"Romeo, Romeo whereforth art thou Romeo?????"

This eloquent phrase first crafted by William Shakespeare so many years ago in that wonderful Romeo and Juliet work, Act II, Scene II. Most think of humans......

In our little farm, the image that comes to mind is our Romeo is a gorgeous Lamancha buck bought as a baby buckling from a dear friend Autumn, from Raven's Haven, winner of so many goat awards!  My human Romeo (Jacque), also my husband, wanted to get him for his great attitude and His coloring and diversification of Lamancha lines.!!!  We were blessed to get him and his offspring have been GORGEOUS!

Yesterday we went to sell at impromptu farmers market, and that pm, my human Romeo found our goat Romeo wandering around near his pen......   He was easy to bring back to his large pen, but my heart was beating being by him, because this is still mating season for milk goats and this Romeo smelled to "high heaven".  When someone says someone smells like an old goat, you really should smell a buck in heat to know what they are talking about.   AND if you are on a farm, anytime between say July and about March..... Back away from the male goats because you might get an unexpected happening and you will need two or maybe three showers and a change of clothing too!  I apparently had a coat on yesterday that I had visited our milk goats in and their scent drove Romeo wild! 

Last night I dreamed of Romeo the goat getting loose and running after me.  And today, on Sunday, a day of rest, this is what I saw.   Romeo in the front Yard while Hubby was trying to leave for a meeting.  Jacque secured Romeo (the goat) and walked him back to former Delawareville, now High fence residence to one Delaware rooster who wants to know what is this thing in HIS pen.  Promises to be an interesting afternoon.   Now, my dreams are not always predictive.  I am not Joseph the dream weaver.  I suppose one could say that I went to sleep and my subconscious played out its concerns.     Had Jacque been a little later in leaving for the meeting, perhaps I would have seen Romeo walking/running and in my trying to get him, he might have decided a game of chase would have been fun.....

Well for now, unless Romeo practices a super high jump, he is safely penned, although if he is really smart, there is a spot above the gate to his pen that he could back to the far end of the pen and jump over.   I think I'll just go sit by Romeo's pen until Hubby gets home.

There is one thing that life on a farm NEVER IS:   Boring........  

The farmer who gave His All for His farm!

Today, in 2015, it is time for a little education but also some levity and so we begin.....We are a thrifty farm and my husband lets me cut his hair and sometimes do a beard trim too!  For the price of an occasional new hair trimmer, about once every other year,  $17 to $20 on sale it is a savings of a lot of money and we can work in appointments really easily.  So I'm guessing yesterday saved about $26 plus gasoline and time.  Sometimes the hair salon doesn't want us to walk in as our shoes track soo much dirt! But more importantly I got to be creative and and I got the "locks" for an important project!!!

Now this was the top part of the hair that needed cutting....from the last real hair cut I did. I fell behind my hair cutting and he had to go to a pro shop.  So this time it was not quite as long or curly!  Here is a before shot on yesterday's cutting Chez Nancy Hair Salon

I like those curly but Hubby likes a #2 hair cut and that's short short short.  And he doesn't like moustaches to "sieve" the soup... So it was a hair cut and beard trim!  And because we were not trimming outside due to rain, I got HIS Hair for the compost pile!!!!   It will become dirt in probably a matter of weeks!!!! How cool is that!

This is his hair ready to go to compost......

So I guess you could say that our farm recycles and composts almost everything we can think of!!!!!  And here's a happy farmer with his New "do" and beard trim.....What an appreciative guy! So blessed....   All's well that ends well....  And don't forget to tend your compost pile.   You are making earth..... So much fun on the farm or even under your sink, just don't forget you have it there!!!!

 

What is this Celebration Cake of The Garry Farm All about.......??

Sometimes we need to celebrate life.   It may not always be the momentous beautiful wondrous birthday of age 84 where The Garry Farm celebration cake was delivered by her daughter Jane Griffin to her sweet mother Doris Chestnut in Alabama.  I hear that Doris enjoyed the love of her family but also her cake two times that day.

I can see where the gals in the family get their wonderful great looks, beautiful hair, face, smile, spirit of love and kindness and JOY!  All are natural beauties and I'm so glad to count them as special friends of The Garry Farm! Jane Griffin, I love your dedication & love you show to your mother and what a joy you are to me at market!  Always so enthusiastic and Joy filled!   and the love continues through to Nikki and her family too!

Then there is celebration of Zinnia's first birthday.... A special picture of her time with the candle, the cake and the camera!   Truly a farm birth and youngun and already helping mom and dad build their home!  Busy as a bee fits here and this picture of one of zinnias on the farm is a perfect match and have to share!

Please remember these little cakes are for celebrating lives.  Sometimes, we just need to celebrate the fact that we made it through the week ..... or even the hour...or to another benchmark year!

We have criteria for all the food made in The Cookery....  That it is made with Love and hand crafted in small batches, That it reflected natural goodness and simplicity and incorporated farm items and that our recipes are crafted and designed with joyful creativity.  This cake is moist and flavorful... Needs no topping but is happy toasted with preserves as a topping, or with a simple topping of fresh fruit, or even ice cream or cream/milk. SO like the small size as it is personal and assures we will savor the flavor without "over celebrating" So tomorrow we will be bringing 6 little cakes to market.... Who will celebrate with us?   Also bringing white chocolate chip cookies and amazing roasted red pepper cornbread featuring our cornmeal, local grown wheat berries, freshly ground in time for baking and also our roasted peppers! Recipes for the roasted red pepper cornbread are available. Most of ours are not.

Here's hoping you will enjoy your life.... Moment by moment and don't postpone all those pleasures until we are 100!  LITLA

Mamma don't let your girls give up their overalls!

Mamma don't let your girls give up their overalls!

Here I am with my prize overalls later ruined by chicken chasing with brussel sprouts as my cheerleader's baton, having a lovely time at our local market, 

Cotton Mill Farmers Market, Carrollton, GA

Overalls or even work jeans, my Aunts and grandmother never wore them.  The following were done in dresses. Sometimes accessories included kerosene rags wrapped around their ankles, handmade bonnets & aprons with large pockets.  This is how I remember them as They:

• milked the cows,

• chopped firewood and wood for the wood stove, 

• planted gardens,  

• hand cranked out the clean clothes out of primitive washers and hung them up 

• hand plowed behind a mule, 

• delivered calves

• drudged in the woods to rescue calves or to call in the younguns from wild blackberry picking  

• And any other farm activity.

Sometimes in boots that were for men folks but claimed by the women folk....I never really understood whose boots they were but they were never new to the women....Never boots tried on and fit for them.....The oldest generation of farmer men relatives went to Church in stiffly starched overalls with a very stiff and very pressed white shirt. Menfolks knew about overalls.  Now some of my younger male relatives say born in my generation or maybe just one before wore suits or a nice shirt and a pair of pants... But the older and earlier men wore Overalls and always there was the best overall reserved for revivals, church meetings and the occasional going into town. I remember funerals where the best overall was worn by my relative.  It did NOT seem strange to me at all....But this is a story of girls and wanna be women and women who lost part of their farm roots but then found them again...

I loved overalls as a child...I owned none in the city home I grew up  - Atlanta. They were NOT allowed in the house.  Mother grew up on that farm, worked her way through College and there was no way her daughters would suffer through all that.   She never said that but in her actions I knew that she wanted for us an easier life, not knowing that in my blood, I had inherited the need to farm...  In fact, DIRT was not allowed in Mother's home...Dad may have been king of some decisions but there were no dust bunnies in mother's house, but that's another story. Smile...

But I digress.... within 5 minutes of arriving at Granny's, first of course smothering myself in her wonderful hug and smelling all the scents in her old apron from cooking all morning, grabbing a tea cake, running to the old cedar chest with the broken hinge, I found the old worn out pair that was mine while in the Country, soft as a 1000 thread sheets, smoothed my hands over it and sighed, I was home, the smell and feel spoke of times to come covered with possibilities of love and fun and adventures and probably a little danger from poison ivy and snakes and more! ...For the longest, I thought the overalls were spelled and pronounced overhauls, because certainly my spirit felt completed overhauled when I was in them!  My symbolic I'm a country girl not only clothed me but embraced me with the love from the country. All the predictability of life in the city disappeared and all that it meant to me lifted as I held those overalls and breathed in the air of the country still held in them - well that and a heady dose of mothballs.

Sadly, there came a magic age and it must have been say around 11 or 12 when my girl cousins quit wearing overalls, work jeans, woods exploring clothes...  Being the impressionable, favor seeking, following, idolizing cousin that I was, I left my overalls and all my other boy clothes behind. Looking back now, it was too early but I did it anyway...Cousin peer pressure is real... And called them boy stuff.   I tried to join in the reading of magazines, painting of face, burning of skin to get tan,  listening to the swooning records of that time - mostly 45's and the finger and toe nail painting contests with the girl cousins.

But deep inside me I wanted my wornout boots and my overalls ........Decades later I'm back in my overalls and worn out jeans.   I still love the broken in jeans the best...I won't buy new, I like my clothes worn out and at the point of no return, They bend and fit the best!  I now have my own old straw hat, which I treasure.   It's not quite broken in as it is only 14 years old. I'm so glad to be wearing overalls, they fit me to a "t"! 

Encourage, lift up, and lighten up!

Living in a world where I get so tired of seeing so much emphasis on negatives and still cannot believe that a crowd will gather for a person on a ledge to encourage them to jump and "unhappy news" sells more than happy news, I look at social networking and often see something of a contagious negatory attitude, in an environment of bashing.........

But then I see some posts that encouraging, memorable for the joyous uplifting, positive, kind, goodness and life changers.  Even the cute pictures of a stray dog leading a rescue team to her babies.  So.....

Those positive ones are the posts that mean the most to me.   

Don't want to go through my long lists of medical things but I will say that God has been with me each step of the way.  And I have encouragement from many that always was perfectly said or felt.  So recently asked my Facebook friends what words they gave ore received that they thought were helpful. 

I received some real gems.   Treasures!!!   I'll quote a few and then ask if you are reading this blog, that you post things that have helped you through rough times.   

"You gotta keep on keeping on. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Phil 4:13"   Johanna

"Just keep swimming!"  Trina and Mary Beth

 

 "help someone else"  Jane

"encouragement to me is when one will tell me the truth, but remind me that Jesus said HE would never leave me nor forsake me. When I am on the bottom looking up, I really need to be reminded that Jesus will be there. Many times when I've been that low, my dad would take his finger and point like he wanted me to see something very far off. He would say, I want you to look way, way down there. Can't you see there is light at the end of the tunnel. He said, you may not see but just a little flicker, but there it is, see, it really is light. OH JESUS YOU REALLY ARE SO GOOD AND KIND. "  Suzette 

"If God brings you to it he will bring you through it. Jesus is the reason and I put my hope and trust in Him." Christine

  

"The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him, " Nahum 1:7  Celeta

Practice random acts of kindness, and senseless acts of beauty. Lori

What I have found personally helpful for me....

"You know that God loves you, but I am just saying that people are looking to see if your faith will waiver under what is going on."     

I prefer "feel good" movies like Polyanna.... one of my favorites

As a younger person, I began reading biographies of people who were quite exemplary in how they handled life.... and overcame what seemed to be impossible situations.  

Music guides my thoughts and can transform my emotions.  One of the best modern songs about overcoming.   Wonderful Mandisa with Overcomer.   Just saw the vidoe for the first time! (click the blue hyperlink next to this to hear and see her)  Mandisa - Overcomer

Sometimes solitude is needed and sometimes a good cry or sometimes a laugh or even both.

When I become anxious, words of comfort like these help: 

" Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"  Matthew 6:26

When I feel I can do nothing anymore, just nothing and feel the start of a major pity party, I start planning something to do, a prayathon is a likely event or a surprise for someone else


My mother used to give the quietest and sweetest comfort to me.   It would go something like this "I cannot make this go away, but I'll stay with you as long as you need me to and I know you are strong and will work your way through this.      And she seemed to know innately what people needed.   She never did "tell" people what to do - other than to tell my Dad NOT to track up her very clean kitchen :)   But she was the kind of positive sounding board folks still need.   

But most of all I look for the rainbow that God will send....His promise to me and to the world.  There will be a better day....   Life is never easy but it becomes much easier when I tell myself.   God loves me.  He has a plan, a purpose, a reason for everything and everything unto its season..... Just Like Ecclesiates 3 says....

Feel free to add your thoughts about encouragement...  LITLA   

 

The inspiration at the bottom of the colander

Not much blogging going on in 2014  It's been a myriad of hospitalizations, doc visits, more rare diseases, mostly lung- a few skin, etc. since January. But in the middle of all of this, I try to do regular farming things..... Like picking strawberries, cleaning them, making strawberry jam, farmers markets and tending animals, etc.



This week I had just had a biopsy and it was my first complete "all out" one, so of course it went fine in technicality.  My thoughts throughout it were, how long will this biopsy take? because I have strawberries I cleaned and cut the night before waiting for me in The Garry Farm Cookery.

So when The Doc got to the questions I might have, I said "how many pounds can I lift without ripping these stitches wide open?"   (This is a wonderful new Doctor and he gave me a quizzical look and I explained I had fresh strawberries that had to become strawberry preserves that afternoon.  They could not wait)..  He was negatory on my moving the large cooking kettle full of water, He did not understand my spirit that I would find a way.... Probably would have been for the the heavy soup cookers full of strawberries like this one:

Dear hubby didn't want me to do anything after surgery but he knew better than to "waste his time" He helped by filling two heavy pots full of water and the rest was mine! For me, making preserves is Extreme Precision, absolute therapy.  It is a mind over matter game.  Keeps my mind off of "me",  as I must focus 100% on the task at hand, one wrong move and hours and hours of picking and preparation and product are wasted.   Everything is sanitized and ready and slow cooking without pectin takes hours. Heavenly smells of strawberries wafted in the Cookery.

During the last boiling for the filled jars, I sat down for the first time in 4 hours and glanced at some photos made the day before of the cleanup.  I was filling up a bucket for the compost from the colander over the sink and what did I find?   A tiny scrap in the shape of a valentine.   Somewhere a little sweet angel sent me some encouragement in the tedious job of cleaning up the kitchen sink.  My berries were very dirty as they had been splashed by dirt in a rainstorm. and it took quadruple washing and a very soft vegetable brush before the cleaning was completed.  I think the spectacular gift must have been from my sainted sister as only She ever loved strawberries as much as I.   All of her china had strawberries on it and many of the items in her kitchen. Strawberries always seemed to find a place in her home, on aprons, pictures, children's clothing, and more.  Thanks Annelia, sweet sister angel. That strawberry valentine has found a place in my treasure of memories and as I was cleaning, my heart just changed from dread of the drudgery to JOY of the journey. Have you ever had something occur that did that?

If I had not been looking, I would have missed that strawberry and everything it means to me.  May I always be looking for encouragement and miracles Lord.   And for those of you who think it is a coincidence.  I've trimmed mega thousands of strawberries in my lifetime and never before found a valentine shaped scrap emerge at the bottom of my colander.    Farming brings me so many delightful and joy filled moments.  Thank you Lord for each of them.  I am so grateful for the joys and everything that it takes to bring me closer to you! Amen. 

The Garry Farm Grows Faith.............and more

Spring and the nearness of God is in the air for me.  It's a wonderful day as it was yesterday and shall be tomorrow! Jacque is headed to market and last time he can use our little car - wagon.  I am at home doing scheduling of eggs and bunny pickups and burning my breakfast, but that's another BLOG, LOL. Thanks be to God and all our farm helpers, produce is bustling. And next week we need a trailer!

Who would believe two flats of strawberries TODAY after all our freezing weather? Counting that as a miracle.  For you non farmers, I would have been on my knees even just grateful for 1/4 of the strawberries to have survived the winter.  Instead, I see maybe 1 plant missing in 20?  Thank you Lord.  When temps get as Low as they did in Georgia even with row crops or covers, to me the game is up.  Meaning, totally up to God totally.  Man cannot make what God can provide .

And the field that was wall to wall last year where I practiced strawberry yoga, tippy toeing between the plants, is getting perfect for a back up picking and we did NOT Cover that one at all. NOW that is the 100% cannot argue with me Miracle as it was next to all the covered plants and those rootings survived minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit!!!! Where we 100% trusted in God to provide, He most certainly did and more abundantly than what we did ourselves! The old plants died away and now we have new plants with blossoms ready to set in a few weeks for fruit.  I don't know how atheist can farm.   I'm not trying to be superior or set myself up for a bunch of negativity.  But I could never even watch a farm or definitely be part of a farm if I had no faith and if I was not surrounded by a Man and people of faith. Every time I hold a newborn baby chick - Faith and Hope and Belief and Love....I feel it.

The floods, the droughts, the unrelenting cold temps crushing on us, the predators, frailty of seed, last minute squash beetles, bee swarms, tragic animal deaths and destruction by predators or natural disasters and more.   I have really come to believe now that the Garry Farm grows a Lot More than fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, bunnies, etc.   The Garry Farm grows Faith and Hope and Belief and Love and Spritual Molding.   At least it does for me and for that I am eternally grateful. And all of that is Losses seem as a distant memory when I walk through the tall grass and weeds in the front and back yard, dreading the sneaky snake, just to see a little bee bringing in early pollen to go back to his Queen.  Eternal Optimism is now added to the list of what The Garry Farm brings to me !

Lord, thank you for the teaching and blessings you give me here at the farm.  May I please find a way to share it with the world or at least the part of the world YOU choose. Every moment Lord I am grateful for the Life you give me.  Even those really hard Molding and Learning moments because it is in those that I know you the best.  That I feel your presence 100% and I am most aware that all Good is this world is from You and of You and that I am dependent upon your tender Mercies. May I never fail to give YOU the Glory as nothing I ever do that is worthwhile is of ME, it is of You.   May I always set my eyes upon you. And dearest Lord, I thank you for Spring and our Farm.  Where flowers I didn't plant grow around the farm and even weeds, like me, take on a Crown of Glory of yellow in nature as the bees circle around them.

I am so tearfully grateful of all Blessings about here and may I never fail to acknowledge them as yours and share them!