Dandelion Jelly

We picked oodles of dandelion flowers and made this beautiful jelly. We loosely followed this recipe. The natural color is lovely and it tastes very similar to honey. Lots of work, but sooo good! The oldest two girls have already picked me another quart of blossoms to make another batch!

Fruit trees galore.. and more!

This weekend we worked on getting our newest order of fruit trees planted. They all got planted in the "horseshoe field" that our driveway encircles. We ordered 2 peach trees, 2 pear trees, 1 cherry tree, 1 plum tree and a brown turkey fig tree from Stark Brothers. We also got a gooseberry bush from Henry Fields as part of their free $25 order promotion. The fig and gooseberry bush got planted in our soft fruit area. Now I'd love to be able to impress you with photos of these trees.. but really they just look like sticks. But in case you don't believe me.. here's a pic for you of three of the trees. We have surrounded them with cages to protect them from the marauding chickens and dogs.

And while I'm here, I may as well share some photos of things that are starting to bloom, it's an exciting time of year on the farm!

Strawberries starting to do their thing!

The grapevines are starting to waken and push out shoots.

I planted some mint in the small little garden area at the bottom of our deck steps. The chickens are leaving it alone and I'll be able to contain it easily enough. Plus it's really handy for picking for the kitchen.

I love Spring!

Dishcloth set

DD16 has been very busy with her crochet work. Here for your viewing pleasure is her latest creation, a dishcloth/hot pad/kitchen towel set. Beautiful work. If you would like to own this set, you can buy it in our Etsy store by clicking here.

Dandelion Coffee

DD14 has been using her foraging book she got for her birthday and tried her hand at making Dandelion coffee. It came our really well, and tastes quite nice. It does have a bit of lingering bitter aftertaste though. Maybe we can work around that somehow.

Bandit.. the dawg.

Bandit has joined our family. He belongs to three girls. He is about 8 weeks old and cute as a button. A Sheltie/Brittany mix. Cute what?!

Cornish Cross Chickens

Meat chickens have come to the farm! 34 of them. Cornish cross.. not so happy about what I've read about this breed, it's just not very natural, but we're giving them a try. They were 99c each at our feed store. Ready to butcher by 6 weeks of age!

The ducks are growing... and growing!

The ducks got to enjoy their first swim... in our bathtub! They *loved* it! They sure do dirty up the water real fast though.


And we took them outside for the first time in a little enclosure. I don't know what they enjoyed more.. the swim or the outside time?!