Valentine Date Night

This.

*This*

This is what happens when you spend the majority of your waking and sleeping hours in a house full of males.

You forget all about dressing up for date night.  Hours and hours of fussing over your hair replaced by an Alpine ski hat.  Accessorizing with a mustache. Letting him wear the pink heart glasses. 
Selfless, sacrificial and fashionable love, that's how we do things in our marriage.

 

Bob & Hollie

Valentine Sweethearts circa 2014

First B Valentine Fellowship Party

A date which will go down in infamy.

 

{Thanks for the fun night, love! xo xo xo - Can I have the glasses back now please?}

Season Opener and Numbers From Last Season

Gardening Season begins in January on our little farm.

 

I always think this is the most exciting point of the season - where the garden is full of hopes and dreams and void of insects, hail, drought and the other realities that make gardening such a hard task.

 

Johnny Jump-Ups from Seed Savers

 Normally, at this point in the season I am so desperate for anything to be growing somewhere that I tend to start too early and plant too much.  Thankfully, I am slowly maturing {it takes a while} and am learning the lessons of patience.  I'm still trying to figure out how to not over-plant!  The little seedlings are just *so cute* when they first poke through the dirt!

  I've only planted our 'cool season' seeds thus far, but this weekend it will be time to put the pepper seeds in and we are just a few weeks out for tomatoes and flowers.

{HOORAY!}

Ailsa Craig and Red Wethersfield will be our onions this season

 My husband is eternally patient with my zealousness.  He always has a little twinkle in his eye when asking how many 'babies' I planted this time.  And he's always so kind to not laugh too hard when I tell him maybe we DO have room for 341 tomato plants this year ... maybe?  They just start out so small and cute to begin with- they hardly seems like anything cumbersome until May and then I am usually forcing plants on my friends who have anything resembling dirt in their yard.

Gruner Krauser Kale

 

We saved a lot of our own seed from our garden last year - which is a wonderful project {and necessary, if I might say so myself!} to do with the boys.  Because we did this I was able to try out a few new crops for this coming year and still we have only spent $60 on new seed/supplies for our anticipated gardening needs. I'm anxious to see how celery and fennel do in our garden.  Of course, we'll need to till up a bit more of our back yard which means I need to get busy baking some chocolate chip cookies for my most excellent and wonderful tiller operator.  {Thank you, Love!}

 

I have finally put all the numbers together from our 2013 garden and orchard - how blessed we feel to have harvested 745.46 pounds!!  I'm quietly hoping to break the 1000# mark in 2014 but we never know what the weather will bring or how helpful the work force will be.  It seems like we have a ton of help in the garden during raspberry harvest (somehow those raspberries never quite make it to the scale ... :-) )

Have you started thinking about your garden?  I'd love to send you some seed from our 2013 harvest.  Leave a comment and a way for me to get in touch with you.  The boys and I will go through the comments and send some seed to a lucky commenter {or two!}

 

P.S. Georgia, I already have some Yellow Pear Tomato seeds with your name on them.

'He who works his land will have plenty of bread

but he who follows worthless pursuits will come to poverty.'

Proverbs 12:11

 

Fair Weather {Nebraska Football} Fans

Yay Seahawks!

We have a new family tradition of watching football games only when the Seahawks are in the Superbowl.  Last night was the second football game we've watched in eight years - since the Hawks played Pittsburgh in '06.  It has more to do with the fact that we can't stand to sit still for four hours in front of the t.v. than a reflection of how well {or not} the team is doing.  I guess you can still classify us as fair weather fans.  It's pretty exciting that the Seahawks have finally WON a Superbowl!

Yay Hawks!