What can happen in 40+ days?

Wow!  A lot has happened here on the farm since I last posted.  So many memories have been made and so much has been learned.  Where do I begin?

Since everyone seems to be in the "thankful" mode, I will start by saying how thankful I am that God moved our family to this beautiful area of our country.  I cannot describe the beauty of the colors.  Everyday, there is a new master piece to view.   Fall has always been my favorite season.  Ironically, we have only lived in one location for a short time to enjoy the temperatures and the awesome color transformations this season offers.

Loving the"Changing of the Colors"

What's more fun than a pile of leaves ?!

Our Angel!

We made these from the leaves in our yard.

As most of our friends know, we are avid outdoor people and hunting season is in full swing.  We are so blessed to be able to walk out our door and be on a stand in 5-10 minutes.  Bow season has been open for a while, however, our family has never really been big bow hunters.  We purchased a cross bow a couple of years ago and have harvested a few deer with it back in TX.   When we moved here, a friend  gave our son a compound bow.  It seems he has a natural ability and is pretty darn good with it.  We have an archery shop just up the road from our farm and one of the owners has taken him under his wing and is giving some lessons to tweak his shots.  Hopefully, he will be shooting in competitions soon.

This past Saturday, gun season opened.  Game on baby!  Now this is familiar territory. A hard day of hunting paid off on opening day.  Finally, in the afternoon, this spike was harvested.  Fortunately for us, we don't eat the horns anyway and it is meat for our freezer.  We plan to make Bulgogi Jerky and roasts from this guy.

Thank you for our first harvest of the season! 

Great father/son memories

Let the processing begin.

Carefully carving the meat.

Call us crazy, but it is so fun and maybe somewhat addicting, appreciating and learning to live off the land.  In the short time we have been on the farm, we have successfully grown a great garden, raised and harvested our own chickens, put venison in our freezer, hunted squirrels and made some "to die for" squirrel dumplings.  Hmmm, what might be next?  Need to check the hunting season rule book first, but just maybe there will be some turkey and goose meat in our future.  And NO!!  Our Mr. Gobble Gobble is safe!

Thank you son for the squirrels.

One of my favorite little sous chefs

Freshly rolled out dumplings

Squirrel dumplings! - Smells delicious!

We do have some new, fine feathered friends living on the farm, thanks to Momma Bess.  She is such a great momma!  I can't image having octuplets to care for.  Of course, she has a great Nanny to help her, Chicken Girl!  Lol!

Sweet Momma Bess

She is so excited we have a little Naked Neck! 

Momma and her babies

About 5 weeks old and starting to explore

Chicken Girl in her Nanny roll! Lol!

Yes, life is good here on the farm.  Living, looking, and experiencing everyday all of these wonderful things our God has created for us makes my heart sing!

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, I will say Happy Thanksgiving to all our family, friends, and other readers who happen to come across this blog.  Take time to give an extra BIG bear hugs to those you love, give an unexpected gift to someone, stop and smell the wonderful aroma coming from the kitchen, compliment a stranger, tell the cashier on Black Friday thank you for coming to work so early.  I promise you, if you do any or all of these things, it will make your heart sing too!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

  

Fall Garden is still producing....

As you may have figured out, we love gardening and the farm life.  We pulled into the driveway of our new home on 13 May.  What a great Mother's Day gift :)  Most people would be worried about getting their house in order but not the Lambings.  Lol!  Our priorities were getting a chicken coop built and a garden planted.  There would be plenty of time to unpack boxes.

Papa Roo got him a fine new tiller and went to tilling.  We got our fall garden planted on the Fourth of July weekend.  We knew nothing about this area, the soil, what grows well or doesn't, so we were not even sure if our little garden would produce.  Sticking with what our family likes, we planted peas, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.  No garden would be complete without flowers :)  Before we knew it, the garden was producing rather nicely.  Papa Roo continued to research and read about various ways of planting and other crops that we might like.  After all, this is what we want to do in our retirement life.

Beginning garden in July

Cucumbers are looking good

Giant Tomato plant

The two green thumbs of the family

Fresh Green Beans

Yummy Cucumbers

Lots of Peas

Now it is mid October and this little garden is still producing.  Yesterday, Papa Roo picked about a half bushel of Italian Green Beans, a good family size helping of peas, about ten tomatoes, and several jalapeños.  Oh, and we even have a few ears of corn from our experimental planting method.   Not bad for our first garden here in VA.

Tomato plant is hanging in there 

A portion of what was picked 8 October 

See our corn in the back

Looking good

Chicken Girl's beautiful flowers

 I don't have a picture but we even have some potato plants that are looking awesome.  We plan to put a hoop house over them so they can survive after the first frost.  Another experiment  that Papa Roo read about.

New Life on the Farm

Today was a special day here at the Quad L Farm.  One of our Columbian Rocks went broody and we now have our first baby fuzz ball :))

Momma Bess and Fuzz Ball #1

When we realized that Bess was broody, we collected eggs over the next couple of days and put them under her.   We gave here 11 eggs :)  I was able to candle them about three days ago and saw movement in all of them.  Hens are always better with the incubation process than a homemade incubator.

Because we were unsure of the exact day she started sitting on the first few eggs, we had to guesstimate the hatch date.  Chicks hatch in 21 days.  We were thinking Wednesday was going to be the magic day but obviously we were off by a couple of days.  This evening I went to check on her and was trying to figure out what she had stuck on here beak (a feather), and all of a sudden, I see the little fuzz ball stick it's head out.  Yippee! Yay!  We had a surprise :)))

Momma is feeding her baby :)

Chicken Girl and I sat down at the coop and watched as Momma Bess gently called her baby to come out and then she gently fed her some food.  God's creations are so awesome!!!  Love, love, love watching His creations in action :)  My heart is singing tonight :)))

Fall has Arrived

I am loving these cool mornings.  I get to sit outside with my coffee and take in this beautiful masterpiece that my Lord has created for me.  I love watching how the cooler weather makes all of our farm residents a little spunkier than usual.  Ladybug, Ginger, Liberty, Neiko, and all our fine feathered friends have all got a little pep in their steps.  The roos are busy calling their girls to come get the tasty treat they have found.  Ladybug was even fast enough to get her squirrel :)  She has been carrying her trophy around as if to say, "Look what I got!"

Here are a few cool pics from around the farm.

The pretty Sunflower  that Papa Roo planted for his Chicken Girl

More flowers for Chicken Girl

Liberty has found the perfect resting place 

Just a cool looking mushroom!

We found a Smurf village :)

Table for one

Smurf House :)

Let the processing begin!

Our first volunteer

With school in full swing, hosting family and friends, and just living life, it has been a while since I have been able to blog.  I hope to get back on track soon, but until then, this is just a quick plug to let those of you following our broiler adventure know that we have started processing them.  I have posted pics on our "Broiler Adventure" page if you are interested.

More to life than rush hour traffic!

It's been a little hectic around the Quad L lately.  The kids and I have been canning like crazy.  You can read and see all about that in the previous post. Kevin has been putting in some really long days over the past couple of weeks, mainly due to that crazy I95 traffic.  It seems to be getting worse, if that is even possible.  He still takes the VRE sometimes if he is only going to the Pentagon. The van pool continues to be the best and fastest way for him to commute in, however, coming home is just down right painful in our fast pace life styles.

Fortunately for the kids and I, Kevin has some use or lose leave:)  For our friends who are not military,  that just means that he hasn't taken a vacation in a very long time and he better take some time off or POOF, it will disappear from the books.  You might say he is a borderline workaholic.  Well wait a minute, who's kidding here?  He is!  However, from the time he pulls into his parking spot on the farm, (yes, he has one here too), it is all about family, no matter how tired he is or how late it is.  Some how he manages a little one on one, quality time with each of us, and of course his garden!

This was a surprise welcome home for Dad after
one of his TDYs.  Lol!

Over the past couple of leave days Kevin took and this past weekend, the family has had some pretty awesome family time.  Thanks to our wonderful landlord, Mr. Zimmers, the guys got to scout out a beautiful piece of hunting property and help Mr. Zimmers mark some trees for those law breaking trespassers. Of course, the trip wouldn't have been complete without a little target practice.  In the midst of all their fun, they stumbled across a ground nest of yellow jackets.  They liked Noah the best.  He walked, or should I say, ran away with the most war wounds.  Seventeen stings!!!!  Ouch!!!

Noah ran right out of his boots!  Lol! 

Beautiful piece of property!

Back at the farm, Lydia and I did some baking and chicken bathing.  Lol!

Chocolate pie we baked for our neighbor :)

Baby, hanging his head with embarrassment
after his bath.  Lol!

This weekend we did a bit of exploring with the metal detector and working in the garden and yard.  We always find something of interest and it is usually Lydia who spots it.  That girl is attentive to the smallest details of nature :)  I love it!!!  As for Noah, well his definition of enjoying nature is to be out in it shooting targets.  Lol!  I am so thankful that God gave us such awesome children.  They keep Papa Roo and myself on our toes.  We try to stay just one step ahead of them:)  Heck, we still like to steal their ATVs and take a little ride.  Kevin and I even developed a RED NECK idea for our winter bon fires.  Lol!

Just look at the colors!

Tiny little LadyBug 

Our Red Neck chairs for sitting around the bon fire :)

First crow of the season
Yes, there is a Crow Season up here.

Noah thinks our landlord, Mr. Zimmers, is the coolest ever.  He brought a couple of these guns out for Noah to shoot.  Needless to say, he is loving life out here on the farm!

Gonna do a little shooting:)

Rambo style!

Well, I guess it is time to stop blogging and get to work.  We have family coming and we need to get our guest house ready. :)  Hope everyone enjoys this beautiful day God has created for us :)

Until next time ......