O Christmas Tree

This years Christmas Tree once again hailed from our back yard.  We chopped down the large hemlock behind the barn and gave the branches to the goats as a winter snack.  Rather than buy a tree, we opted to use the top of the hemlock instead, giving us a nice wispy, whimsical tree.

Merry Christmas!

Israel - The Holy Land

We just arrived back from a great trip to Israel through Pilgrim Tours.

Our tour guide was fabulous.  We greatly enjoyed Yatzuck's morning off-key singing, his "go, go, go" speed, and the caring oversite of his "people."  This photo really captures him well.

We spent 7 days in country stretching from the Mediterranean Sea on the west to the Dead Sea in the east.  It was absolutely incredible walking in the footsteps of the Israelites and Jesus.  Below are some pictures of our favorite places.

Fall Recap

Where did the time go?!?!  Apparently we've been so busy that we didn't even have time to post the past two months.  Here are some of the highlights from our Fall.

1. We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary!

Yup, still kickin'.

Eric even made a banana cream pie!

2. The garden harvest was successful.  We enjoyed many fruits and vegetables along with a great pumpkin and gourd harvest this year.

3.  The goat's hay was delivered in one BIG wagon.

4.  The piggies all went peacefully and have since returned to the freezer.  They sure were a happy bunch rooting around in the woods all summer long!  We definitely enjoyed having them and are now enjoying the bacon.

5. We started refinishing the wood floors in the house.  First stop was the living room. 

 (Sadly no one warned us about the dust)!

Before and after.

Happy Farm Animals!

Hanging with Harriet

We returned home from a day up in Burlington on Saturday and much to our pleasant surprise, we found "little" Harriet attached to a post on our porch, starting to spin a cocoon.  Eric cut her out and we added her to the tank.  Hopefully in the spring we'll now have two cecropia moths hatch!  

We're keeping our eyes peeled for more caterpillars as they seem to be everywhere!

Herman the Worm

Well, he's not actually a worm!  We had friends over the other day and saw this amazing looking creature on the porch.  After examining him for a little, Teresa went in search of more and sure enough, there was a second one crawling through the grass!

We did a quick google search for: "Green worm with colorful spikes" and there it was, the cecropia moth.  This is North America's largest native moth with a wing span of 5-7 inches!!!  These big caterpillars spin a silk cocoon and overwinter.  They will hatch in early summer into this large moth.  The moth has no mouth and will simply mate, lay eggs, then die.  A new batch of these guys will be born and in August and September they will be mature enough to form their cocoons. 

We brought Herman inside and the first night, sure enough, he spun his cocoon.  We'll store him in the barn for the winter, sprinkling him with snow and hopefully next summer we'll get to see this amazing moth emerge. 

 

Old ham crates = new furniture

A few months back, Teresa had a vision for a new cubby-hole organizer for the mud room.  All of the online options seemed so modern and uninteresting, so with the help of a Google search, the idea of stacking old crates came to be.  Last week we drove around stopping in antique shops looking for some old crates.  We kept striking out time and time again, but eventually found a large antique store in Quechee and our prospects started to look better.

In the basement of the store were PILES of old crates.  Most of them ham crates shipped from Poland.  They were all slightly unique and possessed so much character. 

We bought 11 crates total and Eric went to town with the nail gun when we got home. 

We ended up with an awesome looking storage shelf and another smaller bookshelf.