the awagoning

Besides taking care of the animals, gardening, and running around the vegetable patches, us farm kids do have some other ways of entertaining ourselves. Quite possibly the most dangerous and most entertaining of these was messing around with the wagons. We had several large child wagons at tollgate that were used to move things that were too heavy to carry, like boxes of glass bottles and things like that. At least, that's what they were supposed to be used for. When we were really little, me and my friends regularly took these wagons out of the barn and played around with them. Do you think that we just rolled them on the grass, maybe pushed some toys around in them ? NOPE.

 Those are things that normal, sane children would do, but were NOT normal sane children. We were 

4-H'ers.  Stupid ones at that. We wanted adventure, and so we took these wagons, climbed into them (as much as 3- 4 children per wagon at the same time) found the steepest hills on the entire farm, and launched ourselves down them. So imagine 3 or 4 small children rolling down a hill at high speeds in a wagon that looks like this:

(these are meant for 1 to two children of our size, so we were basically piled on top of one another.)
And if you thought this couldn't get any worse, the hill that we chose as first was in an arboretum that was right next to a large pond (I call it the peewee lake)  and we were going down the hill that was headed right into the lake, and we didn't care because we figured that since the hill wasn't really steep that we would stop before we hit the lake, and for once we were actually right. But then we realized something terrible about that hill. It was too safe.😞😤😥 We were not falling out and tumbling down the hill, and that is a major problem. Since this was actually the 2nd steepest hill, we decided to try the
steepest one, a hill near the horse pasture. We rolled our wagon to the top of the hill, climbed inside, and pushed the wagon down. After going faster than we ever went before and almost slamming into the nearby fence, we decided that this hill was worthy. We did have a few minor accidents, including the  wagon flipping over, launching us out, and landing on top of us.What did we do when this happened? scream? cry? reconsider our incredibly stupid behavior and stop? nope. we flipped the wagon over and went down the hill again. Looking back on this now, I can only think one thought: totally worth it.

Happy holidays!

Hi people, I'm sorry about not posting for so long, but I've been quite busy and really did not have the opportunity to. Anyhow, since the holidays are coming up, (yay!) so is an event in our club called Light Up The Night.

yaaaay holidaaays!

so gather round and I shall tell the epic tale of this awesome event.

Light Up The Night is a holiday themed event taking place at the Novi Civic Center. This is an event to celebrate the winter months and the holidays that happen in them. Just like the name implies, there will be a giant Christmas tree in the middle of the event that is quite breathtaking. However, that is by far not the only thing that is there. there is also:

• food vendors selling goodies like pies, restaurant food, and fresh, still hot kettle corn. (trust me, it's awesome)
• other kinds of stands selling things besides food. Some examples include jewelry, sock monkeys, knitted and crocheted things, and vegetables, soap and dried products (from 4-H, MY farm club)
• A concert stage with various songs and even karaoke
• an ice sculpture display
• marshmallow roasting pits
• a miniature train taking people from the civic center to the nearby Novi Public Library
• events at said library ranging from magic shows to decorating your own plate
• and a petting zoo with ACTUAL REINDEER. why? because Christmas, thats why.

So here is the address:45175 W 10 Mile Rd, Novi, MI 48375

 

That is all for this for this post, and please come to this event.  you would make this goat happy.

please make this goat happy.

Turkey Trot

Since Thanksgiving is coming up, I've decided to share the story of the (brief ) time that we had turkeys on our farm an how they terrorized us.



Since it was around Thanksgiving, our club's leader decided to get turkeys so that we could raise an sell them to people for Thanksgiving dinner. We set up an electric fence, put up some wire coops inside and released the turkeys that we had bought in their new home. Things went smoothly for the first couple weeks, but soon the turkeys started getting a bit older, and there for bigger, stronger, and more rebellious. And of course it was the job of the 4-H kids to take care of these birds. This included feeding them, giving them water, and putting them in their coops at night. That last task is where most of the problems occurred, because the turkeys really, REALLY did not want to go in. They would make us chase them around the coops, attack us, climb under things, and one even jumped onto the coop itself.  (the coops were like 6 feet tall) not to mention the times when they escaped and we had to chase a turkey across a field in total darkness (it was in the evening) So this thanksgiving, when I'm eating turkey, I won't take it for granted.

The Stupid Tomato Worms

While it is true that there are a lot of other pests on the farm, but the Tomato Hornworms have a special place at 4-H as the most hated of them all. and it's not just because they look like this:



they also cause a ton of damage to tomato plants by eating leaves, eating the fruit, and laying eggs all over the place so there is never a shortage of these little creeps in our tomatoes. There is still hope though, since there are ways you can get these worms out of your plants.

1. bring in some predators .
tomato worms have a few predators, an if these other animals won't do any harm to your tomatoes or other crops, then you can keep a few of those around. These include lady beetles, green lacewigs, and wasps, though I would not recommend wasps if you are planing on keeping the tomato plants in an enclosed space (like a porch or greenhouse) or near children or pets.

2. handpicking
if you have only have a few tomato plants and you want to keep it natural, you can always pick the worms off by hand. They may look scary, but tomato worms do not bite and are harmless. You may still want to wear gloves while picking, because some of the worms can be covered in wasp eggs, like this one:


3. Bacillus Thuringiensis
this is a bacterial disease that affects Tomato worms, and it is commonly available in most garden stores and other stores such as Home Depot. You spray the leaves with BT (it does not affect tomato plants) and when the insects eat the leaves, they will become infected by the disease.

gardeners hand scrub

Hello people of the Internet, today I will be sharing a recipe for "gardeners hand scrub" 

and it will keep you hand soft, healthy, and smelling great. This stuff usually costs an arm an a leg in stores, but this is an inexpensive and easy way to do it.

What you will need:

• containers
• any brand of dish soap
• sugar
• salt (optional)
• anything else you want to add in, like herbs or essential oils

1. get some small jars to put the scrub in. They should ideally be medium to small mason jars, but you can put them in pretty much anything.

2. pour dish soap in until the jar is about half full

3. add about 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of salt (the salt is optional)

4. add anything else you want to put in and mix it until it is fairly evenly mixed.

5. enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed this little DIY, and if you enjoyed it please hit that follow button for more like it.

happy fall!

Since it's fall we are harvesting all of our stuff now, like this popcorn that we harvested about 2 weeks ago:

it may not look that good, but it will look much better when popped, with maybe some salt and a pat of butter.

Just Some Derp

I got like 5 hours of sleep last night and I'm too sleepy to make a regular post so just enjoy this:


                                     picture from goats goats goats.html




                                           images from memegenarator


I hope u enjoyed this and if u wanna see more just click dat follow button

How we Egged the Trailer

This is just a funny story from a while ago at the club.

So whenever we collect eggs from the chickens, there's bound to be a few broken ones, right? Well one day, me and a couple of my friends at the club decided to draw faces on them. So we took the eggs and drew faces on them. It was mostly faces of people we dislike, like teachers.

Then we took them over to the open trailer where everyone throws all the compost, and threw them in, because that's where we should put the broken eggs, right? Maybe, but put them in does not mean hurl them so hard that they stick to the bottom. So when we were tending to the animals a few minutes later and one of the club leaders stormed in and demanded to know who had thrown eggs at the trailer, because they had dried in the sun and were now firmly stuck to the bottom of the trailer. oops.

Recipe For Chive Vinegar

 This is the recipe that my club uses to make the chive vinegar that we sell at our stands. The chive blossoms should be available at most farmers markets, or if you have a garden at home you can grow them there as well.


1. pour vinegar into whatever container you are using.  (I recommend mason jars)

                                                                 these are chive blossoms

2. take the chive blossoms and separate them from the rest of the chives. (you will need about 8 per jar of vinegar, but the more chive blossoms you add, the stronger the flavor is)

3. put the chive blossoms into the jar with vinegar, screw the lid tightly on, and put them in a cool place for a few days. The chive vinegar will be ready when the liquid is a darkish pink and the blossoms have turned from purple to white. (you can take the blossoms out before you use the vinegar, but that is up to you)



it should look something like this


I hope you enjoyed this post, and remember,

Jenna

I think it's time that I talked about one of the most respected member of the club. Jenna the goat. I'm not joking. Jenna is the leader of the herd of our goats, and she is the toughest, largest (weighs more than 200 pounds) sassiest goat on our farm. And the smartest, too. She is the only goat so far that has learned how to open doors by pushing the handles with her nose, and in this way she often opens the door for all the other goats to stampede into the barn an destroy/eat everything.

                                       me showing Jenna at an Oakland county fair (I'm the one in the white shirt)

Jenna is also one of our best fair goats, and has won a ton of blue ribbons, but it is quite a challenge to get her into the ring if she does not want to go.

Pumpkinfest

Hi, guys, sorry for not posting in such a long time, but I have been really busy. Anywho, I am posting about the event where I was all morning, at the 4-h Oakland County Pumpkinfest. This probably the most fun and least known event in Oakland County, and it was awesome today. The sun was shining, people were taking hayrides or roasting s'mores, and the 4-h booth had all its products and goats out on display. We had all our stuff there, vegetables, goat milk soap, dried apples, and even goats! (though they were not for sale unfortunately) I was walking around with one of the goats on a leash and letting people pet her.

Pumpkinfest seemed pretty busy, which is good, since we had a lot of produce and stuff to sell. (I also tried to get some publicity by walking around with the goat)

Farmers market

Hi guys, I'm back with another post. I know I did not not post yesterday, but that was just because I was busy and I will still be posting on a daily basis. Anywho, Since we grow all of these things and get the eggs and stuff from the animals, we need something to do with it all, so once in a while, we hold farm stands and sell all the things we make and grow.

carrots 

The things that we sell at these sales vary, but we usually have the following things at our farmstand:*

• carrots
• tomatoes
• peppers (sweet and hot)
• dried apples
• goat milk soap
• other vegetables

*in the winter we don't have vegetables, but we have everything else

FYI, there is a farmstand this Saturday, and it is at an incredibly fun celebration called Pumpkinfest, where you get to shop, roast s'mores, and go on hayrides. This is taking place at the MSU Tollgate Education Conference Center on Meadowbrook road. 

Animals

As you know from my last post, we do a lot of gardening in 4-H, but that is by far not all we do. We also raise animals, mainly goats and chickens, but we do get the occasional sheep or cow, too. We sell the chicken eggs and make soap from the goat milk, so the animals are not just for show. (they are also very cute :)

                                                                         our new baby goats                                                           
 we also enter the female goats into competitions every year, and we sometimes even win these! (yay!) We come to take care of these animals twice every saturday and sunday, which can be a lot of work, but just try to look into a baby goat's face and say it is not worth it.

                                                       

The Average Workday

Hello, this is another post from the adventures of the wonderful tollgate farm. This time, I  will tell you what goes on at most of our workdays. A workday is a meeting where we get most of our garden work done.(workdays happen on saturday once or twice a month) This generally includes working in our greenhouse

                                                         the greenhouse
and in the outside garden, where we have most of our plants now, and where we mostly work now. (I do not have a photo of the outside patch at he moment, bu i will find one soon)

 This is not all we do though, and what we do at these workdays usually depends on if we have any events coming up. For instance, if we have a farmers market the next day, we will generally pick produce and put stuff in bags, whereas if we have a goat show coming up, we will usually train our goats and walk them around. But one thing is the same about all workdays. They are all awesome. It is usually pretty awesome to work in the garden and get some fresh air, and afterwards someone usually orders a pizza and we sit around and complain about teachers.

Salsa Party

Hello, It's Susanna, back to post once again and continue the (kinda) epic tale of 4-H. So I had arrived at the salsa party and I was already pretty excited about it, since I  really liked spicy food. (still do by the way) Right off the bat, I noticed that there were some other kids already in the room. 3 of these kids, were the only people at that party that became long term members of the club, and they are, along with me, (and another girl who joined the club recently, but that is a story for a different time) the group that attend almost every meeting and kinda hang around after the work is done.                                                          

 

So we started making salsa, and I was beginning to really enjoy myself. We could pick how much of what we wanted for our salsa, and an adult would help us chop it and put it in little bowls. After eating, we played tag for a bit and generally laughed and screamed and ran around. After this was over, my mom decided to join this club, and I had no objections, since that meeting had been awesome. So we enrolled, and I left, happy and unaware that I had just changed my life forever. (for the better of course)

How it All Began

Before I continue with this post, I want to say that I don’t live on a farm. And by that I just mean that I don’t have my house there, but that is the only difference between living there and what I do, and considering the amount of time I spend there, I might consider getting rid of that difference and just moving to my beloved Sun, Water, and Seeds Youth Urban farm club altogether. What’s even crazier is that my entire farm hobby/obsession started with a single bite of farm-grown spinach. It was a nice summer day, and my mother suggested going to a local fair at my now familiar tollgate farm. Me being 6 years old, I did not have much say in whether I stayed home or went places, so off we went. It was pretty cool, I looked at all the stands with people selling things and rawn around like the hyperactive kid I was. But then we were invited into the hoop house on the property (a hoop house is not a greenhouse, and I’ll talk more about that later) and someone pointed me to one of the rows, one where spinach was growing. I loved spinach, so I jumped at the opportunity to try some. As a kid raised on canned spinach, this was an amazing experience. The spinach was crisp and fresh and flavorful. My mom then asked who grew it, and we were told that it was grown by the Sun, Water, and Seeds 4-H club that met here, and  that that same club would be having a salsa party the upcoming wednesday. This salsa party will be discussed in my next post, since I think this will be all for my first one, see you next time.