The retail market is a crowded field in southeastern Wisconsin. Everyone is vying for their share of the consumers dollars. There is an area of the market that is being under-served however - that is the semi rural customer. When people buy a 5-10 acres, a popular size rural estate, they want to have animals and hunt or fish their land.

This customer wants a one-stop shop for their rural hobbies: fishing, hunting, hobby farming, horseback riding. They also want personal friendly service by knowledgeable employees. Given the current complement of stores, from Fleet Farm and Menards to Cabelas, no one is meeting this market. The closest is Fleet Farm with their large variety of product categories. But even they fall short in feed supplies and equine products. There is a need for a clean, simple store with good prices for these products.

So how do we meet this growing need? By creating a store that caters to the semi-rural land owner and hobby farmer. Following is my answer to a growing need in this part of the state:

Announcing.........a one stop shop with friendly customer service
just for semi rural shopper and hobby farmer in us all!

Hobby n' Farm

 

Look at what we have!

Small farm animal feed

 If you need feed or supplies for any small farm animal, we have it.

 Chickens, Llamas, goats, potbelly pigs, we have it all!

Complete line of equine feed and supplies

 Finally, a store that has a wide variety of equine supplies and tack, all at a down to earth price. We pride ourselves on quality stable supplies. Its time to get real with our selection of used saddle and equipment also. Need quality feed? Come see our selection of feeds and supplements.

Household pet feed and supplies 

 We never forget about our household pets. Dogs and cats will be happy with our selection of reasonably priced, quality-made products. Toys, grooming products to food, we have it all.

Hunting and fishing equipment

 Pick up your new shotgun or shells with us. Hunting  and fishing permits are available. Large variety of poles and lures are on display. Equipment for deer, pheasant, turkey hunting and more are here.

Come check us out!

 As an incentive, show us this blog on your smart phone and recieve 25% off one bag of animal feed, your choice.

And remember - check back in for new posts about products and sales!

Almost forgot about my blog!

I knew this would happen, I knew I would forget. And I did...

Summer is such a busy time for me. Its nice out (finally!), I have the garden, the birds, county fair, state fair, parties and work. Need I go on? Probably the same in everyones life, I imagine. So I have not posted much lately. In fact, nothing in July. Shame on me. 

Its not like I was busily working on my coat either. She just sat there, neglected on Red (my dress dummy), waiting to be noticed again. Gathering dust and cat hair.

I finally did notice last weekend.  It was well over 90 and humid and I don't go outside in such weather. How anybody can live in that kind of weather is beyond me. I don't go outside when it below zero either. I am not much of one for extremes. So I told my husband and son I would be sewing all weekend, don't ask me to cook, don't ask for anything. 

I got the topstitching all finished! BARELY had enough silk thread to get through it all. You get lucky sometimes. I wouldn't have wanted to reorder 1 spool and have to pay the shipping from Yawitz. It's very subtle, being tone on tone. You actually wouldn't notice it except for the fact it leaves an impression on the melton. 

Also got the body of the lining inserted into jacket. Told you, major progress. That includes the hidden pocket, tacking to the seam allowances, and hand-stitching the lining to the facing. OMG, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I just have to hem the lining, and hand-insert the sleeves. I could have machine-stitched and bagged the lining, but seeing has I was working on a vintage coat, I wanted to do it the old fashioned way. Might as well make it couture while I am at it right? It takes time, but the results are worth it, the lining fits in the coat beautifully.

Of course my house doesn't contain ONE single working AA battery, so I didn't have any pictures to take. I need to buy a package and hide them from my family. The remote, your toothbrush? Who cares!

I will try to remember to buy some tonight on the way home from work and take some pix. After all what is a blog without them?

Respect the turn of cloth

Seems like I have heard this some where before. I probably should have listened better when I heard it. I did run into a small problem with the coats collar. It could have been a design flaw or when I sized up pattern, perhaps I didn't do it right in that area. 

The coats upper collar piece didn't compensate for the turn of cloth. It was made worse by the fact that the wool melton is very thick. Didn't catch it because I have never done a shawl collar and didn't "get " how the pieces went together until construction was well along. So I had a bit of fixing to do. See the solid white line drawn on the back neck facing? 

Thats the seam line for the fabric I had to piece. Quite a bit isn't it? I ended up hand basting piece in to make sure position was right and then stitching it in place. I will have to cover that area with embroidery when I put lining. I was thinking about putting braid over the facing/lining seam or perhaps a embroidery chain stitch. I have some burgundy silk topstitching thread that would be very subtle and perfect. And then a chain of flowers over the seams of my mistake with the collar. It would almost be "on purpose":)

We'll see. What I need to remember here is to make sure to:

1. Check pattern for turn of cloth on collars. It isn't that hard, Kim!

2. Don't get discouraged, you can fix almost any mistake when sewing, just need to calm down and get creative, right?

Till next week..........I have to tack down interfacing and attach shoulder pads. See you then!

The arms are actually attached now.....

I've got pictures too! With summer practically here, I've have really gotten busy with other parts of my life and finding the time to take pictures has been difficult. But not impossible.

So here you go, this is what I did this weekend:

I got the sleeves actually ATTACHED to the jacket! Yeah! This actually may be done by the time the snow flies. I am getting the itch to sew some summer clothes so I have to finish this soon. If I put it aside, it won't EVER be done. I've done that to projects before.

The sleeve were actually quite easy to attach. The wool melton was great to ease into the armhole. I've only set in sleeves a few times before so I was nervous about this. I must have been using difficult fabrics before, because this was a breeze. I just followed the directions in my tailoring book and all was well. You will notice if you look at the sleeves some vertical lines in the sleeve cap. I have not put the sleeve heads in yet. I am thinking(hoping) that that will solve the problem. Could also be the dummy, her arms stick out a bit. I did baste in horizontal and vertical lines to hang the sleeve so I know it it not skewed. We'll see I suppose. 

Here is the armhole from the inside. I pressed the seam allowances between the notches into the sleeve. Below the notches, I cut to the staystitching every 3/4" and pressed seam open, then hand stitched the seam allowance under the arms back onto itself so it would stay tidy. This is supposed to give me more room in the armhole.

Note all the stitching on the back of the armhole. There are 3 rows here and 4 underneath the arm hole. There is one row just on the body of coat(2 underneath the notches) for staystitching. I used this in place of taping the armhole. I was worried about bulk with a 4 layer seam already. The other 2 rows are the actual joining of arm and body. Had to go around twice, didn't stitch quite deep enough the first time and the staystitching showed on the outside.

And heres a side view. Note the cool retro cuffs, they rock! I am pretty close to lining this coat actually. I just have to finish the saddle stitching on the front of the coat,permanently attach the shoulder pads, make the headers, and permanently baste the hymo in place on the front.

Lightning strikes again

Wow, did I get lucky again! Hard to believe I have such good fortune.

We went to Richland Center for the Badger Poultry Club show last year and had to great honor of winning the Chantys first "best in show" with a white bantam cock. I had purchased him about 3 years ago and he is my "old man", the foundation of my flock. It's just AWESOME, knowing that the birds I am breeding are coming from good parents. But I had not actually hatched him. He was somebody else's breeding.

The family went back over the weekend to the same show. We took 5 birds, 2 Brahmas and 3 Chanteclers. All hens and cocks seeing as our young stock is gone.  All the Chants are bred by me. And well..........

Ethan, a 3rd generation cock won a reserve Best in Show! The Chants hit big twice in 2 years, talk about lightning striking twice. I am thrilled beyond words over this one. I bred this bird, yeah! I am doing SOMETHING RIGHT! Of course Ethan is too, he put on quite the show. He danced and preened and convinced everybody he was the man. 

On the baby front, I have 5 chicks out from Buck. Its a start but I would like to get about 30 altogether. 15 from Buck and 15 from Ethan. I have lots of fertiles in the incubator. Yeah! Even about 10 Brahmas, so Mikes birds will be saved also. I will have 15 chicks for sure from Bucks ladies and I have about 5 fertiles from Ethans girls. They are older, so they are laying a bit less. But I will get there!

So here are my handsome boys: The first one is Ethan, and the second is Buck, the older one.

Slowly starting up again

I am coming out of my funk just a little bit. Its hard to be depressed for too long. I don't know how some people do it. It's spring, that just gets me going, everything is so ALIVE and GROWING, how can that not perk you up, right?

I started in again on the coat! YEAH!! I am not going to do anything else until it is done. I have to. If I don't, I will put it aside "for a while" and it will gather dust for the next 10 years. This is how I am. So I sewed the cuffs onto the sleeves yesterday. I know, not much, but a little bit every week now and I will be done by the time I need to wear it. If it rains, I could actually finish them and set them in the coat. Ambitious, I know..... but there could be a downpour of biblical proportions. I'm going to need that kind of time to set them in!

And finally, I got some chicks hatched! YEAH! Four, as of this morning. Hopefully two more when I get home. All Chanteclers, the Brahmas aren't laying yet. So I start the year again. I'll have young birds to carry over the winter, but thats OK. At least they will be alive.

Oh yeah, put the garden in over the weekend. Should be buried in produce by the end of July. ANOTHER YEAH!

See you soon, hopefully with pictures, still haven't taken any yet.

Not too much going on....

Haven't been writing as there is not too much going on lately. I suppose, it being spring, that I should be hopping. I am busy, but not working on the things that I write about on this blog.

The garden is full of weeds. I haven't put anything in the ground in two weeks. 

I haven't touched my coat in the same amount of time. I need start the sleeves and can't bring myself to start. I will never have it done by the time State Fair, I know this now.

There are only 16 chickens left at the house. It is so lonely without any young ones around. I have 8 in the incubator with a week left to go. They may hatch, but the temperature has been very erratic, I hope they hatch. I need a new incubator, but they are expensive.

What have I been doing? Working on house repairs, and moping around. Repaired the floor under the toilet after we discovered it had been leaking for years. Fixing the bathtub faucet. Working on the kitchen sink also. Fixing the waterline for the icemaker. TRYING to find a new job. Short hours, paycuts and temporary layoffs at mine and my husbands jobs are taking their toll. We're broke. I'm scared. If my job goes away, it will be hard to replace. I work in a dying industry and people who do what I do are not in short supply.

I may end up in retail again and working until I die. 

Yeah I'm depressed today, can you tell? Maybe tomorrow will be better, you never know. 

Right?