Schoonover Farm Blog

We were able to take the kids for a couple of days during their spring break between my work shifts.  We picked them up Wednesday late morning.  I had the bright idea to go out to lunch with them and Tom’s parents who live south of them.  Here they are at the Hearthfire restaurant.

And here is part of our lunch.  It was really nice, and I think Tom’s parents enjoyed it too.

Back at the farm, the first order of business was seeing Jameson.  We fed him a bottle of calf replacer.

Then it was time to ride.  William showed Piper how to drive the quad.  He did the steering and braking, and she did the throttle.

I made them some Peanut Butter Blossoms.  I didn’t have any Kisses but had some Cadbury milk chocolate eggs.  They actually worked out just fine.

There was more riding and calf feeding until bedtime.  This morning we made runs to the local feed stores looking for turkey poults.  Our local store was supposed to get them in this morning, but it was not to be.  So I ordered some online, but we decided to head to the Breazeale Interpretive Center.  The aquarium of one of my all-time favorite photos wasn’t operational today, but the others were.

The touch aquarium was open today so the grandkids were both able to touch starfish.

Piper prepared this beach animal depiction.

They had a great time exploring everything there.  Then we headed to The Rex Bistro for lunch.  We sat on the patio so we could have Ryeleigh with us.  Our neighbors arrived with a dog named Brandy.  And then the Rex security dog Carly showed up.  It was quite the dog party.

Lunch was great, and the weather amazing.

We then headed to Snow Goose Produce for ice cream.  Here are the kids decided on what flavor they wanted.

And here are the views. You could see Mount Baker and the snow geese.

Piper chose Blue Bubblegum, and William chose Pop Rocks ice creams.

There was nowhere to sit as they were incredibly busy.  So we decided to tailgate it.

Then we drove by the daffodils and tulips to go back home.

There the kids wanted to check on Jameson. We let him out of his pen to run around.

Back in this house, we measured the grandkids.  I had noticed recently that there was only one measurement here for William from 2020.  I think after that we started doing measurements at Mom’s cabin and stopped doing that at home.  But I thought we should use both places so they were measured today.  Both are growing like crazy!

We had a leftovers dinner as there have been plenty of them from the lunches.

Then it was more riding.  By now, Piper is driving the quad completely.  She is steering, accelerating and braking.  It looks like we will need another quad.  It is impressive how quickly she is picking this up.

There was one more feeding of Jameson, and the day was over.

They will be going home tomorrow morning when I am at work.  It was a whirlwind of activity but fun.  I hope they think so too.

This morning while doing chores I was impressed about how nice our farm is.  And I was appreciating the work and dedication we have put into it to create it.  It may be the gorgeous spring weather influencing me, but I am impressed by what we have done here.

I have been getting ready for this day all week.  I hard boiled a bunch of eggs, and some of them were dyed.

Yesterday I took a British Baking zoom class called Bake with a Legend.  One of the recipes called for glacé or candied cherries.  I couldn’t find them in the local stores so I bought frozen sweet cherries and used this recipe to make them myself.  The recipes were for Howard’s Chocolate Cherry Hot Cross Buns & Calabrian-style Easter Nests.  Here is the class in action in our kitchen.

Here are Howard’s finished bakes.

And here are my hot cross buns (I struggle with piping),

and my Easter nests.

This morning I got up early getting things ready.  One of the tasks was to make a fruit salad.  The poultry got to enjoy the leftovers from this.

The stanchion worked well again, and the calf was able to nurse on both sides completely so that is a win.

I let the cross beaked hen out of her pen as her companion chicken had died.  We will put wetted food out for her in the chicken pen.  Hopefully this will work out for her.

We also put out the Easter eggs in the orchard this morning.  Fortunately we were blessed with amazing weather.  Can you see the eggs?

I got the rest of the food together which also included carrot cake, pickled eggs, and deviled eggs.

When the grandkids arrived, they wanted to meet the calf first.  Here is William petting him for the first time.

This is Jay, his mother, also petting him.

And William was able to feed him his electrolyte solution.  This may be his last bottle as his scours seem to be resolving.

Here is Thomas and Diana meeting him.  Everyone was enamored with him.  After a discussion, it was decided by William and Piper to name him Jameson.  It seems to fit.

Tom made London Broil, oven baked potatoes and steamed asparagus. Everything was really good in my opinion.

After eating there was the Easter egg hunt.

Then they got to got through their loot.

There was quad riding in the mud out back and another visit to the barn to pet Jameson.  The weather was perfect, and everyone seemed to have a great time.  Another Easter done, but this one without any drama, which is good.

P.S. I finished this book this evening.  It was more about theory in my mind rather than specific of Indigenous foods.  But I did learn a lot and have some information to follow up on.  It is a good book if American Indigenous foods are an interest to you as they are for me.