The winter 'rainbow' is called ---

A sun dog! They can only be seen in the winter. Read more about them here. There's more pictures of sun dogs here.

We're busy getting ready for snow! They've been predicting eight to ten inches, which would be great. We'll see how much we get . . .

Wordless Weekend

Does anyone know what this is called?!

Nine gallons of milk!

This is what happens when Stephen comes home and we enjoy a long weekend! We're getting about four gallons of milk a day from our cow, so if we don't stay on top of it the milk really backs up. We made a lot of butter today!

Skimming the cream off.


The cream in the electric butter churn. When we first started making butter we tried just shaking the cream in jars, but it took hours to make it all!

Weighing the butter so we know how much salt to add.

Salting the butter and working out the buttermilk. Then we pack the fresh butter into molds before freezing or using it. We make a lot of butter, but use even more, so it's a good thing we have a cow! Please don't even ask how much butter our family goes through...it's -- amazing. :)

Okay, Ben and Elijah said this post needed some interesting pictures, so here's some Elijah's been taking.

He's been playing with our camera and taking some really neat pictures.
D.J doubles before your eyes...and no, you didn't just cross your eyes.


"It's a SamSung ad, man!" (Elijah) click on the picture to see it bigger.

Hope you're having a great week!

posted by Betsy along with Elijah :)

What could be better....

Than an Ice cream Sandwich?


This is one of our family's favorite desserts! :) It was Mom's birthday last weekend. Here at our house, if you're the birthday person you get to pick your meal and dessert.




Jeannie mixed up the dough. The night before Mom's birthday we girls were up late making these delicious ice cream sandwiches. It takes a lot of flour and a little patience to deal with the sticky dough, but it's worth the effort.


Betsy and Jeannie roll out the dough. They were super fast at it, and the sandwiches were a big hit!
So just how do you make these? Well, we thought we'd share the recipe with you all...
Choco-Mint Cookie Sandwiches
1 egg
3/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup flaked coconut
1 teaspoon of almond extract
1 package(18.5 oz.) devils food cake mix
1/2 gallon mint chocolate chip brick ice cream(or whatever flavors you like!)
Heat oven to 375. Beat egg, butter, coconut, and extract until well blended. Stir in about half of the cake mix(dry) until smooth,. Stir in remaining cake mix. Divide dough into 4 parts; wrap in plastic wrap to keep from drying out.
Roll each part into a large rectangle, (10x6 inch.) with a floured rolling pin. Cut into rectangles, 3x3 1/2 inches. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Prick surfaces of cookies with a fork.
Bake until edges are set(centers will be slightly puffed), 6-8 minutes. Cool 5 minutes; remove from baking sheet.
Cut brick ice cream lengthwise in half; cut each half into rectangles about 3/4 inch thick. Work quickly as ice cream tends to melt fast! Place ice cream between two sandwich halves. Wrap with cling wrap and freeze for several hours.
Yields: 16 sandwiches. (we double this recipe).
posted by Katie

The Answers!

Okay, we know this was probably a pretty hard quiz for some of you who don't really even know us! But we sure enjoyed seeing the answers coming in. We had some great ones! Most of you actually got several right, but the winner is -- T.J.C! He got 5 of the questions right. Way to go Tim!
Here's the answers:

Betsy shot a deer with a gun, that already had an arrow sticking out of it
D.J. rode a toy tractor down the basement steps, splitting open a chin
Katie fainted and broke both front teeth
Dad's birth caused a gray streak to appear in his mother’s hair the following morning
A.P. likes mayonnaise on hot dogs
Stephen rode a cow
Jeannie uses any excuse to honk the horn
Mom maxed out the speed on a jet-ski!
Elijah asked a girl for a “date” at the age of 7 (Not understanding the concept of courtship yet!)
Ben wanted to sing opera at the age of 8

As you can tell, we tried to come up with some pretty hard ones. :) Thanks everyone, we had fun watching you guess!
Have a great week. . .

One Hundredth Post!!

Farming Wisconsin has reached it's 100 th. post!

Yes, it's pretty exciting for us beginner bloggers to have posted 100 times. And what's been even more fun is watching our follower's list grow, and reading the comments as we hear from all of you out there! To start off this commemorative one hundredth post, we're going to take you back to see the first one we ever did. Most of you never even saw it, it's been so long ago.

Farming Wisconsin's First Post!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

With spring comes mud....and of course, four wheeling. Can't wait for warmer weather!

0 comments . . .sad
From the Founders -- How did this blog get started? Well, originally Ben and I (Elijah) thought that it would be a fun thing to do. So, with Dad's permission we started it. Our idea was that eventually everyone else would tire of it and - Presto! We'd have our own blog! Ironically, Ben and I post the very least now. :) It has been the girls who keep up the blog and us guys are very rarely talked into doing a post.




Our purpose in the blog has been to let customers, family and friends have a chance to know us better and see a part of our lives. There's no telling what you may learn about the Castleberry family when you follow this blog! For our hundredth post, we decided to give you a random/crazy fact about each one of us, and let you try and guess who did what.

What you're going to do is match a question with the name.

(1) Who shot a deer with a gun, that already had an arrow sticking out of it?
(2) Who rode a toy tractor down the basement steps, splitting open a chin?
(3) Who fainted and broke both front teeth?
(4) Whose birth caused a gray streak to appear in their mother’s hair the following morning?
(5) Who likes mayonnaise on hot dogs?
(6) Who rode a cow?
(7) Who uses any excuse to honk the horn?
(8) Who maxed out the speed on a jet-ski?
(9) Who asked a girl for a “date” at the age of 7? (Not understanding the concept of courtship yet!)
(10) Who wanted to sing opera at the age of 8?

For those of you who may not know us personally, here's the Castleberry family names to match up.
Steve (Mr. Castleberry)
Susie (Mrs. Castleberry)
Jeannie
Stephen
Katie
Betsy
Ben
Elijah
D.J.
A.P.
Okay, so here's an example of how to do it: Katie is #8. (that's just an example, not the right answer!) :) Leave your answers in the comments! We'll give the answers in our next post.

The rink has frozen!

Several cold nights and our rink is frozen and ready for skating! The guys have already been on it playing some hockey. This morning the younger boys made this the ice. Who can tell what they 'drew' on it?
Have a great weekend and look for a commemorative post coming soon!

~posted by Betsy