Welcome back to White Oak Farm!

APRIL IS AN EXCITING TIME FOR THE HOMESTEAD!

I hope you had a wonderful Easter holiday. We were very fortunate to finally be able to bring all of our kids and grandkids together again, for the first time since before the pandemic! It was great to spend quality time together again!

It was so great to see the littlest three all playing together for the first time! This was also the first time for our youngest daughter’s boyfriend’s son to visit us here. It was fun to see all the different ages of these kiddos get along so seamlessly. They’re all so sweet! Our homestead has never been so busy! We are truly grateful and blessed!

I also got to spend some quality time with my parents and brother recently and you can see here how much my mom loves being a Great-Grandmother! I’m of French ancestry and we call our grandparents Mémère (ma-may’) and Pépère (pa-pay’) with the short “a” sound at the beginning of each.

Organic Vegetable Gardening

We’ve been working in the garden and have shared some of our progress in a couple of videos you can find on the VIDEO GALLERY page of this website. There will be more from the garden to come this summer as our favorite things get planted and growing. I’ll also share how I preserve some of our home-grown veggies for the winter by making salsa, pickles and other goodies.

Martin built some raised garden beds our first summer here in 2019 and he recently built a few more which you can see in THIS VIDEO. 

Our oldest daughter and son-in-law live nearby and will be growing their own selection of veggies in the garden this summer too! That also means we’ll get to spend more time with them and their two sweet kiddos! Healthy food and lots of extra hugs and kisses! Win win! 😊

Farm Animals on the Homestead 

Our first farm animals were a small flock of chickens that we got as day-old chicks last Spring. They’ve been a lot of fun and a great first experience. I chose 4 different breeds of chickens and don’t really have a favorite breed yet but there are 3 individual hens that we’ve grown rather fond of, Daisy, Oreo and Little Squirt! They are 3 different breeds.

They are all great egg layers except one! And I won’t name names here but I’m keeping my eye on that little girl! Even without extra lighting in the coop, they have kept us covered up in eggs even all winter. I hear this is unusual but they HAVE been eating well! lol

Most days I collect 12 eggs from our 13 chickens! We’ve had lots of extras to share with family and friends and that makes me so happy!

FLOWER GARDENING & LANDSCAPING

Even though I used to admittedly have a “Black Thumb”, I’ve always enjoyed working in the dirt, building flower beds and surrounding our home with pretty flowers at all of our other homes. Nice landscaping really does improve your property value.

HYDRANGEAS ARE MY FAVORITE!

Growing perennials, roses and hydrangeas in my flower beds is one of my passions but it can be a slow process because they can take a long time to get established and the initial purchase can be expensive.

We have the beginnings of some pretty landscaping. Some of my favorite garden ideas for our flower beds are starting to take shape and come to life here at Stanfords Modern Homestead. My skills have definitely improved over time and I’m excited for what I can do here.

Who’s Coming to the Farm?

I’m getting really excited for more baby animals that we will be bringing to the farm this year! I wonder if you can guess what kind of animals they will be! Leave your guesses and ideas in the comments below! I’ll let you know if you’re right very soon! In the 3rd week of April some of our new animals will be arriving to the homestead so be sure to check back here and on our SMH Facebook page to find out who they will be!

It’s true – You are what you eat! Clean, healthy eating is important to us now more than ever! And I’ll tell you why in another blog post very soon. We’re excited that we can grow more of our own fresh food here and use organic, free-range methods to also raise pastured animals for eggs and meat.

I can not wait to share pics and videos of our flower gardens and farm animal updates with you this summer! I’ll share more pictures and stories right here on the blog, as well as in some videos on our YouTube channel. 

Come visit again soon to keep up with all the fun!

Truly,

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” Author: Aristotle