Better (Tree) Homes & Gardens

Last summer, we were fortunate enough to get a great deal on a playset for the kids.  They immediately set to making it their own little place.  I love watching them work on it. 

Over the past few weeks, as the weather has warmed up, the tree house has been getting a sprucing up.  Natalie is creating her own "homestead" out there.  She has added a firewood pile, for the "fireplace" a raised bed flower garden, a place to keep her little chickens, a compost bin, a clothesline, and a flower box filled with pansies.  It's likely that I'm completely and utterly biased, but I think she's one of the most creative little people I have ever met.

Here's a peek inside.

Welcome!

Putting the finishing touches on her window box garden.

 

 

A closer look at the newest addition to her "homestead"
 

The animal quarters, notice they have an escape route behind the barn.

The fireplace

The Kitchen

 

 

 

Sinks and storage for clean & dirty dishes

We hope you enjoyed our treehouse tour!  Happy Sunday :)

Homestead Happenings

It's officially Spring!  In Minnesota, we call this Mud Season.  This year's snowfall was far below average giving way to a mild, dry Spring.  When I say "dry" it's a relative term.  There's still mud.  But it's not deep mud.  It's not don't-slow-down-on-the-dirt-road-or-you'll-sink-to-your-axles mud.  It's still sloppy, but it has been worse.  Far, far worse.

Matt & Joey sawing up a little dry pole they found on the edge of the yard

Along with the mud comes the cleaning up of sticks that have blown loose in the winter and the season's first campfire.  And preparing the garden for the "last frost".  And ordering/starting seeds.  And this year, tapping maple trees.

Seeds, Glorious Seeds!

I ordered seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds this year.  I have never ordered seeds in the mail before.  Just gone to the fleet supply or Wal-Mart and picked up whatever looked fun.  This year, I did a bit of research and decided to go with heirloom varieties in the garden.  I already had some seed left from last year for peas, cucumbers and summer squash that happened to be heirloom varieties.  I purchased new varieties (for me anyway) of carrots, peppers, beans, tomatoes, and lettuce.  

One raised bed down, seven more to go.  Just add dirt.  And plants.

The other new thing in store for my garden this year is raised beds.  Tilling is really a hassle for us.  We don't have a reliable tiller, the weather has to be just right and we both have to be home to get the job done.  And it never fails that I manage to stir up some long extinct variety of weed seeds and single-handedly  bring them back to a thriving population.  So, I'm trying the raised bed method this year.  We have a pile of old pine boards leftover from when we ordered siding for the house a few years ago (This is plain untreated rough sawed pine).  The lumber is no longer in it's prime, but it will get the job done for now.  Natalie and I built the first one last weekend.  We have several more to go, but we've got a start.

Matt putting in the final tap.

Another First for our little homestead is the tapping of maple trees.  Matt and Natalie had been talking about it and he told her that his dad used to tap trees when he was a kid.  So, off to Grandpa's house they went for a hand drill and his homemade taps.  My job was to sort through the recycling and find enough empty milk jugs to put under the taps.  Once we had everything ready to go, they went out and got started.  The neighbors were coming over for the afternoon and soon enough, Matt had all five of the kids (our two plus the three neighbor girls) following him around like he had magic powers.  We have collected about three and a half gallons of sap in our first 24 hours.  I am saving it in my big stock pots in the shed until the weekend and we'll try cooking it down.  Frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing on this.  I'm just along for the ride.  But if the kids want to tap trees, then we'll follow the process to the finish.  We probably will get very little if any syrup, but the kids (and I) will learn another lesson in how to make something.  So, here goes nothing!  Wish us luck!  If you have any insight on this, please share in the comments section.

Random chicken shot.  They're happy to see bare ground too!

Happy Spring!

A New Year Already?

It's 2015.  What?  Wait a sec.  It was January 2014 about 20 minutes ago.  Crazy.

So, yeah, the year flew by.  I really didn't intend to take a break from blogging.  It just sorta happens sometimes.  

Since my last post:

Natalie turned 8.

My girl is growing up!

We made our annual trip to our neighborhood pumpkin patch.

I think I have a picture like this of the kids
from every year of their lives.

Natalie took a picture of us in the corn maze
to mark our 15 year wedding anniversary.

Matt went deer hunting. A lot.  To no avail.  For the first time in many years, we do not have fresh venison in our freezer. Joey tried out deer hunting this year too.  He even helped his uncle Danny haul his deer our of the woods.  It was a long walk for a little guy.

Joey headed out to go hunting,
pointing out deer tracks in the yard.

I started a second part time job as a substitute para for the school district.  I signed up for multiple districts, but have been busier than expected just with the schools right here in town.  I love it.

We hosted Thanksgiving.  My brother and nephew came.  Matt's parents came.  We had a huge turkey.  The whole deal.  It was yummy and fun and relaxing all at the same time.

The kids and I went for our annual Bon Bon day with Auntie Iris.  We made a bunch of different candy which was heartily sampled.

We butchered some roosters.  We wound up with 9 of the 10 chickens we hatched this spring being roosters.  That's way too many for a flock our size.  One went home to the neighbor's coop.  Six more went in our freezer.

We did lots of artsy projects and crafts for various Christmas gifts.  

Auntie Iris's tomato cage tree

Cookie decorating

We spent lots of time with family over Christmas.  Christmas Eve with Matt's family, Christmas Day with mine.  It was calm and relaxing.  Mostly.

The kids watching How to Train Your Dragon 2
on Christmas morning.

Joey gave Natalie a pink tip-up for Christmas.  They got to test it out on the day after Christmas when they went fishing.  She brought home a nice sized pike.  We ate it for supper that night and it was delicious.

Natalie's nice pike.  Caught at an undisclosed location
on a tip-up with shiner minnow bait.

Today the kids went back to school.  It is bitterly cold.  They weren't thrilled.  At all.  When I stopped by Joey's class after lunch to drop off his snack, the room was full of glassy eyed five year-olds.  I had a rare day off today.  Got some errands run.  Did some organizing of my recipes (an ongoing project for the past decade at least) and canned a quick batch of cranberry sauce.  

I don't do much in the way of New Year's resolutions, but if I had to say what my goals are for this year, they would be to blog more and spend more time in my garden.  We'll see how this pans out.

Happy 2015!

Summer, The Highlights

Looks like its been a while since I've visited my own blog.  Apologies to my adoring fans.  Summer is coming to an end and so many things are changing in our household.  Since the peach canning wrapped up, we've celebrated birthdays, had a few visits from the tooth fairy, went to our county fair, welcomed a new niece, and started school.  In between there were lots of hot days spent swimming with friends, the building of a bird trap, a fish hook firmly embedded in the hand of our boy and our usual berry picking & canning sessions.  

Natalie swimming at her cousin's birthday party

Joey admiring his selection of tackle

Joey & Dad with the bird trap they built together

Close up of the bird trap and all its features.  The metal latch on the top is the trigger for when birds come.  The marshmallows are the bait.  The gator grabs the birds so they can't get away and the jumper cable thing is to shock any raccoons that try to get in.

Joey fishing with the Pocket Fisherman.  These are great for kids, by the way.

Natalie lost her first tooth!

Joey made friends with a goat at the fair

Natalie is a fan of the roller coaster

Our new niece.

Natalie's first day of First Grade!  Joey is really excited too!

Next week Joey starts preschool.  With both kids in school, I will hopefully have a bit of time to better keep up on things, like my poor neglected blog....

Wanderings- The Frog Hunt

With the arrival of spring we've been spending a lot more time outside.  Every day it seems there is something new to see.

One evening last week, we took the kids for a "frog hunt" down a nearby logging/hunting trail.  We had been hearing the frogs singing for a few days by this time and the kids were dying to catch some.  With nets and buckets in hand, we set out to see what we could see.  We did catch one wood frog (thanks to a daddy with sharp eyes and quick reflexes).  

But, we saw so much more.  Water spiders, fiddlehead fern shoots, deer scat, frog eggs, a female wood duck, tiny white flowers, wild strawberry plants, a buck scrape and a funny daddy climbing a tree like a monkey. 

The evening started out as a search for the elusive singing frogs and ended as a game of being Grizzly bears.  For some reason, this particular area had seemingly hundreds of dry poles from two feet to eight feet tall.  The kids got the biggest kick out of pretending to be bears knocking down trees.  Naturally, the batteries died in my camera before we got to that part of the trip.

We were only out for about an hour and a half, but we covered a lot of ground.  For me, the best part is always watching Matt in his element, teaching the kids what he knows about nature.

Spring at Last

I think I can safely say that it is finally Spring.  Since I last posted, a few feet of snow have melted, fallen, and melted again.  We have lots of bare ground in our yard and experienced our first rainfall of the Spring this morning.  The birds are slowly returning.  I saw this confused looking robin from our living room window last week.  I like to think it was asking the red squirrel what's going on.

In my head, their conversation goes something like this:
Robin says to squirrel "What's with the snow?  I heard it was all melted?"
Squirrel says to Robin "That was last week.  You missed it."

We've been busy during this time of waiting for green grass and sunshine.  We got an invite from some friends of my Dad's to go see their newborn calves.  A visit to a farm is always fun for us. We met a day old calf and her ornery mama, two big dogs, some bunnies, a flock of chickens and a duck.  The kids had a blast!  And, I asked them a million questions about their chicken and rabbit setups.

The General leads Matt and the kids into the birthing pen.

She does not look happy to see us.

We celebrated Easter.  The kids dyed eggs, we went to Easter Mass and out to brunch with Matt's family.

We've had a few birthdays in the family.  Joey turned 4 and had a party at the local bowling alley the same weekend as Matt's sister, Tina celebrated her birthday.  Their birthdays are two days apart and both of them were born on Good Friday.

We got our spring chicks. We added five Rhode Island Red pullets, five Marans pullets, one Buff Orpington, and one Brown Leghorn to the flock this year.  I am especially excited for the Marans because we've never had them before and they lay eggs that are very dark brown.  We've lost a few hens since the last time we bought chicks and a few more are getting pretty old and rickety and may not make the year, so its time to add some new ones.  I hope to add two more chicks this year also.  If I can get to L&M when they have them, I'd like to get a couple of Buckeye pullets.  They are a reddish brown chicken that looks much like a Rhode Island Red, but they were developed in Ohio and have a "propensity for catching mice."  I'm all for anything that eats mice.

One little Rhode Island struck a pose for me.  She kind of looks like Paris Hilton.

We have begun cleaning up from the winter both indoors and out.  Matt finally took down the deer bones that have been making our front yard look like a scene from a horror movie and I've been organizing.  We've finally taken down the Christmas/winter decorations from the porch and replaced them with more colorful cheery warm weather things.

Thrifted buckets, crate and flower art.  The chicken and silk flowers are from Walmart.
The red thing is a piece of sidewalk chalk that happened to be laying there.

  

The spring flowers are starting to peek up through their blanket of leaf mulch.  Seeing the peonies coming up always makes me smile.

I see a few more crowns than last year.  This is promising!

I've tried several new recipes.  Cinnamon Roll Cake is heavenly.  The recipe says to serve it warm, but I think it tastes better the next day.  Chicken and Dumpling Casserole got mixed reviews.  We'll see how the Rutabaga and Carrot Mash goes over tonight.  It looks tasty and Joey informed me this morning that he just loves rutabagases, they're from Canaba you know.

I've been doing some thrifting.  In my travels, I've found some clothes for the kids, a few more vintage bowls for me,  toss pillows for the living room, some metal and ceramic containers to serve as planters and several books for me to read.  I also picked up a family size George Foreman grill and a waffle iron for very reasonable prices.

I hosted my card swap group over the weekend. There are five of us in the group and we meet every other month to share cards.  We each take a turn hosting, have a potluck lunch, stamp and gab.  Its nice relaxing girl time.  And, the cards are always beautiful.  I'm very happy with this last bunch.

We've also checked out the new Cherry Berry frozen yogurt place in town, (it was ok, but over priced and not enough tables), been to the public library, had some play dates and a sleepover with the neighbor kids.  

Springtime is getting off to a good start.  I just hope it doesn't decide to be winter again until about mid-December.

Here's to Sunshine! :)

Thinking Spring

We've all been getting a little antsy for spring to come.  Layers of bulky coats and boots are getting old and we're ready for bare feet and t-shirts.  It is looking like a long wait still.  We have snowbanks about 8 feet high all along the edges of our driveway/parking area with paths to bird feeders and the critter houses.  The rest of the yard is pretty much inaccessible.  

But, we're being positive.  We're thinking Spring.  We're sorting seeds and making plans.  Last weekend Natalie and I started some seeds.  

I just love these little yellow pots.

We've never had very good luck with starting our own plants, but this is going to be my year.  By the way, I say that every year.  I just know this is really going to be the year that my seeds turn into healthy little plants by the time all this ever loving snow goes away.  

Natalie watering the seeds

After we had the seeds all planted and watered, I was talking to my father-in-law on the phone and he advised that I cover the pots loosely with plastic wrap and set them on top of the fridge until they sprout.  The top of the fridge is always a little above room temperature and will help the soil warm up.  The plastic wrap keeps things from drying out.  That way, I only had to water them when they were first planted, then not again until after they come up.  He was right as he always is about these things. Unbelievably within a few days we already had zinnias, bachelor's buttons, pansies and cucumbers sprouting. Now we're starting to move seedlings to the windowsills during the day (putting them on top of the fridge at night since it gets cold still.).

My tomatoes and Natalie's flowers all lined up in the sun.

Keeping my fingers crossed that spring will indeed come.  Soon.