Month: November 2023

All For Now!

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello friends!

Last update of the year!

Unfortunately it’s kinda a boring one. I’ve been working 16 hour days and weekends to pull off a project at work and it’s sorta come at the detriment of the farm. But I guess going into winter is a good time to start slowing down.

We have not yet got the permanent hay storage up, but we’ve made progress! We had a pretty wet, stormy period of time that sorta slowed us down, on top of work, but I finally got enough wood salvaged for the beams and as soon as I can find the fittings I need, we will be good to go. It should just be a trip to Home Depot, but it’s been hard getting away lately. But I kinda need a few brackets and things to make this work… I think. Do you trust me to build a thing? Juries out on the side of the screen haha. 

Full disclosure, I’m writing this just a little before Thanksgiving, because I doubt I’ll have much time the rest of this week, but I’m going to assume it’s going to be a fun holiday because it always is. We have lots of little ones running around, and usually some spirited board games. I’ve bought the pies and drinks, turkeys, ham, and all the fixings will be coming in potluck form day of. I’m pretty excited!

The wild turkeys have heard its Thanksgiving and are pulling some serious mafia behavior, including trying to break into my neighbors home

The horses have gotten to be lazy because of the weather and my schedule, and because Ro continues to struggle with her cracked hoof. It’s not really hurting her, but it’s also not very stable. It’s been pretty hard getting the mud to stay out of it, which always worries me. But she’s in good spirits and she’s giving her all in work and in play, which probably explains the cracked hoof haha. She’s my little firecracker, injuries and all. 

Nellie Belle on the other hand is absolutely thriving. She surprised us so much the other day, she’s not wanted to take her mask off because of the velcro noise and I can’t really blame her. But I was gearing up for an argument, and bless her heart, her arguments usually end in my bruises. But she worked so hard and took her mask off, and I was so proud of that alone, but then, just in case I wasn’t blessed enough, she then offered to put her face back in it and took if off and put it on several times for me! And she’s done it a couple times since too, we’ve been casually keeping up on it. She’s so amazing!

Look at these breathtaking sunsets we’ve been getting! It’s been unreal, I’ve been standing outside in the freezing cold to watch these, its so worth it

I’ve been learning about wood fungus lately. Unfortunately I learned the hard way, by writing a too big check from my emergency fund to keep my house from caving in. I mean, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but the end result was an eventually unplanned elevator to the crawlspace under the house. Luckily we caught it before that, because that’s a little too green acres, even for me. Anyways, we’ve had more contractors in the house and I’m starting to think November is cursed house repair wise and… anyways.

Yall, I tried an apple sauce cake cheat recipe the other day, and it was so good! And that’s coming from someone who generally despises apple based sweets of any kind. It was super simple, a box mix of yellow cake, apple sauce, and some eggs. Then you add some cinnamon and sugar, swirl, and tada, 30 minutes later: cake! We had it with ice cream and powdered sugar and, oh my goodness, it was tasty. It kinda reminded me of coffee cake but without the crumble on top. Which, now I kinda wanna make more apple sauce cake and a coffee cake. I haven’t made a coffee cake in a very long time, but they used to be my favorite thing on a Sunday morning. I might be baking this weekend, and not just for Thanksgiving. 

Anyways guys, I really appreciate you all being understanding about my taking December off for the holidays. It’s really going to take the stress off, especially because work is making it hard to get even a little free time.  I’m sure I’ll check in, I probably can’t stay away that long, and I wish you the happiest of Thanksgiving, full of food and love and gratitude. 

Until we chat again my friends!

Blog News

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello Friends!
It’s that time of year where I need to start considering what I want to bring into the new year, my goals and plans, and how to make things work better going into 2024. Since some of those plans involve the blog, I figure I might as well share some of what I am thinking with you guys.

So, to start, I have decided to take December off. I ended up taking January off last holiday season after getting supremely overwhelmed trying to keep all the plates spinning, so this year I have decided to be somewhat proactive and just understand that the holidays are crazy and I won’t be able to pull off keeping updates rolling. I’m honestly struggling already to keep things going here on the blog without the added holiday stuff, so instead of making it worse, I am just going to make it easy.

Speaking of things being just left of out of control, we are going to go into 2024 a little differently here. I’ll be slowing way down on posting here for a while. I’ve really debated on how to handle this, because I love this blog, but I’ve not been happy with the quality of posts or my ability to devote time to it for a while. Frankly, I’m a little burnt out on it, which I hate more than I can express. I have such plans for it, but this year was just ridiculous. So much has changed in the recent months, most of which I haven’t even been able to share with you, that the blog just needs to take a less prominent role right now. 

At first I really thought about taking a year off completely, because quite frankly, the farm and I need a bit of a rebuild and regroup season, and I don’t know truly how I feel about trying to capture that online, but that didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it’s sunk cost fallacy, maybe it’s pure stubbornness, but I don’t think this project is done yet. So, I needed to find a compromise.
So, currently, the plan is to post a fun farm round up every two weeks ish, and a video diary type thing every two months. That’s the base standard, the goal for now. We may adjust as things change and we sit with it for a while, but that felt like a fast enough cadence that I won’t forget the blog, or lose track of things, but long enough that it won’t be taking up a bunch of time each week.
Now, there’s a huge part of my heart that still wants to post more often, so I am sorta assuming that as the seasons roll on I will probably be using the “photo”, “quote”, and “status” type posts a lot more for “in between-ies” but I don’t want to overpromise and under-deliver. So, for now, I am just going to plan for every two weeks, and the occasional video diary.

But I can hear you saying “Amanda, what are you going to do to solve the actual problem of too many spinning plates?”. Glad you asked! I’ve already done one big thing. I started leaving work at work a lot more, and being unapologetically unavailable during my off hours (not completely, when something pressing is going on I don’t leave everyone hanging, obviously, I’m just more selectively available), and while it’s only been about a month, it’s been really nice. I also took the opportunity to change my hours a little, it’s harder because I work a little later in the afternoons now, but I get a couple extra hours of sleep, which has been life changing. I’m not eighteen and I cannot function on four hours of sleep anymore, and I am way more useful and pleasant with the extra sleep. I’ve also put a lot of personal projects for other people in “maintenance mode”, they are either not active or chugging along passively, where I don’t have to spend so much time on them. Learning to say “no”, and “not right now”. So don’t worry, I am fixing it.

But, that’s where we are at, I know it’s not the post you were hoping for, but I know you all are amazing and will understand that the blog has to enter “low power” mode for a little while. And if 2024 goes the way I hope, when we reevaluate for 2025, we will be able to add back in the fun things, have a way more stable grasp on the farm, and on our to-do list!

Until we chat again my friends!