A Trip To Harmony Lane Farms In Smithville Tennessee

Happy Monday. How was your weekend? Last week was a long week. I started last Monday taking my sister for outpatient surgery in Knoxville. Then I had to stay late at work three different days. A long week. But the weekend was great!!! And I was so ready for it.

On Saturday my sister, niece and I went to nearby Smithville to visit my nephew. He works in Smithville and has lived there for more than a year. He discovered a goat farm near his house. Harmony Lane Farms, it is a working farm and they sell goat milk, ice cream and even fudge all made from Goat’s milk.

I went online to check it out and saw that they even had a farm tour and baby goat cuddling. We were all in.

We met my nephew in Sparta Tennessee which is about thirty minutes from his house. He had a pizza place he wanted us to try. We got into Sparta almost an hour before we were scheduled to meet him so we drove around the town.

My sister and I chose something different than pizza. Although the pizza looked great too.

Just outside of town we saw a little farm store that was very crowded. We still had some time to kill so we pulled in. The Farmers’ Storehouse. It was the neatest shop.

They make a lot of sour dough and even gave me a sour dough starter. It turns out that my sour dough bread is actually more of a yeast bread than an actual sour dough bread. But that’s okay I can do both. I have already fed the new starter a few times but haven’t actually made bread yet.

The farm tour was so much fun. We rode on a wagon and fed chickens, goats, cattle and watched the hogs being fed. I even got to milk a goat. Then we were able to cuddle the baby goats and even feed them with a bottle. They were just adorable.

***The goats know when it is feeding time.***

***The goats are hand milked twice a day.***

***Me and my sister and some baby goats. We also got to bottle feed them.***

We sampled several different types of cheese and the fudge of course. It was all delicious. My nephew always buys ice cream here.

I got home just in time to capture this beautiful moonrise.

Sunday was mostly resting and some laundry and spending time with my hubs.

How was your weekend?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

Goodbye March and Hello April!!

I was thinking about the month of March. It’s hard to believe it has ended for another year. March came in like the proverbial Lion. The weather was terrible the wind was so strong it blew our outside furniture all over the deck. We had tree limbs down and lost power one night for about six hours. We had a hail storm that left our deck littered with hail so thick it looked like snow. And then it, March, went out like a little meek lamb. Goodbye March. Until next year.

March was a full month of work and reading, knitting and crochet projects, dinners with family and then with some friends, I was the guest speaker at a hospitality training seminar, my husband retired and is loving it, I was able to visit with my niece who was in for a time from California, I visited a farm that grows tulips, my tulips are blooming and several of my orchids are blooming. So wow!!! Quite a month. I would expect no less I guess.

The Reduds are also blooming. At work we have several visitors who come in and ask “what are the beautiful purple trees that we see all along the roads.” I tell them they are actually Redbuds. Redbuds? but they’re purple, and then I show them the picture of a Redbud when it first blooms out and it is definitely a red bud.

***See how red the first bloom actually is***?

I passed a house that had this beautiful tree blooming and just had to get a picture.

And of course just like clock work we experienced Redbud Winter. The temperatures took a plunge last week which is always what happens when the Redbuds bloom. I truly believe in all the winters that we experience in East Tennessee. If you haven’t read my post explaining them you can read it here: The Five Winters of East Tennessee. Many people I work with, even my husband, poo poo this and don’t believe that the trees budding, and other signs have anything to do with the weather, but I firmly believe they do. My parents always believed this and so did early settlers, for them it was the only way they had of knowing when the last frost had occurred and it was safe to plant crops.

A few weeks ago I became obsessed with the crocheted Easter eggs that are all over the internet. I spent several hours watching a YouTube video while working stitch by stitch with a yarn, turns out was much too thick, to make one of these eggs. You crochet one side and then the other side separately and then slip a small plastic Easter egg inside and slip stitch the two sides together. My first one turned out so large, because of the thick yarn I was using, you could have put three Easter eggs inside of it. Back to my computer and YouTube I went. The second egg wound up on the floor because I got so frustrated, I may have actually yelled and stomped a little, with the yarn. I had picked a thinner cotton yarn. Wrong. The cotton just didn’t work. It kept splitting and it was still too thick. For round three I chose crochet thread, it is super fine. I am using a size 2.75 crochet needle. I finished it and I think I sort of like it. I would like to make a few more and hang them across my kitchen window.

***The third attempt. I think I am better off sticking with the crochet thread. I hung this one in my window and would like a few more. Maybe I will get better with each one***.

If you want to try one of these eggs, just put crocheted Easter egg inside your search bar and lots of them will come up.

So here we are in April. The weather has been so nice and soft. The trees are turning about a million shades of green. Flowers are blooming, and the pollen is going crazy!!! I guess you just have to take some of the bad with the good.

I leave you with one of my favorite April poems.

Have a wonderful week and month!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

It’s Tuesday Let’s Catch Up

Hello friends. I have been a little quiet on the blog lately. My life has been busy but good. I really have no excuse except I have been so tired every evening I usually don’t do much after I get home. So here is a little bit about what has been happening in my neck of the woods.

My sister and I visited the cutest farm on Saturday. We have been planning this for a while. The farm produces tulips every year. For about four weeks out of the year you can go there and pick tulips and take pictures and just enjoy the atmosphere and scenic beauty of the farm. It is really quite lovely. We had put off going for more than a week because the owners had reported a very small crop of tulips this year because of the rain and wind. We finally went Saturday, even though the tulips were a little less than what they will be in a week or two, and we had a great time. The weather was warm and so nice. We picked a few tulips. Most of them hadn’t bloomed out. I put them in a small glass dish and they are really starting to open up. We also had lunch and did a little shopping. I ran into a dear friend I hadn’t seen in a while. She recently lost her husband and she and I have been planning to do lunch forever. I made sure I had her number and we will definitely go in a week or two.

I had to do some work on my orchids on Sunday. I repotted two of them. My orchid Oliver is blooming after almost two years. His leaves were always green and strong but he didn’t bloom. I am so excited that he is finally blooming again. I don’t know why some of my orchids are male and some are female but I just see them that way.

Last week I met up with two of my best friends Lorie and Emily at one of our favorite restaurants in Tellico Plains. It was Lorie’s Birthday and we had dinner and Emily brought a cake. This restaurant has some of the best truffle fries I have ever eaten.

So lots of things going on. I have been working on a crocheted egg for Easter. I will share that with you soon. I’m not sure how crazy I am about them and they are so time consuming.

I leave you with a picture of two of my babies Kitty Kitty and Gus. It looks as though they are on guard, protecting us I guess.

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

Making Chocolate Pudding Cake

Hello and happy Monday. It really was a true Monday. I left the house this morning and several miles down the road I realized I had forgotten my purse. I did not go back. I had my phone and my lunch. I can use Apple Pay on my phone if I need to. So I did without it today. It did feel a little strange though. Oh well I guess it just proves I don’t really need a purse. I think I will get me one of those cute little wristlets and hook it to my keys.

It was a great weekend. The weather was so nice. I went outside Saturday morning to check out the tulip bulbs, and there are now fourteen coming up. I am hoping for even more because some of them are just barely breaking through. Of course I had a little helper. Allie.

I spent some time out on the deck reading. I am still reading Ina Garten’s Memoir. The sunshine and warm temperatures were just great. I baked bread and took most of it to work with me today.

When I was growing up my mama made a very yummy chocolate dessert that she called Chocolate Pudding Cake. Think lava cake or something like that and you will have an idea of what it is similar to. For many years we have tried to perfect the cake and make it like hers. I think my nephew and I just about have it down. After we came up with our recipe, other than a few tweaks here and there, my niece casually mentioned that she made it all the time. We are thinking we need to have a bake-off and let the family decide which one tastes the most like my mama’s.

Here is the recipe:
First melt one stick of butter in a 9×5 baking pan or casserole dish.
In a separate dish mix these dry ingredients:
1&1/2 cups of self rising flour
1&1/4 cups of granulated sugar
1&3/4 TBS. of cocoa
after you have stirred these together add:
3/4 cup of whole mild
2 tsp. of vanilla extract
pour into your pan evenly (DON”T STIR) after you pour it into the pan.

In a separate bowl mix:
1&1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of cocoa
Stir all of this together until all of the lumps are out of the cocoa
Sprinkle this mixture over the top of the first mixture (DON’T STIR) after you put it on top of the first mixture.

Boil 2&1/2 cups of water (this is where I am tweaking mine next time and only adding 1&1/2 cups of boiling water.) But I used 2&1/2 cups yesterday and it was still delicious just a little runny while it was still warm. Pour the boiling water over your mixture very slowly. Let it soak in for a few minutes and then put it in your oven at 350 degrees and bake for thirty minutes.