What's up for 2016

There's nothing like being ahead of the game!

We did our annual TYOSNYDRT (Tour Your Own State New Years Day Road Trip) up around the thumb of Michigan.  I didn't worry about taking pictures, we didn't listen to the radio once we lost the NPR station we just enjoyed each others company and talked.

We went over a plethora of "What If's" - "What if we...", "What if I...", "What if you..." and we came up with some truly amazing ideas.  We realigned ourselves to what it is we are both looking to do with a fresh new year stretching before us and how we can support each other in reaching our goals.

I am so excited to move forward and work on achieving our dreams, it feels good and right.

Right around New Years there are a million articles clogging up everyone's feeds on resolutions. I do everything I can  to avoid them.  Short of not getting on the internet or reading magazines it's kind of hopeless.  I am a sucker though and being a Potterite I couldn't resist this one: 12 New Year's Resolutions Inspired by HP Characters.  And you know what? I love it.  I love it because it's not about losing weight or remembering to floss your teeth every. single. night.  It struck a cord with me so I am committing to do all of these things. Watch your snail-mailboxes!

The next article that caught my eye and I actually read was this one from The Kitchn, What Pushing the Resent Button Looks Like for Me After a Hard Year.  I had a rough start to 2015 at my job due to office politics and staffing shake-ups, moving to HQ from the comfort of the hospital that I had worked in since 2003 and finding my way at HQ, even though I have worked for the company since 2010. I didn't have any major catastrophes happen in 2015, it just wasn't a good year, it's hard to explain and I'm going to sound fruity but it just didn't fit.  Does that make sense? It felt like a wrong sized dress I was trying on in a too hot, tiny dressing room.  I've hit the reset and am looking forward to 2016!

Last year my word was patience and I feel like I have made great strides.  I still sometimes struggle with it by internally tapping my toe at who/whatever is I'm feeling impatient with but, I don't snap or verbalize my impatience.  Instead I tell myself to shut up and be patient.  It works!

Also in 2015 I said that I would try to:
1.  Say "I love you" more - Success!
2.  Knit more - Fail! I knit exactly one thing which I didn't even FINISH until a few weeks ago
3.  Find something, anything, at least one tiny morsel of happiness in every situation - Success, mostly!
4.  Read more - Success!
5.  Smile more - Partial success, it's hard to judge 'cause are we counting forced smiles?
6.  Blog more - Fail! Overwhelming failure at that.
7.  Be more patient - Success and I will continue to work on my patience!

This years word is: Calm.  It came to me out of the blue, I wasn't looking for a new word, just one day it popped into my head and it's stuck.  So a hundred times a day I say, both out loud and in my head "calm".

Hey wait!
Here's a picture so that when my post pops up there's a picture associated with it and not some weirdo squiggle or just nothing at all. I've been meaning to share this but didn't have a reason to.  Also, it's winter and flowers are a beautiful reminder that summer is right around the corner!

A picture I took in Greece of Bougainvillea.
Isn't it pretty?
It grows everywhere!

Last years motto for our little family of two was: You always, always, always have something to be thankful for.

This years motto is: There are so many beautiful reasons to be happy.

For 2016 I'll continue to say I love you more, read a lot, smile more and persist in trying to be patient. I'll work on actually getting my crafty on and knitting more, I'll solemnly do my best to be a better blogger and I'll add calm.

Viva 2016!

Blurbing: From Scratch Magazine

Some super awesomeness happened back in the fall.  The fine folks over at From Scratch magazine decided that I was worthy enough to talk to for their blogger profile!

I know, crazy, right?

If you didn't know already I am the Empress of Exclamation Points.  Forgive my early morning eager beaver answers and over use of exclamation points. I should've had my lovely friend Cari, with her awesome editorial skillz proofread/edit my answers!

Here's a link to the the issue and my silliness: My Big Fat Green Life

You should totally sign up for their e-magazine because it's plain old awesome with tons of information (my interview notwithstanding)!

It Just Gets Away From Ya

Thursday, December 3, 2016
5:19 p.m.

I started this blog post 8ish hours ago.  And all that I came up with was a title.

Proof. Pudding.

Prediction: This is going to take me many more hours to write.  'Cause you know, I have to bake 6 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange at work tomorrow, roast the rooster (we'll get that) for dinner, finish laundry, vacuum the living room and decide how best to get the OhHolyGoodness sized tote of summer clothes downstairs, finally.

HI! How y'all been? It's been typically craaaazzzy around here.  My Beloved and I have been going at breakneck speed since August.

A few days after my last blog post (forever ago in September) I went to San Francisco to scope out and do some training for a new scheduling software. Let me tell you something, those hills ain't no joke! For serious.  You can see them on TV or in pictures but until your Uber driver drops you off six blocks DOWN HILL from your hotel in Union Square and you are wearing dress and super cute wedges and you have to hike up those blasted hills, it's not real.

Then at the beginning of October my Beloved and I took a road trip! We drove to Montreal to visit my dad's side of the family - Instagram pictures for the winny-win!

- 9:26 p.m.

Update: Dinner has been eaten, cookies have been baked and packaged, dishes done and laundry complete.  Side note: Jam Thumbprints - a Christmastime favorite 'round here, impossible to package- let alone cutely.

Tuesday, December 8
- 6:18 p.m.
What in the what is going on around here? Oh yeah, life.  Folks, I can only promise to keep trying; to write this post, to be a better blogger, to carve time out.

Where was I? Oh, yes.  Vacation! My beloved had only been to Montreal once before and that was for my cousins wedding.  He's never done the touristy stuff.  So we went to Notre Dame Basilica, took a horse drawn carriage tour of Old Montreal and would you believe if I told you that our carriage driver is from SE Michigan, only roughly 30 miles away? It is a small, small world! We also went to Mont Royal to the look out and saw all of Montreal sprawling out before us. Beautiful, beautiful.  The rest of the time was spent with family eating food, making food, eating food, catching up and eating.

Looking out over Montreal

Notre Dame Basilica 

Then we wended our way down to Connecticut via New York and Massachusetts.  We had meant to go through Vermont but we took the wrong exit after crossing the bridge.  We were doing it the old fashioned way, using our eyeballs and hastily scribbled directions from the internet because we didn't have internet in Canada so we used the free WiFi at a Tim Horton's.

Guess who lives in Connecticut? My friends from waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day, Cari & Ken Donaldson of Ghost Fawn Homestead & Clan Donaldson fame! We got to hang out with them and their six lovely children for a few days.  They were such great hosts! Ken ground coffee each morning and used his fancy french press to make us coffee, Cari cooked for us- yaay more food!, she took us to Boston to go to the Museum of Science, I went on my very first subway ride, and I'm still alive to talk about it.  Although there was a moment when it pulled up with people jammed in there like sardines, faces smashed against the glass and eyeballs bulging, that I had a wee bit of a "WTF did I let her talk me into?" moment.  But it was fine 'cause all those folks got off the train and made plenty of room for the nine of us.  On our last day there, Cari took us to a fancy New England apple orchard!

I think we all got caught up in the heat of it and even though my Beloved and I had at least two bushels at home from our own orchard, we picked a bushel of Macoun's.  Which is nothing in comparison to Cari's 140 pounds of apples!

Belltown Hill Orchards - South Glastonbury, CT

Apples from our orchard
(and Greek cookies from my aunts!)

Macouns from Connecticut

Apple pie filling ready for the freezer!

Friday, December 11
- 10:37 a.m.

By some miracle I talked my Beloved into taking me to Sleepy Hollow, New York! He was really, really keen on getting home because we had so much to do around the house/outbuildings and really, he wanted to cancel our trip all together.  But seeing as it was was only a few hours from Cari & Ken's house, it was October and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is my best most favoritest spooky story and my Beloved is awesome like that, we went! We had some (more) awesome Greek Food at Lefteris and stayed at a fancy hotel, Tarrytown House Estate that was hosting a Maserati convention that night, soooo fancy schmoopsy!

Awesome, right? Do you think they're to keep out the Headless Horseman or Zombies?

We took a lantern-lit walking tour of the cemetery! YaaaAyyY!

** I am going to interrupt this blog post**

Dear Y'all -

It is now January 17th.  It's time to kill this blog post, there is no hope of resurrecting this bad boy. I've got other posts to write! So here I will leave it with a photo dump.

Walnuts!
So. So. Many. Black. Walnuts.
After de-hulling them, this is our makeshift drying station,
an old screen door on saw horses in the pole barn

The weather was still in the 50's this November
So we delayed full winterization.
We checked on everyone before putting a quilt-box on
It looks like Matilda is doing her job!

November 21st -
The weatherman said we'd get a "few" inches of snow-
My Beloved dragged the snow blower out of the big barn
when the snow reached 6"

I stayed inside and made chili & cornbread for dinner
I stopped measuring at 13" -
We ended up with 16.8 inches!!!

The next morning I huffed it out to the hive to check on the girls
The hive faces ESE
We used straw bales as wind-blocks

After clearing the front of the hive
this little lady flew out and fell in the deep, deep snow.
I scooped her up, breathed on her until she started moving again,
became oriented and then I put her at the entrance where
she toddled inside.

This guy, Darth Vader, was SUCH a jerk.
Like his namesake.
And, like his father, Mercy
he was downright cruel to the hens - then he started to come after me.
Sayonara, dude.

Padfoot and Darth Vader
I actually cried when I caught Darth Vader
and carried him upside down to the crate.
It didn't matter that he was a jerk.

But I did it.
I cannot and will not put up with horrible roosters.
And I just have to remember:
they had an awesome life and just one bad day.

Okay, now that that's over I feel like maybe I can move on to other posts! I have, no lie, eight drafts!

Viva 2016!

How You Bee-n?

Eh, get it? Huh? Funny, right? Okay, fine, not really.

I spent entirely too long trying to think of a clever title that included information about this post (bees) and to ease my back into blogging.

Like everyone else summer time is our busiest time.

The garden performed beautifully, lots and lots of beans, tomatoes, zucchini, corn (corn! we grew heirloom corn!), peas, cukes and dill.  We have lots of pie pumpkins but they got stupid powdery mildew so they didn't get very big before the vines started dying.  We had two watermelons, one on each vine. but they started rotting on the vine where they were in contact with the ground?? No Stars and Moon watermelon for us.  Le sigh.

Our June Garden

Corn, it grows over night.

All of the chickens are doing well, the middle-girls haven't started laying yet so my Beloved is planning a movie night and showing Chicken Run.

Mercy's legacy is two little roosters, Padfoot and Darth Vader

Padfoot in front and Darth Vader in back

Padfoot was named by our 13 year old niece, who is a HUGE Harry Potter fan (uh, who isn't?), she named him thusly because he was born on the anniversary of the day that Sirius Black died.  Who even knows this stuff?? Darth Vader was born a day later and was named by our then five year old nephew who is obsessed (like, who isn't?) with Star Wars.  Thanks for picking BOYS names guys!

That's Padfoot in front, you can definitely tell his daddy was a Silver Laced Wyandotte.  He has a small rose comb- I don't know squat about genetics and can't even guess who his biological Momma is but Esmeralda the wonderfully mothering Buff Orpington raised him up. Darth Vader is quite obviously Emily the Barred Rock's offspring and Prudence the Jersey Giant was his surrogate mother.  Pru decided rather early that she was done being a mom so Es stepped up and took both rowdy boys on.

About a week after she gave up on the whole mothering bit Pru tried to go broody again but I disabused her of that notion rather quickly.

Now onto the bee-f (get it? Bee ... bee -f... meat... no? I'll stop) of the post!

We have had some trouble in the hive.

My Beloved and I had gone to a tractor show (it's a new favorite past-time, so much fun!) and spoke to a beekeeper who told me that visiting my hive every few weeks was too much.  So, instead of following my gut instinct we didn't check the hive for a few more weeks.  Therefore we didn't know that they had gotten crowded and the queen decided to fly the coop.  I am so not blaming the beekeeper I spoke to, she was just giving me her opinion. One thing they said over and over at the bee conferences is that if you ask four beekeepers a question you'll get five answers.  It's all trial and error for even the most "experienced" beek (that's insider lingo for beekeeper, it's kinda like geek - you're welcome.)

When we did check the hive there were lots of swarm cells, we couldn't find the queen and there were no eggs. We did find capped brood though and saw a few bees emerging and they created a supersede cell (they were making an emergency queen).

We checked back and the emergency queen had hatched but was nowhere to be found, there were no eggs still, less brood and bees.  We had to step in. We purchased a mated queen from the beekeeper who we bought the original bees from.  I installed her on Thursday and we'll check tomorrow to see if she's out of her cage and going about her queenly business.


Ready for some pictures of our bee-scapades? Behold!

A bee hiding under a milkweed leaf in the front garden

Our Beehive!

When we took of the the first honey super we saw this; the first sign of trouble; swarm cells

The emergency queen (or supersede) cell

Burr comb with honey and larvae between the supers

I feel soooo bad! That's a bee in the burr comb that isn't fully developed.
We basically killed it when we lifted the super that was above it off.

An open swarm cell and some caped brood

Dang swam cells were everywhere!

A drone (boy) bee, some larvae and capped brood.
Do you see him there? Big, goobery and hairy-butted.

Here's a close-up of a drone.  See his massive eyes and hairy butt?
The girls are going to kick him and their other brothers out of the hive soon.

Unfortunately there are no eggs in this picture (it sort of looks like it but that is the sunlight glinting off the water & honey)
There is however some pollen and capped brood!

We closed up the hive and a found a couple of workers coming back with big ol' pollen pants!

This picture makes me so happy and I am in such awe.
It is a beautiful world we live in.

I am half convinced our last queen left because she was unnamed.
Therefore, without further ado, I present to you Matilda, Queen of Hollow Orchard Farm
Long live the queen!

And that my friends, is the end of the hive tour.  I'll take some pictures when we go out to check on Matilda and her brood!

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

I love both of these trees

My view from the kitchen sink
The black walnut tree in the front looks like a cyclops saying "Ooooh!"
The black walnut tree in the back has the coolest branches - they're so intertwined they look braided

We Bee Learning

We attended another bee conference today and while waiting for our first class to start we took the plunge.

We bought a beehive and bees!

We took the rookie way out and are having the (local) beekeeper we ordered from install the bees in the hive for us.  So he'll call us when they're already in the hive and the queen is laying.  The plan is to add another hive next spring - more on that later.

So much bee learnin'!

It's finally Spring here in Michigan! The chickens are getting outside time, out of the run.  Being the over protective chicken parents we are, they only free range when we're outside with them.  Outside today I was thinking that if a hungry critter decided to make off with one of them, what could I do other than run around flapping my arms and shouting? Yeah, shouting and flapping I can do but running and my name are not synonymous.

Tomorrow we give the coop its Big Spring Clean Out.  It has been one heck of a long, cold winter.  Lola has some frostbite on her comb but it doesn't seem to bother her, we put some vaseline on it to keep it moist; all of the girls below Clementine in the pecking order has bare butts because they all sleep in the rafters and their bottoms are at her eye level, and Mercy has a new white streak on one of his tail feathers.  We sure have learned a lot,  so next year it'll be easier for everyone!

Mercy sporting his new bi-colored tail

Now to talk my Beloved into goats.  Or at least ducks.

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday: The Naughties

Dear Kittens,
We are not friends today. 
Love (I guess...),
Your Very Angry Mom

The Sunday Seven: An Update

Ενας: Naming the Farm

Way back in May of last year I blathered about naming the farm in a post and how one goes about it. 

Well, I finally came up with a name for our little homestead!  It came to me out of the blue, I dreamt (yo, spell check, dreamt is a word so just stop squiggle lining me) about it multiple times and I've written it the blackboard just to be sure I didn't hate it.  My Beloved is even good with it.  Ya ready?

It's Hollow Orchard Farm.

Why Hollow Orchard? Dunno. (Spell-checker, why is dunno a word but not dreamt?) but I like it and need to find an artist to make me a graphic or a drawing or a painting or something!

δυο: New Years Resolutions

Once upon a time, when I was on a roll and had high hopes, I wrote a post detailing my Prospectus for 2015.  Here's where I'm at  with that almost through the first quarter.

1.  Say "I love you" more - Check! So far so good.  
2.  Knit more - Meh.  I started out strong, I got through one pattern repeat (about 8") on a modified cowl and ... that's it.  I really have to finish it because I actually bought the "fancy yarn".

3.  Find something, anything, at least one tiny morsel of happiness in every situation - So far, so good.  I have been using the blackboard in the kitchen to add reminders and ask my Beloved to help me when I'm struggling.

4.  Read more - Super check.  I've read 14 books since January 1! I need to pace myself.
5.  Smile more - Trying.  It's not as easy as I had supposed.
6.  Blog more - Fail.  I have intentions to sit down 97 times a week and end up not doing it at all.
7.  Be more patient - Work in progress.  I have been very conscious and make myself stop when I feel myself getting twitchy with impatience.

τρία: Beekeeping

We're going to be beekeepers! I have dreamed of being a beekeeper for a long time, even before we bought our farmhouse with orchard.  I've been reading books, blogs and magazines like crazy and finally a few weeks ago I looked up beekeeping in Michigan, signed us up to the Michigan Beekeepers' Association and yesterday we attended their Spring Conference!

We learned an awful lot, mostly that we need to get our poop in a group if we want to start bees this spring.  Next weekend the Southeast Michigan Beekeepers' Association is having their conference and we'll be attending that as well!

τέσσερα: Homesteader Fitness Experiment

Here's the deal.  There are things that I am and things that I am not.  Example: I am not tall, I am not dimwitted, and I am not very good at math.  Conversely, I am overweight (okay, fat.  As in fat, fat, fatty), I have ginormous feet for someone so short, and I am a good details.  I am not putting myself down when I say these things, I am being truthful.  In order to try and get my behind to a more healthy state and much, much smaller, I jumped on the bandwagon and bought myself a Fitbit.  We'll see how well this puppy tracks homesteady things.  There's an option to add activities but, how many calories does chasing chickens burn? Or planting veggies? Mucking out the coop? Hauling bee supplies out to the back of the property? I dunno' but we'll see! So here's to the Homesteader Fitbit Experiment.

πέντε: Monthly Grocery Shopping/Meal Planning

We are still doing well with only grocery shopping once a month.  Every once in a while we've had to run up to the grocery store for fresh produce or to buy something we've unexpectedly run out of.  We have been saving a TON of money! We'll be cutting down on buying at the stores once our (planned) veggie garden is producing and we can run up to the local farmers market.  I do plan on canning and freezing (we bought a good chest freezer, yaay!) any excess.  The monthly meal plans have worked out tremendously except I find myself getting into a rut with planned meals.  Also, I suck at planning side dishes.  I am a one trick pony.  What goes with Sloppy Joes? Don't ask me because I came up with rice and asparagus as my first foray into side dishes.

έξι: Anniversary Vacation

Last month for our Anniversary Vacation we headed back down to Universal Studios so that we could go to the new Diagon Alley part of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Our first day at the park, our actual anniversary, the plan was to get a lay of the land and ride a few rides.  It started raining a few hours after getting there so we went back to the hotel to hang out at the bowling alley and arcade.  The second day I didn't take my camera so that we could ride the rides and not worry about stashing it every time in a locker.  The plan was on the third day at the park was to take pictures, buy souvenirs and hit the road toward Savannah.  Guess whose battery was dead in the camera? Because, while I charged it before leaving home, I left the camera on the whole 6 days before.  Savannah was, of course, beautiful and we enjoyed every minute.  Maybe I'll make a post one day of the few pictures from my phone. Don't hold your breath.

επτά: Movin' On

I have worked at the same hospital since 2003 and I worked for said hospital until 2011 when I took a position working for the doctors private practice (but still working at the hospital).  Next month I will be moving to HQ.  No seeing my peeps.  No running into my sister or brother-in-law any more.  No cafeteria. Ahhhh! No Cafeteria! What do other people do when they forget their lunch, I seem to have forgotten.  I am excited though because it'll be a big step up and my new office has a window.  To the outdoors.  Which you don't get very often in a hospital setting.

Here's to hoping I keep up on resolution #6 better than I have been the past two and a half months!

New Years Day - 2015's First Road Trip

My Beloved and I are big on road trips.  There are just so many opportunities to find places you would have never thought to visit, little gems like The Hermitage or The Lane Motor Museum or The Museum of Appalachia or even The International Towing & Recovery Museum.  And do you know what I lovedy, love, love about my Beloved? He will stand there and read all the plaques with me, listen to the guides and even if it ain't his thang he doesn't get impatient and try to rush us along.

He is an awesome road trip buddy.

Every New Year's Day we pack up some sandwiches & sodas, fill a couple of water bottles and our coffee cups, grab a bag of chips and a map book and hit the open roads to be touristy in our own state.  We only take the back roads and the two lane highways heading in a predetermined direction or taking a certain road.

One year we took Grand River from our house all the way across the state to Grand Rapids, another year we decided to head up to the tippy top of the "thumb" where we saw the Pointe Aux Barques lighthouse, Grindstone City and Port Hope.  One year we drove up to Traverse City despite blizzard warnings,

This year I got a hankerin' to take Michigan Avenue (US 12) across the state to where it ended at the Michigan state line in New Buffalo - it starts at Campus Martius in downtown Detroit and ends in Washington state (!) - I didn't want to drive down to Detroit to start there because I felt it would take up too much of our morning and we were getting a late start as it was.

As is tradition I fried up a pound of bacon and we had a whole mountain of scrambled eggs (instead of french toast) before we headed out.

Road Trip Essentials: A camera, a map book and your besty

Ready for a million picture pictorial review of our day? Good, 'cause I'm giving you one.

Chelsea, MI - Home of Jiffy Mix
Relatively close to home & our first encounter with Michigan Ave. 

Muuuuch of our drive looked like this: farms/farmhouses and fields
*You can tell how old a farmhouse is by its proximity to the road!

Bronson, MI - Where they get purple street signs with Vikings on them.
Also, where US 12 is called Chicago St.

Our sister street!

Interrupting the pictorial for a history lesson:
My mom always used to tell us that our grandmother proclaimed that her children (eight of them) were going to send her to the poorhouse - I'm not going to go into detail about poorhouses but you can Google the term and read about them.  Fascinating stuff! Anyway, Poor farms were poorhouses, subsidized by the county's government, on farm land where the able bodied had to help to take care of themselves and the other poor/disabled who lived there.  The poor farm for the county that I live in was across the street from our house, hence the name County Farm Rd.

St. Joseph County Michigan - Poorhouse/farm.
(credit)

And here it is today

Sturgis, MI

I wish I had gotten a picture from the front
but I didn't know I would find an awesome historic one

I wonder what this is for!?

The one and only historical marker we stopped at (?)

See? He gets out of the car to read the signs!
Which shamed me enough to actually get out of the car

One of the original pylons 

We made it!

We made it to Michigan/Indiana border and had lunch in New Buffalo, MI where my hubby went to truck driving school.  Afterward we decided to drive up the Lake Michigan coast and wander toward home.

I think that the Great Lakes are incredibly beautiful

Pure Michigan

See what I mean?

And as the sun was setting I didn't get any more pictures after this.  Except this one as we were in line waiting for our Taco Bell dinner.

I stole his hat and was wearing it at a jaunty angle