fresh from the hen house

Fresh from the Hen House

My big mistake with homeschooling my younger two was not straying away from the book work more than we did. I felt a ton of pressure to get through their work books so they would learn what other kids their age would be learning and stay on track.

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Fresh from the Hen House

Talk about a growing season right now, mainly thanks to the blessed rains. The garden is growing, the grass is growing, spring babies are growing, the number of flies is growing, the weeds are rapidly growing, the laundry pile is growing, and the to-do list is growing.

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Fresh from the Hen House

I couldn’t be happier that summer break is here. Even with having two kids home the entire school year with homeschooling, I have been so ready to have my oldest home daily as well. We really jumped full swing into summer break. The first two days were filled with regular chores, appointments, errands, meetings, and more errands, so after that we were more than ready to spend some quality time in the kitchen.

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Fresh from the Hen House

There was a time, freshly married and pre-kids, when I bought low-fat sour cream because I thought it was healthier. Now, that didn’t last long at all and the “me” now cringes at the thought of ever having bought it, the additives and all in it.

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Fresh from the Hen House

It’s that time of year where looking at my calendar gives me anxiety with all that is going on, but if I don’t look at it daily, there are going to be some major repercussions. My children aren’t even involved with that much, so my suffering is minimal compared to most, but it’s our lifestyle that is picking up as well. The garden calls to me all day, every day. It says it’s currently needing the rest of its seeds in the ground and that it’s growing some nice little weeds pretty much everywhere. I was actually folding laundry, the first time in two weeks, up on the couch this week. I folded a bit and was putting it away in between and suddenly just stopped, and I sat there thinking “what am I doing, I need to be in the garden”. The laundry isn’t going to feed us the entire summer, so I picked my priority. I find that laundry is never, ever my priority, no matter the season and it seems the bigger the garden, the more canning there is, the more animals there are, and so on…the bigger the laundry pile.

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Fresh from the Hen House

I moseyed into our local greenhouse this past Monday and bought tomato and pepper starts, probably the earliest I have ever bought them. Now, I wasn’t sure if I was going to plant them right away or not, but I had them if I decided to just go for it. I also snagged some more onion bulbs, onion bulbs that my oldest said once again I’d have to plant myself if I came home with more. I tend to keep bringing them home since our onion patch area just isn’t quite full, I think I’ll go ahead and grab a few more when I’m in town next just to hear the children groan at the sight of them. That Monday evening, I hoed the rows for peppers and tomatoes, that alone took up all the time I had, but while I was doing that, my oldest made mounds for all of our squash varieties and put some seeds in the ground. The next day, I checked the ground temp and weather, the ground temp was at the minimum of what I would comfortably plant into, and the weather was going to be steadily warm with chances of rain. Those chances of rain made me itch even more to get plants in the ground, even with the risk of severe weather I decided to put some plants in the ground. I planted a small variety of both tomatoes and peppers that evening just to make sure the ground conditions were actually fine. Seeing that they were perky in the morning, I got to planting more around some small rain showers. As my allotted rows for peppers filled and filled, and plenty remained in the box, I realized that maybe I should have counted plants as I put them in the box at the greenhouse, but this wouldn’t be the first time I lost all control in the greenhouse. As we received more rain later in the week, there was a lull in planting. Sunday, we finally got the cattle panel tunnel up in its new spot for the cucumbers and pole beans to vine up on. I’ll plan on getting them in the ground first thing this week. While I was planting peppers one day, my younger two had big sis help plant their own little gardens. Their gardens flourished last year, so they couldn’t wait to get planting this year’s, now to wait for sprouts!

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