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No Need to Tiptoe around it

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Soft breezes, green pastures, and a cacophony of various frog songs often ring through the air in the spring on our farm.  All summer, it is the sound of squawking birds flying through the hot and humid sky.  In the winter, it is the silence.  The peacefulness that cold nights and falling snowflakes bring.  But the most influential time of year is the fall.  It is the combination of falling acorns, bustling winds, warm sunshine, and the overall feeling of change in the air.  It is a feeling you cannot really escape.  It sneaks up on you and gently taps your shoulder to remind you that something different is about to happen and you better be ready. For us, it is a mixture of uneasiness and excitement all in one. This fall was no different.  It was the ever-constant workload calling our name every day, beckoning us to keep pushing as hard as we could go.  Raising your own food and tending to animals is a job with no vacation days, no sick days, and you will have the worst boss imaginable
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The Adventures of Little Miss Candy Cane Jayne, Entry #2

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Hi Everyone!  I am still so very excited about this blog and I have been thinking all week about what I should make my second post about and then it hit me!  Since I am using Alex and Amy’s blog, I thought I would tell you about how I met them!  I guess it was about six or seven years ago, I was on a mission for Santa.    He wanted me to go to Hershey, PA but somehow my sled landed in Virginia.    It was a full moon that night and for some reason, my official North Pole GPS was acting really strange.    My system said I was over Pennsylvania, but I was actually over Virginia!    I did think it was strange that I kept seeing these blue-colored mountains and I thought I even saw a really big lake and I knew that wasn’t supposed to be in the middle of Hershey.    I looked around for a field to land Donder and Blitzen in so I could call Vespucci.    He is our elf in charge of all the routes us elves take when we run errands for Santa. It was then, I saw it!    There in the middle of a bunc
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The Adventures of Little Miss Candy Cane Jayne, Entry #1

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Hello Everyone!  My name is Candy Cane Jane and I am one of Santa's special elves.  I live at the North Pole, but I get to travel all over the world!  I have been to so many places that it would take me an entire year to tell you about all of them!  My friends at The Burning Barrel Farm are kind of enough to let me come visit them whenever I am close by.  Alex and Amy love to make me a cup of homemade hot chocolate and little Miss Morgan, well she makes the BEST banana white chocolate chip muffins I have ever eaten.   One day, I was sitting in their kitchen and we were chit-chatting about my latest adventure to Ireland where I visited my cousin, Gael (she's a leprechaun, you know) and Alex suggested I write my adventures down.  He said I could even use their blog!  And I thought, "What a novel idea!"  So here I am introducing myself and letting you know how excited I am to share with you some of the adventures I have had in some of the coolest places in the world.  On
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Um, Say What?! In AUGUST?!?!

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<!-- Google Tag Manager (noscript) --> <noscript><iframe src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-N5QJSRH" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript> <!-- End Google Tag Manager (noscript) --> Did you know that August is National Family Fun month? Recently, I was looking up a few things on the internet and came across this novel idea and it literally made me laugh out loud. Seriously, why designate just one month for your family to have fun in? And ESPECIALLY August?! Let’s face it, August has to be one of the top three most stressful months for most modern families. Kids are so involved in activities (which is not necessarily a bad thing), that there is hardly any time to transition from summer activities and vacations to getting ready to go back to school. Parents are usually running around getting a million school supplies, going to “Back to School” nigh
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Projector Screens

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Sometimes I wander through our house aimlessly.  Most of the time, it is because I forgot where I was going and why I was going there.  Alex says I have way too many tabs open all the time.  Maybe he is right.  My mind is forever racing with thoughts and things that must be done daily.  I like to think I am on a mission to get something done.  The truth of the matter is I steal moments from my daily schedule to look at the pictures of our kids sitting on the piano or in a photo album on the shelf.  I will find myself reminiscing about when they were little and the funny things they often did.  Like the time when Emily was about five, and she had just learned to read.  She came running into the kitchen and jerks open the silverware drawer to get a spoon for her dinner, and says, "Don't make me b!tch slap you."  Naturally, I looked at her and said with a very elevated tone of voice, "What did you say, Young Lady?"  She looked at me with those confused brown eyes a
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Plot Twists

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In my last post, I mentioned that everyone's journey is different.  Our journey began in childhood and has been tumultuous at times and smooth at other times.  It isn't easy.  I don't think anyone's journey is easy, whether they are farming, working in the corporate world, or have a blue-collar job.  All jobs are worthy of respect, and the recognition that they require effort and gumption.  The point is there is a story for every person and that story would be very boring if it were written with the same plot for the main characters (or protagonists).  In mine and Alex's story, we have quite a bit of rising action and many climactic scenes that keep leading up to a great falling action, and finally a resolution.  BUT, we are not quite ready to reach the end of our story.  Our short story turned into a novel somewhere along the way.  In this novel, we have lots of plot twists and some pretty great supporting characters to make this story go forward. We also had some
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Deep Rooted Women

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  Have you ever wanted to explain something, but cannot find the words to sufficiently describe what it is you want to tell?   Well, that’s me right now.   I wanted to do this long blog piece on how Alex and I got to the point we are right now (mostly because we have had a lot of people ask us), but I have so much to say that I completely stumble over exactly what it is that I want to say.   So, I guess I can start by saying that anyone can fall into a more simplistic lifestyle, but how you get there is something that is entirely your own journey.   Our journey began as children.   Alex’s childhood was filled with fond memories of playing outside, sports, and visiting his grandmother in Floyd County, Virginia.   All these things shaped Alex into a young man who loved to be outside and was independent in his actions and in his viewpoints.   He was a thinker and a problem solver (and still is).   As Alex grew older, he began to realize the impact of spending time with his grandmother a
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