Vacation.........and The Hidden Evils of Honeysuckle......

Hubster has been on vacation this week.  He's been getting lots of stuff done, but I've been pretty much worthless.  I've got some sort of sinus muck going on.  I'm not really sure what it is, but my equilibrium is totally off.  It feels like my brain is swimming around in my skull instead of attached like it ought to be!  I've been to the doc (because of the dizziness) and they said I've got fluid in my ears and some nasal irritation.  I'm taking OTC sinus meds but the dizziness and disconnection aren't going away. 

Anyhow, today Hubby took me to town to get my supplies for Thanksgiving.  I'm not comfortable driving in my current state........LOL!

Here are some pictures of my handsome man workin' 'round the place.  I never tire of takin' pictures of him, even though he gets tired of being my model!

You can tell in this picture he was thinking......Lord a mercy woman stop with the camera!!  He is working on clearing honeysuckle from the back of our pasture.  Honeysuckle is evil and don't let anybody convince you otherwise.  At least here in our neck of the woods it is.  This stuff is almost impossible to kill and like kudzu in the south it will take over everything if you don't stay on top of it.  When we first bought this place it had totally choked the creek.  It was when we started clearing the honeysuckle that we found all the scrap.  I'm happy to report that the creek is almost totally cleared of scrap after 6 years of living here!

He has been clearing and burning and cleaning and now the back of our pasture looks like a park.  It is so lovely! 

Above is back in September......

This is the same area now.  There are some huge old trees back there that we didn't even realize how big they were because of all the scrub growing around them.  This will also allow more grass to grow for Champ to eat. 

And don't worry, there is still plenty of brush for these two to eat....... 

The creek banks are covered in honeysuckle and other browse that Tulip and Star LOVE to eat.  There is so much scrub brush that even when I had 11 goats they couldn't make a dent in it.  As you can imagine with just these two lovely girls they have their work cut out for them.  Star is in the background and Tulip is in the foreground.

Last but not least, I have to mention this girl...........

Have I told you all lately how much joy this dog brings me??  Yes we have 4 dogs and I love them all, but this is my dog and I adore her.  The Hub-Unit tells me all the time it's a good thing we only have one kid. The way I favor Ellie over the other dogs, if we had more than one child I'd be sure to favor one over the other!  ;) 

God Bless............

Florida Memories........2010!

My old camera died a while back so when we got ready to go to Florida last month, I decided I had to have a new one.  These pictures are from our vacation to Navarre Beach. 

If you didn't enter my contest, please feel free to do so.  I'll be picking and posting the winner tomorrow. 

A rainbow that was just lovely.  That is the Navarre Beach pier.



I loved watching the surfers!



This little guy was in the bottom of our pool!  The Youngun spotted him from our 5th floor balcony so we went down and fished him out so we could carry him down to the beach and let him go.

This guy just cracked us up! 

The Man and The Youngun walking a short pier at Navarre Park.  Looking across at those condos, ours is the third one from the left.  The body of water is the Santa Rosa Sound and we had lots of fun swimming there one day!  You drive across the sound and then you are on Navarre Beach, and you have the Sound to the north of you and the Gulf to the south of you.  Very very beautiful!

A monarch butterfly at the Butterfly House in Navarre Park

Giant Swallowtail butterfly at the Butterfly House.

This was after a day of clouds and rain.  The sun popped through and I just loved how it looked hitting the water.  I wish I was a more talented photographer and could've really captured it!

Well I've got lots more pics, but I'm sure you've seen enough for one blog posting!  Check back in tomorrow for the contest winner!

God Bless.........

Good Gracious!

It's been a long while since I've posted! I get caught up in my other blog Thickin and Thinnin and don't update here as much as I should!

Things are good here on the ole homestead. We just returned from a 10 day vacation to Navarre Beach Florida which was a nice relaxing time. I missed my critters, but it was nice to relax on the beach just the same. My wonderful friend Darling Deb took care of things for me here, and she did a fan-tab-u-lous job! I wasn't worried a bit and she claims that she had fun doing it. We are looking into therapy for her, don't worry ;)

The weekend before we left we butchered our meat birds. The Man and I did them together, 12 on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. I must tell you that we skinned them rather than plucked them and things went much faster. Since I'm on Weight Watchers, I don't eat the skin anyway and he doesn't care as long as I double dip his in milk/egg and flour before I fry them so he has lots of good crunchies to eat! These birds were nice! Great big ole breasts and legs! When we butcher chickens we package them up in parts. We package legs together, thighs together. We also bone the breasts because I eat alot of boneless chicken breast. The breasts on these birds were so big that I put one HALF of a breast in a package for the three of us to eat. That means out of 26 birds, I got 52 packages of boneless breast! That is awesome I do have to say!

The goats are doing well and hopefully all three of the girls are bred. My fingers are crossed for that because Naomi got bred back in July and didn't show heat again. I thought she was bred and was looking forward to December kids. Then the silly goat came into season in October!! So hopefully she is bred this time. I'm almost positive that Star is bred. She shows heat very very strongly and she hasn't come in since she was bred in late September. We plan to butcher Icing Ears within the next couple months. I'm very excited for this as I've never eaten Chevon before, but it is a very lean, healthy protein source.

Moon's litter of bunnies will be ready to butcher in a couple weeks as well. I plan to can some of this rabbit meat for quick meals such as BBQ rabbit. Mmmmmm, BBQ rabbit.......

I'm almost done quilting the baby quilt that I will be gifting to a friend who is expecting a little girl. It has really come out nicely and I'll post pictures as soon as it is complete.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. My family came here and I got to cook all day (which is what I love!) and we had a nice holiday. I enjoy Thanksgiving and it's my wish that everyone will remember to be thankful EVERY day of their lives. God is good to us, and we have only to think about our blessings rather than dwelling on the negatives!

Till next time.............GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!

More busy busy busy!

Sorry I haven't blogged in awhile. I've been busy as a bee! We've got 9 little rabbits and another litter due any day. Naomi and Star are now both bred, and it's time to dry Tulip off for the season. I hate this because I do so love my goat milk, but we are going on vacation in November and I don't trust anybody else to milk her. She's been fresh since January and is due for a rest anyway. Next year, I hopefully will have milk the year round! We also have 25 meat bird chicks in one of the horse stalls eating us out of house and home. Since I've been on Weight Watchers, and eating lots of boneless skinless chicken breast, they will save us lots of money this year. We are also going to bone out some of the rabbit meat when we butcher and see how that works out.

Today I'm mixing up two batches of homemade ice cream. We never buy ice cream, just mix it up and make it here. It's so much better than anything you can get in the store! Since I'm drying Tulip off, we are trying to get enough made to last until Naomi kids in December. I don't think we will make it! We'll just have to do without until she freshens.

I'm also busy working on a baby quilt. I love to hand quilt and this is going to be beautiful. After it's finished, I've got another one ready to start!

Hope you are all happy and healthy!

Till next time...........GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!

Hubby is on Vacation....

this week, so we've been busy doing lots of fun family things as well as some of the heavier chores around the homestead. We went to Cameron Cave on Monday and took the lantern tour which was very beautiful and lots of fun. We got to see three bats snoozing the day away which The Youngun absolutely loved!

We also saw some really beautiful formations in the cave. It never ceases to amaze me the wonderful, beautiful world that God created for us to live in. And it never ceases to amaze and disturb me how little we value and take care of it. Big Daddy P found a candy wrapper deep inside the cave. Here we are 100 feet down in the depths of our amazing earth and some jerk felt the need to toss his trash on the ground! UGH! People like that infuriate me. But anyway, the cave is a beautiful, mostly unspoiled bit of God's handiwork and we had a great time!

Here is The Youngun standing in front of a really lovely formation inside Cameron Cave.


This is a beautiful little pool of water inside the cave.





God created this wonderful amazing place for us to live in........yet more proof of His abiding Love for us! Thank you Lord for the wonders of our world, and thank you for letting us be alive to experience those wonders!



GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!