Season of Survival

After we planted our fall garden I soon realized why we usually skip this second garden round. It was truly a season of survival. We were so busy once school started up that we were really out of garden tending mode. Even in this year of quarantine, the busy schedule took over. I like to call the crops that made it out there the “Fall Survivors”. I am happy to report that we actually had some pretty great things thrive!

It was a good test to what crops are hardy enough to survive our fall neglect to show us exactly what we can handle growing in a future fall garden with respect to our busy schedule. 

Our family has been in a bit of survival mode lately. All 5 older kids are in school, but on a hybrid in-person/virtual schedule and there is not one day that all kids are in school. I feel this is somewhat unfair. I am thankful they are attending school and the alternating schedule does cut down on my time in the carpool line so there is no argument here. It is a very interesting and confusing schedule that leaves me nightly figuring out who goes where and when.

In October we went on a family camping trip to Devils Fork State Park (it was beautiful by the way, I highly recommend this park for camping). As we were setting up our campsite we got a placement call for a newborn foster baby girl. Although it drastically change our weekend plans, and the rest of our near future, we all agreed that I would run to the hospital and start the steps moving toward taking this little pink bundle to be a part of our family. This meant that our schedules were once again being changed, but also that we could be a part of the positive changes for this sweet little girl in such a difficult time in her life. I love fostering, and I love babies, so it was an easy decision for me. 

So the fall garden and bartoncraftbarn.com blog were put on hold for a time as I paused life every 3 hours to feed a hungry baby while organizing my mom taxi and short-order cooking gig. I discovered with six kids my hands are officially full. People have been telling me they were full for years, but I now feel them sagging! I did snag a few moments to craft some Christmas gifts for family and friends. Crafting is cheaper (and more fun) then therapy! Below are two gifts I designed & delivered this year. The guitar snowflake ornament was cut by a friend out of metal and I designed the sticker label for our first batch of muscadine wine that we made this past fall.

So when I was able to surface for air and grab a breath it was exciting to see that our garden still loved us and had some wonderful produce just waiting to be harvested. I think my favorite crop this fall was the collard greens; they were so much tastier than what you can find in the grocery store! I made them with this recipe in my new instant pot (thanks moms for this fantastic survival meal making machine!) The cabbage was delicious as well as the broccoli. The rutabaga didn’t fair that well. I’ll have to do a bit more research on those. They grew, but were not very big and looked nothing like the grocery store variety. The last thing we were able to harvest were the Brussel sprouts. I find it crazy how they grow on the underside of the leaves and that the cold weather doesn’t seem to effect them much.

So now as we move on in another year, as the baby stretches her feedings for more than 3 hours during the night giving me a little more brainpower to work with, we look forward to more than surviving. I started thinking about the 2021 garden plans and even started a few seeds for the garden. This year we ordered seeds from the Vegetable Seed Warehouse for the first time.

We have a greenhouse in the works. I’m calling the greenhouse project the “reclaim my screened-in porch project”. The farmer was sick of the squirrels stealing the seeds he planted that he covered the entire perimeter of our screened-in deck with his planted pots. I look forward to not walking around pots of dirt one day soon! Hopefully the dirt pots are moved before the baby starts crawling! I also hope to craft a bit more and jump on the blog more often to update our happenings.

Something new for our little farm is we started selling our duck eggs at the local farm, Happy Cow Creamery. They have been very gracious to help us sell our eggs. I had fun creating this a little label below for our duck eggs.

Go check them out! This weekend, February 20th at 12 noon, Happy Cow will celebrate Farmer Tom’s 80th birthday and the governor will present him with the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest-level civilian award. This is pretty cool for our local farm where we have gotten milk since my kids were little. In fact, my 11-year-old is somewhat of a milk snob and will only drink milk if it’s from Happy Cow. Spoiled much?

I also started making Kombucha. I have only made a few batches and have many more things to learn, but I love the process so far. Our interest in kombucha started with a visit to Grapes and Grains to learn how to make wine. We left with a thirst for kombucha, but only until this past month did I have the time to try to make some for myself. The first batch was a success and if anyone local is interested I may have a SCOBY to share one day soon. 

Something very exciting came to my craft room this month: a magical laser cutter. I can’t wait to fire it up more often as I learn the ins and out and get started making laser cut crafts. I have been lurking over laser cut projects for way too long and I hope to steal moments of time to have some fun with the new machine. Below is my first project that was such a pleasure to make for a friend that will be married very soon.

Expect some laser cut tutorials in the near future! It felt like Christmas morning the day we picked this monstrous machine up. 

As always drop me a line if there are things you would like to read about, or if you have project ideas for me on the new magical laser cutter. I may even be able to fill custom orders!

I’ll end this post with a video project that my son made for school for an assignment to describe a process in a sequence of instructions. It’s quite funny and I hope you enjoy it.  He choose to list the steps of how to raise chickens and because it’s on topic with the blog I wanted to include it here for a little laugh.