Flowers for a party

Hello dear friends, it has been a whirlwind last few weeks for me!  On August 19th I was able to retire which also happens to be my birthday.  So to celebrate those two big events and our wedding anniversary my husband planned a little party,

We were up early to finish preparations for the day.  My sister in law had already arrived from Montreal and was ready to help.  The morning was glorious and the weather held all day.

Another sister in law was not able to attend but sent us masses of flowers that I could arrange as I liked.

So much fun arranging them.  Next year I am resolved to have a cutting garden so that we can enjoy fresh flowers throughout the season.

We set up 2 tables for dining on our kitchen deck.

We used a third table for serving.

I love to prowl around thrift shops for old silver.  Some of the old tea pots have broken lids but I love to put flowers in them.

We set up one of the drinks tables on our lower deck with wines and glasses, and used the little gazebo to store cold drinks in coolers.  

In addition to silver tea pots I have a small collection of silver trays.

The flower delivery included hydrangeas, dahlias, lilies, chrysanthemums, roses and lots of greenery.

We had a great selection of wines including a lovely sparkling rose.

I see Lucy lounging on the sofa in the background.

We have 3 different seating areas on the verandas with Adirondack chairs and I had enough flowers to make little arrangements for each table.

We had a lovely time visiting with family including a sister in law and her husband that have never visiting our farm.  In the next couple of days I will share photos of the dinner and the amazing cake we enjoyed at the fire pit!

Thank you for visiting my blog and have a great week!

 

Introducing Vera!

Hello dear friends, it has been quite a while since I have posted anything!  Everything at the farm is fine and we are just a few short weeks from my retirement!  One of the many things I will look forward to is being able to spend time photographing life and the farm and sharing those photos with you.

A couple of months ago our dear old Willow passed away.  As often happens when we lose one much loved pet another one finds us.  That is exactly what happened with Vera who is a cross between a Mastiff and a Husky.  Last week she turned 6 months old and weighed a whopping 67 lbs at her vet visit.

Vera looks perpetually serious and confused at the same time.  

This was her first day at the farm.  We cant believe how much she has already grown!  She has gained 27 lbs in 2 months.

Lucy is mostly indifferent to Vera and thankfully Vera leaves Lucy alone.

Abby and Vera on the other hand are great playmates about 90% of the time.

Our 3 adorable stooges.

I hope everyone has been keeping well and thank you for visiting!

 

Snow for Easter

Hello dear friends, I am not sure what happened to the time between Christmas and Easter!  We have been quite busy here at the farm starting and working on various projects and promising to complete others that we had already started.  But that is a story for another day...

For today I am stopping in with some quick photos of our most recent snowfall.  April is such a variable month!  The classic tug between winter and spring.

For Easter we decided to roast a couple of our farm raised chickens with lemon, garlic and rosemary.  They were delicious!

 Until next time!  Thank you for visiting.

Taking Down Christmas

Hello dear friends, another Covid Christmas has come and gone!  Our friends and family know that I love to decorate our old farmhouse for Christmas and we love to host intimate holiday events starting in November.  Sadly this is the second year that we have not been able to do so...but the good news is that both my husband and I remain healthy and Covid free!  So I (mostly) decorated the house even though we didn't have guests to help us enjoy the season.  I hope you will enjoy a virtual visit before I start packing everything up for another year.

When we first starting thinking about an addition to our old farmhouse a big dining room was a priority.  I wanted room to be able to host dinners for about a dozen people.  For those that know us, the part of the renovation we were responsible for has actually dragged on for about 6 years now.  On Christmas Eve evening my husband finished laying the new flooring for our dining room just in time for Christmas dinner.  More on the dining room renovations another time but for now here is a picture of our dining room mantel piece at Christmas.

I just love finding ornaments for our Christmas trees.

Henry was often found napping or snoozing or resting under the tree in the dining room.

I put up and decorated a tree for our bedroom.  This tree has a Victorian theme and features many hand made decorations.  Every night we would sleep with the tree lit.  The warm glow is just lovely in our big bedroom.

There is a tree in the dining room as well.  I mentioned that the flooring is now down so all of the wood trim is the next big project.  This room will look quite different next Christmas!

Of course we also have a Christmas tree in the kitchen! 

We have a tree in our portico entryway which has a woodland theme.  A couple of years ago my mother helped me make some ornaments for this tree which is decorated with cardinals, owls, pinecones and other woodland creatures.  For those that are looking closely, this are also needs trim and flooring.

Our living room tree.

New this this year is a tree for our library.  It has a sort of gawdy, bright and garish feel to it.  My mother had already made some brightly coloured felt ornaments and I had wanted to make other ornaments but somehow just didnt have the time.

This tree is in one of our guest rooms.  No overnight guests this year.

I hope you enjoyed this quick sampling of some of our decorations!  Wishing a healthy and safe 2022 for everyone and thank you for visiting!

 

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.