Around The Farm

Around the Farm
The weather has been wet!
The chickens are laying abundantly.
Zinnias, butterfly bushes, roses,sunflowers, and chrysanthemums are in full bloom.
Harvesting: butternut squash and tomatoes.
Canning: pear sauce and pear butte.
Baking: whole wheat bread and butternut squash pie.
Making: soap! Just made batches of Cool Water, Pink Sugar, and Mint Julep.
Sewing: completed a new skirt this week.
Family news: all three children are doing well. Laura is constantly asking, "how about we do------" with whatever idea she has in mind. Elizabeth talks more each day. Gabriel is growing well and sleeps 6-8 hour stretches at night.
Life is busy and we are blessed.

Going From Two To Three

We are only five and a half weeks into this life change, but I thought I'd report on the transition from two to three.
I really think that the toughest transition so far was going from 0 to 1. Each new child presents new challenges, but after the first baby you really understand how parenting is truly a 24/7 job, and how exhausting and overwhelming it can be.
By number three you are familiar with the sleepless nights and long days, but you also know how quickly the newborn days will fly by.
The hardest thing about going from two to three is that as parents you are outnumbered. There are times when all three need to be held or need something different all at once and RIGHT NOW and there are moments all three are crying.
However, there are many wonderful moments too, all three snuggled on mommy's lap, watching the girls play together, seeing how they adore their little brother.
We get to enjoy each child, and we get the joy of watching the children enjoy and love each other.
So I'd say having three is pretty wonderful. We are thankful for each little blessing!

New Soap Scents

We've recently added two new soaps to our line.
We've been asked how we decide which scents to make.
For our regular soaps, we occasionally drop a scent that is no longer popular, and add a new scent.
We add new scents on of three ways. We sometimes select a new fragrance from one of our suppliers. Other times we create new scent blends with our essential oils. We also add fragrances that our customers request. We get many requests and suggestions, and we can't try them all (we can do small custom batches, though ). If we get a number of requests we will generally make a batch of that new scent and see how it does. So if you are looking for a particular scent let us know!

Our new scents are Citronella, and Kudzu Blossom, both often requested fragrances.

We do holiday or seasonal soaps in addition to our standard product line.
We generally do 2-3 seasonal scents for each season. We select and make those seasonal scents months in advance so the soap is cured well and ready to go when the appropriate season arrives.

He is Here

Gabriel William arrived July 14th. He is a joy and blessing.

Farm Girls.

Laura LOVED feeding the kids this spring!

Elizabeth hugging Milla, one of the few doe kids we had born.

Daddy and his girls.

Back After A Long Absence

I haven't posted here in too long.
I did have a reason.......

 I had a rough start to this pregnancy and just gave up the blog for a while.
I am feeling much better now but these two keep me pretty busy!

I'm going to try to be more faithful though.
We have been busy with many things, a farm open house, vacation in Florida, guests, a busy holiday season, kidding seaso, and now focused on gardening and preparing for a soon to arrive new baby!

This and That

A pile of things ready to go on our trip to Virginia.

Me at the ice cream shop in Charlottesville VA.

Laura with Bill on the train.

The girls with Bill on the train.

Elizabeth playing in the cupboard.

We spent several days in Virginia visiting with friends and family. One day we took the train to Charlottesville and enjoyed a picnic at Carter Mountain Orchard with friends, shopping, and we went to Kohr Brothers ice cream parlor.
We were only home one day before heading south to Georgia to show goats at the GA State Fair.
Our Helena was Reserve Grand Champion SR doe, and our Clementine was Grand Champion JR doe.
The last week or so we have been busy trying to get caught up on everything here after being so busy with Elizabeth's party and travel.
The goats are starting to cycle and several are bred.
Our summer chicks moved into the layer barn and should start to lay soon.
The ducklings are huge now and moved out with the big ducks.
We have a wonderful new soap made with pureed sweet potato from our grden. Its called Sweet Tater, and it smells wonderful and the sweet potato adds Vitamin A to nourish skin.
This week we have harvested zucchinis, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, spinach, kale, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green beans. We're thankful God has blessed our gardens and given us such bounty to eat!
I have more photos from the trip but have not uploaded them yet.
Hopefully I'll be updating this blog a bit more now that we are done with our travels for a while.