Quick corn bread

I’ve made a lot of chili this winter. (I have a pumpkin chili recipe coming up for you next week!) Where I come from, we have corn bread with our chili. So, I’ve also made a lot of corn bread! You know what? It’s super easy!

Planting our hay fields

This is the year that we need to re-seed our hay fields. We grow a combination of red clover and fescue grass for our cows to munch on. The red clover will only grow for two years before it dies, so every two years we need to re-seed the fields. This year we stepped into a little more high-tech than normal!

We were able to put our John Deere Gator to good use to get this job done. We pooled resources with some farmer friends to get this whole contraption built. We co-own the seeder (the black can on the back of the gator) with some family, and we borrowed the GPS guidance system (the thing that looks like a flood light on the top of the Gator, and the small black box in the windshield) from some very good friends. (We let them use the Gator and the planter to re-seed their fields, too.)

Crockpot chili

It was 20 degrees out this morning. That means it’s still winter. That means we can still have chili!!


This recipe is another from my new favorite cookbook, “Slow Cooking All Year ‘Round” by Gooseberry Patch. I have yet to find a recipe in that cookbook that I haven’t loved!

Hungry beasts

There’s not much that’s cuter than the first calf of the year! We’ve got our first four babies “on the ground,” with five more on the way at our house (and about 15 at our other farm). It’s not all fun and babies around here, though. While the babies primarily eat their momma’s milk, the mommas are big eaters – especially when they’re also feeding a 60-pound newborn!

Random Friday

What's rambling through my head this week…

1. I have a slightly addictive personality. I have been known to crash on the couch and watch a full season of Downton Abbey in two days. Or to burrow down and plow through the entire Twilight series in 5 days. Seriously. Twice. Over this past weekend, I sat still with a book, a blanket, a cat, and a cup of coffee for 6 hours on Saturday and 8 hours on Sunday. And I was thrilled!
2. I lost my activity tracker in (literally) knee-deep mud out in the cow pasture. Believe it or not, I found it the next morning! (Thanks to the ladies for not trampling it under the manure/mud!)
   
3. Speaking of cows. I love healthy baby calves. It’s so much fun to watch them play!

Crockpot ground beef

I will never go back to browning ground beef on the stove again. Ever. This is so easy! (And foolproof!)

One month in

I’ve been working on my Year 2 Change for a little over a month now. (Okay, 36 days, to be exact.)

My progress

My goal has been to get up at 6:00am, only hitting the snooze button twice. Out of those 36 days, I hit my goal on 19 of them. I had another 6 days where I hit snooze three times before I got up. Frankly, I count those days as successes, too! So I’m 25/36.

For me, that’s pretty darn good! Most of the time I’m getting up to times like this…

Till the cows come home

Our cows came home two weeks ago! I never would have thought that I missed having cows at my house. But I sure did!

Crockpot fajita rice bowls

More crockpot cooking! Have I mentioned that I am insanely in love with this cookbook?

Feeding corn silage

Normally we can grow and bale plenty of hay in the spring, summer, and fall to feed our cows through the winter. The summer of 2012 was a little different. Southwestern Indiana (and most of the midwest) was hit by a bad drought. Our cows are usually on pasture all summer, but this year we had to feed them hay because the grass in the pasture didn’t grow. Which also meant that the grass in the hay fields didn’t grow. We were afraid that we were going to be short on hay this winter, so we needed to come up with other options to keep our girls fed and happy in the cold weather.