Dreams Come Moo

Welcome back!! Its been a while since we have last updated on our progress. I can’t really tell you why we took a break, maybe we were just busy but either way we missed chatting with you. 2020 was crazy pants. I mean did everyone see those Match.com commercials with Satan and 2020?? There literally could not have been a more perfect ad to end the year.

Ok, so back to what we are really here for, what did we actually accomplish last year? A lot actually. We added fruit trees for the future, because we all know the best time to plant fruit trees is five years ago. Unfortunately, my time travel machine is currently in the shop, so we instead stopped what we were doing and put some trees, bushes and vines in the ground, so in 5 years we can eat them (the fruit, not the tree) :-). It seems crazy that we had to stop everything to put a couple trees in the ground right? Well for us that first meant removing some trees that didn’t want to come up. Also for a couple things we had to build a trellis so they could grow off the ground. We still have a few more fruits we want to get in the ground in 2021 but at least we have a starting place now.

2020 also brought us ANIMALS. A lot of animals. You can see all their cute little faces throughout our facebook, but the highlight here is it brought us our first egg, and then our second and for a brief moment in time we found ourselves drowning in eggs. The weather however, decided to get cold and rainy, and the next we knew we had no eggs. Silly chickens. They are a lesson in patience and thankfulness.

The Farmer’s Market was a HUGE 2020 milestone for us, full of valuable lessons. Our application has been approved for the 2021 season and we look forward to seeing you guys again…with SO MUCH MORE PRODUCE!! That was the biggest lesson for us. We didn’t know how much to plant, and once again I couldn’t go back in time to plant more when we needed it. Hopefully, I am doing a better job of planning this year…if the frozen mud season would ever end. It’s not just me right? This has been one of the rainiest winters I can remember.

While I tend to focus on the positive, I would be remiss to not highlight the less than fun things 2020 brought us. We experienced our first farm animal loss, which I will post in another blog this week (stay tuned). We experienced loss of friendships as our lives begun to follow a slightly less societal flow or maybe a more “traditional” style is a better way to explain it. Some of our friends just couldn’t relate to us anymore and as much as we tried to build a bridge, we found ourselves traveling down different paths. I think the thing that hurt us the most in 2020 was when our crops failed, that is totally a part of the learning process though and I think we are in a much better place for 2021.

I don’t know many people who are going to say that 2020 was their FAVORITE year ever, but honestly for me, it wasn’t the worst. I learned a lot. I met new people. I picked up new hobbies. I got to spend more time with my husband, which was one of the biggest blessings to come out of 2020. I grew as a person (dang quarantine calories, just kidding). 2020 showed me what I want for the future. Now it would have been nice if it had a provided a crystal ball so that I knew exactly what I need to do to get there, but it did provide mentors and that is kind of like a crystal ball.

So lets just jump, feet first (safety first y’all), focused on all the positive things that are going to happen (SPEAK LIFE) and see what 2021 has in store for us.

It has been a crazy couple of weeks since I last wrote. Thelma is all better from her emergency. We have been hustling to get the chicken coop ready for its new occupants and are pretty close to having it finished, just a couple of cosmetic things remain. We got our newest zebu herd member, Anna. She is bursting with personality and its so interesting the similarities and differences between her and Thelma. Our gardens are doing well, we have hit a few roadblocks but that is to be expected with everything going on. All in all, we are watching this place become what we imagined it could be.

The learning curve associated with this mini farm has been anything but mini. Some days it feels like we are drowning in projects, while trying to make sure that the every day items don’t fall behind. We sat down and wrote out a list of nearly 30 projects we would still like to complete by the end of the year, thats more projects then there are weeks left. But its 2020 and I don’t know many people who are really going to miss this year. It is probably a good thing that we didn’t know what 2020 would look like, otherwise, we all might have decided to wait another year to start some of the adventures we have going on. So what have we learned this year so far?

1.) Talk to other farmers, homesteaders, or gardeners. They are a wealth of information. Sometimes, the information is not what I was actually asking but its in those moments where you often get some little nugget that might help you with another project. We have learned that most people involved in agriculture or animal husbandry have no problem talking with you. Not only have I learned a lot about practices on other farms but I have had the opportunity to visit some of those farms. Like most things though, the more you ask, the more you learn and sometimes you learn things you wish you didn’t know, but I will save some of that for another day.

2. It is not about looks sometimes. We had a family about a month ago come to the farm and one of the first things out of their children’s mouth was “Eww, there is poop in the field”. I think we all got a good laugh out of that. Its one of those things that is often forgotten. We have watched television with shows that display perfect barns, manicured landscape and freshly groomed horses and we have applied that to all farms. All barns are fancy equestrian barns, all homes are landscaped, and all animals are fresh and clean. Sorry to disappoint you if you come here, because you will most likely not find that.

3. Regardless of what type of business you are in, being the new business is hard. This year we have a learned a ton about selling vegetables at the market. We have learned that people have no problem telling you their opinion. We have learned that the market vendors are like grocery stores, everyone has their favorite and sometimes its hard to be noticed if shoppers are set on going to their favorite. We have learned that there are going to be good weekends and bad weekends. We have made friends and been encouraged by other vendors. All in all the market has been a good experience, but with that said, we have got to grow (pun intended). So we are already starting our plans for next year.

4. Sometimes you have to suggest to people how to use your vegetables. This is not always the easiest thing, because I am a vegetarian and I know most people are not looking for vegetarian meal ideas. I could be wrong about that though. We do our best to give you ideas on how we use our veggies and if you stop by the booth we share any ideas we have with you. We don’t want to encourage people to buy things they are never going to eat because food waste is way to real, but we do want people to step out of their comfort zones and try new things.

5. You have to believe in yourself. This has been the most difficult and profound thing that I have learned during this process. No one is going to believe in you, if you don’t believe in yourself first. I had a good job before we started this adventure. I was good at my job, but if you are not careful, people can tear you down to the point that you stop believing that you can do something. Most people have been and are encouraging of what we are doing. However, there is always going to be that one. The random person that tells you to get a job, or tells you to go work for the big farm because you can’t compete. It was never about competition for us. It is about feeding our family a wholesome dinner, where we know everything that was put on our food. It was never about making tons of money, our prices reflect that, it was about doing life differently. At the end of the day though, its not about convincing someone else about my place in agriculture, its about believing that I belong.

Isn’t it crazy that fall vegetables are already in the ground or going in the ground? It seems like January happened and February, but after that it appeared more like Marapmajunjuly…..it was just one big jumbled blur. There is so much still to come this year and hopefully now that the coop is almost complete and Anna is settling in nicely, I can share more from our crazy adventure. Until then, I will be the girl on the farm playing in the gardens, chatting with the animals, and dreaming of slightly cooler days.

I decided to wait a week before writing this post, mainly because it was an emotional week. What started out as a runny nose, turned into a full blown emergency. One that scared both my husband and I, along with our vet. Let me rewind.

On Sunday of last week, June 7th, we decided to let Thelma, our Zebu calf have a day of supervised play in the pasture with the donkeys. She was tearing it up and having a blast. While she was out playing, my husband off hand mentioned that she did not finish her whole bottle that morning, which he did not see a problem with, however, it immediately sent off warning signals in my mind. This a calf that never and I do mean NEVER misses a meal. She is normally mooing for that bottle within minutes of what is her normal feeding time, so for her to not finish her bottle was strange. Regardless, she seemed fine and was having a good time playing, so I pushed it to the back of my mind and went about my work.

At dinner time Sunday though, she was still being weird about her bottle. She would drink a little, lose interest and a few minutes later she would drink a little more. Normally, she chugs the bottle and then runs up and hits your leg asking for more. This evening though, she barely finished her bottle, making it two bottles now that she had not really drank. Robert wondered if maybe she was starting to wean herself naturally, we knew that she was getting close to being weaned and that her doing it by herself was a possibility, so we decided not to worry too much about it that evening.

On Monday morning, I was down at the barn around 0630. Once again, Thelma had very little interest in her bottle. This time, after nearly 30 minutes of trying, she only drink about half. I noticed that it didn’t appear that she was eating any of the hay or grain in her stall either. She also was being less annoying than normal. We love her annoying self, but we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that her constant sucking on our boots or head butting our legs was anything other than annoying. I also noticed that she appeared to have a runny nose. Once barn chores were done, I sat down to do some research. I needed to make sure that there was nothing seriously wrong with my calf.

By 1030 that morning I was officially worried and so we called the vet to see if there was something we needed to do or if this warranted a visit. The vet was reassuring. Yes, it was considered a “serious” issue that Thelma was not eating and that she had a runny nose, but it would be an easily treatable situation. We had caught it early and she wanted us to get antibiotics into her quickly to keep her cold from turning into pneumonia, something that commonly happens in calves Thelma’s age. So off to the feed store I went to get the antibiotics and syringes. Meanwhile, Robert was trying to transition his day at work, to a work from home day in order to help me with Thelma.

Livestock are fun. Unless it is an emergency or a scheduled routine visit, the vet just talks you through things like antibiotic injections your first time. Then from there on out, you can handle common colds yourself. No one wants to give their child a shot and Thelma is that, one of our children. When all was said and done, Robert went to work at the house and I stayed at the barn to make sure she was okay.

On Monday evening and throughout Tuesday we did not see any improvement. We weren’t worried though, antibiotics take a couple days to work and the vet had said to call back on Wednesday or Thursday if we were still concerned.

Wednesday morning when we went to the barn, Thelma had noticeably lost weight, she had not drank a full bottle in over three days and was starting to lay around a lot. We called the vet to see what our next steps were, and she confirmed that at this point, she would need to come out. At this point I just wanted my sweet, highly annoying, milk loving calf back, so whatever we needed to do was fine.

Throughout the week whenever we had checked Thelma’s temperature, it had been high normal but when the vet arrived she officially had a fever. Her nose was still running, even after the antibiotics, her stool was starting to change and her eyes were now starting to be sunken in due to dehydration. Thelma received a fever reducer, some probiotics and some fluid. I felt like a normal mom with a sick child at the doctor, she essentially got some Tylenol, a yogurt, and some pedialyte. Once all her meds were in, she was 100% better. The vet gave us additional meds for the next couple days and because Thelma was feeling better said to go ahead and see if we could get a bottle in her.

I took a little longer than normal to make her bottle, as we were discussing how were going to handle getting all the meds in her each morning. I was away from the barn less than 15 minutes and thankfully when I went to take her bottle to her, Robert had decided to walk with me. We didn’t find our sweet, happy calf feeling better. Instead, she seemed intoxicated. She was stumbling, visibly confused and was exhausting herself trying to stand up. We immediately called the vet back. Thankfully, they had only gotten 10 minutes down the road. Robert stayed with Thelma, while I rushed to driveway to meet the vet. By the time I returned to the barn she was down, all the way down on her side.

Thelma’s normal heart rate is around 80-120 bpm, when the vet reached her, her rate was pushing 160 bpm. She was breathing nearly double her normal respiratory rate and she was completely incapable of holding her head up, let alone standing up. Vets use many of the same medications that are used on humans, and having grown up around medical terminology and working in the pharmaceutical industry for years, I recognize many of them. The first drug she was pulling was adenosine, used to slow the heart rate. While we waited for that to work she listened to Thelma’s lungs and noticed that she heard a crackling sound. We now knew what the problem was, her lungs were filling with fluid due to the amount of fluid that had been given to her to combat her dehydration. We needed lasix. Lasix is a drug that helps remove excess fluid buildup, and is not a drug that our vet uses frequently so the vet tech had to run back to the truck to locate it.

While we waited, the vet went ahead and pulled up epinephrine. At this point we were well past worried and I remember looking at my husband who had the same look on his face that I am sure was resonating on mine. We are going to lose our sweet Thelma. We knew that the vet was preparing for the worst case now, Thelma’s heart to stop. It was almost 10 minutes since the Adenosine had been given and her heart rate was not decreasing.

Zebu are a unique type of cattle, they have not been bred to be miniature, they are just naturally small. At three months old, Thelma is approximately 35-40 lbs. She will be closer to 250/300 when full grown. While most medications have dosage amounts on them for different types of animals that a vet will see, the uncommonness of the Zebu breed meant that none of the drugs had dosages pre-set for an animal of her size, so our vet was having to calculate everything manually. This takes time and during this experience, time was of the essence.

Once the lasix was calculated, she only got .2mL, we just had to wait. Within about 10 minutes we noticed that her breathing was slowing and that we heard water gushing as she was peeing off all the additional fluid that she had in her system. After about an hour total, our vet felt comfortable to leave. Thelma still had not gotten off her side but she was at least able to lift her head and rest it on our legs. She remained down for almost 4 more hours.

It has been a week since we experienced our first animal emergency and I am truly thankful that we now have our annoying little calf back. It took almost 4 days for her to get her strength back, but even on Thursday morning, after everything that happened on Wednesday, we saw improvement. We have learned that every animal is going to react differently to medications just like people do. Also, do to Thelma’s small size, we have to be a little more aware in making sure she gets proper dosages, since most packages did not have her in mind when they were written. We have an amazing vet, who has texted to check on Thelma several days while she was getting back to normal. Most of all, we were reminded that even with our animals, every day is a gift, that shouldn’t be taken for granted, even as they are trying to knock you down for their bottle.

Have you ever had a really big goal, but you didn’t realize just how big that goal was until a little too late? That is how I feel right now. Dreams Come Moo is simply put, my dream. I want to raise livestock, to garden and produce homegrown fresh vegetables, and to help others experience long lost traditions. But I find myself with this sinking pit in my stomach as the first day of market season approaches and I look at my garden. What am I going to sell??

We never planned to be spring gardeners. That is not to say we didn’t try. I planted cabbage and broccoli this year. I started it from seed, transplanted it into the garden and watched it …die. Or Bolt. Or bolt then die. I am still not sure what I did wrong outside of maybe I didn’t plant it when I was supposed to but alas I thought I followed all the instructions that I found online. So the expectation was that come Saturday I would have beautiful heads of broccoli and cabbage to sell, but instead the reality is I don’t have either. I guess on the positive side, I will have seeds from the bolted broccoli to try again this fall.

I feel like so many times when you put yourself out there to the world, the expectation is that you have your stuff together. In reality, I am learning. Everyday. Some days I think my garden is watered with tears of frustration as I can not seem to figure out what I have done wrong. I mean you put seed in the ground right? and something is supposed to be grow from it. Yeah that is definitely another example of expectation vs reality. The reality is, I am really not that hard on myself, because I know this is the first year. This is my starting point. But I am terrified of everyone’s judgement. I am worried I am going to drag my little future business down by not meeting the expectation of the surrounding community. First impressions say a lot, well this weekend I am just praying that our lack of produce doesn’t say anything but please come again. Come summer we will have all the goodies, but you have to have business to build it.

You know, maybe I should have waited another year before we decided to join the market, but it seemed like such a good opportunity to get our name out there. I am still believing that it is. I am still believing in the positive and encouraging atmosphere that our community brings. That, that atmosphere will fill us with desire to keep dreaming our little farm dream. I wish that circumstances were different, that the world was not coming out of a pandemic, so that we would have the opportunity to chat with everyone that visits our farm stand. I mean, that was what we were planning on. There I go with expectations again.

I do believe that with the turn of events that 2020 has brought us, that going into the future we will have learned so much that we can share with others as they start their farm ventures. My inner scientist has been doing so many ridiculous experiments, trying to figure out the best ways for us to do what we want to do in the most space efficient and resource efficient manner. The reality is that I am super blessed to be on this adventure, it is one of the few realities these days that match up with the expectation. I expect that 2020 will be a launching point. We have so many ideas for the future expansion of our farm, and probably a lot more lessons to learn. So the reality is, this post is not meant to be a downer, just a “reality check”. People aren’t always successful their first time doing something, but the people who are become successful, they didn’t give up. So don’t give up on whatever you are dreaming even when the expectation and the reality aren’t initially lining up.

I think most people would agree that we are currently living in a new normal in our country. In some ways, with restrictions on travel, shelter in place orders, and the general isolation, the whole world is currently operating in a new normal. I have found during this time period, the thing that has helped the most at maintaining some “normal-ness” in our household is simply taking time each day and being thankful.

Most people are thankful, at least in part for the things that they have, even as we want more, but in this season of life I think it is more important that we vocalize what we are thankful for. That vocalization allows us to not only feel/think that we are thankful, but to hear all the things that we are currently blessed with in our lives.

My husband has been working strange hours, some days from the office, some days from home in order to minimize the people who are around one another. That puts him in my “space” more than I am used to and has caused us to find our new normal. Most days (since it is still chilly in the morning) I do housework or computer work til around noon, I would normally run errands in the morning (something I am not doing now) and then after lunch was where I worked in the gardens or with the animals. I normally stop “working” around 4 and then start working on dinner between 530 or 6 depending on what I have planned for the day.

Four o clock is my me time. Its where I sit on the front porch when it is warm, drinking coffee, generally with a book in hand and just pause. I love to watch the animals play in the pasture while I sit on the porch, or watch the birds and squirrels in the yard. I even enjoy watching the large farm equipment roll down the roads, its just peaceful. We all need a little peace in our lives. However, now my husband is generally home around or before 4 because of the gym closures and that means my peaceful hour is not so quiet anymore. While I love the peace of sitting quietly in nature with a book, I am thankful for this time where we can come together and chat about all that is going on around us.

It is during this time of togetherness that we are able to discuss what we need to do going forward; financially, mentally, physically. We can discuss what concerns us with the ever changing environment we are in. Most of all though, we can just be thankful that in the midst of the crazy, we have been blessed with this period of time to just slow down, sit on the porch and enjoy coffee together, something that is very rare with our schedule.

“Quarantine Coffee” Recipe

I hope that during this time of new-ness we all just take a moment, to pause try something different that you may not have normally had the time for and just be thankful for all the blessings that we still have. One day we will all look back on this time and have so many emotions; for some it may be the bright spot in their childhood because parents were more readily available, for others it may be focused on that challenges that we all overcome, but I hope that for all us we take the slow down seriously into our future lives. Let us not forget those quiet moments, sitting on the porch, discussing what all we are thankful for.

Coming Home Day

It seemed to us that the day would never come. We had to wait until the donkeys were 6 months old and fully weaned from their mothers before they could come to our little farm, and honestly it was one of the longest six months of our lives. 

They have been here a month now (sorry for the delayed post) but we have all been adjusting. Who knew two little donkeys could turn our world upside down? They can be sweet one minute and moody the next. They never leave each others side, and if one of them does accidentally walk to far away, the other comes running to get back into the fold. It is 100% true what they say about donkeys being stubborn. If these two don’t want to do something…then they are not going to do it. 

On the flip side of that coin though, they can be so loving. Resting their heads on your shoulder while you rub their necks. Coming up to you in the field just so they can be petted. Always together. The wait on one another before they go into the barn at night. Literally, if one is lagging behind, the other will stand at the barn door, refusing to go in without his/her friend. In some ways their bond reminds me of childhood friendships: earnest, true, patiently waiting for their friends to come down the slide at the playground before they both run to the swing set. 

Getting them here was an adventure. The day before we picked them up, they were separated from their herd and their mothers for the first time. It broke my heart to find out that they both had cried most of the night. At least they had each other. When we got there that morning to pick them up, the first thing we noticed was how much they had grown from the last time we had been to visit. Their winter coats had come in and they are so incredibly fluffy. Jambalaya looks more like an ox to me then a donkey. 

Once all the paperwork was signed, we put their little halters on and walked them to the car. They literally rode home in the backseat.

Poor Raspberry brayed several times as we pulled away from the farm, their home. The drive home really wasn’t that bad. We had to stop a couple times because they were restless, but once we gave them some hay to eat as we drove, they calmed down. 

When we got them home and settled into their new pasture, we quickly realized they were actually smaller than we originally thought. We were concerned they would be able to go under the fencing we had in place, so we spent the next couple of days quickly running an additional wire. Now that the wire is in place, we are ready in case we end up with any smaller animals in the future.

In our first month, we have learned a lot and have many stories to share in the coming weeks. We look forward to you all sharing in this crazy adventure we are on.

Several years ago I was given the opportunity to spend the summer in Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. It is a tiny country, about 6700 sq miles, with a population of about 1.1 million. I know what you are thinking, why on earth are we talking about a country in southern Africa on a homesteading blog. Well, honestly because I can Jand because while I didn’t know it then, this small country is a huge part of why we are homesteading today. 

You see, in the zulu language, Wahamba nathi, means “you walked with us”. It’s a popular praise song that we heard and sang often while in Eswatini. When I was preparing to leave for Eswatini, I was working a 12 hour job, finishing up from being in school full time as a paramedic, had just finished my master’s degree from Liberty and was fully involved in multiple activities outside of work and school. I was BUSY. If you saw me, you would notice my walk was near jogging, in just my everyday life. I lived fast, and I was good at my job and at school because I was able to function at such speed, but being good at something doesn’t mean that you are happy doing it. Going to Eswatini was like watching my high-speed life, hit a wall at 80 mph. Most people don’t walk away from that kind of accident and if they do, they make changes to the way they live.

I learned two very important life lessons while I was there. Both of which still permeate my life on a daily basis. The first while I am sure we will discuss another day was to learn to live vulnerable. This was by far the hardest lesson I have ever learned and is a phrase that I wear on a bracelet now as a reminder. You can never meet people where they are in life, if you are not willing to first live your life vulnerably. But as I said, we can discuss that another day. The second life lesson was learning to walk slowly.

Homesteading is my ultimate act in learning to walk slowly. I promised myself when I got off the plane from South Africa that I would be more intentional with the way I lived my life: to meet people where they are and if that act slowed my life down, to take the time with them. In the U.S. we find ourselves irritated with the car that drives the speed limit, or the elderly that walk slower in the grocery store. We find that if our whole day is not planned from sunrise to sundown we are missing out on something. We have even created an acronym to describe this: FOMO, the fear of missing out.

What if what we are truly missing out on is the people, not the events. I started small at first. Finding a job that didn’t require me to work so many hours away from my husband. Gardening on the weekends and taking up jogging to spend time with him doing something that he loved. But it didn’t take long for the culture that I had come back to, to slowly creep itself back into my every day life. Soon I found myself fighting the desire to climb the corporate ladder, while also trying to be an old school southern wife. I would try to bake from scratch, can, and freeze things on the weekend while bringing work home to do at night. It even crept into our vacations, where I found myself on a conference call, while in the waiting area to board a cruise.

While there are many factors that played into our ultimate decision of slowing down our lives and farming, the intentional act of walking slowly was one of them. I see the benefits daily as I am out and about talking with local business owners or random people in stores. Even today as I walked the aisles of Wal-Mart, I struck up a conversation with a lady regarding my larger than normal purchase of floating soap. It is good to be a part of a community, without always being in a hurry. It is freeing to not have every moment of every day planned out.

Even as the summer is coming to a close, I love to fill my basket with produce to deliver to our neighbors and customers. The farm, the animals, the people are all an act of intentionally learning to walk slowly in my life. Yes, there are going to be days where we are busy, where we have to pick up the pace, but that should never be our every day speed. If you never stop to smell the flowers or watch the sunset, how will you ever be able to appreciate how blessed you are to be living the life you have been granted. We only get one shot at this life and there is so much joy knowing that we walked with people through it.So my challenge to you is to walk just a little slower today. Sit a little longer at the café and read a book or have a conversation. Take a walk through the park and enjoy the changing of the leaves. Sit in the front porch swing, sipping ice tea and watch the sunset. Whatever you choose to do, slow your life down intentionally.  You won’t regret it. Until our next adventure, “wahamba nathi, siyabonga Jesu” that is to say “you walked with us, thank you Jesus”.

Who doesn’t like baby animals? I mean seriously, to not love them must be a crime. From their cute little faces and stature to their innocence, it is just impossible to not want to get all their snuggles. Thankfully, while we wait for their arrival to our home, we have been blessed with the opportunity to visit our baby donkeys. Raspberry and Jambalaya are coming from a cute little farm outside of Stem, NC called Elevenses, please feel free to visit them here http://www.elevensesllamas.com/Llamaweb/Welcome.html

When we first spoke with the owner of Elevenses, they really encouraged visitation with your animals until they are old enough to go to their new homes and we jumped at this chance. I mean how can you say “No” to these guys, look at those faces. This visit made our second trip up to the farm and we were all in awe of seeing how much they had grown in size, as well as, how much their little personalities had started to shine through.

While our visits aren’t long, we know Elevenses has tons of work to do each day, it is always both fun for us and educational. Remember, this is all new to us and that is what makes each day a new adventure. This weekend we got more info on what kind of food they are being fed currently, as well as, what kind of treats are best for them. Since we want our animals to be super friendly, spending time with them and giving them treats is a big part of that. However, we learned that due to their short stature, miniature donkeys have a tendency to become overweight and that is something that we definitely want to avoid. We do want people to be able to give them treats when they visit though, so we were able to get some great ideas about how to make this work for both the donkeys and our visitors.

We can’t wait for them to come home, but each visit reminds us about the work we have to complete prior to then. Making sure that our barns provide them with protection from predators and the weather, as well as, making sure that the pastures are fenced in appropriately for the small stature of the animals. But until then, we hope you enjoy this video and the cuteness overload of our latest adventure.

One of the best things about writing about our adventures in homesteading, is that the homestead encompasses so many aspects of our life. Topics from our garden, to our future animals, home projects, recipes and so much more. But today, I had to share one of my favorite recipes growing up.

On September 11, 2011 ( 8 years ago), our family lost a matriarch, my grandma Ag. She was the true glue that held us together. I think most southern families had someone in their family like this, someone who hosted Sunday lunch and baked Christmas cookies. That person who always had a $1 surprise bag from the dollar tree waiting for you and a pantry full of food for you to shop when you were so poor right after college. She was my favorite person, and missing her still creates an ache I can’t seem to hide. So, I must admit I am thankful that type doesn’t run like ink, or I would have to start over right now.

But the real reason we are here today is Blueberry Yum Yum. Man, was this one of my grandmother’s signature treats. Her and my grandpa, had these amazing blueberry bushes in their yard. She would take an old 5 gallon ice cream bucket and tie a string through it so that you could wear it around your neck while you picked blueberries, allowing you to use both hands.

When my grandpa passed away in July 2019, our family sat at his house for almost a week, reminiscing about things past and going through her old recipe box, which is how I rediscovered this delicious piece of history.

Blueberry Yum Yum

To Make the crust you will need:

• 1 c. all purpose flour
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 c. chopped pecans

To make the filling you will need:

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 8 oz whipped topping
• 1 c. sugar

To make the topping you will need:

• 2 c. blueberries (fresh is best, but frozen will do in a pinch)
• ½ c. water
• 1 c. sugar
• ¼ c. cornstarch (mixed in water to create a slurry or liquid)

Preheat the oven to 350 ° . Spray a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with baking spray. Mix crust ingredients together. Once mixed well, press into the bottom of the pan. Bake for approximately 20 minutes and then let cool.

While the crust is baking, mix the cream cheese and sugar for the filling together. Add in the whipped topping and mix until smooth. Once the crust is cooled, spread the filling mixture on top of the crust. Place in refrigerator while preparing the topping.

Prepare the topping by place the blueberries, sugar for the topping and water in a small pot. Bring the blueberry mixture to a boil for approximately 2 minutes or until all the blueberries have burst. Remove from heat. Mix in the cornstarch and water slurry. Place the pot back onto heat and bring back to a boil, stirring constantly, for one minute. This will thicken the blueberry topping. Allow topping to cool . Spread topping on top of the filling and Enjoy.

We have had a garden for as long as we have been married and every year we make a couple changes to improve our efficiency. At the beginning of 2019, prior to ever even thinking about this whole homesteading idea, I decided I wanted to double our garden. Even now, I am not sure what I was thinking because we were not prepared for what the summer had in store for us. In April, we planted and planted and planted some more…honestly, I didn’t think we would ever get the garden completed.

In May, our garden was chugging along. Blooms were appearing on many of our plants and we decided to take a much needed weekend to go to see my husband’s parents. We were only gone a couple of days, but when we returned our beautiful tomato plants looked decimated. We had no idea that we had monsters in our midst. For several days after returning home, we looked at our destroyed tomato plants trying to understand what had happened. I had just turned in my notice at work and knew as soon as I was at home full time I would have to set my sights on correcting the tomato problem.

It was not until almost a week after our mini vacation that I discovered the tomato problem was staring us right in the eye.

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Tomato horn worms (or in some cases tobacco horn worms) had infiltrated and attempted to annihilate our garden. They were everywhere! When I first discovered them, it was because one had reared its head up at me, attempting to scare me away I think. It was almost 4-5 inches long, that is a huge worm, had what appeared to be a mouthful of teeth, and this little red horn off it’s backside. I had no idea if it could bite or sting and to make matters worse it appeared to be spitting green juice at me.

We had decided early on that we were not going to use any kind of pesticide or insecticide outside of soap and salt. Our plan had been from the beginning to grow everything as naturally as possible and even with these giant green monsters in play, we wanted to stick to our plan. Therefore, after a little more research, I found out that they were relatively harmless, to humans that is, and so our mission was to find each and every horn worm, pull it off the tomato plant and “smush” it.

The first week, we found hundreds of these creatures. Thankfully, the ant army would follow close behind us after we completed that day’s de-worming and they would take all the worm bodies away. As the weeks went on, we saw a decrease in the number of horn worms and our tomatoes were able to recover.

Just when I thought the worst of it was behind us I started to see a new variation of the monster I had fought all summer.

Initially, I thought it must be a mother horn worm, carrying all her babies and so I started removing these from my plants as well. I found myself intrigued though by this new monster as I continued to find more and more of them on my plants and so I sat down once again to do research.

The white larvae on the horn worm turned out not to be baby horn worms, but actually baby wasp; the braconid wasp. These wasp babies, were actually feeding on the horn worm from the inside out, eventually leading to the horn worm’s demise. Hello circle of life (cue the lion king please). I mean, you almost feel bad for the horn worm, he has baby wasps everywhere on him. Furthermore, I found out that once the baby wasps are full size they actually eat the horn worms. Winning!!

So while I continue to fight what feels like a never ending battle against the tomato monster, it is good to know that we have wasp allies on our side, fighting with us. It is always an adventure on the farm.