This morning the temperature was -21 here on the ridge. We are definitely in a winter freeze right now and it’s probably going to last until the end of the week going into the weekend.

We are doing good embracing these cold temps. The animals are doing great and the coop we made is working out wonderfully.  

So far I’m not totally over winter, I embraced winter this year and so far that has worked.  Sugaring will be starting up in no time and life will again get busy.  Seems like we have a lull right now and I’m enjoying it. Our seeds are all bought and soon I’ll be planning out which to start first in the house and which ones can wait to be put in the ground. I’m anxious to see how the garlic is doing, since this was our first year ever planting it. Fingers are crossed. 

We have a rhubarb plant that hasn’t done very well. It was here when we moved here 10 years ago (wow did I just say 10 years) and I keep thinking I should move it to a different spot.  Anyway, I did order rhubarb seeds this year to plant, so we’ll see how those do as well.

There is so much we want to do here on our homestead, I get excited thinking about it. 

We stopped at a campground last month when we were out for a drive.  We used to go camping there back when our children were small.  Driving through the campground really brought back so many memories.  This pond is a man-made pond and we would enjoy taking the kids swimming there.  I'm guessing it's been about 30 years since we were here last. 

So many changes in our life.  We no longer live in Illinois and our children are all grown up and have moved out of the house and have lives of their own now.  It's nice to reflect on the past remembering the good and even remembering the bad, but as long as we don't stay in the past all is good.

I had started another blog and thought to close this one.  I may keep it going, I may not, I guess I wasn't really ready to let this one go, so I'll keep it going for a bit longer.  We are coming upon the anniversary of Sadie's death, and maybe that's why I'm feeling a bit melancholy at the moment.  It won't last long I know.  We haven't had too many sunny days lately and we've been a bit under the weather over here.  But life continues to be good to us and I feel very blessed to be where I am today, physically and mentally.

Thanksgiving has passed and we are now heading into the Christmas season. The rain we had Saturday evening has officially turned into snow...YAY! And in years past I have been known to cook some kind of comfort food to feed my family, mostly homemade pizza. Today I made Italian style meatballs from the ground deer meat we processed. 

It's just that kind of day to stay indoors and enjoy the home fires that are burning in the wood stove.

Also from the previous post I seem to be getting into the Christmas spirit and with that I gave my blog a new facelift for December month.

Oh my goodness, I can’t believe that it’s almost thanksgiving. I know it’s been quiet here on the blog but life here on our little farm has been far from quiet.
I am so blessed to have a wonderful husband who is such a big help to me. 


I’m not sure if we are done with our canning for the year. Jim shot a deer which is meat for our freezer and pantry.

Making wood was late this year, we won’t be doing that again next year that’s for sure.  I enjoy getting out to help stack the wood. I usually wake up the next day pretty sore but I love it. 



We are now in our tenth year living here in Southwest Wisconsin. Where did the time go?  We’ve had a lot of changes is our life since moving and I’m thankful for it all, the good along with the bad. I can’t believe I’m even going to say this but we are heading into our 60’s, Jim next year and me the following year. We have our health and we have each other, so life is good.
We do miss our Sadie girl, and look for her many times a day. Thank you for the kind comments and emails I appreciated them so much. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Life just seems to get busier as the years go by.  Jim and I are doing good here in Southwest Wisconsin. The Christmas season is fast approaching and I have no idea where the year went. At the end of September we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and I had meant to share our anniversary trip with you. We had an awesome time, we headed to northern Wisconsin and made a loop and ended up in Door County. I will share it here soon. 

I’ve been on a few quilt retreats, the boys came hunting again this year, we can now call it an annual event, which is great. I make sure the boys are fed which is pretty much my job the whole time they are here. It’s a great time for everyone. 

We have snow still up on the ridge here, though down in the valley and especially in town all the snow is mostly gone. The other day it was warm enough for me to go outside and wash my windows and for the snow to melt off the deck. It felt like a spring day.  Jim worked out in our woods cutting up a huge tree that had fallen during a storm, it’s also in the path where we drive during sugaring time so the tree had to go and it was the perfect day to be outside in the woods, plus it’s a start for the 2019 wood supply, which is a never ending job when we heat with wood. 

Life keeps moving on and we’re trying our best to keep up with it. 

Wow, where do I begin?  I can't believe that life just got so busy that I've neglected this blog again for the umpteenth time.

Since I've been gone we have had two new grandchildren born within a few days of each other, a granddaughter and a grandson.  I flew to Spokane twice and we drove to lower Michiagn to see the new babies.  

I've done a bit of quilting and this quilt is for a baby whose parents are diehard Cubs fans and the mom beat breast cancer and had their baby at the age of 40. This summer we had 5 granddaughters visiting 2 were from Texas and came here for the week, and now we have 4 more for the week.

It's been raining here lately so everything is green and lush, the garden and flowers are doing great this year.

^{We call this the leaning barn and always look for it on our way to town to see if it has fallen over yet.  The day it does we'll be surprised as we always think every time we have a bad wind storm that it has to be down now, and there it will be standing.}

Our cherry trees this year produced pretty good that we were able to can some for the winter months  

Fog hovered over our farm one day so Mr and I jumped in the Kubota to take a look around and this is what we saw.

This is just a bit of what has been happening around here.  I hope you all are doing great and that you are having a wonderful summer. 

What's been happening since we've been home.  If you haven't guessed already from all my previous posts, Mr. and I went away for a bit.  We spent part of the winter down in Texas, and we had a WONDERFUL time.

Not long after we got home the sap started to run and we went from arriving home with snow on the ground to no snow to a sugar snow/ice storm.  We did hunker down and waited the ice storm out, and luckily it was over in time for us to head to Madison to a Salmon Slam party where we were able to sample salmon and cod that was caught in the waters off of Alaska.  We bought some king salmon filets and Mr. cooked some up and it was every bit as good as we had hoped it would be.

We have the local 4H club coming this weekend to tour our sugaring operation, and we bottled up some sample bottles for the kids to take home with them, and it looks like it's going to be a great week for the sap to be running :)

We have been fighting sickness for about 5 weeks off and on, and getting back home I caught some kind of sickness that just knocked me for a loop, and Mr. was always a step behind me in getting it all but just not as hard.  Crossing fingers we are all done with that.

It feels good to be walking the hills again when I can which always depends on the weather.  My sometimes walking partner came with me the other day.  She's getting old and not as spry as she used to be.  Sadie is going to be 10 at the end of the year and not sure how many more years she'll be with us, she's been just a wonderful dog to us.

So that's a bit of what's been going on around here.  I do seem to post a lot more photos on Instagram so if you follow me there sorry for any repeats of photos.

Today is Mother's day and it's the first Mother's day with my mom gone and it really was different knowing that I wouldn't be calling her anymore for Mother's day.  I have a box of old photos that were my parents and found this photo of my mom in High School in sewing class (my mom's the one in the middle).  This photo was very small and I blew it up so that we could see it better.

My mom wasn't so much of a quilter, tho she did do some quilting in the later years of her life.  My mom was a seamstress.  There wasn't an article of clothing that she bought from the store that she didn't alter in some way, if it meant shortening the sleeves, putting a collar on it or taking a collar off, she pretty much changed whatever she bought.  When growing up, my mom also sewed most if not all of the clothes my sister and I wore, especially when we were very young.  Looking at the old photos my sister and I were always dressed alike, which was pretty much why people would ask us if we were twins (we were two years apart).

For me it's a no-brainer to where my love for sewing came from.  I've loved to sew since I was young and loved sewing in Jr High and High School, and this photo that I don't ever recall seeing has a pretty special meaning for me.

Where did April go?

We picked up our meat birds and they are doing fine and getting big, we moved them out of the brooder and now they are outside.

I went on a two day Midwest Farm Girls Seed and Sew bus tour to 7 quilt shops here in the Midwest visiting shops in Minnesota, Iowa and here in Wisconsin.  The theme of the trip was from the Farm Girl Vintage book by Lori Holt.  I went with a friend and we had an awesome time, unfortunately I did not take any photos.  I am working on the blocks and having a lot of fun.

When I drive the tractor to mow the lawn I'm sitting up pretty high and see things.  I spied the shagbark hickory tree leafing out and wild asparagus growing, which I had Mr come and pick so we could have it with lunch.  Fresh picked asparagus is about the best thing there is, tho you either love it or hate it, and I love it.

It's May 4th today, so lets hope the next time I do a post it's not about where did May go.

Mr had a birthday.  I made him a Black Forest Cake from the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog.  It was very good but very big, at least too big for just the two of us.  So, I divided it up to share with our neighbors, and they all seemed to appreciate someone bringing a cake to their door.