I Love When They Get it Wrong.

Happy one year shop-aversary to Farmstead Vintage!  A year ago, I was scared to take the leap.  I remember hemming and hawing, scared to post my first piece...scared that I would never sell a thing.  But here we are, you and I, 226 sales later!  Every sale is still as exciting as the first.  I am totally proud of what I have created, and that feels good.

I want to chat a little about the thrift of it all.  I'm a treasure hunter.  I love sifting through dingy stores to find the gems.  If you have great thrift stores near you, by all means go scavenge them and do not waste your money on me.  But, that is the beauty of why Etsy and Ebay work.  I may find your perfect dress in Detroit, and you may find my perfect cowboy boots in Nashville.  And, we are both willing to pay for the service of the other getting out there and finding them!

I don't however, only thrift for vintage.  Many of the items I score are new indeed.  I dress Coco in Hannah Anderson and Mini Boden, and she sports a new pair of Bogs each winter.  Joe is always a dapper dan for work, and when things get hair dye and bleach on them at the salon, I can throw them away because they were dirt cheap.  I hate paying more than around $3.00 for clothes or shoes, and no more than $10 for quality boots.

One of the best parts about thrifting is when "they" get it wrong.  Sometimes the pricers mark really quality items at $1.80, and crappy Kohl's brand things as high end.  And we, good people, are the beneficiaries of these  mis-pricing shenanigans!

My friend Kelly and I tag team all of the local thrift stores.  I often check my texts to find she has sent yet another picture of her cart loaded with goodness.  Sometimes one does not find a thing, but when the getting' is good...it's really good.

The recent spoils...

New J Crew cream wool and cashmere pea coat...$5.80.

On sale here for $189.99

Stella and Dot Chandelier earrings...$3.20

New here for $49.00

Vintage Frye Harness Boots (can't tell you what I paid because I'll sell these :)

They've made this style for decades, but seen new here for $298.00

And, The piece de resistance of the week...a brand new The Kid Craft My Modern Dollhouse  
$10.81 at the thrift store.

List Price $199.99.  I know.

And this, she said,  is why I thrift.  
Here's to another successful year!  xoxo, e.

Oh for the love of Thrifting. Sigh.

A few events took place today that led to a thrifting excursion.  I've been hating Dish network more and more lately.  The bill keeps going up, and channels I love keep disappearing from our plan, etc. (I need AMC people!).  And, event two,  I went mama bear cleaning in Coco's closet and decided she needed a new bookcase.

So, we switched to Direct TV, and the cable guy could not hook up the new cable to the TV in the bedroom.  Ok, in fairness to Direct TV,  I think it was my sister's TV from college.  It was old.

We set out to Lowe's for wood so Jojo could just whip up a bookcase (he is good that way), but we were unmotivated by the lumber section, and decided to go to the creepy thrift store across the street and look for an old bookcase.

We found a perfect tall cream bookcase for $4 (for coco), a small old cherry red bookcase for $3 (for me), and two embroidered pillows.  As we were getting ready to check out, Joe noticed the hand scribbled sign that said "all TV's $5."  "Hey, we need a TV!" he yelled over his shoulder as he ran back into the creepy basement where the TVs are.

It's one of those weird thrift stores where nothing has a price.  You have to wait for the lady with the peg leg (a.k.a., my arch thrifting nemesis see here), to come and haggle things out with you.  She is so authoritative, like she is taking you for everything you have.  I don't really care...just give me a price!

We hashed that out and she disappeared.  I was then left to deal with cashier #2.  The following events actually happened, and I was absolutely nice to her through the entire thing.

Me:  "My husband has a TV in the basement...he left it by the loading dock.  Can we just pick it up at the loading dock so he doesn't have to haul it up here?"

Her:  "No!  You cannot go into the loading dock!"  (panicked).

Joe:  "It's ok, I took it off the loading dock and set in on a couch down there."

Me:  "Um, alright.  It's just really heavy and that would be easier.  But ok - do you have someone that will lug it upstairs and out to the car then?"

Her:  "Yes we do!" in kind of a snippety I told you so sort of tone.  "Jerry!!"  she yelled.

*in comes Jerry, a thin and frail elderly gentleman*

Her:  "Jerry, there is a TV somewhere on a couch downstairs.  Can you take it out to their car?"

Jerry:  "No.  I'm making a sandwich right now.  Do you want a sandwich?"  (oblivious to our very existence).

Her:  "Jerry, can you help them when you are done?"

Jerry:  "I'll need to go put away all of my sandwich making materials.  I don't want the mice to get into them."  ....walks away.

By this point, Joe had already lugged the heavy ass TV out to the car, and I just wanted to pay and leave. My total for the two bookcases, two pillows, and one flat screen TV was $13.  The cashier was so busy saying "you know, she really should have charged you more for those pillows," that she only ran my card for $8.59 (totally random).  As she proceeded with the second transaction, I noticed a beautiful art deco print on the wall behind the counter.

Me - "How much is that painting?"

Her - "I've never seen that painting before in my life, but tomorrow everything is 30 % off.  Tomorrow really is a better day to shop here."

Sigh.  All for the love of thrifting!!

Apparently I need to go back tomorrow.

xoxo, e.

The Bee's Knees - Harvest Day!

   Saturday night, I cozied up on the couch with Joe and Coco, and watched "The Secret Life of Bees." It was beautiful; one of my favorite books and movies, and felt ritualistic as we prepared ourselves for honey harvest.  Our little guys had worked so hard for us all summer, and a little Queen Latifah action reminded me to send them love, goodness, and gratitude for their gift to us.

   I'm going to go through this process for you, bees 101 if you will, because it is so entertaining.  Until this summer, this was all foreign to me - yet it's amazing; one of the most perfect little civilizations ever formed...all inside a box.

   You start, in the spring, by ordering a nuc - five frames which include a queen and a few thousand bees.  You also order a hive - a wooden box with empty frames inside.  You take out five empty frames, and put in your nuc frames full of bees and your queen.  Throughout the summer, the bees fill all the frames with babies, honey, comb, etc.  When they fill one box, you add another on top...and another, and another.  Our hive this year had one deep and two shallow supers (extra boxes) added to the hive.

   Today was harvest day.  We took out all of the frames from the top two boxes, and three from the third box down - leaving a ton of honey for our bees to use as food.  The goldenrod is blooming like crazy right now, so they will probably fill the supers back up with goldenrod honey this fall, and we may get one more small harvest in before winter.  Before winter, you leave plenty of honey and a feeder for your bees inside the hive to eat while it's snowing!  

On to the picture tutorial!!

Final count:  Over six gallons (yes, gallons) of honey from our beautiful, productive honeybees!

The bees were really active last night and this morning; this is called the "front porch" of their hive.

Joe taking the lid off and smoking the bees to calm them.  The smoke also covers any "panic" pheromones that the bees let off, so that they don't get each other all worked up.

Joe took out one frame at a time and gave it a quick tap on the ground to get all the bees off.  He then put the honey filled frames in a tote and quickly put the lid on to keep the bees out :)  The bees crawled right back up into the hive (probably close quarters while we had all of their frames !)

When he tapped the frame on the ground, the ground would become a "carpet" of bees.

He ran over a little honey and wax comb for me to chew on while he worked.

On to processing!  We set up shop in Nigel and Emily's food processing barn.  

Step 1:  Hot knife down the frame to "uncap" the honey.  The bees cap it with wax to keep the honey in the comb.  We take the wax off, then put the frame in the spinner.

Video of Joe uncapping the honey...watch it flow!

Into the spinner.

Joe and Nigel - it's a two man job, really.

Thank you Allison for the spinner!!

Oh my ...it's so beautiful!

Back at the farm - I sent the honey through the strainer to get the wax bits and pieces out.

Everything Joe hot knifed off of the frames went into a big bowl - wax and honey.

I put it in the double boiler and let it simmer down so that the wax floated to the top, and the honey sunk to the bottom.  When it cools, I will lift the wax off and make candles, or lip balm, or..I don't know?  It's just so exciting!

We ended up with three different colors of honey from our one hive.  The darkest came from the first frames on the bottom - the spring honey.  The lightest is the most recent, probably honey from the thistle that's been blooming.

When we got home, Joe put all of the frames back in the supers, and put one super back on the hive.  We'll keep an eye on the hive, and add the boxes back as they grow throughout the fall!

Back to school tomorrow, so I should go...Coco has an outfit to pick out people!  xoxo, e.

A Bat in My Belfry.

We are an equal opportunity farm.  If you are a sweet animal or insect, you are probably welcome here...save two exceptions - don't eat my chickens, and don't come into my home in the middle of the night.

Last  night, as I laid in bed, I could here something in the hall.  We're talking maybe 3 a.m.  Florence, the little Siamese kitty, was leaping at something and then landing with a thump.

Leap, land, thump.
Leap, land, thump.
Leap, land, thump, screech, squeal ?#@!

Crap, perhaps she caught a mouse, and I knew I should investigate before she proudly brought it into the bed (this has never happened to me, a mouse in the bed, but it did happen to my sister!).  I turned on the bathroom light and started walking towards the hallway....and swoosh...something flew at my head.  I ran into the bathroom and closed the door.  I cracked the door open and yelled -

me:  Joe, there is something flying around the bedroom.

Joe:  It's nothing honey, go back to bed.

me:  Joe it's a huge moth or a bat, you're gonna have to address this.

Joe:  Go back to bed, it's only a mo...  oh f#@k it's a bat.

Let me pause here and inform you that for some reason my husband jumped out of bed fully clothed in khaki shorts and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up - like a hot Indiana Jones ready to hunt bats at 3 am.

The bat was in heaven flying around my vaulted ceiling, weaving through the chandelier, dive bombing Joe.  He caught it in a sheet after a few passes, and threw it out the window.

We got in bed and he cuddled up to me with his khaki shorts.

me:  Why are you fully dressed?

Joe:  I'm always ready for an expedition babe.

True Story.

The bat hunter.

Time to Make the Chokecherry Syrup.

    I have a beautiful friend named Amy Lesser.  She is an herbalist, a shepherdess, a farmer, a mother, and well, just a really sweet person.  If you were stuck in the wilderness and told to survive, well, you'd want her along.  She would gather wild food for you, make you soap, and probably tell you stories of your ancestors that warmed your heart (I'm guessing on that last part, but I bet she would).  When Amy says it's going to rain, it rains.  When she says fall weather is on the way, it comes.  And when she says that it's time to start nesting and gathering...you better just do it.

   And so we did!  It's funny how we wait and wait for that first tomato to ripen, like its gold, and then before we know it the entire dining room table is covered in ripe fruit, begging to be canned and processed.  Coco Rosie went to my mom and dad's for the weekend, so Joe and I got down to business and started putting up food.  Between the goodies from our garden, and fillers from Family Circle Centennial Farm down the road, there was just produce everywhere.  We canned tomatoes, made dilly beans, and threw on a big pot of veggie beef stew while we worked.  We made blueberry jam and blueberry syrup (bad year for Michigan maple syrup, but blueberries abound!).  There are peaches waiting to be processed, and more zucchini, squash, peppers, and eggplant than I can think about right now.  And then there were the chokecherries...

   We have a bunch of trees out back that we've always called "ornamental cherries."  We were chatting back there with neighbor Al this week, and he called them chokecherries...then he told sweet stories of fishing in the back woods of Canada as a young boy, and helping all of the older ladies make the chokecherry syrup.  Sold.  I live for stories like that.  If some old Canadian wilderness women can make chokecherry syrup, then so can I.

    The tiny berries have an intense tart cherry flavor with a big pit in the middle.  I stewed them down and mashed out the juice.  I make fruit or other simple syrups all the time (ok, mainly for cocktails or coffee, but I make them none the less).  I make blackberry syrup for gin drinks, ginger syrup for Pimms, gingerbread syrup for coffee in the dead of winter...etc.  So, I followed suit and added some sugar and simmered down the chokecherry juice.  I poured it into a jar...and I'll be damned if it didn't set up like the best cherry jam you've ever had!!  Not syrup, but Success!

The chokecherry syrup.  or jam.  or whatever....it's good though!

Harvest Thursday night...

Rain harvest Friday night...

By Saturday we were just screwed (in a good way).

First batch of blueberry jam. The berries are so concentrated with sugar due to the drought this year, that we used less than a cup of sugar for this whole batch..and it set up just perfectly!

This beauty is from Emily and Nigel's crop...gigantic luscious heirloom!

I canned in some of these huge 3 quart jars which will be nice to pull out for soups and chili!

I could not stop taking pictures of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes in jars.  Pure beauty.

Dilly Beans!  I'm not much of a pickler, but we had beans, and we had dill...so there you have it.

An after-canning snack with my honey and the chickens.  They liked dad's cheese-it's more than mom's pretzels.  Fo'Sho'.

The ducks know that there are treats being handed out...just waiting in the wings for their turn.

The Shiekh.  My beautiful rooster.

Lolita, my oldest kitty who is never around for pictures!

Wrapping up canning weekend with a little Sex (the bubbly that is....get your minds out of the gutter people!).  Stay tuned for Saturday morning peach picking pics!   xoxo, e.

Crazy. Crazy Good.

I believe this is what they call the "sweet spot" of summer.  We finally have some days filled with tolerable sunshine and pleasant breezes.  The shop hit 100 sales.  The air is off, the windows are open.  Vacation is a sweet not-so-distant memory, and preparations for the Hootenanny are well under way.

So this is just a hodge-podge of a post about the pleasantries of life.  A few random vacation pics to get the ball rolling, and then we'll wrap things up with a lovely budding friendship.  I know so many of you will be in Leelanau heaven yet this summer...so here are few of my favorite things!

On day one, hour one, on the beach, my mom found a Petoskey stone.  Joe yelled out "Oh my God they are so rare!"  Which became the joke of vacation, as throughout the week we found hundreds.  If I told you where, I'd have to kill you...sorry!

Mom and Dad's first trip to L. Mawby!  One of my fondest childhood memories is of my mom and dad, every Sunday after church, having champagne together.  There was nothing sweeter than sitting in the vineyard and sipping some sparkling wine with them on a beautiful day!

Willow, not the greatest wine, but the greatest view!

Little Bee's in Sutton's Bay - Home to delicious gelato, Italian ices made with fresh fruit puree, and an adorable husband and wife funky retro couple...named after his Grandma Bee!  GO THERE!

Sadie loved her first watermelon/cherry ice!

Chateau Chantal...can't beat that breeze on a perfect Old Mission day!

2 Lads - Best wine and best company in all of the Traverse wineries.  We were served for an hour by one of the "2 Lads" who was gracious, knowledgable, and adorable.  (there were hugs given and emails exchanged).

Coco:  "Lets just get this over with mom."

And when you see 80 year old women and 2 year old children at the top, well, you really have no excuse.

The Dune Climb.  Coco insisted that there should have been some kind of better "reward" for reaching the top.  All she got was "jumping off the dunes" lessons from Joe...they are the tiny two on top of the dune ;).

Our sweet neighbor's luscious home, filled with primitives, antiques, perfect old quilts, barkcloth curtains, baskets hanging from hooks on ceilings...etc, etc.  Perfection.  (and a bear in her yard on night 2 of vacay!)

Part 2.  I have this friend who plays guitar in this Band, and there is this tall leggy blond lead singer whom i adore.  She is just good people.  Well, she did a sweet little blog post that may or may not mention me ;).  I love her blog, and she is doing a giveaway this week for a Shabby Apple gift card (really sweet reproduction vintagey goodness clothing!).  So head on over to Dressed Up Like a Lady, enter the giveaway, and look at the pretty lady in the pretty dress!  (And click the band link to get a peak at The Canastas who will be playing the hootenanny!!)  

It's just been a Crazy Good summer!