Christmas at the farm

Hello dear friends, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas.  This is our second Covid Christmas which of course means no parties, no friends, no overnight guests and the smallest gathering for dinner.  Still, we remain healthy and that counts for a lot!  We did have my mother, brother and sister in law come for Christmas dinner, so I have some quick photos to share.

We raised our own turkeys again this year at the farm.  This turkey is a whopping 27 pounds.  It seems as we get older we don't gorge on turkey like we used to so we have lots of leftovers.  This turkey was prepared very simply with a sprinkling of course salt and poultry spices and roasted with some onion, carrot and celery.

I saw this idea on Instagram....a turkey shaped loaf of bread!  I used a roll recipe but instead of individual rolls I fashioned the dough into the shape of a turkey for the final rise.  I added some golden chia seeds to make it look more realistic but they didn't stick very well.  It was however great fun and tasted delicious!

Our festive table.

We added a miniature picket fence around the tree before dinner to discourage the cats from nesting on the new tree skirt or our fur nephew from stealing the bears.  

I haven't said much about our ongoing renovations at our old farmhouse.  The truth is that it has taken us so much longer than we thought to finish the rooms in our addition.  When we first discussed adding onto our old stone house we knew we wanted a large dining room that would allow us to host larger gatherings with lots of room.  Although a contractor did the major building, we decided to do the finishing ourselves.  Between jobs and a farm though what we thought we take a year has dragged on to 6 years!  The good news is that my husband just finished laying down this flooring on Christmas Eve evening!  Getting the room ready for Christmas was a scramble.  He still needs to finish milling all of the wood for the baseboards and trim around the doors and windows.

Thank you for visiting my blog and wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2022!

Snowy Afternoon Walk

Hello dear friends, here I am after a very long absence!  We have had a very busy fall here at the farm with a great many (unfinished) projects on the go and that, my friends, is the reason I haven't been posting any updates. 

We have had a couple of snowfalls already including one this past Sunday so I thought I would take a little walk around while my husband was nursing a sore back after a slip and fall on our road.  As it turns out trying to walk around the fields wasn't much better than our trip down the road so the walk ended up being rather short!

The sun tried but failed to break through the steady but light snowfall.

This is our youngest Muscovy duck.  I was a little surprised to see him outside and then I was more surprised to see how far he travels based on his tracks in the snow!

Last year we snowshoed through this part of our farm.  I was only going to my office one day a week then but now I am commuting every day so finding time to enjoy the outdoors it a little more challenging.  (OK, a lot more challenging!)

We have 16 lambs at the moment and 4 of them have decided that they like milk from a baby bottle.  We use a bottle to supplement lambs if their mums are not able to produce enough milk for them.

One of the nice features of having a retired husband is have a fire in the fireplace each evening.  We have lot of old fallen or damaged trees that we can use for fuel and as the weather gets colder a fire feels very cozy.

Every year I say my little garden shed needs attention.  Maybe 2022 year will be the year I empty it, paint the inside, and reorganize the contents!

I love my Schwinn 3 wheeled bike!  It really should take itself off the barn for storage over the winter. 😉

We had a good year for hay.  Our square bales are stored in the barn and the round bales are stored outside.

The chickens still have access to forage outside, even in the snow.

This lovely little building is Rose Cottage and was a big project for my husband this fall.  He designed and built it from scratch, it is not a kit!  One day I will share another post on the construction.

Our lovely little garden arbour.

 Our gate nestled in the snow.

I hope you enjoyed this quick little walk!  Wishing everyone a good week.