Summer Skin Is In

Yep!  its official!  Summer has entered the building and she is hot and humid here in Georgia.  This is the time of year I'm up early to try and beat the heat in my 3 huge gardens or I don't start work till 7pm ish and go to dark.  If I work outside during the day, by 11am I'm just a sweat filled clothes soaked Market Farmer, bugs attract to me so I get bit ( even with my Farm 2 Face Beauty Bug Repellent)  and not to mention your clothes stick to you and my SPF is just sliding off my face and arms.....so not attractive!  All the better to chat about Summer skincare.

Summer is a good time to re-evaluate your skin products.  Some are good all year round, but some are not. For example, harsh acids, retina-A are a no go for summer.  Don't give your melanin another reason to creep up on you.  Use gentle exfoliants like enzymes ( in our Enzyme Mask) that gently melt the dead skin to reveal beautiful and glowy skin.  Face polishes or scrubs are also gentle to use many times a week!  The sun is intense in the summer, so treat your face right, use an SPF of atleast 50 and reapply every 30 minutes or so to keep from getting burned.  I wear a wide brimmed hat when I'm out side, I use an Beach Umbrella when we are at the beach and I wear SPF every day.  

Hydration is also needed in the summer.  If you have oily concerns you may need to exfoliate a little more but still replenish the face with moisture.  Lighter oils are great and don't make more oil on your skin.  Oil doesn't make more oil.  Our C You Glow Vitamin C Face Cream is great for oily skin.  For day time use you can add a few sprays of our Fresh Fruit Mist to your face before sparingly applying the cream.  And let it absorb.  If you have oily areas you are afraid of just apply the cream to the areas that are not as oily.  You can use moisturizer,  you just have to know how your skin reacts and you use more where you are drier and less where you are oilier.  

And don't forget to cleanse your face before bed!  If you don't all the sweat from the day and makeup etc will be smashed into your skin by way of your pillow.  When you don't clean your face before bedtime you can age your skin by 3 weeks!!  So don't forget!  

Check out our IG account to see our featured products for the summer!  And as always if you have any questions you can email me at farm2facebeauty@gmail.com.

Have a great start to your summer!  

In health & beauty

Shannon

Summer is here in Georgia! That calls for Blueberry Quick Bread.

I love summers in Georgia, even on those super humid days when even the bugs stick to you!  Today isn't too humid so I took a look at my blueberry plants.  Lots of juicy blueberries!  So I decided to make my Blueberry Quick Bread.  Its quick to put together, the cook time is 1 hour and its so good with my Amish Butter that I get at the Farmers Market in town.  A loaf doesn't sit around for too long.  This can be made in muffin tins as well, but I love to slice it thick and slather butter on it and have my coffee with it on my porch in the mornings.  You can use any fresh fruit too, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, nectarines etc. Just swap out the blueberries for the fresh fruit you have on hand.  Right now I can still pick strawberries, so thats my next bread.  Kids love it too, so its a great snack for them.

Right now I'm using White Lily Flour Self Rising, I've been making biscuits with it and I love it.  Its a Southern staple in the South.  I used Coconut Sugar in place of white sugar, You can use Coconut Sugar cup for cup to swap out in recipes, so it makes it easy and the taste doesn't change.  I also used Silk Almond/Coconut Milk, which I like, it has 50 calories per serving, I also use it in my coffee in the morning and whenever I bake in place of milk.  I also use some Organic Greek Yogurt in this recipe.  It makes it so dang moist, I use yogurt in many of my cakes. 

I hope you get to try this recipe!  There is nothing better than fresh picked blueberries and a sweet bread together.  And its just so simple to make.  

The pictures from the bread I made are on my Instagram: farm2facebeauty.  Take a peek!

Ingredients:  2 1/2 cups self rising flour, 1 cup coconut sugar, 1 cup nut milk, 1/2 cup greek yogurt plain or with honey, 1 large egg at room temperature, 1/4 coconut oil, 1 cup fresh blueberries.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt your coconut oil a bit if its solid that will make it easier to mix in.  Butter and flour a 8x5 inch bread pan. In a medium bowl mix flour and sugar together.  Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add nut milk, coconut sugar, egg and yogurt. mix together well, batter may be a little lumpy but it won't show in your finished bread.( I use a Kitchen Aid to mix it).  Pour half of the batter in your prepared bread pan, add half of the blueberries, then cover with the rest of the batter and top with blueberries.  You can sprinkle a tablespoon of Coconut Sugar on top if you want, 

Put in oven and put timer on for 1 hour, at the 1 hour point use a knife in the middle to see if it comes out clean, if not put back in at 5 minute increments until knife is clean.  Let cool for 10 minutes and remove from bread pan onto a baking rack until cool.  if you cut before it cools it may fall apart. Serve with butter.

You can make this the night before, after it cools wrap up well and its ready to serve in the morning.  You can also serve with any jelly or jam or get fancy with whip cream with some berries on top!    

Welcome to the Farm!

We get a lot of questions about our goats Daisy Mae & Peggy Sue.  They are so precious!  We rescued them 3 years ago from an elderly women that had way too many animals for her to care for, so instead of taking them to the auction we took two!  Would have loved to take more but since I was new to being a "goat mommy", I didn't want to over do it!  

Before we even got them, we had to prepare a big pen for them.  And wouldn't you know it that it was Spring and it started to get hot, if I were to do it over I would defiantly build something in the fall, when the sweat doesn't run down your back to your feet!!  We went out into our woods, cut down the big posts we would need.  Most of the holes for the posts were dug by myself and my son Joey!  That was a huge chore....and I'm not the strongest person around these parts, so that is why I had my son help!  Even though it was back breaking and so exhausting for my body, at the same time it felt so good to be working on the land and building something with your own hands!! Trust me, from being an Aesthetician in a huge city to cutting down trees and digging holes is something I never thought I would do!  And my friends back in Las Vegas, Nevada are so shocked I'm still here living this simple lifestyle!  My parents raised me to never be a quitter, so I'm still here chasing goats, cleaning chicken coups and driving the tractor!  God has just blessed me immensely, so as long as he whispers my name every morning, I'll still be the country girl I always knew I was deep down in my heart!

4 weeks later, after lots of sweat, arguments with my husband, working sun up to dinnertime, the pen was finished!  My sweet husband outfitted the area with electric fencing, because we live in the woods and have coyotes and foxes running around, we wanted to keep Daisy Mae & Peggy Sue safe, along with the chickens too!  We added a big doghouse that was left from the previous owners so they can sleep inside at night.  They are so hilarious, when it barely drizzles outside or rains, they run into there house and watch me from the door!  It just makes me giggle.  

Daisy Mae is a pygmy goat.  She is just a funny goat.  She loves to play chase and jump around and give me little head butts!!  She has quite the personality and is very talkative.  Super sweet too.  Peggy Sue is more reserved and quiet (except when its feeding time, she lets you know she wants some hay) She is best buds with Daisy Mae and follows her everywhere.  Peggy Sue is a Dwarf Nigerian Goat.  Both are just really amazing little creatures.  

We have a small back field that we had to reseed for the chickens and my 2 lovely goats.  They have been grazing in the afternoons in that area for a few weeks now.  I know they love the fresh grass.  We have a big mean rooster and those two are not even bothered by him.  He has tried to peck them a few times and they just ignore him!   

We are on IG, you can see pictures of them from time to time!  From Daisy Mae, Peggy Sue and myself....have an amazing day!

Say Hello to Ace!

Nice to meet you!

Hello.

My name is Ace.

Ace is the top dog around here! Look at his handsome face.

This is Mr. Aceball, he is one of the 3  dogs we have.  He is a rescue from Las Vegas Nevada.  We got him 5 years ago and have loved on him ever since!  He is a German Shorthair Pointer.  Wonderful quail dog, and he's also an avid hunter of squirrels and mice.  He is very regal and you will see him in a lot of our photos.  He cannot be trusted alone though, he is a counter surfer and can steal a loaf of bread in about 3 seconds without a sound and out the doggy door to bury it for later!  He loves everyone that comes to the farm.  He is quite the vegetable and fruit eater too.  In the summer he takes cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe and zucchini right off the vine and eats it. He loves to go to Tractor Supply and get a treat but his most favorite thing to do is to go with his dad in the woods to change the trail cameras and chase squirrels!  

Keep your eye open for Ace and the other dogs on my Instagram and Facebook!

Thanks for stopping by today!

In Beauty & Health

Shannon