Outside doing chores the other night the sky just looked so neat above the Farmall M that Jim has.  I absolutely love this tractor. 

Friday night we had no plans to do anything but hang around the homestead doing things that have been neglected some.  Am I complaining? Nope, it's all good.  Making meatballs and a broccoli cheese casserole for supper, yum!  I especially love leftovers the next day for lunch.  I've finally learned how to make meals and not have enough to feed an army

The pigs are only with us a few more days and then we'll be butchering them.  It seems like we've had them forever.  I will say it'll be sad not to see them around the homestead here anymore.

I've been trying to do some knitting and that has been going so slowly and heading to the sewing room has not been happening lately either.  I chalk it up to the short days we have now.  How about you, does the shorter days bother you too?

Another month has passed and so much has been happening here on the homestead.  We lost one of the 3 pigs we are raising for meat, she developed pneumonia and we had to put her down.  We could have tried giving her shots but there was no guarantee that she would survive, plus we would not have been able to butcher her for a minimum of 30 days.  We got 3 on the chance of losing one, and even though she was going to be butchered it was still hard to put her down.  I will admit that I cried, she was a sick girl and it was hard to see her so sick like that, so I cried and when I was all done I pulled myself up and told myself it was okay to cry because as we don't want to lose any livestock like that I realize they are here to be butchered and fill our freezer.  So no attachment girlfriend.

When our Amish friends mentioned that they have this Devon/Jersey calf that was a bull but is now a steer and that they really don't want to sell him but just don't have the room to raise him until he's ready to be butchered as they had twins born this past spring, and would we be willing to raise him on our land and split the beef.  We of course said yes, so the day after thanksgiving Jim went and picked him up.  Once our fencing is done around the pasture he’ll be able to roam a bit more, right now he’s kept in a smaller area to help him feel more secure while getting used to his new surroundings.

We definitely did not plan on getting any sort of cow, milk or beef at this time.  Our plans were to get a milk cow this spring and raise a calf with it but the opportunity came for us to jump right in we just couldn’t pass it up.  He’s such a good guy and so far things are going well with him. 

The sunset the other night was just awesome.  I looked up from checking on the pigs that we had moved that day to their new paddock area and this is what I saw.  It was really nice to see after having such a difficult time moving the pigs from their old paddock to their new one.  I've come to the conclusion that pigs are not up for change and that they are creatures of habit.  I should have video taped the whole process but I didn't.

We also harvested our garlic and so far growing garlic has been going good (LOL).  It seems like it's been so long since we planted the garlic bulbs, in reality it's only been just over 8 months.  I would like to double our garlic harvest for next year.  Our onions are not quite yet ready to harvest, we planted them later than we usually do.

Visiting with our Amish friends last week they gave me some eggplant.  I have never ever had eggplant before and thought I would try some when they offered it to me.  I have to say that I am not a fan of eggplant.  It could have been the way I cooked it, and I will say it won't be something I would be planting in the future, we both actually didn't care for it.

We have been dealing with hornets when we sit out on our back deck, to the point that I'm getting stung when I hang my clothes out on the line.  Well we found the source for all those hornets, I will tell you this was HUGE that we had to take it down for our safety.  Looking at it though it really is a beautiful piece of work done by the hornets.

Well our little Noki is down to 8 lives now.  We are not sure how it happened but she somehow got hurt to the point that we thought she wasn't going to make it.  Noki had crawled up into our ATV and Jim's not sure what happened, his first thought was that he had run over her with the ATV but I don't think so, she hurt her right back leg and could hardly walk for a few days.  I think that she had gotten thrown off of the vehicle and somehow her leg got twisted and sprained.  Here she is a few days ago and today she is starting to jump and play with Smoky our other barn kitten.  Poor little Smoky couldn't figure out why her barn mate wasn't up for playing anymore, but she's back and I am glad.

There is never a dull moment here on our homestead and I like it that way.

Well  we  got a light dusting of snow the other day and it looked so pretty coming down.  The ground didn't turn white like I had hoped but a few areas did.  Heading out to feed the chickens that morning I saw Jim's Farmall tractor sticking out from around the shed.  I've been meaning to take a photo of this tractor and thought today would be a good day to.  The whole morning just looked and felt like a winter day.

Coming back in the house all I could think about was that pumpkin pie I had made.  It did taste good with a cup of coffee later.

Tomorrow is supposed to be 50° and I really need to get my garlic in the ground, so that is probably what I am going to do, get it in the ground before our first frost hits.

I'm off to maybe have another slice of that delicious pumpkin pie.

This is the first time our grapes produced so much fruit, our apple trees did as well.  Talking with an Amish family that we visit, they commented how their fruit trees also produced well this year.   I plan to make grape jelly later this winter with the juice.  We bought a Mehu-Liisa many years ago when we lived back in Illinois and only used it a few times, so it was a nice feeling to finally pull it out again.

Life is full of ups and downs but I feel so blessed despite all that has been going on the past few months, I will say this, our cup runneth over.

It’s been warm here in Wisconsin but the evenings are a bit cooler, still warm but tolerable. Our potato patch is doing well and we’ve been keeping on top of the Colorado Potato Beetle that will infest our potato patch here.

I do love walking our land checking everything out and seeing the beauty that surrounds us here. 

I thought I'd share just a bit of our small piece of land we live on, so I grabbed my camera and walked around the farm.  The peaches were taken a few weeks ago when they were ripe. The grapevines are starting to produce and the apple trees aren't doing as well as the peach and cherry trees did.  We'll have to definitely work on them more.

I hope you all have a peach of a weekend.

The hays been cut, the lawns been cut and the cherry trees are full of cherries.  There was a thunderstorm raging outside our log walls the other night and there is thunder in our hills right now.  It went from almost 90° yesterday to barely 60° this morning and I love it!  It seemed like spring came late this year and now it's here. The meat birds have been processed and are either frozen or canned, and that feels so good to have our pantry and freezer getting full.  I've been quilting a lot and this quilt went to a family member who is battling breast cancer, it's an X's and O's Quilt Block from Missouri Star Quilt Co.

Well that's it in a nutshell for what's happening around here.

Well you saw all the trees that had been broken after our ice storm.  With some of them they had to come down as they would cause problems later.  There was a tree out by the road on the corner of our property that really needed to be taken care of right away, on the off chance that it would come down in the road and possibly hit someone.  So Mr had me help him.  I drove the tractor (I just love driving it) to help pull the tree if it started falling the way he didn't want it to fall.  Luckily I didn't have to do anything other than put my phone down before he started to saw the tree.

We live up on a ridge and our road goes up and down, so he parked the Kubota at the top just in case someone came and didn't see us, but they would see the Kubota before they got to us and hopefully slow down.

The tree fell perfectly and so he commenced to cutting it up.  I took the small branches that were way too small for firewood and brought them to the burn pile.

We use a lot of wood during the year.  We heat our house with wood in the winter, use wood for the sauna and maple sugaring.  With our wood supply having been pretty depleted after this winter and sugaring.

This ice storm really wasn't so bad after all, it gave us a head start on making wood for the year.

I love living life in the country. 

Walking our woods to see how much tree damage we had after the ice storm.

The ground was covered with these ice chunks that came off the trees when it started melting.

We continued to walk into the woods to see if we had anymore tree damage.

Mr had already started to cut down trees to make fire wood.

Along our walk we saw a tree that had fallen across the path.

This tree we had taken down after the woodpeckers had pecked it pretty much clean.  You can see a tree still standing where the woodpeckers are making some big holes.

More trees on our property where the tops have been taken off by the ice storm.

And it's definitely mud season.

Well it's never a dull moment here at the farm.