Monday Dose of Cute: It's a Brand New Week.

Bring it on.

© FarmgirlFare.com, powered by The Jaspernator, who is currently sprawled across the top of one of the chest freezers downstairs, staring at the wall.

Wednesday Farm Photos: It's Spring!

Jasper is so much help in the kitchen garden. Not.

Spring: The time of year on a farm when it feels like you're already behind before it even begins.

Whew! The weeks of snow and ice finally ended and we went straight up into the 70's. My hunky farmguy Joe and I would actually prefer at least another month of winter—minus the treacherous layer of ice covering everything—but Mother Nature is having none of it.

The birds are chirping, the peepers are peeping, the grass is growing, the daffodils are blooming, and last week we saw at least a couple of thousand geese heading north. The butterflies are out and the rhubarb is up.

The kale and spinach and cilantro (which loves cold weather) and Swiss chard (so easy to grow!) that I managed to keep alive this winter despite single digit temps (some outside in raised beds, some in the unheated homemade greenhouse) are taking off and already finding their way into our nightly salads, along with the first freshly snipped chives.

More photos and story below. . .

Monday Dose of Cute: It's a Brand New Week

8 more photos below. . .

Wordless Wednesday Dose of Jasper Cute

More photos below. . .

Weekend Dose of Cute: Hard at Work

Flattening the baby kale. . .


And staying inside the lines.

More Jasper? Here.
More Mr. Midnight? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where there's lots going on in the garden—and it's good to be a cat.

Friday Dose of Cute: Have a Happy Weekend.

Four more photos below. . .

Friday Dose of Jasper Cute

Have a relaxing weekend.

What a pleasant week. We've been working outside as much as possible, inspired and invigorated by this unseasonably cool weather. Fifty degree mornings in August? Unheard of. And wonderful.

This respite from the energy sapping heat and humidity has the wildlife out and about too. More below. . .

Monday Dose of Cute: Ready to Jump into a New Week?

It's gonna be great.

More Jasper? Here.

More chickens? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where somebody promised you Jasper's story ages ago and then totally forgot to deliver. It's actually a fairly short story, so hopefully I'll get around to telling it soon. Meanwhile he's pretty much taken over the farm.

Thursday Dose of All-American Cute

Happy Fourth of July!

Wishing you a wonderful day surrounded by good food and those you love.

More Jasper? Here.

More farm cats? Here.

More about growing those gorgeous Dragon Langerie beans? Here.

P.S. The wild turkeys are out strolling around the hayfield today, celebrating the fact that it isn't that other American holiday.

© FarmgirlFare.com, made in the USA, available around the world.

Wednesday Dose of Cat Cute: Growing and Harvesting Heat Tolerant Lettuce (and The Whole Picture)

Lots more below. . .

Thursday Dose of Cute: Down at the Sheep Barn

Four more photos and a Jasper report below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #29

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Lucky Buddy Bear cooling off in the creek.

Welcome to the Saturday evening edition of the Friday Farm Fix! The best news of the week is that last Thursday and Friday's five inches of rain started the wet weather creek running again on Saturday. A week later it's still gently flowing, thanks to another half inch of rain we got on Wednesday, most of which slammed down during a five minute period while I was out in the kitchen garden. I was afraid that if I went inside it would stop, and sure enough it did.

The biggest news of the week is that an enormous black walnut tree fell over in the barnyard during last Friday night's thunderstorm. Sometimes you don't realize just how tall these trees really are until they're horizontal.  Miraculously, nothing was smashed or hurt.

I laid awake half of Friday night worrying about the sheep while the storm raged outside, because we'd locked them in a section of the driveway adjacent to the barn without much protection from the elements. The next morning when I saw the fallen tree, I was so thankful I hadn't sloshed down there through the downpour at two a.m. to let the sheep into the barn and barnyard like I'd contemplated. And, like my hunky farmguy Joe assured me, they weathered the storm just fine where they were.

What else has been going on? Joe brewed a double batch of beer, and I made a double batch of these classic beef Cornish pasties (only this time I added an egg yolk to the crust); they're great to have on hand in the freezer for quick meals. I also bought and froze another four quarts of Amish strawberries to sweeten up our so-healthy-you-feel-virtuous-for-the-rest-of-the-day morning smoothies.

The weather has been hot and sticky (hello June!), so we've been drinking lots of fresh mint sun tea. So refreshing, so easy to make: just stuff a handful or two of fresh mint leaves in a glass jar, fill with water, set in the sun for a few hours, then strain and chill—or serve over lots of ice if you want some right away.

Lemon balm sun tea is wonderful too (you can read more about growing lemon balm along with my five other favorite herbs here). I love these half-gallon wide mouth canning jars and plastic screw-on caps for sun tea and so many other things.

26 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Wordless Wednesday Dose of Cute: Jasper Meets Rooster Andy

Six more photos below. . .

Wordless Wednesday Dose of Cute: Jasper Meets the Sheep

More photos below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #27

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Daisy, our seven-year-old Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, leads the flock down the driveway. (Marta was napping.)

The only thing about starting back up with the Friday Farm Fix is that it's making me realize just how fast the time flies by. It's already Friday again Saturday again?

Here's what's been happening around the farm this week. . .

The highlight was seen from the upstairs bedroom window: a mother doe nursing her itty bitty spotted fawn about 75 feet out in the hayfield. So sweet. You can just make out the baby in the photo below.

The humidity jumped up to 87% in the house and had us turning on the upstairs a/c and wondering how we were going to survive the next four months drenched in sweat, but thankfully we've been given a brief reprieve, with a few beautiful breezy days and sweet cool nights. Temporary bliss. We're gearing up to hopefully start cutting some hay next week if the weather cooperates; it can heat back up all it wants to then.

I spent as much time as I could in the kitchen garden, planting, plotting, mulching, watering, clearing out a few more raised beds, and picking lots of bolting Swiss chard (cold tolerant, heat tolerant, easy to grow!) for the chickens. I've also been marveling at how much farther ahead things were a year ago this week. Look at all that beautiful basil! (The Friday Farm Fixes from this time last year are here and here.)

We signed on for a month of rabbit sitting. So far so good.

We fed about 5,000 ravenous mosquitoes. I think this may be the worst they've ever been, but at least their appearance means we've had a more 'normal' (and much needed) wet spring.

I made yet another version of a yellow cake with easy lemon curd that I've been sporadically working on for the past couple of years. Joe loved it, but I don't think it's quite there yet. At this point I've decided it would probably be easier to simply bake a plain yellow cake and pour the lemon filling over each slice.

23 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #25

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Hay inspectors back on the job.

It's been quite a while since I posted the last Friday Farm Fix, but the other day Joe and I were talking about how much we both miss this series. We love being able to look back and see everything that was happening around here during a specific week, and I confess to sometimes including extra photos especially for us.

This time I thought I would also a list of some of the things we've been doing around the farm, for those of you who are interested. If you've been missing your Friday Farm Fix, I hope you enjoy this cute-filled, spring green installment.

So what's been happening on the farm during the past week? We've been busy. . .

—Eating giant freshly picked kale and Swiss chard salads nearly every night.

—Splashing through the creek.

—Worming the sheep and trimming some hooves.

—Planting 10 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes (the 5 pounds of Pontiac Reds already in the ground and a few inches tall froze this week but should hopefully make a full recovery).

—Reorganizing the walk-in pantry (it looks and feels so much better in there!)

—Cracking up at our new farm cat (a proper introduction will hopefully be coming soon, maybe when he gets a real name).

—Getting invaded by armadillos (including one that almost dug its way into the shop, which is attached to the house, the other night at 10pm).

—Enjoying the unseasonably cool (mostly under 80°) and beautiful mid-spring weather.

—Locking seven wayward, disappointed donkeys back in Donkeyland (I told you they'd start misbehaving).

—Stopping to smell the lilacs.

—Trying to fix the broken sickle bar mower and the little antique diesel tractor so they're ready for haying season (with a minor head wound to Joe and a sledgehammer to my finger in the process—ouch).

—Celebrating the much needed rain and hoping it keeps on coming.

—Polishing off the third (!) batch in a row of these addictive (and almost too easy to make) Baby Chocolate Chip and Toffee Shortbread Cookies (hint: you can double the recipe).

—Loving all this gorgeous green.

16 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .