Our Dexter/Jersey cow, Maybelline, had her calf - a beautiful heifer!

Look at that adorable little face! Another future milk cow, yee-haw!

Cow bonding.

Both mama and baby are doing fine, despite the humid, sticky, summer heat.

Meanwhile on the homestead, the flowers are blooming...

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow...
Matthew 6:28

Nasturtiums radiant and wonderfully edible.

Here is a delicious recipe we have been enjoying this summer and thought we'd share with y'all. 
Summer Green Beans
3 TBS.  Olive oil
1 LB. fresh green beans, snapped
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 purple onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp. salt
2 handfuls fresh basil
Layer ingredients in order given in a heavy bottom pot. Cook over medium high heat till green beans are tender. You don't have to stir this, or add water- tomatoes and green beans make their own juice as they cook. Cecilia created this simple but tasty recipe last summer and its now our favorite way to eat green beans!

One of our blue heelers, Sackett, ever ready to do a job. Good Dog.

Stay cool y'all and remember our new book "Bella the Blue Cowdog" is coming soon!

We're back on the homestead after a trip out West to see Granny. Glad we got to go, but glad we are home again too. The garden is overflowing with veggies and weeds and we have been canning up a storm! One of the prettiest things in the garden are the zinnias that are in full bloom. We love to grow zinnias as they are bright and colorful and bloom till late fall. 

The luffa gourds are doing real well and climbing up the trellis we built. 

Green beans.

Tomatoes and green beans.

Harvesting potatoes... 

One potato, two potato, three potato, four... 

It's always nice to have time to make some mountain music!

Hey Ya’ll! Sorry it has been a while since we have written, but as you can imagine things are really busy on a farm in the spring and summertime. We have been gardening (of course) and getting ready for the next Homestead Blessings video series. 
A few weeks ago we had help from some dear friends at church who came out and built our new chicken house! It is really awesome and we are very grateful to them. The hens and rooster are very happy now in their new home! 
Yesterday we got two new things for our homestead. A nice 7 foot deep swimming hole dug out in the creek by the garden (so we can cool down on those hot summer days to come) and a free kitten from a yard sale! We needed another cat because the two we have are getting old and a little lonely for a youngster running around. She is silvery gray and has green eyes. We have called her Fiona Gray. Also, Billy the Kid got a new home yesterday. L I was a little sad to see him go, but we can’t have a Billy goat on the farm. So now Magnolias milk production will go up, I hope.
This past week we filmed the Canning video. And the week before that we filmed the Gardening video. We only have one more to film for this series, the Herbal one. Since we filmed the Canning one, it got us a head start on our summer canning. So far we have put up, 14 quarts of green beans, 7 quarts of tomato puree, 6 or 7 quarts of blackberry jam and a little bit of sour kraut and pickled eggs. This is just the beginning though, we usually like to can at least 100 quarts of green beans not counting all the other fruit and vegetables we put up. 
We have harvested almost all of the early spring garden- broccoli, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, spinach, all this is over with so we replanted the raised beds with peppers, basil and other hot weather plants.
We have quite a big day ahead of us today. We are going to try and build a chicken pen for around the new chicken house, pull up the peas and replant lima beans, harvest potatoes, and I need to find some time in between all that to can some dilly beans and the rest of the tomatoes. So I better be going. Magnolia needs milking and the little chicks need feeding.
Many blessings to ya’ll!
Cecilia

We have been very busy here on Homestead Blessings since spring has sprung and the sun finally decided to shine and chase away all the rain. Yesterday, was a beautiful, beautiful, perfect day. The bluest skies, warm sunshine and a gentle southern breeze blowing, not too hot and no humidity. We even had a fire going in the cook stove in the morning because it was so cool. The garden is so beautiful right now and we spend 90% of our day out in it. We had part of the film crew out here yesterday morning getting some B roll shots for our new up coming DVD on gardening. So most of the morning we were all outside, hoeing the beans and potatoes, making raised beds for holy basil, marigolds, balsam and parsley, digging our first new potatoes, picking our first harvest of peas and squishing bugs that were on the potato plants. We have been using some straw for the pathways in the spring garden, so the contrast of the golden yellow straw and the brilliant green of the broccoli and cabbage is amazing. At dinner we all came in, sat around the table and enjoyed the meal and each others company. With the new potatoes and peas we just harvested, I made creamed potatoes and peas which was amazingly good, not because of my cooking, but because they were organically homegrown and very fresh. We also had, home canned green beans, yellow squash cornbread, fresh lettuce and blueberry buckle for desert.
After dinner we did some cultivating with our mare Cascade, staked our tomato plants, and found that our newly hatched Barred Rock laying hens that we ordered in the mail, were gone from their little chicken tractor out by the barn. Only 3 were left out of 15, we figured my blue heeler, Bella, must have gotten to them while we were eating dinner. ‘Tis a very sad fate, but that can happen on a farm. Bella is a very good cattle dog and watch dog. We have her trained to keep the chickens and goats out of the garden and she does very well herding up the horses for us. She just hasn’t been trained to leave the baby chicks alone yet. Needless to say, I’m working on that now.
Billy the Kid is getting very big and today he is 2 weeks old. He is very playful and friendly, and he has not discovered how to get out of the pen yet, which we are very grateful for. I milk Magnolia every morning, even with the kid on her all day and night, she still gives about a quart of milk. She is very good about milking. I just take a bucket of feed out there to her, squat down and began to milk. She never kicks, moves or anything. It is wonderful. When Billy is weaned, we’ll take him to sale barn or sale him to someone locally. We are going to get another young nanny soon, and hopefully some lambs in June. So our small herd is growing! Well, I best be moving along, there is laundry to be washed, eggs to check, planting to do and songs to be written.
The Lord Bless Y’all!
A Rambling Farmgirl,
Cecilia

Well time has gone by as it so quickly does and we have now had some very hot and dry days! That’s Tennessee for you! We have been able to pick pok choy, butter crunch lettuce, (my favorite) spinach, a spring mix with wild flowers and more! Its is such a blessing to gather the beautiful, healthy food that will nourish another sweet family ! There are many wild trees and flowers to enjoy right now, dogwoods, mountain laurel, blackberry and more! Plants are so amazing to me! They feed us, cloth us, (cotton, flax and linen) give us medicine to heal us, feed our animals and more. Wow, we are blessed! It is so wonderful to work with them and watch them grow. We are truly working close to our Creator when we are in the dirt!

We got the tomatoes (that we started in the green house from seed) planted in the garden this week. We planted Roma tomatoes which make the best for canning pizza sauce, ketchup and salsa. This year we started our okra in the green house around the first of the month and we set the plants out in the garden yesterday. That way we will have okra a little bit earlier this year. Maybe some jambalaya and okra file` gumbo will be on the menu this spring. Okra is related to the hibiscus flower and is very healthy for you. Some dear friends of ours came out yesterday and helped us build a big beautiful trellis for our cherry tomatoes and hyacinth bean to grow and climb on. We will also plant the beautiful moon flower vine that blooms big and white in the evenings. It is so nice because we will be able to walk under the arbor into the big garden, pick our food and enjoy the beauty of it!

I’ve been transplanting zinnias and marigolds from the greenhouse out into the garden. I got African marigold this year for a salve I would like to make and marigolds are soooo good for the garden and to keep away bugs. Zinnias make beautiful cut flowers and of course look wonderful in the garden! Cecilia and Hannah have been staking the early peas and Jasmine is planting arugula. We are all trying to get plants and work in before the rain comes in the next couple of days. We will be working on getting a new chicken coop built next week. We are having to move our hens to another spot on the farm because they like to find our neighbors garden and scratch up their lettuce. Oh how they love to ramble! We have 18 hens and 1 rooster that give us plenty of beautiful brown eggs. (Not the rooster of course!) Three times a week we sale eggs to our faithful egg customers, which is more than enough to help pay for the feed and still leave plenty of eggs for us!

Well I must go transplant my basil now. We love pesto, and we eat it with almost every meal in the summertime! We hope to share a few recipes with ya’ll in the future. That’s all for now folks, gotta get back to the garden!

Blessings,
Vicki
P.S Here is a recipe we love to use when the spinach is coming in:

Mushroom and Spinach Marinate
1 gallon sized bag of baby spinach or chopped large spinach
1 ½ cup mushrooms, sliced
1 can black olives, drained and sliced
¼ cup olive oil - or more if needed
Celtic or Kosher salt
Fresh cracked black pepper
Toss spinach and mushrooms with olive oil, add black olives, pepper and salt to taste. Let marinate in warm kitchen for 1-2 hours or in fridge overnight. We like it best at room temperature. This sounds too simple to taste good, but we love it and even served it at a gourmet party and everyone raved about it.