Fox Trot Farm

Grass Fed Lamb and Fresh Eggs from our Happy Hens

October 26, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
0 comments

Home School Educational Tours are So Much Fun

Home school groups are starting to come visit us now on Fox Trot Farm and we are really enjoying these groups. They are small groups of children of all different ages, from toddlers to young teens, and I tailor their tour to their age levels and the topics they are studying. It’s so much fun observing how each child relates to our farm and animals, and every single one of them learns something and has fun in the process. There’s nothing like hands-on when you’re learning about animals. There’s also nothing better for children than to be able to run down a grassy lane in the clean, fresh air of the country just for the pure joy of running. Up hills and down, swinging and jumping, yelling and somersaulting….there’s a time for learning and playing and not getting fussed at for burning off some energy here at Fox Trot Farm!

Here’s our 18th century log cabin, and that’s where the tours begin. Everyone wants to look at the bunny rabbits first, and then, when they are close to the cabin, I tell them a bit about how our ancestors lived way back when. Continue Reading →

October 25, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
2 Comments

Granny Bee’s Cinnamon Swirl Pound Cake

Granny Bee makes traditional Southern pound cakes from a very old recipe a friend gave me years ago. Sadly, my friend has long since passed to her heavenly reward, but I often think that she would be so proud of this Pennsylvania Dutch gal who learned how to make her pound cakes so well….and at how many people are enjoying them now as they buy them from our farm market.

Traditional Southern pound cakes are not light and fluffy like layer cakes. Instead, they are moist and dense with a fine crumb. The addition of our honey adds even more richness and a darker crust. These cakes require no icing or glaze. Indeed, many people will toast a slice and have toasted cake for breakfast! Pound cakes are a good time-management investment, too. They freeze very well for up to 3 months, and I package them so they can go directly into your freezer. I’m starting to make holiday cakes now, in fact. I sold out of the eggnog cake on Saturday at a farm event we participated in, and baked more Sunday morning and sold out of those in the afternoon!

I seldom cut one for Farmer Bob and me to eat because we have no self control. (I bet we’re not the only ones! HA!) Yesterday morning I baked early…pound cakes and oatmeal raisin cookies (our signature cookie made with our honey), and I just had to slice one of the cinnamon swirl pound cakes for us to have for dessert. Here is one of our cinnamon swirl pound cakes fresh out of the oven. It’s made with our fresh pasture raised hens’ eggs and our own raw honey. I wish you could smell the aroma of these cakes baking. Our house smells just like a donut shop.

cinnamon-swirl-pound-cake Continue Reading →

October 24, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
5 Comments

Beautiful Quilts at the SC State Fair!

FB (Farmer Bob) took me to the state fair on Saturday….our friends Dee Dee & Jeff Mahaffey are in charge of the dairy goat show. Jeff is superintendent (I think that’s his official title) and Dee Dee is his #1 assistant. She emcees the show…calls up the divisions and passes out the ribbons, smiles and laughs a lot, and just generally helps everyone have more fun than they thought they were going to have. We love seeing them in action, and we always learn more about dairy goats and dairying from listening to the observations of the judge and talking to the dairymen/women. We had dinner with them and the judge…it was so fascinating to meet the judge and hear her history with dairying and judging and all her travels. She came the whole way from New Hampshire!

The traffic was awful driving through Columbia (our state capitol) to get to the fairgrounds, because there was a home Carolina Gamecocks football game that was just letting out when we got there, and the fairgrounds are just beyond the stadium. It took us almost 2 hours to get through town, and then we were lucky to find a paid parking lot and we walked the rest of the way. Unfortunately, when we got to the goat show, I realized that I had left my camera in the truck wayyyy back at the parking lot! Luckily, I had my cell phone! The battery was getting low, though, so I saved all my pictures for the quilts and honeybee displays. 🙂

I’ll tell you what, these quilters in South Carolina sure are talented! One difference between the quilt show here and at the Kutztown Folk Festival in PA is that most, if not all these quilts here are machine quilted. They also hang so high on the wall that they’re not always easy to see, but I enjoy them anyway. I hope you enjoy all these pictures. Continue Reading →

October 20, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
3 Comments

Update on Anna

Farmer Bob did the chores last evening so I could sit on my heating pad (have follow up appointment with the doc this morning), and when he came back inside, he said, “I thought you said that Anna was in the pasture with Hobart.”

Well, I’m used to him “pulling my leg,” and I said, “Don’t even joke about that, Bob!”

He wasn’t grinning, though…..

“Where is she?”

“In with the lambs.”

I couldn’t breathe! Continue Reading →

October 19, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
3 Comments

Holly Flowers for our Honey Bees

Years ago, we pulled a holly bush out of the foundation bed in front of our house and Farmer Bob threw it on a burn pile of debris out in the pasture. Well, the darn thing took root and started to grow! Having no need to prune it, we just allowed it to go natural and grow as big as it could. FB pulled all the debris away from it when he was ready to burn the pile so it wouldn’t get damaged, and it continued to grow.

Fast forward to now. We ended up putting the hen houses next to it and the chickens love it, as you’ve seen in other pictures.They love its protection from hawks and even flutter up to sit inside the bush, where you can barely see them. Every once in a while, one or two will roost in it at night. See how big it is? Continue Reading →

October 19, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
1 Comment

Fall Lambs are Here!

About 5 months ago we put a young ram in with 10 yearling ewes, and I’ve been watching them closely and noticed two of the ewes had udders that were starting to swell. When you put a ram in with ewes, sometimes they will come in season pretty quickly, and sometimes it takes another cycle for that to happen and the ram to do his job, so it was really no surprise that only two “took” right away.

About a month or so ago, I pulled a muscle in my hip (I know, I know….be careful how I lift things, right?) and so when Farmer Bob is home, he tends to all the chores so I can rest that muscle. Especially the past two weeks, I haven’t been going out to the Back Forty every day. In the meantime, we got a new young Anatolian Shepherd (like Hobart and Turk) only this one is a sweet girl, Anna. We put her in with this group of ewes and their ram, intending to take her our before the lambing started since we didn’t know how she would do with all the mess of lambing and babies yelling for their mommas, etc. Well, we didn’t take her out in time and, when I went over to the Back Forty yesterday morning to feed everyone, Anna wouldn’t come to me, but stayed on the far side of the pasture. There was a ewe over there, too…what the heck? And then I heard a lamb bawling! Sore hip and all, I hightailed it across the pasture, just praying that the lamb was ok. I got over there to find a nice big ram lamb, and Anna had “adopted” it and was guarding it from the ewe. She was so very proud to show me “her” baby, and smiled and danced all around it! Continue Reading →

October 16, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
3 Comments

The Day After Fall Family Farm Day at Old McCaskill’s Farm

omf

Old McCaskill’s Farm, Rembert, SC

Wow! We had a great time at Old McCaskill’s Farm event yesterday! It was Kathy’s Family Farm Day at her farm and, from our best estimate, there were a couple thousand people there. We didn’t have a minute to sit down from the time we set up our farm stand at 10:00 a.m. till we packed it all up at 6:00. We sold out of all our honey bear jars of honey, and sold 22 bars of soap, 22 pound cakes, 21 dozen cookies, and 1,062 honey sticks! We could have sold double everything, but we ran out!

Do you remember this quilt? Continue Reading →

October 9, 2016
by Deborah Burgess
8 Comments

A Visit from Hurricane Matthew

Saturday we were paid a visit by Hurricane Matthew. Thank goodness it was just a side swipe and not a direct hit like we had with Hurricane Hugo way back in 1989! Matthew hugged the coast and did a lot of damage there, but for us, we received a little over 4 inches of rain here on our farm, and it was pretty windy with some strong gusts, so there is a lot of tree debris lying around. Farmer Bob went out last evening and walked most of the fences…saw a few downed trees and limbs but, thankfully, not on the fences.

I took advantage of the rainy day to catch up on UFOs (unfinished objects for us quilters!). I found a crazy quilt that I’d done and all it needed was to be bound, so I knocked that off pretty quickly. Here it is. It’s foundation pieced and a friend in our guild taught the class on this one. I think it will make a great quilt for someone’s little girl to curl up under, don’t you?

crazy-quilt-picture

Several weeks ago I ordered one of those great Daily Deals from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. It was a layer cake, which is 42 (10-inch) squares of fabric from a collection of fabrics that coordinate. (If you are a quilter and haven’t signed up for the Daily Deal, then do it now, although I warn you that the daily temptation of buying precuts at 40+% off is hard to resist! Here’s the link to sign up. Yes, I’m an enabler! What are friends for?)

Anyway, I ordered the layer cake and it sat on my shelf until I saw a quilt in a magazine that made me think of those layer cakes in primary and secondary colors, and so I figured out the pattern and made this baby quilt:

baby-quilt

I had the top finished, so I just did the quilting and binding and voila! I think it turned out just perfect, and I put a sleeve in the back so it can also be used as a wall hanging. I wish I’d taken a picture of the back, but you can see the same fabric on the binding. It looks like festive curly ribbons in all the same colors as the layer cake, and I found it at Emmie’s in Camden, SC. Bought what was left on the bolt, which will give me plenty to use on another baby quilt. I’ve already pieced another top from scraps I had left over from this one in the picture!

I finished binding a BQ2 quilt that I’m giving someone as a surprise gift, so I’m not going to share a picture of it yet and spoil her surprise, but it looks like this only with different fabrics:

bq2

You can click HERE to go to the quilt pattern for this and other BQ patterns. (BQ stands for Big Quilt.)

What I’m Working on Now

One of the guilds I belong to decided to do the Craftsy 2016 Garden Charm BOM together, and will get together one day a month to sew on this project. Since I have the farm and all that it entails, it’s not easy for me to carve out whole days to sew, including packing everything up and lugging the machine and supplies across the county. I decided to just work on this project at home as time allows. I’m currently on the applique border step, and yesterday I got all the pieces cut out and the stems made. I’m doing needle turn instead of raw edge, though, so this step will take me a bit longer, but will be fun to work on in the evenings. I haven’t done a ton of applique, so this will be good practice. Here’s the LINK to the pattern and classes, which are free, by the way. Here’s a picture of what the finished quilt will look like. As you can see, I have quite a way to go! (I’m using the same fabric…bought the kit when it went on sale for $99!)

bom-craftsy

Today (Sunday) is market day. I’m going to set everything up and hope that folks won’t be too busy cleaning up their yards to come out and stock up on honey and eggs and Granny Bee’s Bakery goods….and maybe even check out the new quilts that I’ve finished. It sure feels so good to get more UFOs out on the sale racks.

Our market here at Fox Trot Farm is open every Sunday from 1:00-5:00, so come by and see us!

oatmeal-honey Honey cinnamon-swirl-pound-cake

2016-08-18 Cinnamon Honey Oatmeal Cookies Honey Jar Display  Basket Of Eggs Thelma

EIEIO!

Deb