a picture of the lamb chops I cooked up!

They were rubbed with a mint sauce/rub, and served with some golden potatoes. Totally completely awesome. They practically melted in our mouths. Ryan suggested I cook some because until now we've just sold them without ever having made them! He's right, of course. Here's the whole rack, in a less presentation conscious arrangement:

We may not be making money yet with our business, but I tell you the perks are un-freaking-believable!

And now for the Hazel pics of the day. We were folding laundry and tossed a Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) T-shirt on her. Ryan wears these constantly and has 4 or 5 of them. So here's our future practical farmer:

We're going to the PFI conference in a couple of weeks, I'll try to remember to report in on it. 

I think you are probably aware we just had Christmas. Therefore, we need an obligatory opening presents pic of the munchkin. 

Lucky you, we even got Nermal in the shot!

Cast of Characters: Nermal

Nermal is our farm kitty. He was raised on the farm where we buy our feed and he charmed his way onto our farm. In some ways, he's a totally normal cat.

He's a little destructive. Here he got ahold of an egg carton.

Suffice to say, there wasn't much of that egg carton left. 

He's also a bit of a climber.

Here he is on the top of the bathroom door.

Then, of course, he likes to be in the middle of any quilt in progress. Quilts I'm working on are there expressly for his pleasure.

Even barn quilts in progress apparently count, as evidenced by his actions yesterday.

As of tonight, I now have the yellow painted on it, but as soon as it was marked up Nermal climbed aboard.


Somehow, he just knows.

Lullaby quilt & the Stuff that makes a Marriage

The turkeys are all done now, and just in time! We had a nasty rainy couple of days and wind from the northeast (our least sheltered direction). A fellow farmer friend of ours lost a bunch of her turkeys last night, and Ryan commented that we got done on the right day. Now it's just a few short days to Thanksgiving and we can settle into winter.

I finally finished another quilt, this one is a blue version of a green one I made for my niece about a year ago. I hand quilted this one with an all over design that is the sheet music for Brahms' Lullaby. 

I do like the design idea, but again I continue to quilt complicated all over designs on top of non-wholecloth quilts. I should just save those designs for less complicated patterned quilts. Someday I'll learn.

So tonight I went to do a load of laundry and our dryer was making a funny noise. It was heating, but not spinning. Ryan immediately surmised it had lost a belt (Mr. Fixit) and we googled it for confirmation. So we pulled out our "tools" in the house together, and took the top off the dryer.

This is a wrench set Ryan used to have in his very first car. Even though we have all kinds of tools from Ryan's grandfather, this is what he grabbed. 

So as we're pulling wads of lint out of the dryer, Ryan comments that this is what it's like to be an old married couple. We spend Saturday night pulling lint, both ours and someone else's (we bought the dryer used for about $50), out of a dead dryer. 

I told him these are the things that make a marriage. And they are. 

Meanwhile, Nermal enjoyed playing with the broken dryer belt.

He's helping.