Prayer request and a recipe

Early this morning, before it was even time to feed the animals for the day my mom and I took my daughter to get an ultrasound done on her gallbladder. She has been having trouble with nausea and a little pain for about a month so they are seeing if they can find anything wrong. Please keep her in your prayers.

The brown stuff around the pie is cinnamon to keep the ants away while it cools.

It is getting to that time of year again. The time of year when I get to start harvesting my garden! Lately I have been picking lots of zucchini and tons of raspberries. I will can what we need to get us through the winter but I also like to use fresh fruits and veggies in my cooking while they are in season. Today I made some sweets. I made 2 loaves of zucchini bread and a yummy looking raspberry pie. You can find the recipe for the pie below.

1. Raspberry pie
2. Ingredients
3. 5 cups raspberries
4. 3/4 cup sugar
5. 1/3 cup flour

         Your favorite pie crust (I make my own but my sister buys the

         pre-made ones in the store so it depends on your liking)

1. In a large mixing bowl combine the sugar and 1/3 cup flour. Stir in berries. Gently toss the berries until well coated. Transfer berry mixture to the pastry-lined pie plate.
2. Then top with your second crust, making small slits in it for steam to escape.
3. If desired, brush pastry top with a little milk and sprinkle with additional sugar.
4. Bake in a 375 degree F oven for 25 to 30 minutes more or until top is golden. Cool on wire rack. Makes 8 servings.

    Here is a neat trick for rolling out your pie crust. Place the dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper and roll out to desired thickness. Place dough on pie plate and remove paper. Viola!! That easy!

Have a blessed day!

~April

Farm happenings

There has been alot going on here at the farm lately. I have not been able to post in the last few weeks because my daughter has been sick but she is feeling better so life can get back to some resemblance of normal now.


My husband and I went out to White House Fruit Farm a couple weekends ago with some friends to pick our own strawberries. The strawberries were so nice and big and we had a great time. It was hard to get Doug to stop eating the strawberries but as you can tell in the picture  alot of them finally ended up in the baskets. I plan to go again next year.

We have had a visitor on our farm lately. I call him Henry and he is a beautiful blue peacock. It has been such a joy to have him coming around. We found his owners yesterday so they will be coming to get him soon but it was fun having him here for awhile.

I have decided that if I want to get anything done around here I am just going to have to get wet. It has been raining alot here. One of the good things about it is that it rinses all of the mud and muck off of me. This morning I needed to do some work in the chicken pen and by the time I was done I was filthy. After washing my hands I went and picked some black raspberries and while I was out it began raining and by the time I got back in all of the mud was rinsed from my clothes. So you see there is always a silver lining to every dark cloud. The berries are doing amazingly well this year. After not having any last year I was worried about how small the crop this year would be but I ended up with almost a full gallon bucket today and I did not get to all of the bushes because I needed to come in for lunch. I will be back out tomorrow looking for more. Then after the raspberries are done it will be time to pick blackberries and it looks like we are going to have a bumper crop this year.

Have a blessed day!

~April

Gotta take the bad with the good!

Row of peas. My garden is doing very well so far. Lord willing it will continue to do well

The dreary, cold weather we have been having has reminded me of one of my favorite sayings, " you cannot enjoy the sunshine without the rain." I am not sure if that is a real saying or if I just made it up but it is one of my favorite sayings because of how true it is. If we never had bad times or things that we did not enjoy then we would not be able to enjoy the good things as much. I think that is true with all things. One of my goals this year is to eat fruits and vegetables when they are in season and have enough of my own produce and some of the produce I get from the farmer's market preserved to last us the winter. Just think of how much more we enjoy zucchini when it first ripens, it is something I look forward to every year. I do admit though that by the end of the season I am  a little tired of zucchini but I believe it is much healthier to eat things while they are in season. I think it is nature the way God intended it. My strawberries are not doing well so in a couple weeks my husband and I will be joining some friends of ours to go to a farm to pick our own strawberries, I cannot wait. That is my idea of fun. I cant wait to taste those fresh strawberries. The ones from the grocery store just do not compare in taste and are nowhere near as healthy as farm fresh. I hope you will join me on my journey this summer and I will share as many pictures as I can of how we do things. Have a wonderful and blessed day!


Farm update

We have 3 new additions to our farm. The first is 2 little doelings born to my Nellie girl Friday afternoon.

Penny (Penelope)

Merry (MerryWeather)

And the last addition is my bees!!!! Hooray! I am so excited about this new adventure!

~April