July 2017

Last year was my first year canning, but this past July I really went to work. I put away tomatoes, salsa, tomato sauce, green tomatoes, jelly, jams, pepper jelly, banana peppers, jalapenos, peaches, peach cobbler filling, and more. The biggest hit however has been our candied jalapenos.

Fried duck egg, grilled peach with butter and honey, and homemade buttermilk pancakes with my homemade peach syrup.

My weekly homemade breads

Our animals are continuing to grow and so is our feed bill!

We also found these beautiful muscovy ducks for sale. They have made a wonderful addition to our pond.

Our appleyards first swim in our pond

In July we continued to do well with our farmers market. We even made an appearance in the local newspaper. Skylar and Maddox joined in with their own booth selling homemade dog treats and essential oil bug spray.

Skylar's Barkery

Maddox's MADD-Ox bug spray

As a fun day trip, we took the kids to the Jimmy Carter's boyhood home and museum. Meet the future Presidents of the United States of America!

President Mason Brevard

President Skylar Brevard

President Josiah Brevard

President Maddox Brevard

At the end of the month we celebrated my niece's 3rd birthday. Happy birthday Ashlynne!

June 2017

June Memories

Every evening the ducks follow me back to their pen for dinner

I'll remember this as when I only had 11 ducks! lol

We rehomed our mean rooster Rocky. He was making the morning feeding unbearable with his constant flogging!

However, Rocky did leave us with a parting gift. This mama hen hatched 4 baby chicks after he left

Unfortunately, a few weeks later a predator would come in and take them all

I was so proud of my harvest this year!

The kids joined art camp again this year, and the local newspaper snapped our photo as we were signing up!

Josiah participated in camp all week, but decided to sit out the performance

Mason lost his first 2 teeth on the same day in June! He was so excited. His teeth have been wiggling for days. The first tooth fell out in the Harvey's parking lot, and the second tooth came out that evening at home.

My sister Jessica, Mitch, and I, along with the kids creamed corn this summer. This was my first experience creaming corn and fortunately we did this by the pool, because this was a messy sticky job.

This was our end result!

We were proud to join the farmer's market this year, and even more excited when they asked us to take over and manage the market! Every Saturday we sold our duck eggs, chicken eggs, my homemade bread, produce that we pick from a local farm, and we advertised our turkeys

.
We bought more baby ducks for our little farm. These sweet ducklings are silver appleyard ducks.

Working in the garden

my homemade raisin bread

pork from our hogs and green beans from our garden

We took several trips to Wild Adventures this summer. Mason and Josiah loved the wave pool.