Key, Peaches, and Lunchbox

As of today we are the proud owners of our 20 acres in Madison County. The adventure begins! Ryan went and got the key to the gate today, and I am loving this key.

It is so delightfully retro. Here is the gate this goes to, although you can't see the padlock in this picture. 

So now we get to hit reset on the whole farm thing and start over with a blank slate. I'm terrified, excited, anxious, and a host of other things about it. So far the thing we're leaving that I'm going to miss most is our orchard, which will take at least another five years to get anything established again. On that note:

Peaches!! We have them! Huzzah! Finally we had a winter mild enough and more importantly without major temperature swings to yield peaches. Small, beautiful, white fleshed peaches. I was never a huge fan of peaches growing up, canned peaches have always just been slimy and overly squishy to me. Then we moved here to this tree. We will be planting as many of these pits as we possibly can. 

In this picture I grilled some after we had some brats the other night. A mildly successful experiment, but really not the best way to eat them. I didn't get the nice caramelization that would make this worthwhile. I'll be canning this weekend, and I will try to put up as many as I can while I can!

The turkeys are day ranging now, which is where we just put them in a net area for a few days and then move the net later. They look pretty good, and as usual we had more losses than we would like. However, it was nothing like last year so I think we will be OK for turkey sales this year. 

Miss H started preschool this week! I'm not sure which family member is most excited about this, but I know it is great to have her intellectually occupied. She really was bored at home, and Ryan just couldn't keep up with her the way preschool can. I'm already seeing more imagination from her when she is home as well as better language skills in only a week. Her preschool is also fairly diverse culturally, with families from Turkey and the Middle East. I love that, and I love that she will grow up with multiple cultures around her as "normal" from day one. That is often difficult and unusual in Central Iowa. 

I also dug into my fabric stash to make her a lunchbox, and I purchased some Insul-brite to line it with so it's insulated.

I had always intended this fabric for a jar quilt (a quilt with lots of jars full of various things, usually depicted on shelves), but I've recently decided to stop protecting my fabric stash so fiercely. I don't even have much of a stash by most standards, but it's full of fat quarters that will be happier being used than sitting in my plastic organizer boxes. 

My biggest problem now is finding a tiny bit of time and space to run a sewing machine without kidlets literally underfoot! Little Z's fave thing to do right now is put his weight on my sewing machine foot pedal as I'm trying to work, so I have to guard that pedal carefully and often turn the machine off while I pin seams. 

Just keep swimming!

August Catch Up Post

I don't have an excuse for not posting, other than I just don't have the bandwidth for it lately. Life is too crazy around here. New job, two young children, moving a farm, buying land, working on my MBA, contracting for a new 30' x 50' farm building, crazy. But those are excuses. Sorry! So I'll kind of do a catch-up post here.

It looks like we will close on our new land on Sept 3rd or so. We're trying to find a tractor for sale that we like before that happens because we can qualify for a loan program if it's before we buy the land, but so far we're not finding what we want. 
Here's a picture of part of our new land, in the middle of a small locust tree grove. It was quite lovely in June, although we're going to have to cut and bulldoze a driveway out of that bad boy. 

Here's a picture of the pasture ground, with a little of that grove showing in the background.

In preparation for selling our place, we've been doing various things including staining the deck and replacing the living room carpet. The stain was a bunch of mistints all mixed together, and at first I thought it was too RED. But it has grown on me and I like it.

Before (basically no stain left, since we hadn't stained since we moved in):

After:

And here's a wider shot with the red deck:

The red has faded a bit already since it's not so fresh, and it's softer now in a good way.

I've been doing a little bit of crafting, mostly small projects. H is in a kind of summer preschool program put on by a friend of mine, and I was supposed to embroider a napkin for her to use at mealtimes. H asked for "yellow elephants" on her napkin, so that's what I embroidered for her.

I also made a small charity quilt out of scraps I found when cleaning up my quilting supplies. I used the opportunity to practice quilting feathers, which I think I improved through the practice.

H loves to "help" do various tasks and chores, which really is good. She is, of course, not good at them yet, but her willingness lets us teach her.

Tearing up bread for a topping for a casserole (boy, was this a GREAT task for a toddler! Tear it up, it doesn't matter how, and the food processor blades can't run with the lid off):

Watering plants:

And washing windows:

Before starting my job, I took a very quick trip with Little Z up to my childhood camp in Northern Wisconsin. My feelings about going there were well summed up by this sign that they've added recently:

If I have one spot in the world that I consider to be "mine," it is this rock:

I don't know why, but that rock is just the perfect place at camp. It is a little secluded from the cabins, but you can still see what's going on with the sailboats and everything else. I can almost smell the pine trees just looking at this picture. 

On the way up there, Z and I stopped at one of the Grottos, this one in Wisconsin somewhere. Wow. World class ugly, that thing is. Can't believe someone spent his life cementing pieces of junk together as an homage to his faith and America ('Merica?).

We also did our annual outing to the Iowa State Fair about a week ago, where we spent eight hours there and succeeded in finding a company to build a building on our new land. We're really looking forward to building what we need and not cobbling together functionality from buildings that don't really suit us. 

At the end of a long day, H is a little tired:

And with that, the kiddos need me. Sigh. Keep on swimming!

Open House July 28th

Just as a warning, this post will be lots of words with few pictures!!

 We think we're finally ready to announce some big changes to Wild Rose Pastures. We purchased our current 40 acre farm about five years ago, and at that time (as many of you know), our family politics situation for moving to Ryan's family's farm was difficult. However, in the five intervening years that has changed and we are planning to move to the family farm over the winter. We are not intending to leave any of you high and dry, and especially our Ames and Des Moines customers will be even closer to us! We intend to either continue our business with Pella customers unless the future buyers of our farm have similar philosophy and products to our own and our customers would rather move to working with them.

  That being said, we have a small amount of beef that will be available shortly, and we are having an open house for both that beef and to show our farm to anyone who might be interested in purchasing it. Our open house will be Sunday, July 28th from 10AM-2PM. If you would like to put "dibs" on any cuts of beef, we will hold it for you until 1 PM unless you specifically tell us you are coming after 1. We are only selling by the cut, and pricing can be found here: http://www.wildrosepastures.com/beef.html

First come/reserve, first served! While we can also bring beef to the normal pickup points, we will prioritize people who are willing to come get it on Sunday. If you can't do so, perhaps we can help you find a friend who can! Unfortunately, we are currently sold out of chicken and our lamb isn't ready yet, but we should have a few dozen eggs for sale. Or if you just want to bring the kids, see the farm, and come hang out, we'd love to see you!

PDF directions to our place can be found here:

http://www.wildrosepastures.com/Directions%20to%20Wild%20Rose%20Pastures.pdf

Or the website version here:

http://www.wildrosepastures.com/maps.html

We don't recommend you follow your smartphone or GPS directions! There is a dirt road east of us that the smartphones LOVE to take you down and get you stuck!

If you are interested in buying our farm or know someone who might be, this open house is for you too. It is a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house originally built in 1868 but remodeled all the way from studs in 1999. It has a three season sunroom built in 2005 that is roughly 300 square feet. The main house is 1.5 stories and about 900 total square feet. It has a very nice kitchen (the previous owner's wife insisted on it!) and modern wiring and plumbing. It is on rural water, the septic was new in 2005 and was just cleaned out a couple months ago, has a one car garage, and has a root cellar poured in at least 1910. We get DSL internet from the local phone provider for a fairly reasonable price (no dial-up or satellite!). We just put down new carpet in the living room, and the house is in good shape. We put a new roof on in 2012.

 The house sits on a 2 acre plot (handy for financing reasons because you can finance the house itself with anyone without worrying about an Ag loan) with two other major outbuildings on it other than the garage. These include a divided shop with concrete floor and a closed-in lean-to with a dirt floor. Just off the 2 acre plot line there is also a brand-new large chicken building with a concrete floor and a carport for a tractor. All three buildings have power. There is also a well that we put in in 2010 that has 3 hydrants and a frost-free Cobett waterer (that thing is AWESOME!). There is also a small orchard with peaches, cherries, serviceberries (Juneberries), and apples already producing. Pears and hazelnuts should start producing soon as the trees are young.

  The thirty-eight remaining acres are mostly pasture. There is a wooded draw down the center of the property, which is decent but not amazing for hunting ground. The south pasture has been improved over the five years from having chickens on it and also has some clover. On the west there are about 13 acres of tillable land, although it is very sandy and is currently in pasture because it is not very productive when cropped. There are native prairie remnants on our hills because they have always been too steep to till. Native plants include big and little bluestem, indiangrass, compass plant, bush clover, and lead plant. 

  Here is a Google maps picture of the place with an outline where the property lines are. For locating it, you are best off going to https://maps.google.com/ and typing in "Wild Rose Pastures" and we should pop up in Reasnor, IA. We are a 20 minute drive from Pella, a 25-30 minute drive from Newton, and a 45-55 minute drive from Des Moines. We are on gravel, and it is either two or three miles of gravel to get to us depending on which way you go.

  We also have plans for an addition to turn the house into a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house that we would be happy to share with you if you would be interested.

  We are asking $245,000 for the house and land together. We are not looking to sell them separately at this point. We would like to stay here until November to finish out our growing season, but could possibly work something out if there was a reason or a need to do so. 

Please help us spread the word, and I'll try to post more pics mid-week as we get this place cleaned up enough to sell! I will also keep you posted on our journey to move a FARM and two young children (are we crazy or what?!?).

Computer, flooding, & shoe quilt

 Greetings! As always, I apologize for the lack of posts. This happened a couple of weeks ago, which made posting much harder:

Stupid computer. Either way, I miss my laptop. 

We had some flooding this spring, this is a picture of the road to our place. Our farm did not flood at all, this is just the first gravel road you take to get to us. I just had to take an alternate route to work for about two weeks. Typical Iowa spring!

I have a friend who loves shoes who is new to the Pella area, so I made her a quilt for her cubicle. I came up with the paper pieced pattern myself, and it has a quote from Marilyn Monroe embroidered on it: "Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world." It suits her perfectly! Everyone asks me about the shoe fabric; I found it on fabric.com by searching for "shoes," and then I colored in some of the shoes pink with fabric marker. 

I'm going to catch up on the kids a bit for the rest of this post. When the tulips were blooming in Pella I took them out for a bit of a photo shoot:

 And as usual, I'm badly behind on my gardening. Sigh. But H likes to help! She's actually all about trying to help, which is very sweet. 

 She's also started to get that whole not-so-camera-shy-toddler thing going on. Luckily she hasn't picked up the super cheese ball smile yet! Maybe she won't...

 Little Z is growing well, and crawls like a pro. Here he is at his grandmother's band concert, she is playing clarinet in the Ames Municipal Band this summer. 

 And here he is at a friend's house, looking contemplative. 

 And now he's banging on the keyboard and I have to get H dressed, so I have to go! I will try to post more very soon!

Chores & Grafting

Ryan went out of town last weekend on a much-needed break, so that meant I covered farm chores for him. Contrary to popular belief, I don't usually do much with farm chores. Just when necessary. Ryan is Mr. Farm Chores. 

I realized we don't usually blog about the day-to-day, so here is "How to do farm chores," Janice style:

1. Get oats from the shop. A staple bucket is about the right size and handy. Keep an eye out for the skunk, he lives there and is currently too smart to be caught. But he stays on the other side of the building...

2. Get a sled of hay. If you're lucky and you're just covering one night, the hay fairy already got you a sled. If you're unlucky, pull apart a big round bale or a small square bale until you have a sled of hay. 

3. Offer the oats to the sheep. This is a distraction. They will try to knock you over to get to the oats. Be strong! Stand firm! This is the sheep version of the "feeder rage" we see in broiler chickens.

4. Pour the oats into an old chicken feeder. Deploy distraction!

5. Go get sled full of hay and dump it into the feeder. The feeder is a farrowing crate turned upside down, and it works really well. Lamb babies are already getting big!

6. Watch lambs eat. This year was much better than last year for lambs, we have around 20 and our mortality rate was closer to 10% instead of last year's 50%+. I'm not sure what happened last year, but either way this year was better. 

7. Roll eyes at the building chicken. All other chickens were moved to the new building, but this one stayed behind. She cleans up oats the sheep leave behind and generally has decided she doesn't want to leave. She doesn't like change. 

8. Get water for the sheep. Carry it back, cursing its weight, and try not to spill it on yourself. 

9. Fail.

10. Go up to the brooder and get the laying hen chicks some feed. Unfortunately, none came out so that you could coo at their cuteness. Laying hens stay cute MUCH longer than broilers. This year we have Black Australorps. We've shown this brooder hood design before, but I have to say it is AWESOME! We are not checking the brooder temperature every couple hours with this thing, they can regulate themselves. 

11. Close the door for the adult laying hens. 

12. Check on the adult laying hens. This is our new building in service, and it's been quite nice. Check that they have water and food, since we now collect eggs in the morning. 

13. Hello gals! We mostly have buff orpingtons right now, with some red stars and other miscellany mixed in. 

And then chores are done! Ryan worked very hard to make it easy for me; the cows have a hay bale in a bale ring and access to a waterer that is hooked to the well and manages itself. They'll be grazing soon, but spring has been late this year so they are still eating hay. 

Ryan also took a grafting class recently, which has been a new experiment. 

We have a couple of grafted apple trees hanging out in the bathroom where they can get light, but not direct light. That pretty, healthy growth you see on the one in the foreground? That's the root stock growing. Sigh. The graft does appear to be taking as well, though. Have you noticed I can't seem to take a picture of the interior of our house without a kid toy showing up somewhere? I have. 

I have been productive quilting-wise, but it is currently all for gifts that have yet to be given and so I can't share yet! I will share after I give the gifts.

As for the kidlets, little Z is growing well and as he should. In this picture, he has recently discovered the joy that is feet. I just LOVE the moment when babies find their feet; H did this too. It is the world's greatest toy! And it's right there, at the end of my leg! Whoa!!
Z can now reliably roll over front to back and back to front, his next step is crawling and he is determined to be mobile as soon as he can manage it.

H is still doing really well as a big sister, although she's trying to find ways to play with her little brother. Here, she is adorning him with post-it notes while he ignores her. She is almost three, and is full of all the drama and discovery that comes with being a three-year-old girl. 

And so, life goes on!

Lambs, Brown Green Baby Quilt, & Easter egg hunt

It appears I am on a once-a-month blogging schedule, but I guess that might just be the way it is right now! I like every two weeks when I can do it, but life's a little busy for that.

We have our first lambs of the season, I think the first was born on Wednesday. They are, as lambs always are, very sweet.

We have two single lambs out of two first-time mothers, which is the way it should be. First time mothers who twin frequently lose one or both, and so far we would rather have healthy singles. Yes, that is a Tidy Cats bucket in the background. A friend and customer of ours generously donated a bunch of them, and we use them quite a bit for various things (in this case, water for this lamb and ewe). Buckets wear out fast around here, and are kind of stupid expensive considering it is just a BUCKET!

I also had a friend of ours have a baby in the last week or so, and I decided he needed a quilt of his own. So I whipped up a quick stash-busting Anita's Arrowhead for him; many of these fabrics I am thrilled to finally give a home to. My stash is small, but it's still too full of fabrics that aren't actually big enough to do much with. I secretly dream of working toward a stash made up of decent quality fabrics with a balanced color scale.I also find that I reach for my tone-on-tone colors the most, like Moda Marbles and other blenders. I think that a little bit of print goes a long way, and I like the look of more pure colors best. Anyway, here's the quilt I made!

I've also started putting blessings on the labels of my baby quilts, and I really like what it adds. This one says, "May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone to far." 
And yes, those are my toes in the bottom of this picture. I should have stopped long enough to crop it, but I didn't. Lazy me.

Since today is the Saturday before Palm Sunday, Pella had its Easter Egg Hunt for kids. Now, not to be a fuddy-duddy, but in my day they still bothered to put candy into plastic eggs for the kids. Each one was a discovery: "Did I get good candy, or is this one a tootsie roll?" Alas, now they just scatter the candy on the ground and let the kids go at it when they say "go!" I guess this way is a lot less effort, and as a parent I don't have to figure out what to do with all the plastic eggs or feel bad throwing them away.

H enjoyed it anyway, and thought the whole process was pretty neat. And yes, I was That Mom. You know, the mom who doesn't have a cute Easter basket that's just the right size for gathering candy? The mom who totally spaced the whole concept that an Easter basket might be needed for this activity and emptied a grocery bag that happened to also be in the truck to serve as a makeshift basket? Yeah. That was me. Good thing she's 2 and won't realize that I was That Mom this year. I'll try to do better next year!

Z is growing well, and I snapped this picture this morning of a onesie my sister-in-law made for him

It has a bunch of stats for a Level 1 Human, and it's very Geek Chic. He's growing well, though has a cough (we all do, I'm on week number six of this thing) and is still a very calm baby. In this picture he just had his diaper changed, which is his absolute FAVORITE activity in the whole world. This kid just loves his diaper changes.

On a last note, this is my plea to the universe to decide it is spring already here in the Midwest. As I type this on the 23rd of March, it is the warmest it will get today at 37 degrees F, cloudy, gray, and nothing at all is green. Please spring, we need you!! Last year we know you were too early, but now you are too late!