This week is the first week of Fall and you can tell. The weather is getting colder here. We went to my sister’s soccer game on Saturday morning and I was FREEZING! To celebrate the official end of summer, here are my top 10 favorite things about this past summer:
On my neighbors birthday we did a hundred foot slip and slide with tons of dish soap! (see video at the bottom of the post)
It’s the phrase of the week… well, that an “Hurry! Get out of the chicken pen, you’ve got a class zoom meeting about to start!”
The hens are went from two to three eggs a day this week and the kids CANNOT get enough! They check the coop several times each morning, which means they find the eggs nice and fresh.
Earlier this week Ella and Ava came running up with an egg yelling, “We got a hot one!” 🤣 And they’ve been saying with every new egg ever since. Grace has caught on as well and ran in during one of my Zoom meetings with a client. 🤦🏻♀️
Earlier this week, I was playing with my sisters, Ava ,and Vinny. They were running around the yard catching butterflies. Ella was about to step in our flower bed when she thought there was a stick on the ground. Suddenly she screamed as loud as she could, “Snake!”
My Mom jumped up, she was working on the deck with her computer, and told me to get the shovel from the shed. She said I needed to walk around the deck to bring her the shovel so I didn’t scare the snake and she could kill it.
When I handed her the shovel I said, “Don’t kill it unless it’s a poisonous snake! if it’s a garter snake we should let Andrew have it!” My friend Andrew has been wanting a garter snake forever. Mom said she didn’t know what kind of snake it was so Andrew better get here fast or it was going to be a DEAD snake. Mom texted Andrew’s mom and they headed right over–they live just up the street.
When Andrew got here, he looked at the snake and said it was a garter snake.. he was 99% sure and he said it’s harmless. He went to grab it but Mom made him put on gloves. So I gave him. moms rubber garden gloves and then he grabbed a pole off the deck. He put a pole on top of the snake and then he grabbed the snake behind the head and picked it up. Mom screamed. then took some pictures.
Andrew’s mom showed up and Andrew walked back to his house with the snake. At Andrew’s house, we made it a big cage. He was going to name him Fang but chose Slitherin instead. Then we played. That’s it.
*Posts edited by Mom for clarity, spelling, and punctuation.
This weekend I got my first pair of roller skates! I really like them. They are Frozen kind. They fit over my shoe and they cam with knee pads and elbow pads.
I’ve always wanted skates. I have worn them almost every day. I can skate really really far, even on the road with Mommy’s help. I’m really good on the grass.
I signed up for soccer and I can’t wait for that to begin but I still love my roller skates.
Have you ever roller skated? I think it’d be cool if Jack could roller skate!
My roller skates are my favorite roller skates ever… wait they’re my ONLY roller skates!
Grace has taken to driving the hens around… not sure if they like it as much as she does 🤣
The past two weeks have been busy one on the home front and with work for me. It’s weeks like these that I’m thankful to be doing this whole garden homesteading thing with the Norris family.
Work has ramped up between creating two online courses, preparing for our first virtual summit for educators, and meeting with customers to plan for next school year, I feel like I’ve been glued to my MacBook for two weeks straight. And, though Brian Sr. had a couple of days where he started to feel better, he quickly took a turn down hill with severe pressure and nausea. We’re hoping for more answers and relief next week given this new medicine he’s on. On top of that, I’ve discovered I’m now allergic to poison ivy (turns out it’s bound to happen when you spend three weekends with a weed eater killing that stuff). So much itching!
Last week I didn’t get out to the garden once but often looked out the window and would see Clint and Vinny watering the garden, hanging with the hens, or eating lettuce and spinach off the plant. Grace, Ella, and Brian Jr. often joined them. They even dropped off some radish on Father’s Day! So grateful for them!
The kids tried radish for the first time, Grace was the only one who liked it even a little. I really enjoy some fresh slices on my sandwich but look forward to a few suggestions from some of our Facebook friends, especially roasting them!
By the time I got out to the garden this Friday, it was in desperate need for some harvesting! It’s amazing how much of a different the grass mulch has made for our crops!
Tarin, who has been busy with work herself, joined Ella and I in the garden for some picking. We got quite a haul!
On Saturday, we harvested rhubarb and I picked up some straw to recover our walking paths. Grace took pictures:
It’s about time for a second planting of carrots and some other crops. I’ll have to do some research on what would be good to plant.
Sunday, I spent time in the house gardens, adding cobblestone to a some of the paths, and reconfiguring the front garden by removing a bush and widening the area around our front outdoor table. I plan to add stone or pea gravel to level the space out.
While I worked, Sr. relaxed inside, the girls played by the creek catching salamanders and Brian Jr. played ball in the yard and took breaks to play guitar for the hens. It may be a little crazy, but life on the homestead is good!
Last week, fall finally showed its beautiful temps here in central Ohio and I decided to make the most of it. Thursday afternoon I spent a few hours unloading pea gravel between meetings (since it was cool and breezy enough to do so without breaking much of a sweat). On Friday two of my calls … Read More
Last time I shared with y’all I was fresh into redoing the backyard, so excited about the possibilities. It’s been a month and a half and until this weekend the project hadn’t gone any further. Luckily the stars aligned and I had the energy AND the time. I told Sr. that all I wanted for … Read More
Last summer, despite Sr.’s disapproval, I put a pool up. He was against the idea for two reasons 1. He’s not a fan of pools(unless there’s a slide going into the pool, he doesn’t see the point) and thinks they attract mosquitos. 🙄 2. He thought I’d ruin the grass. While it didn’t attack mosquitos, … Read More
This week we had beautiful weather! A little rain, not as much as I hoped for–isn’t it funny how when you have a garden, you start to pray for rain? It’s way too much of a chore to pull the hose all the way out to the big garden to water. There are signs of plant production everywhere! Clint and Vinny were enjoying the butter crunch lettuce straight from the plant while out watering one day.
The flowers are still blooming every day. I took a stroll through the house gardens and cut a few roses and flowering herbs for a summery bouquet.
The hens got more adventurous as they roamed towards the front yards. If you drove by the homestead on Tuesday morning you probably saw me running around like a madwoman with a lime green snow shovel shooing chickens out of the brush behind the coop (it’s full of poison ivy) and yelling orders at the kids on how to wrangle them so they. Trying to keep them all our of the poison oak and ivy and get the hens put up before my next meeting was exhausting.
Sweet Grace – You can find her most days with a pretty dress on, chicken in tote, and shoes on the wrong feet.
I was able to use Sr.’s lawn sweeper (yes thats a thing) and swept up more grass clippings from our two yards to mulch the rows. I also added some enriching soil builder we had left over from planting the peach tree and blueberry bushes.
Sr got his 17 staples out and this weekend brought a slight improvement in Sr.’s pain 🙌🏻 and we explored new scenery for our walk.
Black Hand Gorge Trails
Vinny turned FOUR and Tarin did a maternity shoot in the garden with the chickens!
Y’all! There seriously couldn’t be a better summertime lemonade!
We have been so blessed these past few weeks after Brian Sr.’s brain surgery with dinners and treats from friends, neighbors, and family. The food has been delicious. One of our favorites was a taco dinner Bridgette made for us, complete with a cold pitcher of watermelon lemonade.
This lemonade was everything y’all! It was pretty–a sunset pink with little slices of lemon and chunks of watermelon. It was also simply delicious. We sucked it down before the day was over.
Sr. was still in the ICU and didn’t get to enjoy the lemonade with us so this weekend I decided to try and recreate it. I texted Bridgette for the recipe but there wasn’t one. She totally winged it! Bridgette did share what she could remember of how she made it so the girls and I took that and ran with it.
Now I have to be honest, Bridgette’s recipe included fresh squeezed lemons and organic cane sugar… I didn’t have enough lemons to make lemonade so I just used good ole Country Time lemonade mix–a pantry staple in our house when the weather is warm. We also added a garnish of lemon balm from the garden!
Watermelon Lemonade Recipe
Prep Time: 10 – 15 minutes
This recipe uses 3 parts lemonade, one part watermelon juice. You can use whatever lemonade recipe you prefer–whether fresh squeezed or premixed.
INGREDIENTS
1 ripe watermelon
3+ cups of your favorite lemonade
Lemon slices (optional)
A few leaves of lemon balm (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Make your lemonade. You’ll need at least 3 cups.
Cut and juice the watermelon. You’ll need at least on cup of watermelon juice and a few cubes for garnishing your lemonade. To juice you can take what pools form cutting the watermelon, or you can make juice by placing watermelon in a cup or bowl and mashing it with a fork. Strain the watermelon juice into a measuring cup.
Mix lemonade and watermelon juice in a pitcher – 3 parts lemonade and 1 part watermelon.
Garnish with lemon slices, cubes of watermelon, and lemon balm leaves.
My garden’s 🍑s will be so sweet. when we eat then we will get the seeds and replant them so we can have more and more. We have a 🍑 tree 🌳 we planted it for my Opie, he died. I really wish we could have showed him, but we can’t. Mom say’s Opie would be proud.
Me nest tot he peach tree holding our first strawberry
I can’t wait to eat the the peaches from our tree. I want to make peach smoothies, peach pie, peach juice, eat them frozen and eat them fresh, maybe even in a salad! We also have strawberries and blueberries, which will be yummy with peaches. Peaches are good no matter how you eat them. But maybe not with onions and carrots 🤮
My Dad loves peach cobbler! I’m sure all my people love peaches too–Grandma, Papa, Opa, Gigi, Papa David, Aunt Rosey, Mr. Paul and Rachel….
THE HALF-ASS HOMESTEAD 