Needs Must Yard Farming

Just a few pictures today. I found my Celtic Cross book which fired me up to do a few carvings. And in the alchemy of trading, I have turned this wooden carving into two pigs.  How cool is that? Amanda being a HUGE help in holding the dried cowhide flat so I could get pictures of it to list on Etsy. Amanda's Canna Lily is looking great this year.  Very pink indeed. How can anyone not love treefrogs?   Heat index of just under 100 but there we are, out walking for our health.  Can you spot the ones NOT enjoying the walk? I love this picture of Devin. As you can tell from the mess surrounding it, this is made TOTALLY from scratch lasagna, just about to be popped into a hot oven to bake.  It was fantastic!  Worth all the work, which is saying something. A picture for Forrest, my mushroom hunting brother. Another walk for Simon's health.  Not sure how healthy it is walking in such heat...

Baking Dairy and Egg Free is more fun than I deserve! Although, to be honest, I have learned so many new things to cook and new ways to cook old family favorites that this has been more fun than not.  And we have found a fantastic book, The Chemical Maze to help us find the food additives that affect Simon so badly so when my friend Missy said on Facebook that our house sounds like The Little House On The Prarie, she was spot on.  There are no more food shortcuts for us, EVERYTHING we used to use has things that Simon cannot have so back to basics we go. Flour, sugar, yeast (although I am about to try sourdough to save that money) single item canned goods like tomatoes and corn and organic, soy free, livestock feed is about all we buy anymore.  Oh, and 15-pound bags of organic juicing carrots as carrots can bulk out anything.   I will admit, the first recipe is neither egg nor dairy free but is so good that I had to add it.  Remember, ORGA...

A few pictures to make up for not having a new blog up and done in so long.  ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth **** A pile of rex hides.  Soon to be a lovely lap blanket.  I love having things like this, just a pile of lush pelts.  Makes me feel rich indeed. Sewing a new microwave rice pad so that, perhaps THIS time, I will get to keep it!  The sewing machine is the 1800s one I found thrown away and have finally got back into working order at last. ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth **** Amanda's birthday cake, baked by herself from scratch.  And very nice it was as well despite the mess in the background.  Ah well, its a home, not a showplace, after all. This is the bunny that Amanda made and stitched onto her pillowcase.  It was supposed to hide a stain but I think a few more bunnies are needed. The vegetable called Celtuse is flipping fantastic!...

Spring in the South brings on a second Fall as the Live Oak trees drop all of last years leaves while growing their new ones.  As leaves on the roof are a big bad no no I dragged out the ladder today and clambered up to sweep them off. A ladder + roof + kids = more things dragged up onto the roof to replace the leaves than even I was expecting. Amanda and Simon spent hours playing at being vets on a roof which gives me my big brave mummy badge of the day.  Our roof is WAY lower than many of the ones my brothers and I played on as kids but all of me wanted to keep yelling "Be CAREFUL"!!! instead of saying "have fun". Two milkshakes, chocolate chips, many couch cushions, paper, art supplies, the vet box and many bed buddies all got to go onto the roof as well.  Best of all?  The kids put it all away when they were done.  How cool is that?  Amanda sitting on couch cushions writing up the blood results in the sunshine....

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!!! This is just a brief, Spring has Sprung update on the yard farm.  The incubator has 71 quail eggs in it, due to hatch in 12 days.  Last week we took 28 chicken chicks out of it that are now keeping Butters company on the porch.  Sadly TK, Amanda's bunny, died of injuries sustained when he fell off of a table when playing with the cat.  As rabbits hide any weakness (prey animals are like that) we thought he was getting better but sadly, that was not the case.  As the table was only 18 inches high it should not have hurt him any to fall off of it but as they use to rocket round the porch so fast he must have been doing about 80 mph at the time.  Butters kept him company through the 4 days he was poorly and misses him hugely. The pregnant sow gave us four lovely baby boys.  Mother nature loves to give me boys, I once hatched 7 eggs only to get 7 roosters.  Did I need any roosters?  Did I heck! Last summe...

Spending Christmas with the kids - it was my turn this year - was lovely.  I spent several days leading up to the day making their stockings (wet felting) as we had lost last years in the move and anyway, in my attempts to remove all fabrics from our lives that are not 100% natural fiber, I probably sent them to a charity shop sometime this year so needed new ones anyway. The stockings were such fun to make that once done, I went ahead and made myself a pair of slipper shoes using my "shades of green" wool.  Soled with scraps of leather and finished off with a band of rabbit fur, they look fantastic and are so warm that I can only wear them on really cold days.  Florida has so many of those, doesn't it?  The finished stocking.  Wet felted with needle felted letters and finished off with white rabbit fur. As the kids were sick on the run up to their Christmas school break I didn't get the chance to make their presents when they were at school....