In A nutshell

I am surprised I don't have more posts with this title, as I always feel that time gets away and I'm posting about whats going on , on the farm and homestead........... In a nutshell!

I found a moment of peace this a.m. My husband took my daughter to music camp , its quiet and I have my coffee,, a good time to sit , reflect and tell ya'll ( well as much as I can , there has been a LOT going on) what we have been up to!

GARDENS

They are more on the Jungle side of things now, or alteast getting there, but they sure were beautiful at one point , this is one of 4 gardens.....


THE BOUNTY

 A few photos of our Daily Harvests

THE FARM

its been a BUSY 4-5 months, we just pulled our Summer Honey ( about 1000 lbs) once that is extracted and in buckets, it will be time to get the girls ready for winter..
Here are a few photos from this Bee season.

COUSINS~
My Niece Collette Came down for a week. Norah and her had an amazing time!  From creek swimming To fort Building ~ Tree house redecorating to raiding the candy counter at the General store, :) I miss her already and sure hopes she visits again soon!

THE PIGS
Saying Goodbye To Bob and Terry was tough to say the least... We now  have a freezer full of meat to get us through winter and for that I am super Thankful... We will process 25 more chickens before winter and I still have a lot of garden Bounty to put up. We will be eating good this winter .


  So that's our summer In a Nutshell................................................



Blessings
The Cool Family

21 days of homegrown food

Hello! So I am really really trying to keep this blog going but its just so busy. planting, weeding, harvesting , weeding, butchering chickens, beekeeping,  harvesting honey,
selling at the market, opening a 150 yr old general store, participating and being on the Local Farm tour have kept us busy to say the LEAST.. its been a complete whirlwind...
I figured I could atleast leave you with some pretty pictures! I started an album on my facebook page, called 100 days of homegrown food posting a daily bounty for 100 days... I leave you with the first 21 :)

 

 

 

Dreams and gardens are Growing!

So, Its that time of year,, its bee season and garden season. and I just cant seem to sit down and blog! At night I am just too tired to try and conjure up the words and explain to you the gazillion things we have going on.

In the past couple weeks we
*got our gardens in
* have been building bee equipment
* inspecting bees and getting ready to rear queens
*weeding, watering, watering and watering( we finally got rain)
* remodeling our honey "house" and putting new equipment in
* spoke at the Mother Earth news fair out bees
* spoke at Eustace Conways Turtle Island preserve ( about bees)
* working with Blue Ridge women in agriculture as we are going to part of this years farm tour,,

oh and did I mention,, ??? we bought a 150 year old General store?? yeah, true story...

We are now on top of everything else ( almost) the owners of a 150+ year old General Store Located in the middle of the National Forest on a wild n scenic river.. * Coffeys General Store* ( its one mile from my house and has been closed down for years) it has survived 2 Historic Flood a great depression and has so much history. the antiques in it are amazing,,  It's  almost overwhelming ... so much history in the store!! and yes everything in it comes with the store ;)
  it will be a bit of long road and a 5 yr vision to really have it how we want, but we plan to open on July 4th of this year.
   the goal : you can get your essentials here for camping, our local produce, honey, eggs, soap, Chicken, ( pork eventually) etc
This is going to be a beautiful extension of our homestead!




The gardens : so all 5 gardens received a wonderful steady rain yesterday( after about 3 weeks of nothing) so everything should really start filling in!!
Its just me working these gardens so its quite a bit of work, but I wouldn't have it any other way.. :)


 

 

 

 so if you follow my blog you are just gonna have to get used to a lot of info crammed into one post,, haha...
we have a lot on our plate right now, but I will continue to update your on our homestead , store, off grid life, market, bees etc...


So as you can see our gardens are growing and so our our dreams!!
Yay for new adventures!

and please forgive all the typos, I know there are more than a few ;) headed out the door and getting started on my day!! Have a beautiful day!



until next time

The Cools