Drying in the Winter

*~*~*

Just to show you that we stand by what we make and sell - 

this picture is one of my drying racks that I use

AND

thats our wood stove 

AND

those are my husbands socks!

Haha!

*~*~*

Blessings on your day!

The Beauty Right Before Us.

We truly love life on our homestead

I will never take for granted the view right outside our front window...

At night.....

In the winter....

In Spring.

For a time, we turned some of our acreage into a nursery, growing

rhododendrons.

Evening sky.

We love this farm, and will spend the rest of our days

(Lord willing!)

making this homestead

Home.

*~*~*

Have a beautiful day.

Daily Life on a Homestead (or "our crazy fun farm life")!

Life is always an adventure, isn't it?

When you live on a farm, that adventure can take on

 a whole lot of meanings!

For example, on just one of our days from last week, 

we:

caught a swarm

"found" two cows on our property
(neighbor cows, ended up keeping their bull here - which means
calves in the spring, yay!)

and got paid way too much money for dead chickens.....

Never a dull moment.

The picture above looks peaceful - and it is, we had

just caught a swarm and added it to this hive....had

this been taken 15 minutes earlier, we wouldn't be so close!

So, this stinker found his way into our chicken tractor

and had lunch.

In fact, he was so fat and happy that he couldn't get out.

We had never seen him before, so we called in proper help

and he was taken back to his owners.

I want to mention, that the owners couldn't

have been nicer, or more remorseful.

We refused restitution, stuff like this happens - you don't need

to make enemies over it. 

They insisted. 

We accepted.

Win-win.

Speaking of stinker dogs.

This is one of our labs.

She is a farm dog.

Farm dogs live outside.

Not this farm dog.

She went and got herself into a mess.

After several veterinarian visits, 

and looking like this for 5 weeks -

I'm happy to say she's back outside to being a farm dog! 

Always exciting around here, and into having fun - we are

very excited to be hosting a booth at the upcoming

Mother Earth News Fair

in Albany Oregon this weekend.

The main man behind it all is pretty

incredibile.

He has vision, and accomplishes whatever

he sets his mind to.

He designed this wall mounted drying rack!

If a rack can be beautiful, this one is.

I'm so proud of him.
(by the way, he and our kids made that farm table you see
for me too. Oh yea!)

Soon, this will be offered on our store:

Homestead-Store.com

*~*~*

Don 't think I can say it enough; we live

and love life around here.

So very Blessed.

Hey.

When you're farm kids, who needs winter and snow to pull

a homestead made sled?

*~*

Have a Beautiful Day.

Memorial Weekend Sale!

Starting Friday, May 22 through Memorial Day

we are offering 15% off all of our drying racks!

Free Shipping.

Woot!

Enter discount code:

memorial15

at checkout.

Have a Blessed Weekend.

Life on a Homestead....

I often think how incredibly blessed we are

to live where we live.

All the experiences our kids (no pun intended here!)

get to have growing up on a farm.

The amazing guy behind it all, my husband, teaches

them all about self sufficiency, hard work......and

even using what you have laying around to

build a pretty cool chicken tractor!

Yes,  there are times

when farm work isn't all that glorious!

Typical Oregon winter to do farm chores in: RAIN!

But we all love and live life.

Even the stinker cat, who waits for 

unsuspecting birds in my bird feeder.

The pill.

So grateful. 

So thankful.

So Blessed.

*~*~*

Even in the midst of difficulty, you can always find Joy.

Blessings.

Just for Mom

Mothers Day Sale!

*~*~*

Through Monday only, we are offering 15% off all our 

Handcrafted Drying Racks.
(Free Shipping!)

Give Mom a practical gift that keeps giving over and over!

Enter Code: MOM15 at checkout.

*~*

Blessings.

Keeping Hives

We thought it would be cool to show

you how Mark sets up a new hive.

These are our two newest additions, a Top Bar 

and a Warre Hive....

:: in two parts as our kiddos were filming!::

Seriously cool, huh?

Mark and the boys are way braver than I.

No thanks. 

I'll enjoy this experience via the videos!

Ha!

Mark catching a swarm.

God sure made the honeybee quite the amazing little critter, huh?

~*~*~*~

Both hives, handcrafted by Bee Thinking are available 

on our website:

Homestead-store.com

~*~

Blessings !

All Things Bee at Homestead Store

So we're pretty excited to offer in our online store, some nifty

bee keeping supplies.

The kind folks at Bee Thinking are wonderful!

As bee keepers ourselves, we are very pleased with the high

quality of the product that we're offering.

These hives are made right here in Oregon !

Gotta love that, right?

This cool little gem below is a Warre Hive:

I thought I'd share a 'not too long ago' honey

extractor session right here on our farm/homestead.

Here is our mighty extractor ready to tackle the job!

Uncapping the frames.

We used a heated knife that slices off the wax

like butt-ah....

Oh my.

Would you just look at that golden goodness.

The uncapped frames go right into 

the spinner inside the extractor.

This is what comes out folks!

Pure Goodness.

Liquid Gold.

Sweet Delight.

Raw

Gorgeous 

HONEY.

Oh yes.

The beauty of it all.

We will be sharing our experience

with our new hives and how they're working out for us.

Stay tuned!

Blessings.

Hello there!
 We are the proud owners of Homestead Drying Racks and
The Homestead Store.
We are a family of 7 who have been homesteading for the past 20 + years.
We share daily life on our farm with cows, chickens, goats, honeybees and plenty of other critters
from season to season!

We live in the beautiful state of Oregon. 

Seriously.

It's that beautiful. 

This view is 15 minutes from our farm.

We have 5 kiddos.

(some homegrown, and some grown into our hearts by adoption)

They all think its pretty awesome to be called "farm kids" and wear it proudly!

We also grow produce and different kinds of berries.

Yup.

We are busy - but extremely Blessed.

So we were very excited when God dropped this opportunity right 

into our lap to become the new owners of:

It's quite an amazing story that I'll share in a different post.

Did I mentioned we're Blessed?

Oh good.

I just did.

*~*~*

Here's the main Man behind it all. 

This guy works harder than anyone I know.

He has vision for his family.

(and his wife thinks he's pretty darn cute!)

Uh....that would be me!

All the kids work on this Homestead.

We couldn't do what we do without them - they really are amazing!

So there ya have it.

A little bit about us - I'm looking forward to blogging more about our lives, our products, family, farming, homeschooling.....

and everything in between!

*~*

Blessings.