Every year the boys and I sit down around Christmas time and come up with a list of things we want to do the following year. We call this our Farm Goals list. This year was a bit messy and honestly we never got around to writing a formal list. However one project we did decide to take on was to try raising chukars,

For those that don’t know, myself and my family all enjoy hunting. We have a lot of family traditions and we are teaching the twins to hunt as well. Farmer Brad’s family does a lot of bird hunting and while I have done a little I’m very out of practice and it’s something the kids have never had the opportunity to try. With that in mind and the fact that I’m the crazy bird lady we decided this would be a good learning experience for the kids and we would be able to use them to work on our bird hunting skills as an end result.

I did my homework and picked out where to order out chicks from and figured out what we would need housing wise. Game birds are more fickle than chickens and need some extra gear and specialized housing.

As a result I got to pick up a hover brooder which I’m not gonna lie I have wanted for a while. This this is awesome and provides a much more consistent heat which I was glad of considering how tiny the chicks were when they came

We also needed a bit of a different flight pen because well I’m stubborn and from all the reading I did you have two options: you can raise the birds off the ground or you have to medicate them. I don’t like to medicate anything long term… I get treating as necessary but forever in an animal that I’m going to eat, not so much. So I sat and googled and google and googled some more. This is what I ended up presenting to Farmer Brad.

We combined the two ideas and then made modifications along the way based on supply prices. We finally got it finished and the birds moved outside last week.

We have a little finish work to do as it still needs some batten boards on the house and in the corners where the wire wraps the posts. We will also have to make some modifications this fall once we move the birds we plan to over winter out but for now. But overall we are pretty happy with how it turned out.

I don’t deal with stress well at all never have and probably never will. When I get stressed I eat and it tends to be nothing but junk.

I hit my high weight around the time my sister got married and basically hate every picture of myself. I worked by butt off for months after that and got down to a weight I could live with not my goal weight but I was feeling good in my skin again.

Over the last year to a year and half I have watched my weight slowly creep back up. I’ll work hard to bring it back down to have something else major knock me off track. I’m not going to lie I’m totally frustrated and the frustration actually makes me more stressed.

I need to be held accountable….I can’t go back to working out outside the home I’m just too busy with kids stuff and family stuff and work to get in regular work outs. I am struggling to even get in my steps most days.

As part of the of this reset I’m going to focus on walking more and paying attention to my diet.

I’m really trying to love the skin I’m in but it’s hard when I don’t feel good in it.

In the last 2 years, I have watched the Rhodes Family (from Abundant Permaculture) challenge themselves to 100 Days of Growing Food. The first year they did it I simply watched and thought “That’s pretty cool but I don’t I don’t think it’s doable here”. I mean, how can you do 100 days of growing food in PA? They live in North Carolina and have a longer growing season than us.

But then I did the math. From Memorial Day to Labor Day is 98 days, which really isn’t that long and it is our main growing season. So why not take the challenge? I presented the idea to the kiddos, and they were totally onboard. We even decided to make a deal that they could set up a farm stand with extra produce.

I always dream big when I start a new project, then reality hits….I took on so many new things this year and am basically drowning at this point. Last night I had a talk with the boys and we decided to scale back a lot from the original plan. We are going to just do the raised beds and planters this year. To improve the raised beds, we put down fabric weed barriers. We also added 5 pots of herbs and two potted blueberry bushes.

While we have decided not to plant the large pumpkin and squash patch that we had last year in the orchard (it got completely out of control very very quickly last year) we did make other improvements there. We added additional raspberry canes and put higher fences around everything as some of the trees have gotten tall enough that the deer were able to reach them over the previous fences.

We have to finish planting the cucumbers and cabbage in the one raised bed but I think we can finally say everything is planted for the year. I’ve also added a few new plants to the hydroponic system we have in the basement just to see what happens because we had plants left over. But our 100 days of Growing is officially well underway!

School is just about to let out and things have been crazy busy both with my job, the farm, the kids, and my healthy living site!

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This is the first year where I feel really nervous about the boys being home with me all day. While they are much more independent at 9 they also have a great love for all things electronic which means their choice of entertainment takes internet access which we don’t have enough bandwidth to support! I’ve decided that the solution is to simply lock them out of the internet until after 4pm when my normal work day ends which I have a feeling will mean the summer will start off bumpy.

We have decided to take on a challenge this year and do 100 days of growing as a family with the understanding that if the boys put in the hard work we will let them have a farm stand when produce starts coming on. So some of their time will be spent working in the gardens but we are putting in a lot of work to try to make maintaining the gardens as easy for all of us as possible. There will be a post about the gardens in the near future.

That being said I’m not too proud to admit we also made the decision to not be unrealistic about what we are comfortable growing ourselves and what we would rather buy from people we know and trust! As a result we decided to buy a CSA share from Plot Twist Farm this year which I’m super excited about! Stella and Jason were so fun in school and I’m so happy to be able to support them! Also the blog post that they post are super fun to read!

Brad guided bird hunts in WV for years before he moved home and the boys are looking forward to learning to bird hunt from him and his brother. To help with this we decided to raise chukars this year . Their flight pen is almost complete and once it is and we move them outside I will be sharing our experience with them so far.

Whatever happened to the neighborhood card or game nights? When did we stop knowing, I mean really knowing our neighbors?

When I was a kid I knew every person that lived in every house on my street. If they were around my age or my siblings’ ages I knew who their teachers were, what sports they played, recognized their parents and visited their houses often especially in the summer. Now I only know a few of them. I’m lucky if I know their names and their kids names and my kids who ride the bus with them can’t even name them all.

So why the shift? I’ll be honest my kids are 9 and still can’t ride bikes by 9 I was riding a bike and that gave me a small amount of freedom I could go across the road to my grandparents house and about a 1/2 mile down the road in either direction which I was lucky enough to have kids in both directions that were my age but still. My kids are allowed to walk across the street to their dad’s house and that’s honestly about it. People drive like crazy on my road these days and you just never know who might be in those cars and what kind of no good they could potentially be up to.

Something about knowing all my neighbors made me feel safe. If someone weird was around the house we would hear about it because a neighbor seeing it would stop and tell us or call us. I have neighbors now that I wouldn’t even recognize if I saw them in Walmart and that just makes me sad. There are young couples in the area again with kids the same age as my kids and I can’t help but wish it was like it used to be.

I’m going to blame this current line of thought on my grandma who so forcefully stated “Jade start a neighborhood card game.” To which my reply was “Grandma I suck at cards, why would I want to host a card game.” But since then I have been part of several conversations about how Covid has changed the world we live in, that people are isolated and that they need outlets and ways to interact with people in person.

Would it really be that terrible to host a monthly card game or game night? Or a campfire? We all need that social interaction and our kids need to feel safe in their world again.

More frustrating than having anxiety myself is watching my kids struggle with it, recognizing what is and not being able to help them. It’s absolutely brutal to recognize that my kid is having an anxiety attack and not always knowing what caused it. Without knowing what caused the attack I can’t help them calm down and move forward. I can vocalize what I need when I’m anxious, my kids can’t.

I never realized how much it bothered me to hear comments like “just get over it” or “ignore the behavior and it will go away.” I wholeheartedly agree with walking away from a child having a tantrum because they didn’t get the toy they wanted. On the other hand, having your kid voice a fear is something you need to hear, accept and try to help them overcome. Rather than simply telling them that’s irrational and you need to get over it.

As an adult, I can tell you when something is causing me anxiety and even identify when a fear I have is irrational. Does that make the fear go away? Not a chance. Anxiety is hard and can be paralyzing for adults. So tell me why people seem to have such a hard time wrapping their head around it being equally hard if not harder for kids.

I get it, it’s easy to judge something you don’t understand. If you don’t have anxiety you are going to look at me or my kids and simply see us having a giant melt down over what you have determined to be nothing and decide we just need to get over it. Maybe it is nothing in reality but you telling us that it is nothing will in fact make the anxiety that much worse. It makes us feel crazy and alone.

So what can I do to help my kids? I read a lot. The article below has good ideas and things for me to try to remember.

https://childmind.org/article/what-to-do-and-not-do-when-children-are-anxious/

The truth though is that in the middle of one of my kids’ anxiety attacks that in most cases causes my anxiety to kick in it’s hard to remember what is right to do. I’m still learning. They are learning to try to deal with these things hopefully to get over their anxiety instead of having it get worse with age.

Next time you see a parent and their kid melting down stop judging and for just a second try to put yourself in their shoes. Chances are the parents heart is breaking because they can’t fix the fear and the kid just wants to be normal.

While I’m always excited to get to talk about small/local businesses that I love, this one is very exciting because it’s actually a young lady just starting out. I can’t say that I know many kiddos that will take on a project like this and stick with it. I find her drive to start and manage a business of her own so impressive! I wish more kids had work ethic like this!

So let me introduce you to Miss Maddie!

Hi Maddie can we start out by telling us a little about yourself?

My interests include: riding horses, making soap, drawing, crafting, cooking, gardening, reading, playing with my pets, playing outside, hunting, fishing, water slides and being a kid

How did you get into soap making?

I had a friend show us how to make soap last fall. I liked it so much I asked for the supplies and molds for Christmas. Once I started making soap people asked about buying some and I said sure. Once I saw how much people liked it I made more and more. Now I decided to help others by donating some of my profits to a Christian Summer Camp and two pet rescue groups.

How can someone find out what soaps you have available, get pricing information, and how they can buy from you?

I have multiple scents and types of soap available.  I’m always trying new scents and types.  All of my soaps are vegetable based with therapeutic grade essential oils. Currently I have:

• Pine Tar
• Charcoal
• Lemongrass
• Lavender
• Shampoo
• Oats and Honey
• Coffee with vanilla
• Peppermint vanilla
• Orange vanilla
• Peppermint scrub
• Orange Scrub
• Vanilla

You can order by emailing: lacey_maze@yahoo.com.

Thank you so much for your time Miss Maddie! I loved hearing about your company and getting to share information about it with my readers! Also keep in mind that she is able to do special orders as well as bulk orders for things like bridal showers. Just make sure you allow at least 4 weeks for processing when you place those special and bulk orders so that the soap has time to cure so it can be used safely!

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While we always have new animals in the spring that I get to talk about this year we also have a new farmer. I would like to take a minute to talk about this amazing man and how hard he works around here. Being with me isn’t easy this farm life isn’t for everyone. But Brad takes it all in stride learns new things and helps me get things done. Most farm chores aren’t fun they are dirty and hard work but he keeps me laughing and keeps things moving even when my day job makes it impossible for me to keep up. Thank you for all you do babe!