December Monthly Moos {Winter Walking!}

It's been called to my attention that I am WAY behind on my Monthly Moos posts!  Honestly, it is kind of hard to write about the happenings on the farm when nothing very exciting happens!!!

What Our Flower Farm Means To Me

All summer I've been wanting to write a blog post about the flower farming business that my daughter and I have.  Every time I think about it, this thought comes to my mind:  "How would I describe why our flower business is so special to us"? And the words just evade me.

March Monthly Moos {Lady Beetle Invasion}

Have you heard of the Asian Lady Beetle?  

If you saw one you would call it a ladybug.  I mean they look like a ladybug.  But, they are not red, cute or sweet.  They are brownish-orange, ugly and quite horrible.  And you rarely see one, sweet little bug.  You see hundreds upon hundreds.

The Cows Come Home

In the year that we've lived on our farm, we've just had steers.  And just a few steers at that.  The grass keeps growing, my husband keeps mowing, and we keep saying, "We need cows...  Momma cows"!

Well, we finally had time to get away from the house building to find some cows, buy them and bring them home.  Thirteen of them - and they are all bred which means that we can be watching for some babies within the next couple months.  

This one is my favorite.  Jillian and I named her Princess Kate.  

We got some black, a pretty old red, a couple white, and then Princess Kate and she is that pretty orangy color.  But there is something funny and that is that they seem to pair off by color.  Is that strange?  We unloaded them from the trailer and the black ones headed off up the hill. 

And there go the white and red.

 

Our horse, Promise (the Queen of the Hilltop) was pretty excited.  She had a real hard time containing herself!

We're excited to have cows grazing around the farm now.  We're all pretty happy to just stand around and watch them settle in to their new home.  

I know you're wondering where Belle was during all this time?  Well, she was like a little kid running around wagging her tail, grinning, jumping, and never stopping for a picture.  She had to go cool off in the pond from all the excitement.

And while Eldon was watching the cows, and Jillian and I were trying to name them, guess what Rosetta was doing?  She only had eyes for her Gramp and about every 10 seconds she was hollering "Grampie" in her little baby language!

Jillian and I are still trying to name them.  Have you got some great Momma Cow names for us? 

Fall On The Hilltop

Even though we aren't anywhere near moving into our new house yet, our porches are finished and I enjoyed doing a little Fall decorating on one little corner of my big wrap-around porch.  I figured as long as I stayed out of the construction zone it would be okay!

I loved using the old mailbox that I nabbed for cheap at a roadside junk sale a number of months ago.  (You can read about that post here.)  It made for fun decorating with my Fall things!

I did a little hiking around our farm for some Fall foliage and really loved the piece of wood with the moss growing on it.  It was my favorite find of the day.

Can you see that awesome huge pot next to the mailbox?  My son and daughter-in-law found it on their eight acres of land when they bought their place about a year ago.  They gave it to me recently and I am so in love with it.  It looks gorgeous full of these beautiful Mums.

I also did a fun Fall display at the entrance to our Farm.  I've never had much luck at making a scarecrow.  They are always so heavy after I fill them with straw that they won't stand up straight.  I love this lady!

She stands up nice and tall and has weathered several heavy rain storms in the last week and she's still as sprightly and happy as ever! 

I happened on an awesome blog post on how to make her...  I don't think I will ever make another scarecrow any other way.  It was such an awesome idea.  You can read the great tutorial here.

I think maybe we made her head a little too big...  oh well, she's perfect to me!

I hosted a Fall Ladies Lunch on my porches last week.  We had about 15 of us for an awesome lunch....  I planned it all out in my head and it was going to be like this:  these amazing tables decorated beautifully out on the porch overlooking the hillside and the beautiful Fall colors.   Instead, it rained buckets of water and was so cold and miserably wet that instead of having lunch on the porch???  I set up my gorgeously set tables under the scaffolding, inside the house under construction.  Therefore, my pictures were terrible.  I do have this one at least.... gives you a little glimpse of the Fall table decorations!

However, I learned a great lesson.  Fellowship with wonderful ladies is just as wonderful under 30 feet of scaffolding as it would've been on the porch! 

And here I am with my darling grand-babies.  There is nothing sweeter or more precious than these little girls (even pumpkins, mums, lunch on the porch, or rainy days)! 

Happy Fall!   

From Tumbleweeds to Shade Trees!

About a year ago, my husband retired and we moved from the West and the home we’d lived in for over 25 years to a 100 acre farm in the South.  I don’t think there could possibly be countryside that holds so vast a change as that!  These last 11 months have brought about so many changes in my life and so many adjustments but every day I am so very thankful for our new life here.  There are things about the South that I love;  like walking barefoot in the grass (instead of sand being so hot you can’t put your bare foot in it) and having a garden and not watering one time all summer (instead of watering day and night for months and getting a few tomatoes and a few squash), driving a few miles to pick fresh strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and apples (instead of not having that option at all).   Where we lived in the West was very beautiful and there are people that would choose to live there in a heart beat.  But for me, I’ve decided that I belong here in the South and a southern country girl is what I am!  I hope you’ll enjoy my photo tour showing the change in our lives this last year.

Two thousand miles between the road out of our property in the West

into the one leading up the hill to our farm in the South!

From tumbleweeds to shade trees.... what a shock!

This old jeep was our son's from when he was a teenager and it actually made the move with us. 
Not sure if it looks better in the sand or the grass!

The change....  from our animal's point of view!

My husband built this swing out of an old leaf spring from a car and attached it to another turning car part with a swing on each end - our kids could really get that thing spinning! 

We weren't able to move it with us and that was sad - but what is more fun than a huge swing that goes way out over the hillside?

We absolutely loved the world famous lake that was just minutes from our house.  We raised our kids boating and swimming on that lake.  But now we have a different sort of lake not too many miles away and we moved our same old boat, so now we'll enjoy watching our grand kids grow up swimming and boating on a different lake.  After all, water is water right?!

The desert has some very pretty flowers and it is amazing to see them growing right out of the sand with little to no water and very poor soil.   But one thing you will rarely ever see is a green background behind the flowers!

Every single year I would try to grow a garden in the desert and every single year I would cry with frustration when there was very little fruit for my efforts. Here in the South?  I had a garden with very little effort and NO water (other than the rain) and I had vegetables in abundance.  You cannot imagine the excitement to pick bushels of cucumbers every couple days! 

These were all views from just minutes from our house in the West.  It is some of the most beautiful  country that you will ever see.  People come from all over the world to see it.
But when you desire to get back to the basics of a simple life and live on a farm, this is a very harsh, almost impossible, environment in which to do that. 

This is now the view that I see out my window every morning.  I recognize that there are many
beautiful places in the world in which to call home.  But for me - I'm thankful that this lush, green countryside is my home now and I wouldn't trade it for anywhere else!