A farm girl, an RV, and a dream

I just had to share these adorable pictures of my baby! You know Sunbonnet Sue? Well this is Raincoat Doodlebug! These are from the last time we went to visit my parents' farm.

Doodlebug loves to water the garden, collect eggs from the chickens, feed the goats and the dog. She likes to do anything to "help" her Grammy and Gramps with farm chores. She even has her own cute little set of real garden tools from Lehmans so she can help. She is learning to not be afraid of the geese (and so am I!). It is so cute how she tells them, "No! No!" She calls chickens "ooh-oohs" (as in cock-a-doodle-doo) and ducks "meep meeps" (which really is more accurate than quack, I think).

Seeing how she loves doing the farm chores makes me long all the more for our someday homestead. One of the best things about having the RV is that someday we can buy land and we won't have to worry about the house. We can either build ourselves or spend as much time as we need fixing something up while we live in the RV.

Still dreaming...



Homestead Update: Fall

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

It's starting to feel like fall on the little homestead. The squirrels are riotous from all the acorns falling, pecans are starting to show on the trees, and the nippy air is a pleasant change from the hot Texas summer. So I thought the change of season would be the perfect time for a little update.

Summer seemed like a season of not-so-successes (I won't call them failures. It's only a failure if you don't learn from it). We moved in in April, so our garden was a little late and we didn't have time to examine the yard and find the right spot for it. We have SOOO much shade. Nothing grew. My mother-in-law did give me a tomato plant that grew for a while, and I got one green tomato quiche out of it. Most of my produce came from the farmer's market or my mom and mother-in-law.

I had a clothesline, but I also had terrible allergies. The clothesline is still waiting to be hung indoors, and we have been using the dryer. Feels like a failure, but I have learned that I need to hang my clothes inside.

As for fall, I had a lot of plans for clearing flowerbeds to plant strawberries, propogate roses, and grow garlic, but those will have to wait. We may be seeing a lot of changes in our family in the not too distant future, so my project focus will be on organization and simplification. I'm hoping to get the garage cleaned out and organized over the fall months.

What sort of things did you do this summer? What are your goals for the fall? Leave a comment!

The Lazy Girl's Guide to Composting

I truly want to reduce my waste for the sake of the planet. I researched composting... and researched... and researched. You are supposed to have an equal mix of green matter (your table scraps, veggies gone bad, etc.) and brown matter (dead leaves, newspaper...). Most people do this by having two bins: a compost bin and one to just hold brown matter. When they throw in their scraps, they add in an equal amount of brown matter. This is actually the RIGHT way to compost, and the best way to get rich fertilizer for your garden relatively quickly.

Yes, those are Sun Chips bags.

I, however, only had one bin and I was not about to go out and buy a new one. So this is my compost pile. Really I just chunk in anything that is supposed to be composted, but in no particular order or balance. I'm not real good about chopping things up into small pieces like I'm supposed to, either. You can see the newspaper on the right; it's really supposed to be shredded.

I have a terrible unbalance toward green matter, but in the spring when the pecan fuzzies fall (those of you with pecans know EXACTLY what I'm talking about), I'll add them in as brown matter and everything will balance out. Doing things this way is not going to make super fast compost to amend my garden with, but eventually it will all decompose and stay out of the landfill.

So now no one has an excuse for not composting. It's not any harder than taking out the trash!