Catch-Up

Sorry it's been so long. Things have been mighty busy around here!
I tried to put some pictures of some garage sale finds (treasures) on here but blogger isn't working right. I'll try again later.
We have had heat indexes of 110 degrees lately and that has made gardening very challenging. But, then, the weather the last three years has been challenging. I picked my first handful of green beans a few days ago and that was exciting! We have large green tomatoes that we are keeping our eyes on, just waiting for them to start ripening!
We'll be taking a steer in tonight. Remember Marty? I hate to see him go, but will enjoy the meat. After eating homegrown, chemical-free, hormone-free, pasturefed beef, we really notice the difference when we eat the other.
I hear thunder in the distance so maybe we will get some much-needed rain and, hopefully, some cooler temperatures.
Hope your day is going well and your gardens are flourishing!
Nancy

Journey To Simplify-Part Four

Jack worked for a local rancher for a year, which was a wonderful experience. An opportunity then came up for an excellent job and he got it. We lived like everyone else for the next eight years (Yep. Eight years.) and in that time forgot about our vision to live on the homestead. We were so far removed from it, in fact, that we bought a house in the city. Things didn't go well there. One day a woman that was at our house, who I barely knew and Jack not at all, said to me, "You two need to remember what your dreams were in the beginning." Just like that. Out of the blue. After she left I started thinking. What dreams? Did we ever have any dreams? I honestly couldn't remember. But, that was the start of a process that led us back to the right track.

Nancy

Journey To Simplify-Part Three

We began to explore small towns and different areas of the countryside and decided on the area we were interested in. Our plan was to buy land and put a moble home on it to live in while we built a house. Someone recommended a place to buy a moble home and we went to look. After looking at the used ones, we ended up buying a new but inexpensive one. The payments were $160 dollars a month. We then set out to purchase the land. The only problem was that this particular county didn't allow you to put a mobile on anything that wasn't a huge piece of land and then only with the neighboring landowners' permission. Oh no. (I think it is pretty funny that it never occured to us that such rules existed. We were following our dream.) Now we had to find a place to put the moble home. We found a nice park (as far as parks go) that actually had yards in a small town of 1300 people. We had it set up there and we moved in. (As it turns out, just about everyone on our street had tried to do the same thing that we did. :-} )
Jack and I stood on the steps and looked around and he said, "A year at the most ........"

Nancy

Goat Bandits

I looked out today to see this:

If this is a hold-up, Emily, you need to adjust your kerchief.

That's better.

Nancy

A Few Blessings Of Simple Living

I bought this fabric in a bundle at a thrift store for three dollars. Here it is washed and dried!


Baby turkeys!

Hiding places for kittens!

Nancy

Journey To Simplify - Part Two

We were told about a place that gave loans to people wanting to move to the country so we applied and were approved. We began to look at small towns and house-building. At the same time, though, we had a desire to live close to relatives and when the mention of income possibilities came up we loaded up everything we had; I mean everything, including a freezer full of food that I had put up, into a moving van and off we went. It was a difficult task moving over a thousand miles this way. The moving truck was slow and even broke down at one point, and we had to plug in the freezer each night when we stopped to make sure everything stayed frozen. To do that we had to unhook the car that we were towing behind the truck so that we could back it up to the room we were spending the night in. Our little ones were four, two and ten months old and did so well! They and I were in the station wagon and Jack drove the truck. We stopped at an older relative's on the way down and she said, "If you were twenty years older, you would never attempt this." Hmmmm...... Because the truck was so slow it took several days longer than what they allowed, and we ended up owing more money for the rental when we got there.
We enjoyed seeing the relatives and had many good times there. Catching crawfish in traps, blue crab in nets, swimming, boating, skiing, and visiting the many historical sites in the area. We ended up living in a suburb of a large city again, though, and home was calling us, so six months later we loaded up everything (not quite everything; I gave away all of the frozen food this time and the car that we had towed behind the truck) and headed back. We went with a different rental company and the trip went very well.