Backyard Farmgals

Okay Farmgals...I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.  The key to glowing skin is lots of water, raw fruits and veggies, and lots and lots of greens.  One of my favorite ways to get the greens is in a green smoothie.  After I drink this I feel like I am buzzing with energy, not even kidding!  I am not tired anymore, I feel like I have energy to get everything done, including chasing my wild Famhands, and let me tell you, my skin is looking awesome!  I have had so many people tell me that I glow.  I could be radioactive...or it could be the green smoothie!?!  I'm guessing it's the smoothie.  This looks a little too healthy, too scary, too sludgy, but it tastes AMAZING, and you feel so good, you will want one every day! There are oodles of ways to make this.  You can use any fruit that you like, banana, mango, papaya, cantaloupe, pineapple.  Anything sweet that blends up a little creamy is definitely an option.  Flax seeds...

What does a Farmgal eat on a cold, crisp Saturday afternoon?  This yummy little sandwich is one of my favorite go-to quick lunches.  It's vegetarian, vegan, full of health and happiness, and packs a good dose of greens.  With Winter here, I find that I sometimes don't get enough greens in my diet.  It becomes a bit of a struggle.  Winter kind of kicks on this potatoes, pasta, rice switch in me and I am constantly reminding myself...GREENS!  I have even concocted a wonderful Green Monster Drink that I will be sharing soon - so yummy, you don't even know it's loaded with greens.  The rest of the year is easy, while I am in the various gardens I am constantly eating little nibbles of green...which reminds me, I am so excited for Spring.  It's coming, I can feel it starting to creep in.  Yay! So here is a quick and easy way to get your greens.  Feel free to substitute spinach for the watercress (I love the spice of the watercress)...

Ohhh...if I had a lime tree...or a lemon tree...I would be in heaven!  I love citrus and it is in season right now.  I crave it in the Winter.  Grapefruit, lemons, oranges, each is like a burst of sunshine when you break into it.  I love how the oil from the skin bursts into the air when you peel a citrus fruit.  It's smell lingers and permeates my memory, reminding me that there is light and joy even in the darkest Winter nights. I ran across a recipe for citrus salts from 101cookbooks .  Basically it is any kind of citrus zest mixed with salt, dried and ground to use as a finishing salt.  I see things like this and my mind starts to wander.  I dream about flavor combinations and creative ways to use ingredients like this.  This time my mind settled on lime salt sprinkled over a fresh lime pie.  A little salty-sweet flavor combination to brighten up a snowy afternoon.  Sassy...the only word capable of describing this desse...

Animals have always been a huge part of our lives. My Will and Woobie (he died a few years ago...I still miss him) six years ago. I thought that with not much planting going on in the garden, now would be a great time to reintroduce some of the animals on the farm.  Each has their own personality and their own story to share.  Each one has a different kind of love to give.  That's the best part about having so many animals is I feel like I am constantly surrounded by love.  Animals have this great ability to love unconditionally; they don't care if you have make-up on, or if you did your hair, they don't mind if the scale said that the ice cream you ate was a bad idea, or if you are disappointed or sad.  They have an uncanny ability to cheer me up, even on the hardest days...and there have been hard days, days where I want to cry until there are no more tears...and there have been great days where I want to shout from the mountain tops and share my joy. ...

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.  This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."       - Martin Luther King, Jr. (December 10, 1964 - Nobel Peace Price Acceptance Speech) Why is freedom so hard to come by sometimes?  Looking back, it seems so out of place that people have been denied basic rights and freedoms.  Why would you have to fight so fiercely for something that without questioning or reasoning should simply be yours?  Unalienable rights...why are they so easily denied to people at the darkest moments in our history? I have a very deep and almost reverent respect for Dr. King and the battle that he fought with such valiance.  What a marvelous example of immovable strength and equanimity.  I hope that I have these qualities somewhere within me...  With Human Rights Day comes a lot of fun for two little farmhands that I know. ...

A little Sunday afternoon wickedness is in order every now and then.  By wickedness, I mean BUTTER, and lots of it!  Every Sunday afternoon, we have family time.  It's just our little family and we talk about things, do a special activity, learn something new, or do something all together.  It's our time, and I love it.  During the busy week, it is really hard to get enough time to do something like this, so Sunday is our day.  This set aside time is really important to our family; it helps us all know each other better, and it gives us a chance to teach each other important concepts, ideas, and values.  The thing I like the most is that my kids know that they are important enough to me that I have set aside time just to be with them.  I think that family time is lacking in today's world and children often find themselves being pushed aside for something "more important". This week we are teaching our kids a little bit about our family histo...

With the cold winter months finally here upon us, if you haven't thought about protecting all of that garlic that you planted in the fall, you might want to consider it now.  If you are in the Southern United States or in any zone above about 6, you shouldn't have to worry about this too much.  Hopefully if you are buried under a few feet of snow, you thought about it earlier!  The idea here is to protect the garlic from getting too cold, and add a few extra nutrients to the soil while you are at it.  Exposure to the cold will surely kill your garlic, and since we have had such a warm (I am using that word loosely) winter, I haven't worried too much about it.  I will tell you that I have now mulched the garlic three times.  The 103 mile-per-hour winds have blown the mulch off once, and another wind storm took off my second attempt at mulching!  You can imagine my frustration.  Third time seems to be a charm, knock on wood, so far it has stayed...

I have a new cookbook, who am I kidding?  I always have a new cookbook.  It's my curse...I am addicted to new cookbooks.  I drag them around with me, I read them from cover to cover, I obsess over pictures, and methods, new flavors that I have never combined, and I dream about it all.  Crazy?  Maybe.  Passionate?  Absolutely! This new one is called the Art of Simple Food and it's by Alice Waters, and it's not really new.  Who is Alice Waters?  She is one of the founders of local, seasonal, simple eating.  She is one of the many people that I would love to eat with!  (I have a list...)  She is the founder/owner of Chez Panisse, which is the core of fresh, local, seasonal, and real flavors.  It is minimalist, the cookbook contends that less is more, and I agree wholeheartedly.  You don't really taste food until you take away all of the sugar, salt and seasonings.  Eating fresh, whole foods allows you t...

I had this idea in my head that the farming would slow down in the winter...it hasn't!  I have spent almost every extra minute of every day, thinking about, reading about, obsessing about soil, fertilizer, heirloom varieties and most importantly what I am going to plant this spring.  With all of this sifting around in my head, there is a constant beat in the background, a drum that beats for March.  March is seed starting month, and I have more than ever to be thinking about when I think of March.  I have ordered almost 200 packets of seeds...yup...200!!!  I will plant the majority of them when March finally creeps up on me.  The thing that I have found to be overwhelming, and I am hoping that I am not alone, is sorting through all of the seed catalogs.  There are pages and pages of varieties; I want to plant them all.  I need forty acres, I have already got the mule, so to speak.  I have found a few tricks to ordering and I would like to ...

We woke to 6-inches of snow...every kid's dream!!! Who needs breakfast when there's snow to be played in??? It's not any fun unless you close your eyes!!! Bird feeders were busy this morning! The barn looked so peaceful... Chickens were warm in their nesting boxes... And "Brig" the rooster was busy keeping the girls in line! We played on the sled, threw snowballs, and built a snow fort... And giggled... It was oodles of fun!!! Hoping for snow again next Saturday...