I did some major fabric purchasing right after the New Year, and since then, I have been trying to be good and not get anything more. But this fabric called Summersville by Lu Summers was way to good to pass up.  I had been admiring her hand-printed pieces in her Etsy shop for quite some time, and when I heard she was making a line for Moda, I knew I had to get some.  Fabric.com had a great sale a few weeks ago, so I picked up three different one yard cuts along with some fabric to make Miss C a couple of pillow cases.

The fabric finally came today and I opened the package and promptly threw the fabric in the washer and dryer.  I had been dying to use this particular fabric with Miss C.  She LOVES coloring and has became quite good at it.  We broke out some sharpies and went to town. It was great fun.  We only had a few bright colors, and they were thick-tipped markers, so tomorrow we will be picking up more.  I can see this being such a hit with kids, wouldn’t it be great at a party!  Someone on Flickr suggested ironing freezer paper to the back of the fabric before coloring it, so we will try that tomorrow.  I see so many possibilities for this line, I will be placing another order this weekend, this is going to become a huge staple in my house.

I have also made a few gifts for friends lately as well as clothes for Miss C and I finished my Katie Jump Rope granny square quilt top.  I hope to get some time on Mother’s Day to piece the back and then baste it.  My plan is to hand quilt it and have it ready for the Woodstock Fair over Labor Day weekend.  Should be doable!

**  We did lots more coloring today, take a peek (ironing freezer paper on the back worked great for this)!

Our big producer this time of year is asparagus.  We get a bundle like this every couple days.

We had a campfire at the end of the day and cooked everything outside — our own pork chops, fresh lettuce from the garden and pie-iron pies for dessert.

And what campfire would be complete without some roasted marshmallows.  It was the perfect day to spend outside.

Our pond last year, April 2011

Our pond this year, April 2012

At least the ducks and the geese still have enough water to swim around in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CCGQmPPZf0

Our fruit trees are also a little bit sadder this spring, though not terrible.  They were overflowing last year and are must less numerous this year.  Compare these shots.

Spring blossoms last year, April 2011

Spring blossoms this year, April 2012

Lastly, we’ve don’t’ have any baby lambs yet. It could be that we had an inexperienced ram, but we’re still hopeful for baby lambs before the weather gets too hot.

Baby lamb from April 2011

As soon as we have baby lambs (if we have baby lambs), we’ll post here.

If you like this year-on-year comparison, check out these others:

• Pond comparison (January 2012)
• A very wet summer (August 2011)

Normally the month of February feels never ending and I can’t wait to get to March.  March is already more than half over and I don’t even know where the past few months have gone.  Time is flying by at warp speed, which is mostly a good thing, but not always.  We have been doing our best to keep up with everything on the farm, in the house, and with the kids.  At the end of the day we prioritize spending time with those that we love, so, stuff has been piling up.  We are now in the midst of a major rush to get many things crossed off of our to do list.  Here are a few of the things we have been up to.

This morning I made a MAJOR trip to the Post Office.  I sent our cow pelt to CA and a sheep pelt (not ours, but it was going to be tossed by our butcher and it was VERY soft) to PA to be tanned.  I also mailed two baby quilts off to friends from graduate school.  Additionally, I FINALLY mailed out my three Pay-It-Forward bundles.  You can check out what they included here, or not, if you want to be surprised

The weather has been amazing and we have some major garden and fencing tasks to tackle.  In addition to our 50′ x 100′ garden in the back, we are putting in a few smaller beds in the front for things like lettuce and root crops.  I need to have closer access to things that need very regular weeding and watering.  The big garden will be for big crops like potatoes, tomatoes, corn, and squash.  Mike is de-rocking and prepping to till.  He added a new gate to the garden and fixed the fencing.

Additionally, we have decided to put up some more fencing in the back.  Our sheep have complete free range of our “back yard”.  This has worked fine as they keep the grass mowed and have been really polite.  But our flock is getting bigger, plus Baby M likes to wander, so we are putting up some gates and fences that will keep the sheep contained and out of our “back yard” and also make it so M can’t wander to the pond.  The poultry will still have free access to everything, but they are not a problem.  Speaking of poultry, our entire flock of seven guineas went missing one day.  We had been lax about closing the coop up but then were finding broken eggs in the morning so were being very diligent about closing it.  About a week into doing this, the guineas went missing.  I hate it when you try to fix a problem and end up causing another one.  We also hope to get an incubator this year so we can replenish our flock.

This weekend our sheep will get shorn and we will vaccinate the ewes in prep for lambing, which should be in a few weeks.  This is our ram’s first breeding season so we hope he has done his job well.  We will know better after tomorrow when we can see their bellies.

The weather has been incredible, we never really had a winter and this week it is supposed to hit 80F!  The kids and I have been enjoying having picnics on the front and playing in the sunshine.  We also started a bunch of seeds this week, mainly cool weather crops, in our grow tunnel.

Finally, last weekend we celebrated our anniversary with a homemade fondue extravaganza.  It was pretty amazing, we followed Alton Brown’s cheese fondue recipe and had an assortment of veggies and bread.  We also had a broth pot and dipped cooked seafood into it to warm them up.  We finished it of  with a round of chocolate fondue.  We made biscotti and sponge cake and had tons of fresh fruit.  It was wonderful

We hope life is busy and happy wherever you are!

Many, many hours have been spent in our household engaged in the construction of forts.  There is certainly something magical about throwing a blanket over some furniture and creating a whole new world.  It is the ultimate in open and creative play.  Castle?  Cave?  Space station?  There is no limit to what it can become.

Until very recently, forts have been the mainstay of our children’s construction efforts.  However, recently there has been a subtle shift, largely due to the preferences of Miss C and the destructive forces of Baby M.  M loves the forts as much as his older siblings, but what he really loves to do is pretend to “Godzilla” them, crashing headlong into them and destroying what took at times hours of work to get “just right”.  Enter the nest.  Miss C prefers to take every pillow, blanket, and pelt she can find and layer them until she has a gigantic pile in the middle of the room.  She will then spend hours engaged in play with her brothers, reading, or playing with her stuffed animals while in her nests. (Seems like she is not alone, check out this great interview)

So, because Miss C needed some new building materials AND because we recently moved our TV down to the basement, I decided to make some very large cushions and pillows.  I wanted something that would be comfortable for a kid and  also a grown-up.  They had to be strong, durable, cleanable, relatively light, and of course, colorful!   Our front room has an entire wall of books and I think we probably spend at least two hours a day engaged in reading with our kids.  So, in addition to making the cushions user friendly for some game/tv time in the basement playroom I wanted them to be transportable up to the library room for story time.

Luckily, JoAnn Fabrics had some very big sales right after the New Year and I was able to stock up on cotton duck canvas, polyfill, piping, and zippers.  I then went in search of some good tutorials to turn my vision into a reality.

I am a child of the 80s and felt nostalgic for some huge, bright, primary pieces.  Reading Rainbow was one of my favorite shows, and so the cushions took on this theme in my head.  I have a great love for brightly colored furniture of the type you see in libraries and preschools, so that is what I wanted to create in my own home. I found some really fantastic tutorials on the blog Living with Punks.  I based the “marshmallow” cushions and the “flying saucer” cushion off of her tutorials.

Before I got started with that, though, I made this sprocket pillow by Cluck, Cluck Sew.  It gave me a chance to make a 3-D pillow in the right shape.  It was pretty easy.  I also had four old foam cushions in various sizes that we had recycled off of old couches and chairs.  They had been covered with some very cheap flannel that was safety pinned in place and were the current cushions in the basement.  I wanted to make proper boxed covers for them, but first we stripped them back down to the foam, washed them well in the tub, rinsed them with vinegar, then left them in the sun to dry for a few days.  They looked good as new!

I think you can find lots of great tutorials for making cushions like this on line, so I am not going to recreate them.  Just do a search for “floor cushion tutorial”.  I will give you my list of tips below.  I ended up making

• three 24″ by 16″ “marshmallow” cushions (red, pin, orange)
• one giant “flying saucer” 40″ cushion (purple)
• two 24″ square cushion (yellow and green)
• one 24″ x 40″ cushion pillow (blue)
• one 24″ x 36″ rectangular cushion (rainbow)

For each cushion, I got 2 yards of duck canvas.  However, with the exception of the flying saucer cushion, they each only used about 1.5 yards of fabric.  I wanted to have leftovers and am planning to use the scraps for a few more flying saucers and some smaller throw pillows.  Because apparently, what I made is not enough for my kids

The round cushions each used 2 packs of Maxi-piping (2.5 yards) and the square and rectangle cushions took between 2 and 4 packs.  I used dark brown and black because  I like the contrast.  Make sure when you attach the piping, you use a thread color to match the piping NOT the fabric.  Also, I used a zipper foot to attach the piping and it worked really well.

I wanted these to be cleanable, so I gave each cushion an invisible zipper.  They are pretty easy to install, here is a great tutorial.  On the first two pillows (pink and orange) I used zippers I had on hand, I think they were about 9″.  They were really a bit too short, so for the rest of the projects I switched to 14″ zippers for the round cushions at 22″ zippers for the squares/rectangles.  I used black zippers and I think it worked great.  It made for easy turning and then closing, I think hand stitching these things closed would have made them less durable.  Machine stitching them closed would not have been possible once they were stuffed.  I used upholstery thread for all of the stitching with the exception of attaching the piping.

When stitching it all together, use a 5/8″ seam.  These pieces take serious abuse and anything smaller is likely to pull out.  In fact, I have  few repairs I need to make on the first two I did, I didn’t give myself enough seam allowance.

Each round cushion used  three 32 oz bags of polyfill.  I got it on sale for 50% off, which was key.  With all of the discounts and coupons, I was able to make each round cushion for about $25 in material costs.  The square/rectangle ones were about half that because I already had the foam.

When making the boxed covers, I also used invisible zippers.  I incorporated them into the sides.  To make the “boxing” I pinned my “side band” of fabric in place on the square, and then as I sewed, I clipped each corner in the seam allowance as I came to it.  I also didn’t seam my band until the end, like I do when making a quilt binding.  That way it fit perfectly.  I found this to be more accurate then pre snipping them and pre seaming.  I am better at fixing things on the fly when sewing.

I wrapped each of the square and rectangle cushions with some thin poly batting before putting them in the covers.  I think it gives them a bit more body.

All in all, this was a fantastic project.  They came out exactly how I envisioned.  The two favorites are the rainbow cushion and the purple flying saucer.  I have enough scraps to do at least two more flying saucers, I just need to wait until the polyfill goes back on sale so I can stuff them.  The cushions are used every day in our house, as you can see from the pictures.  And, as many as I made, there are “not enough”.  I think I could make 100 of them and there would still not be enough  They are fabulous and we have been enjoying a tremendous amount of nest time of late.  While it is a bit chilly in our basement (it is roughly finished and un-heated) they are getting tons of use upstairs.  Come summer, I know this will switch and we will all be so happy to have so many comfy cushions to lounge on down there.

The drawings, including a castle and knight (J drew the outlines and Miss C colored them in)…

Then today, Big J’s tower, inspired from his drawing. Note: He took these pictures, the last two giving really gorgeous perspectives of such a cool design…

Stay warm and have fun everyone!

#6. Animals Are Designed by Nature to Be Gross

Yes, animals crap everywhere.  Animals that are omnivores have stinky crap (poultry, pigs).  Our animals all free range and have large areas plus access to shelter as they choose (coop/barn).  So, in our “backyard” there is a lot of crap.  The worst was when the turkeys decided they wanted to roost on the top bar of our kids trampoline.  It was fairly unusable for a while.  Then came Thanksgiving and no more turkey crap problem.  All in all, our animals are really healthy and have lots of good food and clean water.  While their crap does not smell like roses, it does not “stink” per say.  I have smelt many things worse than our animals waste.  But I fricking HATE getting chicken poop on me, not a great smell.

#5. Animals Are Also Dicks, Stupid, or Stupid Dicks

Yes, they can be.  And if they act that way on our farm, they GO IN THE FREEZER.  We have a zero tolerance policy for rudeness.  If you act like an arse, you will not see another sunrise.  Luckily, we have not had many problems with wild animals, except for predator issues.

#4. Let There Be No Misunderstanding About This: Chickens Are Rapists

Yes, but they have nothing on the ducks.  If you want to see some shocking animal mating, watch the ducks go at it.  OUCH.  When new people visit, sometimes they ask if our chickens are injured.  That is because some of the hens have no feathers on their backs.  That is from the roosters, some of them can be pretty rough.

Haha!  In the article this is accompanied by a picture off a broken down tractor in a field.  Not on my farm, I am a nut about having as “unblemished” a landscape as possible.  Also, our town dump is only a mile from our house and will take anything.  So yes, there are some farms around us that are littered with old, broken down equipment.  Ours is not one of them.

#2. There’s No Such Thing as a Vacation

Sort of.  We are lucky enough to have great neighbors (ahem, pre-answering point #1) who will take care of things while we are gone.  What you should realize, though, is that we never really want to leave.  I love my farm.  I am a huge homebody.  Everything I have ever wanted is here.  Everyone I love.  Why would I want to go anywhere else?

#1. In the Country, All Your Neighbors Are Insane

Absolutely not! Our neighbors are awesome!

If you’re curious about reading more about our take on farm life, check out our FAQs.

Last year, January 27, 2011. The ducks and geese were keeping one section of the pond clear, and the snow was piled 2 feet high.

This year, January 16, 2012. Our pond only froze completely within the last week or so (last year it was frozen by mid-December) and there’s not a bit of snow to be seen.

And because the kids got new ice skates from their grand parents for Christmas, we went out to test the skates on the ice today at lunchtime.

*I wrote this post on January 16th.  Wouldn’t you know it, it ended up snowing overnight into the 17th.  It’s not all that impressive, just a couple slushy inches of snow, but our drought is officially over.

Happy New Year!  The past two weeks have been pretty intense for our family, a fitting end to a very intense year.  All is well, but does anyone else feel like they need a vacation to recover from their vacation?  I have been enjoying reading all of the many posts around the blog-i-verse that are all about recapping 2011 and setting goals for 2012.  As much as I want to do one as well, I just don’t think I have it in me.  So, while I spend the next week cleaning, cooking, and getting our lives back to something resembling normal, please enjoy a big smooch from all of us via Big Momma, one of our two Dexter cows.  When we first got her she was quite to bossy lady, but dare I say that she has begun to mellow just a bit and was so excited to see us back home that all she wanted to do was kiss all over us? Or, maybe I still smell like molasses from the million, billion cookies we have baked recently, your guess is as good as mine

PS-A little package of farm-made soaps and salves to the first commenter to correctly ID the quote that is the title to this post.

We ended up making marshmallow fluff (for use in the chocolate fudge), marshmallows, spicy and candied almonds, coconut bon bons and peanut brittle.  We left out the ribbon candy (a simple hard candy) and chocolate covered cherries.

Marshmallow fluff

We started with the marshmallow fluff (or creme), which we’d need for the chocolate fudge–rather than using store-bought fluff.  We made a double batch, which turned out to be not quite twice the amount we’d need for our quadruple batch of fudge (see below).

Fluff is a lot easier to make than traditional marshmallows because you don’t need to cook anything and it doesn’t take any gelatin.  The basic recipe consists of egg whites, corn syrup, a bit of salt and powdered sugar.

Here’s the marshmallow fluff recipe we used, same as last year.

We used Alton Brown’s marshmallow recipe.  It’s the best we’ve found.

Chocolate Fudge

The main reason we made the marshmallow fluff was to use in the fudge.  We ended up quadrupling the fudge recipe, but even that didn’t use all of the fluff we made.  Oh, well, now we’ve got two jars of fluff in the fridge for fluffernutters.

The quadruple batch was pushing the limits of our pots and pans.  Luckily it all fit and the batch turned out to be the best we’ve ever made.  It was close to 10 pounds of finished fudge.

We used the same recipe for fudge as we did last year, a pretty straightforward cooked budget which has given us excellent results.

Marshmallows

Marshmallows are only a little more difficult than fluff, in that you have to “cook” the syrup first and it also includes gelatin to make the finished product firmer.  We plan to use these as yummy additions to our Holiday hot chocolates.

Spicy and Candied Almonds

Last year our spiced and candied almonds were very popular.  We decided to go larger this year with double batches of each.

Here are the recipes for the spicy almonds and candied almonds, same as last year.

Coconut Bon Bons

My mom loves coconut and these treats are delicious.  Think of it as a Mounds bar, but homemade and without the sodium metabisulfite.  Granted, ours probably aren’t as shelf stable as the Peter Paul/Hershey product.

Here is the recipe for the coconut bon bons.  We do have to say that we think we’ll make some revisions to the recipe in the future: perhaps the addition of coconut extract for extra flavor.  They tend to taste “sweet” and not as coconut-y as we’d like.

Peanut Brittle

If it could be said that we have a tradition, it would be our brittle.  We’ve been making it, with little variation, for many years.  We use a lovely recipe of uncertain provenance that has turned out gorgeous results in our Calphalon stock pot time after time.

The recipe is recorded on pg. 31 of our personal cookbook of collected recipes (begun in 1997), transcribed here (this is the exact wording, I feel obliged not to alter things):

• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• ½ cup water
• Put in covered pot and cook on high heat
• Swirl, do not stir until reaches boil – approx. 5 min
• Bring to 230º F – approx. 2 min
• Add 4½ cups salted roasted peanuts
• Stir with metal spoon
• Cook until 300º F, stirring constantly – approx. 20 min
• 2 cookie sheets w/ sides sprayed w/ pam
• Stir in 4 tbsp butter, 2 tsp vanilla, 2 tsp baking soda
• Spread onto sheets, spread thin, allow to harden & crack