New eggs, laundry stand, and Luna

It's fully winter here, except that this year the world mostly forgot to do winter. The expected high tomorrow is over 60 degrees, and it's February! So strange. We've had less than a foot of snow all winter so far.

Nevertheless, we've had winter activities. In farm news, our laying hens started laying and have been producing about fifteen dozen eggs a week. Hooray!

Sometimes Ryan gets a little help sorting and cleaning them all.

For the house, we built a stand for the washer and dryer. It was a nice weekend project, and I really like the result. Before:

In progress:

After:

I especially love the space underneath that fits our laundry baskets.

I also want to show that we've not only kept an orchid alive in the window of our bathroom shower, but we got it to rebloom!

For quilting, I've done a few smaller projects. First, we didn't have Christmas stockings for the kids, so I made some for our kids and also our nieces and nephew.

They were fun to make, the one farthest back in this picture is mine that my grandmother made me long ago; I used it as a template.

I also made a denim quilt with regular quilting cotton in between the denim, which I love. It looks like stained glass and is very comfy.

A fellow farmer friend of ours had a baby (shout out to Prairie's Edge Farm!) and I had a small quilt in progress, so I finished it for her and sent it off.

It ended up "busier" than I would have liked, but it will work. I backed it with super soft fuzzy fabric.

H did some sewing of her own, and made an Elsa dress for her doll. Maybe not a "beginner" project, but she was persistent and willing to take direction and help from me and she did a nice job.

In family news we're attempting yet another dog. The border collie decided to herd a car, so she didn't make it. We installed invisible fence and adopted a Great Pyrenees. Here she is the day we adopted her, two months old.

We've named her Luna and she's going to be quite a bit bigger than this. She was born in September, so she still has a lot of growing to do. Here she is chewing on a stick:

In family life, H and I took our annual ski trip again in December.

She got to the point that she was going down real hills (instead of the learning hills for kids) and went down about 7 different slopes up about 4 different lifts at Breckenridge. Go girl, go!

Winter Chores, Charity Quilt, and Iowa Quilt

We had a bit of a surprise snow today, it seems our winter just decided to come a little late.  As I type this, however, the evening weatherman is telling me it will be almost 70 degrees by Tuesday. Iowa weather is so strange. 
I snapped this photo of Ryan coming in from evening chores, sometimes it seems like my life is just perpetually waiting for him to get in from chores! I tried to get a picture of the black and white cows against the white snow, but they were over the hill and not very easy to photograph from the house. 

The green bucket is the feed bucket for feeding the layer hens (with the red feed scoop sticking out the top), and the blue bucket holds today's eggs. We didn't have a lot of luck with the traditional wire egg basket, they tend to break eggs. Plastic is much more forgiving in this case!


I try to make quilts for our guild to give to charity, it is one of the directives of the guild that we create quilts for people in need. So I recently finished a disappearing 9-patch made of some garage sale scraps.

It's a variety of calicos, which are oddly coming back into fashion. What goes around, comes around, I guess. 

I used the opportunity to practice making feathers, and I know I improved through the practice. It's about a throw-sized quilt, and I'm not sure where it will go. But I hope whoever gets it likes it!


Last weekend was the semi-annual quilting retreat, where I finished my oldest UFO (UnFinished Object). I started this quilt in 2006 at my very first quilt retreat. I quilted it on my Bernina Activa 130, no longarm machine here!

It's a monster, at 109" square. But it's finally done! It has a lot of techniques that were my first time trying them. This was my first attempt at half square triangles, machine applique, trapunto, and hand applique.

It has 4 Iowa flowers as its theme: Wild Rose, Black-Eyed Susan, Virginia Bluebell, and Iris. 

Here's the black-eyed susan trapunto and a sample of the machine quilting. Lots and lots and lots of little loops. Did I mention lots? I quilted this thing for 3 days straight, about 15 hours a day, and I had started quilting it at last fall's retreat. I'm so glad it's done!!! I was calling out when I finished bobbins (and my fellow retreaters were great for cheering for each one to keep me going), and we estimated this thing took about 20 bobbins to quilt. 

The center medallion is a picture of the bridge in Madison county where Ryan and I were married. Here's the other hand applique themes:

I am proud of this quilt, but I also know my skills were not as good when I made it as they are now. It was never intended to be as big as it turned out, it just happened that way. As you can see, it's too big for my queen sized bed and is really intended for a king. So I'm glad to get it off my plate because I feel I can go start more new projects!

Adorable Appreciation & Omelettes

One of our customers calls us periodically to come pick up eggs, and she came out to the farm yesterday. Not only did she brave our 2 miles of icy gravel roads, she brought us an adorable thank-you.

I guess my point here is that if there's someone in your life that you appreciate, don't forget to thank them! It means a lot.


So I also thought I'd post a recipe for something we actually raise here on the farm: omelettes! No, we don't raise omelettes (that would be cool), but we have some super tasty eggs. Tasty enough that people will brave 2 miles of icy roads for 5 dozen of them. But anyway, back to the recipe!

I know an omelette is a simple food, but it's what we had for dinner, is delicious, is super fast, and is easy. It's also great for a lot of the random leftovers in the fridge! The ingredients are:

eggs (I like 2-3. I make mine with 2 and Ryan's with 3)
milk (just a splash)
salt & pepper
butter
fillings (mine are green onions, provolone cheese, and summer sausage)

First, throw a splash of milk in a bowl. You might even be able to skip this, but I always add it. I'm talking about maybe 1 tablespoon or so.

Add the eggs, salt, and pepper. If you're using green onions or something else that is spice-like, add it now. Paprika works well here, or really anything.

Whisk well. You actually want it both well-combined and to add a touch of air into it to make the omelette fluffy. 

Butter a medium nonstick skillet over low-med heat (yes, this picture is terrible. I apparently can't take pictures with my left hand while buttering a skillet with my right). You could probably use oil here if you want to.

Pour in the egg mixture and cover. This will need to cook for about 2 minutes.

Your omelette is ready for fillings when it looks like this: just set around the edges, and a little soupy in the middle.

Add your fillings. This is a good place for last night's taco meat, that tiny bit of cheddar in your fridge drawer, etc. Put it in half of the pan and run your spatula all the way around the edge of the omelette to loosen from the pan. Then slide the spatula under the half without the filling and flip it on top of the filling.

If you make a mess of this the first couple of times, that's ok! It will still taste good. Enjoy!

Hiatus over & egg carton extravaganza

First, I have to apologize for my long hiatus. I'm so sorry! I have been absent because I'm now about 5 months pregnant and have discovered I am NOT one of those lucky women who feel like a million bucks when they're expecting (they're out there, I know a few!). So instead I have been a huge lump for the last few months and Ryan has been picking up the pieces. On a related note, Ryan HAS kept his blog up very well; it can be found here: http://beginningiowafarmer.blogspot.com/

Now, on to farm business. The growing season is done for us, but the egg layers have really kicked it into high gear recently! We are practically drowning in eggs; although we are continuing to find people who want to buy them. So we ran out of egg cartons and had to order some more. If you ever wanted to know what $150 in egg cartons looks like, this is it. I came home to this ginormous box in my living room and had to share the way the egg cartons seem to come in "columns" within it!

Anyway, it is not my intention to become one of those non-blogging bloggers, so I am hoping to get back to something resembling my bi-monthly-ish update frequency. Wish me luck!!