Missing Willow Farm

Sunset this time of year is fantastic, check out this view over our front yard pond.  We were in our spa on the back deck a few nights ago just after sunset and saw a red glow to our north.  We were a bit worried that there might be a fire nearby then heard on the news the next day that the Northern Lights had been visible as far south as Virginia, and that’s us.  This is a beautiful time of year for stargazing.  Check the sky for meteors tonight, it’s time for the Leonid meteor shower.  🙂

Football?  Not so much.  Both of our daughters were home last weekend, that happens just once or twice a year.  I always ask them what they want to do and the answer is always the same.  Request their favorite foods for Mom to make them and hang out.  Hanging out means games.  We drag out Yahtzee, poker and our new favorite zombie board game.   It doesn’t matter who wins, what matters is playing and laughing together.  I miss my girls already.

Jenna’s waiting for someone to toss the inside of a wubba to her after chores this morning, and it was me.  Today marks 4 weeks since my horseback riding accident and I helped with chores today.  I’m still on a  cane and in physical therapy three times a week but made it to the pasture to feed the chickens and give biscuits to the dogs.  Life is good.

Jessica’s gone from cowering under a tree in our pasture woods to this.  We had to deliver water to her for over a month while patiently working to train her onto a bucket.  Amazing what tasty treats will do for training both dogs and cattle.  She hangs with the flock now and sleeps by the hutch, although we’ve never seen her in it.  Or the barn.  Once the grass is gone, she should be eating hay in the barn like everyone else.  If we need to encourage her to go in there, we’ll lead her in with a bucket of sweet feed.  Oh, and we’ve named our chicken Edwina Scissorbeak.  Thanks Tiffany!  🙂

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Dinner on Saturday night was fried home grown chicken, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, bacon cheddar biscuits and this fantastic chocolate cake.  My friend and farmer’s market partner Lora brought it, she used to own a bakery and won a Food Network cake decorating challenge (for real).  Everyone has a good friend like that, right?  It’s chocolate inside, too, and is sooo delicious.  She also brought the mashed potatoes.  Her savory is as good as her sweet!

Spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes, peas and rutabaga.  That’s what we’ve got growing in our new greenhouse beds.  We started with one bed last year and ate our own cool season produce through the winter.  We’ve got four now, and they are packed with veggies.  A baby spinach salad with hard cooked farm fresh eggs, a sprinkle of blue cheese, crumbled bacon and a dijon vinegarette.  What’s not to love about that?

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  Beauty berry is in bloom again.  I love it!  It’s taller than I am now.  We purchase it in 2009 in the dead of winter.  We bought basically a stick in a pot that they assured us would bloom in the Spring and it did.  The leaves will fall with the freeze, the berries will stay and the birds will ignore the berries.  Same as it ever was.