Homemade chocolate syrup for homemade chocolate milk It isn't morning if my toddlers don't have a chocolate milk in their hand. They call it their "coffee" and I have no idea where they got the whole idea of needing coffee to survive in the morning, definitely, 1000% not from their mother. It was definitely from me. Ingredients in store bought chocolate milk are more than ...
Cheesy Funeral Potatoes (Made with Fresh Real Potatoes)
If you're from the Midwest you probably know and love funeral potatoes. They're a staple at every church potluck and family gathering. They probably got their name from, well, appearing at every Midwest funeral ever. Most funeral potatoes recipes' make these with frozen potatoes, but it makes it impossible to mix, it takes forever to bake, and you're using frozen potatoes ...
4 Simple ways to make extra income for the homestead online
We're farming in the age of the internet, we don't just have to make our money on roadside stands (we do have one though!) and locally. We can make some supplemental income online too. As a stay-at-home farm mom it definitely helps to have extra income, even if it's just to feel a little less guilty when getting a coffee at the drive-thru or to buy little essentials like new ...
Heat wave on the farm
We've had a summer of mostly cool temperatures. So imagine it being almost September, a Monday of course and dealing with a heat wave on the farm. Heat waves are hard to deal with, but today has been extra. It's always constantly checking to see if the livestock is staying cool and that their waters are full. Hosing off hot pigs, pigs love getting hosed off with hot water, ...
How to Quick Pickle Pickles
How to quick pickle pickles It's that time of the year in our garden, we're drowning in pickling cucumbers and we don't always have time to can them. I'm also obsessed with watching cooking competitions, and chefs are always quick pickling. So I started quick pickling our pickles, and it's actually pretty awesome. My pickle obsessed family loves having pickles on hand in the ...
When a food blogger opens a farm stand
I have been thinking a lot about career paths, and how they typically stray far from that path you started in school. I have a 12 year old that we homeschool who is putting a lot of pressure on herself to find a career path, and I keep telling her to maybe find a hobby instead. She's 12, I'm almost 34 and I barely know what I want to do when I grow up. I'm also teaching a class ...
Wake me up when September (and all these homesteading projects) end
We're so close to finishing up our last big project of the summer, if we're being honest the list was supposed to be done in spring. We're just putting the finishing touches on building a front pasture, a temporary home for our buck and buckling until we can get a more permanent area for them next year. After they move out it'll basically just be a play yard for babies or an ...
7 BIG THINGS ACCOMPLISHED YEAR TWO ON OUR SMALL HOMESTEAD
Year two homesteading on three acres Our first year on our homestead was definitely our foundational year. We bought a small bit of land with an old school house on it, started a garden, put together a makeshift chicken coop, and started our journey as homesteaders, you can read more about that here 8 things accomplished year one on our small homestead. In year two we ...
Losing livestock on the homestead
Homesteading isn't always as cute and dreamy as you'd envision it. There's hard work, invasion of privacy (ironically), and heartbreaking losses. We don't wear cutesy dresses and frolic in fields and spend our days petting goats. I actually bought a long flowy gingham dress because it was clearance and my tween thought it was hilarious. Then one day I was wearing it outside ...
8 big things accomplished year one on our small homestead
Year one homesteading on three acres As we embark on our 4th growing season on our homestead I thought it would be helpful to reflect on the projects we worked on in our first few years homesteading. We learned so many things our first year, and we really "hit the ground running" as soon as we could. It seems like we did so many things because we were breaking ground ...
Beginning homesteading: A guide for beginners
Beginning homesteading: A guide for beginners Homesteading is a lifestyle that involves living a more self-sufficient life, often on a small piece of land, we only have 3 acres on our little homestead. Homesteaders may grow their own food, raise animals, and preserve food for the winter. They may dabble into other things, like we're going to start making soap with our goats ...