The Little Things

Chicken Love

2012-01-29T16:48:00.000-08:00

Do ya ever sit in wonder of the things you find yourself saying out loud to your children, things you never thought you'd have to say? It seems as though now that we have chickens, these phrases pop up more and more frequently. Nearly a year since we acquired our hens, and Two Little Girls haven't come close to losing interest. They are constantly trying out new ways of playing with their chickens.

"Girls, chickens don't belong on slides. Or swings."
"For heaven's sake, stop tormenting those chickens!"
"Those are chickens, not puppies! You can not train them to sit!"

But we reached a new level tonight:

"Chloe, please go take the bib off the chicken before she goes to bed for the night."

Watching my children spoon-feed soaked, mashed chicken food to a hen wearing a baby doll bib? Priceless.

This farmy life is a good one, I tell ya.

The Reality is Sinking In (And the first publicly posted picture of the farm!)

2012-01-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

I keep sitting down to try to write a blog - it's been a week now - and I keep failing. I tried to write about using dehydrated onions in the winter. I tried to write about using recycled boxes and canisters as toys. I even tried to write about having our entire yard and driveway dug up to have the sewer line replaced, and nothing is coming out.

There is a good reason for this, of course. It's because we are one week away from signing papers to buy a farm. A farm! A real life, honest-to-goodness farm. And it looks like we may be moving in sooner than originally anticipated.

It's been a month now since we first found it, and it's been an interesting process.

Phase One: the Giddy Phase. "We're buying a farm we're buying a farm we're buying a farm!" Along with a lot of jumping up and down, squealing, and maybe even a bit of spontaneous tap dancing in the hallway. So much excitement, I couldn't sleep.

Phase Two: the Dreamy Phase. Pinterest every spare minute, picturing all the great decorating ideas being put to good use in this lovely new home. Ordering seeds for the garden-to-be that will be four times the size of the one I have now. Daydreaming about having a school room, and a craft studio, and a kitchen without peach cupboards. So much imagining that I couldn't sleep.

Phase Three: the Logical Phase. Researching meat chicken breeds and milk goats, packing everything we own into McDonald's fry boxes, creating a to-do list a mile long of things that must be done to this home before we can rent it out. Organizing and planning galore, making sure no detail was left unaddressed. Laying awake at night thinking about everything that needed to be done... and not sleeping.

We're entering Phase Four now, and honestly, I'm getting tired.

It would appear that Phase Four is the Reality Phase. We got a call from the realtor this evening, tying up loose ends, covering last details, as we prepare to sign the contract on the farm early next week. Somehow this all just now became real to me. We are packing up our small children and everything we own to go live an hour away from our closest friends and family, on a piece of land where our only neighbors will be deer, elk, and an occasional bear. Omgoodness we're buying a farm.

This qualifies as one of The Biggest Things In Our Lives. It's a seriously big deal, not something to be tap dancing or daydreaming about.

There are a million reasons to freak out right now. I was laying in bed running through the list of them in my head - and not sleeping - when I decided to sit up and write.

This is an amazingly huge, not-to-be-taken-lightly financial decision. It's not just a sweet little house in town, it's the house we will live in for the rest of our lives, the house we want to leave to our daughters some day. It means a new budget - a tighter one - and new financial responsibilities. We have to rent this house out, meaning we'll have two mortgages to pay if a renter bails on us. We have to be prepared for things like fertilizing a hay pasture, shoeing horses, and the gas to go back and forth to town.

We have to learn so much! I don't know how to irrigate. My mother's stories of irrigating are enough to scare anyone away from it, and our farm will be far more complicated than what she deals with (though hopefully the neighbors are nicer.) I have to learn to garden in a climate with six weeks less frost-free time, where I'll be expected to produce (and store) enough food to feed my family for a year. We may never eat another ripe tomato as long as we live. We'll have to learn to cut and stack wood for warmth in the winter, and when to cut hay so it doesn't mold in the summer. I'll have to learn to milk goats and butcher chickens.

We're going to be virtually alone. We don't know anyone up there. No one cares if we're okay, if we're surviving. It might be days at a time before I have any adult conversation, especially if my husband works out of town. I dream about that now - 'getting away from it all' - but will I love it once it's reality? I'll have to work three times as hard to get my children any social interaction at all, for fear they'll turn into the stereotypical unsocialized homeschoolers everyone always whispers about.

The workload of a real farm is incredibly daunting. Here on our little homestead-in-the-city, the amount of work required is manageable enough that I go to bed most nights with the to-do list checked off. The reality of living a real farm life is that the to-do list will never be complete. I'm going to have to come to terms with going to bed at night with tasks unfinished. And farming goes entirely against my control-freak nature. When one is relying so much on nature, one has no control. I'm going to have to accept it, and adjust, and that may not be easy.

Homesteading here in our little city house is easy stuff. I keep the garden, I can some food, we butcher some game, we're set. It's a whole new ball game up there, and all I keep thinking is "we have no idea what's even coming."

But that's not true. Obviously, there will be some surprises, though I like to think of them as "adventures". We've spent the last six years of our marriage building skills to take with us up to this place to help us be successful. We embrace simplicity - we can handle living on a budget. We can butcher an elk - I'm sure we can handle a few dozen chickens. We go camping for a week at a time, with no one but each other for company, and we do that on purpose. I can handle solitude. We do all we can to shelter our children from everything they see on a daily basis in the city - living in the country is only going to make that easier.

Our parents raised two intelligent, capable kids who are now going to take all those skills and experiences we've gained and put them to the best use possible, in an effort to live our dream, follow our hearts, raise great kids, and live by the ethical standards we believe in.

If I can keep telling myself that, I just might survive the overwhelmed state of panic and anxiety that's creeping in. Our "Farm Dream" is about to become our "Farm Reality."

All that said, it would appear that Stage Four affords no more sleep than any of the previous stages did.

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For those who have been asking for pictures, here you go:
This pictures shows most of the 37 acres, with the meadow, the buildings, and the little hillock my children will spend their days exploring. :-)

Two Broken Hearts.

2012-01-17T18:23:00.000-08:00

Being a Momma is hard. Really hard. It's hard to keep up with housework, it's hard to try to be patient, it's hard to homeschool, it's hard to teach right from wrong.

But I discovered today what is even harder than any of those things.

Today I had to tell my sweet girls that their newest best friend, Cowboy, had died.

When we went out on Sunday for them to ride him, we could tell he wasn't feeling well. He was lying in his stall instead of eating, and acting like he was in pain. It didn't take long to realize he was colicking, though something more might have been going on. We likely won't ever know for sure. A couple of visits to the vet didn't help much, and he lived only a couple more days.

Breaking that news to my daughters is high on the list of Most Awful Parenting Moments. They only had him for two months, but with such a sweet little horse, that was plenty of time for them to love him dearly. No Momma ever wants to break her daughters' hearts, and that was the job I got to do today.

Chloe reacted in typical Chloe fashion. She shut down, refused to talk or even let me see her face. She spent a good long while lying on my bed crying quietly with me beside her. As I type tonight, she's drawing pictures of him, the coping strategy she turns to most often. Cora was far more outwardly emotional... and that was hard. The look in her little eyes, the quiver of her chin, those big, huge tears. Four is too young to learn how it feels to lose a friend.

And he was an amazing little friend. No little horse could have a sweeter disposition, so patient and gentle and calm. He put up with everything - having his mane and tail brushed and brushed and brushed, having a nine year old try to teach him how to turn on the forehand or learn to lunge him. He took it all in stride. You just don't find horses like that every day, and especially not miniature horses.

I'm so sad for them. He opened up a new world for them, a world I want to see them continue enjoying. Not to say we'll never find another great horse, but he really was special. I hate that such a wonderful experience for them was so short-lived, that they couldn't have enjoyed him for longer. I hate that such a wonderful little horse's life ended much too soon.

Little Girl Dress-up Fun

2012-01-17T05:32:00.000-08:00

Our home is well stocked with dress-up clothes. My children, however, have been on dress-up hiatus for some time now. I assumed, when I packed them, that the dress up clothes would not be missed between now and the time we move.

I was wrong. The sudden urge to dress up like a princess (or bag lady) came upon my smallest daughter yesterday in a desperate kind of way. And there were no dress up things for her to exercise this adorable, ultra-girly form of creativity.

So I did what I used to do for her big sister, back in the days before we had a great stash of play clothes. I opened up my closet, pulled a few things out, and gave her free reign of my scarves, hats, and jewelry box. (I'd say shoes, too, except that... I packed them.) She took care of her own make-up, and the result was... well, adorable, if not quite "princessy."

Big, flowy blouse-turned-dress with a scarf for a belt; a kerchief-shawl and a crocheted hat...

Complete with dirty old cowboy boots on the wrong feet (I kept out the necessities. She didn't seem to mind the lack of high heels though.)

And lots of "real" jewelry.

All dressed up, she sighed happily and said, "I look like a real Mama now."

Is this really what she thinks I look like every day? Hmm...

Then a change of accessories...

And then it was "I don't feel like a princess now. Or like a Mama. I kind of think I look like... a beggar woman." And then, because in her fairy-tale laden little mind, being a beggar woman is a rather romantic notion, she began dancing around the kitchen in the most beautiful way she knows how.

Proof that fancy dress-up clothes aren't needed at all... and that sometimes Mama's closet is more fun anyway!

This is how I spend my afternoons when all of the stress of the Moving To-Do List gets to be too much for me. :o)

Grinding Meat - Revisited

2012-01-16T05:16:00.000-08:00

I've had a handful of messages from folks wanting to know more about grinding game meat into burger, so since we just did it this weekend, I thought I'd share the process. I did write a very similar post a couple of years ago on the subject, but I've learned some things since then that I'll add to this post.

As we butcher an elk or deer, all of the small scraps of meat and lower-quality meat cuts go into the "burger bucket." (We use a five gallon bucket lined with a clean plastic trash bag.) Wild game fat isn't the greatest tasting, so we trim most of the big fatty chunks off, but little bits left on aren't really a problem. When we're done processing the animal, we freeze the burger meat big freezer bags until we're ready to grind it. Yes, this means we refreeze our meat once. I'm not gonna recommend you do it too, but I can tell you that after spending a day (or two) cutting up and packaging an animal, the last thing I want to do is stand at the grinder for another few hours. I prefer procrastination. We've never noticed a problem with the taste and/or quality of our burger meat because of it.

So anyway. Thaw your meat if it's frozen, and round up some fat*. Pork and beef fat are equally suitable. Pork fat tends to be less "gummy", making less mess and not clogging the grinder as often. Beef fat is kosher, and we have kosher family that we like to have for dinner on occasion. Either way, you want a pound of fat for every four pounds of burger meat. This makes an 80/20 mixture, which makes great burgers, meat loaves, meatballs, etc. (I've done a 3:1 ration in the past, and it's good too, but the difference is minimal. 4:1 means you buy less fat.) Fat is cheap, about $2 a pound. Find a butcher shop that will sell you fresh fat, already ground. (We ground our own for the first two years, thinking that was the only way. All butcher shops are not equal - find a good one.)

Grind your meat on the coarse setting first. Then, mix four pounds of meat with one pound of fat. We mix by hand, wearing gloves.

When it's well mixed, run it through the grinder with a finer grind plate.

Then package it according to how you'll want to use it - we do one pound portions.

To package it, I put it in sandwich size ziploc bags, press out all the air and seal it, then wrap it in a layer of freezer paper.

This seems to work great - we'll still be eating this meat in August, until next hunting season, and freezer burn hasn't been an issue for us yet. Mark the package with the contents, and load up the freezer. From the deer we processed this fall, we ended up with 24 pounds of burger in addition to the steaks and roasts we kept out.

Notes and tips:
*Work quickly, and keep your meat cold.
*Have every large bowl in your kitchen clean and ready for use. You'll use them all, and wish you had more.
*Two people working is better than one. It makes the work go faster, and it's more fun that way.
*Get a small kitchen scale. Ours is a little digital that goes up to 10 pounds. You'll be surprised at the number of uses you'll find for it.
*We've used our Kitchen-Aid food grinder, and a Cabela's heavy duty meat grinder. The Cabela's one is about three times faster than the Kitchen-Aid, and doesn't have to be stopped periodically to prevent overheating. It was a worthwhile investment. If you're cooler than we are, you could also use an old fashioned hand-crank grinder. We've done it... well, we tried it. That's a whole lotta work.
*For self-sufficiency reasons, obviously purchased fat isn't absolutely necessary for making burger meat. But the taste is better, and added fat keeps the meat moist. A hamburger with no fat is going to be a dry, crumbly burger, and not very pleasant to eat.
*If you're going to make sausage, leave some of the ground meat out of the freezer, and plan to make the sausage soon. It's not a hard thing to do, and worth the extra effort.
*Clear your counters of everything you don't want blood splattered on. Then, consider using a bit of foil to create a sort of tent over the grind plate. Otherwise, your kitchen will resemble a massacre scene by the time you're finished. Grinding meat is messy work.
*Learn the "butcher wrap", or you'll be going through an insane amount of freezer paper and tape. Ignore the directions on the side of the freezer paper - you'll use twice as much. The trick is the work on the diagonal.
*Do buy freezer tape. It looks just like masking tape, but masking tape will come undone when it gets cold. Freezer tape won't.
*This process is the same for any kind of meat you want to grind. We made sausage out of last season's snow goose as well. Burger/sausage is fabulous for any meat you don't love the taste of (like snow goose) because you can easily cook it in a way that hides the gamey taste.
*The cost analysis: $10 for purchased fat, $20 for deer tag, $1.50 for a fourth of a roll of freezer paper and a bit of tape. $31.50 total. 24 pounds of meat at $31.50 equals $1.31 per pound for free range, grass fed hamburger after two hours of work. Not a bad deal.

This post is shared on Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.

(Almost) Instant Homegrown Pizza Sauce

2012-01-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

Pizza is a standard at our house - Saturday night dinners alternate between spaghetti and pizza. Everyone likes them both, and it seems to be a good lead-in to our "family night."

I make pizza sauce by the quart all summer long as the tomatoes are coming in, then freeze them in 1 cup portions. This works great, until I forget to take sauce out to thaw and dinner needs to be on the table in half an hour. So tonight, I improvised, and the result was so yummy I thought I'd share it.

Here's how to have "fresh" from the garden pizza sauce in less than five minutes.

Use half a quart of canned roma tomatoes. (Yes, half a quart is a pint. However, I can my tomatoes in quart jars, so I call it half a quart.) Squeeze most of the juice out. Put them in a bowl, cup, something that you can use your stick blender in.

To the tomatoes, add a couple cloves (or more) of garlic, a tablespoon or so of dehydrated onions, and a good bit of whatever Italian-ish spices grew successfully for you this year. I used dried basil, oregano, and rosemary.

Now mix away with your stick blender until it's pretty much smooth. If it's too thin (mine was) add a small handful of dried tomatoes to the mixture, and blend them in really well. It'll thicken right up, and add really rich flavor.

And that's that. Super simple, and super fast. I think I might actually like this more than the sauce I've been using for the past three years, it was that good.

An actual "recipe":
1 pint canned roma tomatoes, drained
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp dehydrated onions
2 Tbsp. mixed dried Italian herbs
1/4 c. dehydrated tomato slices

Blend all ingredients with an immersion blender until smooth.

Boxes everywhere...

2012-01-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

It's getting hard to walk through the house without tripping over boxes...

16 days til closing, another five (or so) days after that, and we move to the farm! It's amazing how slowly three weeks can go by, when one is desperately waiting for a dream to come true.

I keep scouring Pinterest for great ideas for the new house, which is only frustrating me because my whole craft room is packed neatly into boxes. There are more "CRAFT" boxes than any others in our house. What does that say about our priorities? Granted, much of it is kid's craft stuff. It's not all my fault.

See my super-awesome organizational skills? Printer labels with the room where the box is to go, one on the top and one on the side.

When we move in, no one will have to wonder where each box ought is to end up, because I will post signs at each door labeling the rooms. Anyone who ~~wants to volunteer~~ can be convinced to help with the move will be able to jump right in and unload boxes from the truck.

Tip: McDonald's fry boxes are the best moving boxes ever, and there is a huge abundance of them. Try to find a McDonald's that separates their cardboard from their regular trash, and you're set to go. They're the perfect size for books, and we have a lot of books.

The Oldest begged and begged to pack her own things, so I sent her down to her room with an empty box. She came up ten minutes later declaring she was too exhausted to continue. There were eight things in the box. Obviously, the kids aren't going to be much help in this endeavor. When I sent them outside with a box to pack the toys from their playhouse, the asked why we couldn't just move the playhouse with all the toys in it. If anyone is great at avoiding any and all extra work, it would be my children.

In our Household Notebook, I have running lists of To-do projects for this house before we rent it out, to-do projects for the new house before we move in, address changes that need to be made, etc. I desperately want this move to go smoothly and quickly. We have one week to get unpacked before seedlings must be started, when we jump in head first in our attempt to farm. Staying organized will be key in keeping things running smoothly.

I'm making double batches of soups, stews, chilis, and everything else that I can possibly freeze, since it may take a few days before my kitchen is in enough order to begin cooking, and the Tiny Little Town doesn't have any fast food restaurants to run to when the children claim they are starving.

All this is really just an attempt to make the days go by a little faster, since mostly I just want to move right now. But patience is a virtue. Right?

Nature Study: Bird's Nest

2012-01-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

For as much as we love nature, and spend as much time as possible enjoying it, I've struggled with exactly how to "teach" nature study. But I've finally figured some things out, and thought I'd share them with other home-teaching mamas, in case you're looking for a few bits of wisdom.

First, get a great nature study/ nature journaling book. My favorite for kids is Nature Connection by Claire Walker Leslie. It's got a month-by-month guide of things to look for, a great how-to for different types of drawing, and so many beautiful drawings from Ms. Leslie's own nature journals that one can't help but find it inspirational. I also have Keeping A Nature Journal, which I use for my own, more grown-up nature journaling.

We split our nature studies in half - some of them are just time spent exploring nature around us, with no structure. I'm fairly convinced my children learn just as much from just playing outdoors as they do from trying to see details and make notes. But the other half of the time, I encourage a bit of structure, point out interesting details in nature they may have overlooked, and we hypothesize together about the hows and whys of the things we find. During those studies, we do our journaling and drawing.

For the past two years, I've encourage my oldest to draw something she finds, and write about it. Granted she's been little, but the results haven't been what I was looking for. I'd make suggestions, "Look for the little details, try to draw those," or "Write a little bit about what you see." But the final result was usually a 2-minute scrawl with a one-word description, and I knew she was capable of more than that. (Some children might not be at seven and eight years old. But this is the kid who would draw detailed pictures of horses and dragons that would take an hour or more to complete. I knew she could do more than a circle with lines sticking out of it for a beetle. What she needed was better guidance.)

Then I started nature journaling on my own. Not because I'm a homeschooling mother, but because I realized I really, truly enjoy it. There's a calmness and peace that comes from focusing on one little bit of something in the world around me and trying to draw it... even if my drawings are rather pathetic. I write what I'm thinking about - sometimes just facts, sometimes the thoughts running through my mind. And one day, I left my own nature journal out where the girls found it... and read through it... and suddenly, their own journals are filled with more detail, more notes, more detailed pictures. It's all in leading by example, I suppose. And not pushing or correcting - just showing them, indirectly (even accidentally), what I'd love to see them do as well.

They found this nest out in the front yard yesterday, beneath a tree:

I saw it as a great opportunity for a structured study, looking in detail at what all the nest was made of, the size and shape of it, what kind of bird might have made it.

Here's Littlest One's page:

Notice she's already "journaling". That string of letters - made up mostly of c's, o's, r's and a's - says "I saw a nest under our tree."

Here's The Oldest's:

And here's my own entry into my nature journal:

Admittedly, I'm not much of an artist, especially when it comes to drawing. But no matter - the girls learn that their drawings need not be perfect if they see that mine aren't.

As often as we feel like - often times once a week or more - we can flip back through our books. There are drawings and entries from some of our camping trips and hikes, and it makes for a fun way to remember our adventures together as a family. It also works well as a science lesson, reiterating the things we've learned. The Oldest and I love to exchange notebooks to look through one another's: often there are details that one of us noticed that the other didn't.

So I guess that's the best advice I can give: show your own interest. If your kids see that you're interested in something, they'll likely pick up on it and develop an interest as well. When kiddos are this young, they think Mom is the coolest person in the whole world, and they want to be just like you. So give them a gentle example, encourage their efforts, and you might be amazed at what they'll end up producing!

The Oddly Shaped Egg

2012-01-11T04:02:00.000-08:00

Remember Goldi, the chicken with the egg laying issues earlier this summer? Amazingly, she's alive and well, even as the temperatures drop and it's practically frigid out there. I'm still not holding out hope that she'll survive the winter, but so far, so good.

But look at this:

Do you see the long, skinny egg? Her eggs are never "egg shaped." They're always flat on two sides, and long and skinny or lumpy in strange places. They taste fine, are perfectly edible... just funny looking. Chickens sure are interesting creatures!

Nine! and Slumber Party Photos

2012-01-08T05:07:00.001-08:00

Time flies, doesn't it? My sweet Biggest Girl turned nine this weekend! We had three friends over for her first slumber party, and it was a great success.

While Chloe was out of the house, Cora and I decorated the front walk:
And the living room (in an attempt to make it look more festive, since we're moving and every room looks naked right now, save for boxes in every corner.)
With Grammy's help, we made the cake:

And then waited for the birthday girl and her guests to arrive. They were all pretty excited.
Littlest One was excited too.

She enjoyed the first half of the party before going to Grammy's house to spend the night.

We had dinner, then cake and ice cream...
with confetti poppers, because they're just so much fun.
And then opened presents.

Yes, she's hugging a lava lamp.

There was some craziness with balloons..
And then they all got to decorate their own pillowcase with fabric markers.
And since no party at our house is complete without some kind of paint, we did handprints on the backs of the pillowcases.
There were horse-head shaped cookies to decorate,

and a wild game of Twister Hoopla, one of the gifts she received from her friends.
Then we settled down with lights off, and some glow-sticks to keep the fun going a bit longer.

Sleep finally came around 1:00... it was a long, long night. But we survived. :o)

Homemade fried donuts and fruit for breakfast
and then they settled in making beaded bracelets until the mamas came to pick them up.
Overall, it was a really great party! Chloe declared it "The Best Birthday Ever", though I think she's said that about every birthday she's had. But anyhow, I'd call it a success.

Happy Birthday, my sweet Chloe! So glad you had a great time!

Little Homeschool Gems

2012-01-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

The best kind of home school book combines two or more subjects into one "living" account, and all the better if it combines both of my girls' age/grade levels as well. Gems like this aren't always easy to come by, so I thought I'd share this one with you:

This book, and others in the series, were published at the turn of the 20th century. (Why does it seem as though the most useful books for schooling our children were written over 100 years ago? But it does often turn out that way.) We're only a few short stories into it, but both girls are riveted and work diligently through their other schoolwork for the reward of the Farmyard People.

Ms. Pierson was truly brilliant in her writing - not just for the beauty of her descriptions, but the thought that went into the little fables. Each story teaches nature by using animals as the characters and describing events in their lives as they might speak about them. The stories are factual and informative but are also just plain interesting. And - even better - each story teaches a character lesson. The rude young dove that needed a good scolding from his mother; the vain lamb with the long tail (that was soon to be cut off.) The stories are so easy to relate to real life that even my four year old can see the parallels.

After we finish the Farmyard People (figured I'd use it as a precursor to relocating Two Little Girls to the farm in the Tiny Little Town) we'll move on to stories about the Forest People, the Meadow People, the Pond People. I can't wait, and they can't either.

Here's the best part though: if you have a Kindle (or a smart phone with a Kindle app) these books are all free for download. Score for the frugal homeschool mom. I'm the first to admit that there is something far more satisfying about holding an actual paper book in one's hands, but homeschool can get expensive, and any book available for free is worth downloading. The ones that turn out to be really wonderful will eventually make their way into our "real life" library as they are found.

If you're in the market for fantastic, intelligent children's literature and are trying to work on a tight budget, check out the Amazon Kindle versions before you buy the paper version. Nearly every great children's classic can be found for free, it seems, if you just take a minute to look. And I don't have a Kindle, I just have a Smart Phone. The Amazon Kindle app came free with it. Granted it eats battery like crazy, but I can sit in my rocker with my phone plugged into the wall and read to them for as long as they'll sit. It's like Little House on the Prairie... with a Smart Phone.

Living Deliberately

2012-01-02T05:45:00.000-08:00

adjective

carefully weighed or considered; studied; intentional: a deliberate lie.

characterized by deliberation; careful or slow in deciding: a deliberate decision.

leisurely and steady in movement or action; slow and even; unhurried: a deliberate step.

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Mama Kautz asked a great question on Facebook this morning: do you have a word for 2012? Her word is "simple" and I'm looking forward to seeing her move her family closer to that word each day.

My word is "deliberate". I want to live deliberately, and encourage my daughters to do the same. My husband is already deliberate. Maybe he can give me lessons.

Note some of the key words in the above definitions: slow. unhurried. careful.

I'm a spazz by nature. I get an idea in my head and I run with it without ever looking back. Without thinking twice, without considering the consequences. At times this can be good - it means I accomplish a lot sometimes - but there are times that when I finally do look back I shake my head and wonder what on earth I was thinking. I don't want to have to wonder any more!

It's easy to get so caught up in everything going on that we just sort of "float" through our days, float through life, going through the motions without putting any thought or meaning into anything. I want to stop doing that! Every little thing we, as wives and mothers, do can be meaningful if we choose to give it purpose, if we think about it before we act. I want to create the habit of carefully, even prayerfully considering each thing I do as a wife and mother and homemaker.

Moving to a farm has been a very deliberate action. We have considered carefully and slowly the right type of land, we have saved money intentionally, over the past few years we have prepared ourselves with skills to use when we begin our new lifestyle out in the country. It seems to be a good start for my Year of Living Deliberately.

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So what is your word for the year? What adjective are you going to strive for? I do look forward to hearing about it! Maybe we can convince Mama Kautz to do a weekly link-up as we check in with our progress for living the word we choose for the new year...

A quiet evening at home

2011-12-30T19:58:00.001-08:00

Friday nights are quiet at our house, with only one of the Two Little Girls home in the evening. Tonight was spent listening to Littlest One have her first guitar "lesson" while I started making seed order plans for this year's garden (on the farm!)

I had to take a break from the catalogs and gardening books to snap a few photos, 'cuz Littlest One's about the sweetest guitarist I think I've ever seen.

My parents gave her this little guitar for Christmas, and it just the perfect size for both girls to play around with.

Can't think of a better way to spend a quiet evening at home.

Building habits

2011-12-27T19:20:00.000-08:00

Each year, I try out a few new "homesteading" skills. Mostly just to see how it goes, learn something new, and stash any knowledge gained away for some day when I might actually need it. But some of the things I've learned over the past few years have become habit: homemade laundry detergent, homemade sausage and pepperoni, homemade noodles and bread, canned tomatoes and fruits and jams. These things have become habit, in the same way we form the habit of making our bed each morning or brushing our teeth, or fixing lunch.

Each year, I add a few new habits. Homemade dishwasher detergent is a new one in our home, and after trying out a few different recipes I'm finally satisfied. All it is is washing soda and borax (also ingredients in laundry detergent) and the secret ingredient: citric acid. Without the citric acid, dishes come out spotty and cloudy. I tried lemon juice and it helped, I tried white vinegar and that wasn't bad, but powdered citric acid turns out dishes that are beautiful and sparkly every time. I found that I can buy citric acid online in bulk for far less than what our local health food store carries it for, and citric acid is the same thing as Fruit Fresh, meaning I can also use it in my canned goods. Fancy. :o)

The chickens are another habit we formed this year: never again will I be able to imagine life without laying hens. No one ever could have convinced me I'd love having chickens as much as I do, but man are they great. Not just for the eggs they lay, but for the compost they produce, and for the fantastic entertainment value. When you don't watch TV, you learn to find amusement by watching other things... like Two Little Girls and the Adventures of the Four Chickens. Chickens take hardly any time at all to care for - five minutes a day to feed, water, and collect eggs, and an extra five or ten minutes a week to clean out the manure and compost it. Of course, this isn't including the hours that Two Little Girls spend outside holding and rocking and petting and combing their hens. But that part isn't necessary, it's just bonus. And even through winter, our girls are providing us with a couple of eggs a day still. We're already looking forward to brooding a new batch of chicks this spring.

On my list of things to try out next year (or some year thereafter):
*Making soap. I'd love to try it with elk or goose fat, just to see how it turns out. I also want to give castille soap a try, since it's the basis for so much everyday cleaning.
*Pressure canning, so I can put up more vegetables without having to worry about running out of freezer space.
*More homemade dairy. I've gotten pretty good at farmer's cheese and yogurt, but I'd love to try out some mozzarella or colby. I'd love it even more if the milk came from our own goats...
*Homemade oils and herbs for medicine. Feverfew was a success this year, and I know certain herbs and teas work great for different minor ailments. I'd love to have my own "medicine garden".

Any other homesteaders out there forming habits, or trying out new skills? I'd love to hear about them, so I can start adding to my list!

Silhouette Pillows

2011-12-26T07:11:00.000-08:00

Now that Christmas is over, I can show you the picture of my Mama's Christmas gift.

Silhouettes of the girls, on pillows.

I saw the idea on Pinterest (imagine that) and tested a few ideas out before finally figuring out how to do it. Mostly, I thought it would be lovely to applique them on, and then realized there was no way I had the skill to applique around tiny noses and lips. So I went with iron-on transfer paper. It made the whole thing easier, and the lines much clearer. The silhouettes are done in a dark blue bottom-weight cotton and the pillow cases are muslin (since I was going for a homespun, country sort of look.)

For the pictures, I just took side profiles pictures of the girls, printed them at out as 5x7's and cut them out. The hardest part of that was figuring out how to style their long hair so that it still looked like them when I cut it off at the shoulders. Ponytails seemed to be the best option. Then I pinned the cut out photo to the back of the transfer paper once it was ironed onto the blue fabric. I was able to cut the fabric easily with the transfer paper, as it added stability. A good, sharp pair of scissors is a must for this project.

I'm really happy with how they turned out, and really would like to make some for myself, too. And my mama seemed happy to receive them, so I think we can call this project a success. :o)

Chemises and Pantaloons

2011-12-24T19:12:00.001-08:00

New pajamas are the customary Christmas Eve gift at our house. Usually it's something store-bought, but I found this pattern and just couldn't not make them.

Chemises and pantaloons in the style of late 1800's pioneers.

The construction is genius, with a drawstring neckband that grows with them and plenty of extra length and width. The pantaloons have three extra pleats sewn in - just let out a pleat, and you get an extra two inches. I sewed in an extra four inches of waistband in each pair, so that I can let out the waist as needed. I imagine these will be worn out long before they're outgrown!

I figured I'd be more excited about the final product than the girls were, but they actually seemed really pleased, especially when I explained the history behind them.

Sewing notes: This pattern was super easy. Total was two hours for each gown/pant set if sewn on the electric. Since my electric spazzed halfway through the first set, much of the sewing was done on the Singer treadle, which nearly doubled the sewing time. After the first set, I changed a bit on the construction of the pantaloon ruffles, just for the sake of my own sanity. Flannel maybe wasn't the easiest fabric to work with, but it worked well enough.

Christmas Eve Bits

2011-12-24T18:57:00.001-08:00

Miscellaneous pics from Christmas Eve at our house:

Homemade gingerbread cookies and
homegrown carrots for the reindeer.

Daddy playing Christmas carols
while the girls try on their new jammies,
and dance around the living room.

Merry Christmas from Two Little Girls, and their Mommy and Daddy!

Christmas Traditions

2011-12-20T20:28:00.000-08:00

Despite being completely distracted by this whole farm-buying business, I'm trying to keep at least some focus on our Christmas traditions, especially since this is the first year we are really paring back the gifts in hopes of keeping the focus on what Christmas should really be about. Over the years, more and more traditions have come about - some inspired by favorite memories of my childhood, and others that just seem to have crept into our yearly celebration.

*Decorating Day: the day after Thanksgiving, a whole day spent listening to carols, putting up the tree, redecorating the house, and hanging lights.
*The Cookie Party: an afternoon of moms only fun, with a huge plate of delicious cookies for the family to gobble up afterward (a blog on this year's party is coming soon!)
*The Nutcracker ballet: we missed this one this year, but we always try to find a nearby, affordable production of the Nutcracker to take the girls to.
*Christmas Lights: an evening spent driving around, listening to radio Christmas tunes and hitting up all the best-decorated neighborhoods in town
*Christmas cookies: we bake 8 or 10 different varieties of cookies, then deliver them to friends and family
*Christmas card-making: a few evenings spent with all the Christmas craft supplies in the house, making cards to send to everyone we love.
*Sugar cookies: this one earns my mom the Best Mom Ever award. She used to bake tons of sugar cookies, provide every color of frosting available, and we made a huge mess decorating gingerbread men, stars, bells, trees and other shapes. I dread the mess every year, but this is a favorite for my girls, as it was for me.
*Cookies for Santa/Carrots for Rudolph. Or in this year's case, carrots for all nine reindeer, because we have an infinite supply of carrots from the garden still.
*Christmas Eve PJ's: each girl gets new jammies to wear on Christmas Eve (mostly because I want them to look cute in Christmas pictures the next morning.)
*The Pickle: If you've never heard of a Pickle ornament, check it out. We let the girls hunt for the pickle on Christmas Eve, and whoever finds it gets to open her jammies first. (The jammies are still a surprise every year. For some reason, though we've been doing it for five years or more, they always forget what the present is going to be.)
*Stuffed toys for Izzy. Each year we buy her one of those $5 stockings filled with stuffed toys for dogs. We wrap it up, she unwraps it, and then proceeds to spend the morning tearing the stuffing out of every single toy. I'm not sure how she knows that it's okay to do this on only one morning each year, but she understands and has a great time of it.

That's all I'm remembering right now, though I'm sure there are others. We also try to make at least a few different Christmas crafts, sing every Christmas song we can remember, and this year we'll add reading the birth of Jesus as well.

Do share - what traditions does your family enjoy through the holiday season?

Third Annual Christmas Cookie Party

2011-12-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

All kinds of fun was had at my Third Annual Christmas Cookie Party.

Never heard of a cookie party? The idea is simple: everyone bakes a double batch of cookies to exchange. We spend a couple of hours eating fattening foods, talking and laughing, visiting and playing games.

First was a quiet game of Jumbled Christmas Words, just to get everyone's brains working a bit.

After that was a game of 7-11: roll the dice, if you get a 7 or an 11, you get to hold on to the prize until someone else gets a 7 or 11.

Whoever is holding the prize when the timer goes off gets to keep it. I'm happy to report that everyone played fair, and there was no fighting (this year.)

The best game by far was Reindeer Antlers. You can read the details here, but the gist of it is that each team blows up balloons and stuffs them into the legs of panty hose.
At the end of the time, the leader of each team puts the nylons on her head, with the legs sticking up like balloon "antlers". Whoever has the best rack wins! It was good, goofy fun all around.

There were a few other games, some more eating, and then came the voting for The Golden Spatula award. Each person tastes a little bit of each cookie and votes on their favorite. And the 2011 Golden Spatula Award winner is.......

Lisa won for the second year in a row, with her fantastically rich Peppermint Cream Bars. There were so many unique and creative recipes this year, and some great old standbys: Alfajores, Peanut Butter Cookie Candy Bars, honey almond biscotti, chocolate toffee shortbread, and snickerdoodles. These ladies really upped the ante this year since they knew it was a contest. Apparently that Golden Spatula Award is quite coveted.

Thanks to all the girls that came this year, I had a blast and hope you did, too. My family enjoyed all your cookies tremendously. To anyone that didn't come this year and wants to be added to the invitation list, let me know. There's nothing quite so fun as hokey house-wife parties during the holiday season. :o)

A Christmas Dance

2011-12-18T05:16:00.000-08:00

We went to the Tiny Little Town for the Christmas Dance last night.

Tiny Little Towns are wonderful. Because they have things like Christmas dances in old auditoriums. Because they have local bands that include banjos and fiddles and all the ranch-folk get up and dance and have a merry ol' time.

Tiny Little Towns also have adorable little boys dressed in boots, hats, and leather vests.

Adorable little boys that like to dance. :o)

I get the prize for worst video quality ever, I think. It was dark! But it's still cute.

===
On a side note... the contract is signed. The Tiny Little Town is going to be home before too much longer!

Refusing to Believe.

2011-12-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

All throughout my childhood, I dreamed of having a little girl of my own some day. I would make plans for things I'd do with my daughter, I saved special toys and books to some day share with her.
When I was pregnant with The Oldest, I had an ultrasound. They told me it was a girl, but I flat out refused to believe them. It seemed to good to be true. Of course I would've been happy with any healthy baby, but in my heart I desperately wanted that daughter I'd always yearned for. I wanted her so badly that I simply couldn't let myself believe that dream might really come true. I was too afraid of the disappointment if they'd have turned out to be wrong. I bought nothing pink, or lacy, or frilly. I stuck with greens and yellows and a safari themed nursery. And then she was born, and I finally believed it. I had the little girl I'd always dreamed of.
And then, to have another? I still can't believe I'm so blessed.
===
We're going tomorrow to sign the contract for The Dream Farm.
I'm still refusing to believe it. It really is just too good to be true. Surely, something is going to go wrong before we close on the property and move our Two Little Girls into the most perfect setting we could ever hope to raise them in. Something will happen to dash our dreams right back to the ground, force us to pick ourselves up and start over again in this search.
I'm so terribly excited, I can't put words to it. But I'm also so emotionally invested in this amazing opportunity that if it fails, I'll be devastated. I refuse to make any concrete plans until I know for sure that it's really going to be ours, just like I refused to buy pink. One woman cannot have so many wonderful things in her life, can she? Humbled is the best word to describe the way I feel when I even begin to imagine this might be real.
But regardless, we're signing the contract. It's one step closer to all we've dreamed of and worked toward for so long. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, if it all comes together. For heaven's sake, it already has a root cellar.
So tentatively and cautiously, we're hoping everything continues to move forward. I'll try not to blog only about this farm-buying business, though forgive me if it's all I manage - it's all I'm really thinking about these days.

Makin' Stuff

2011-12-16T16:17:00.000-08:00

Since I'm no longer sleeping for any decent length of time, I have plenty of time to make things:

"Give a Hoot" fingerless mitts

Altered from the pattern for Give a Hoot mittens by Jocelyn Tunney. Sorry for the phone-cam pictures, I was lazy. The actual color is really a pretty bright turquoise. Using yard-saled wool yarn and a free pattern, the total cost for this project was less than one dollar. Sweet :o)

Leafy-lace Slouch Hat

Modeled by the youngest - it's my size, but she couldn't get my phone cam to work to get a pic of it on my head.

Pattern is called Lacy Leaf Souch (misspelling copied from the designer. Can way say "oops"?) I had to essentially rework the pattern, it wasn't a very good one and I was/am really disappointed with the hat in general.

Saw this sweet nativity on Pinterest. (Oh Pinterest, how I love thee. Seriously, if you aren't using it yet, you should be. It's the best way to waste time I've ever found.)

Directions can be found here. I found a wood carver's kit at Michael's for $5.99 that included enough wood to make two sets. The head beads were separate, and the tiny head was a wooden plug leftover from a recent furniture purchase. Quick and easy to make, and I really, really love it.

And a fun little mixed-media collage on a wooden plaque, all stuff I had on hand and a graphic printed from The Graphics Fairy. The sweet li'l angel boy makes me smile.

Wishing a fun holiday crafting season to all my fellow crafters, and a very Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope you are all enjoying it much as I am!

A Really Big Dream

2011-12-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not supposed to be getting excited, right?

Oh, but I am. And that means I'm in trouble. Because if this house isn't the one we're supposed to end up in, and we don't get it, I'm going to cry. A lot.

We looked at a farm yesterday. I knew just from the pictures that it was The One, and I was right. I was afraid to even go see it - it's a little more than we were wanting to pay, so I assumed we shouldn't even bother considering it. But for what it is, the price is ridiculously low. And it's not impossible. So we looked. And we got sucked in, and we fell in love.

The house itself is Way More than we could ever possibly need. It's enormous. It's fancy. It's so luxurious it's actually kind of embarrassing.

But the land is exactly what we want. When we set out to start looking, our focus was not on the house, but on the land. Houses can be modified, added on to or changed to fit our needs. Not so much the land that the house is sitting on. We knew we wanted 20-30 acres. We wanted some pasture and some wild, natural land. There needs to be irrigation or water of some kind, and good water rights. Out buildings and fences would be an added bonus.

We spent a few hours last week looking at the properties that fit those needs (there are only about four in the area we're hoping to move.) Only one really even came close, but it wasn't perfect - it was all pasture, no wild.

The place we looked at yesterday had it all: enough natural land that the elk and deer would be happy there, enough pasture to feed all the animals we hope to keep. There's plenty of irrigation water to take care of it all. And it's got out buildings. It's got more than out buildings - a wood shop, a chicken house, an implement shed, and a red barn. With a hay loft. It's all well fenced, and has corrals already in place. It all needs a bit of hard work and love, but our family is quite capable of both. There's nothing missing from the land itself that we could possibly want.

As I said, the house is secondary. It wasn't our primary focus. But the house is incredible. All the little details I've ever dreamed of having are there, plus more that I never even thought to wish for. Like a root cellar. It has a root cellar! (This has to be meant for us, right?) It also has a garage. We've lived without a garage for six years. The idea of having one is more than a little bit exciting.

We don't deserve to have this place. We'd be content with just the basics, and this is far beyond the basics. I'm afraid to let myself dream of this becoming a reality. It's too perfect. It's too good for us! I can think of a dozen other families that deserve this house more than we do. But, as my wise friend Katie told me, "God doesn't give us what we deserve. If He gave us what we deserve, we'd all be dead."

Waiting to hear from the mortgage guy, wondering if this is going to come together, is going to make me a crazy person. I didn't sleep last night, going back and forth between dreaming of Two Little Girls growing up in that perfect setting, and then reminding myself that this can't possibly actually happen. Our mortgage guy better work fast, or I might go insane from lack of sleep.

Clearly, I'm in trouble. When it all falls apart, I'm going to be really, really sad. I wish I could prepare myself for the disappointment, but I don't think I can. So y'all dream with me for a little bit, and then be prepared to comfort me when I come back blogging through my tears, K?

Hand Dying with Black Walnut Ink

2011-12-06T04:27:00.001-08:00

Remember the quill and ink project? Well, we had some (quarts of) leftover black walnut ink, so I used it for another quick project:

I hand dyed some hand spun yarn.

I spun this yarn a couple of years ago and it sat undyed in a basket for two reasons:
a) I was scared of dying yarn
b) It's really, really not very well spun. There's a serious learning curve to spinning. This is only about my third attempt.

I learned that dying isn't really hard at all, doesn't take as much time as I was expecting, and that the satisfaction of having 130 grams of hand spun, hand dyed yarn is worth the effort.

The process was simple: I tied the skeins here and there with scrap yarn and dampened them, then put them in the room temp ink/dye in a large pot, and heated it to nearly boiling. Then I turned off the heat and let it sit overnight, using a wooden spoon to occasionally move it around gently and press on it to get the dye to saturate well. In the morning I rinsed until the water ran clear, then hung them to dry.

I'm thinking I'll knit up a shawl of some kind with it, something to embrace the imperfections (and there are a lot of them!) of my first fingering weight hand spun yarn. I'll let you know what I come up with... might be awhile before there's time for that. :o)

*Note: black walnut ink also works beautifully as a wood stain. I stained the borders of a little Christmas plaque I made, and it has a really beautiful color to it. This stuff is awesome, I tell ya. Sure wish black walnuts grew wild where we live... guess we'll have to go back to Missouri sometime to get more!

Meet Cowboy

2011-12-05T06:18:00.001-08:00

This is Cowboy.

He's a miniature horse. My mom got him the other day so the girls would have something small enough to learn comfortably on. He certainly is small enough! He's 35" tall at the withers. He's sweet as can be, and oh so patient.

I see a whole lot of horse-y fun in our future!

The Citrus is Flowering!

2011-12-04T21:16:00.001-08:00

Each year on our anniversary, I give my husband a gift based on the traditional anniversary gift list. This year, the traditional gift was fruit. I got him a miniature citrus tree - it grows lemons, limes, and tangerines all on the same little tree that fits on the plant stand in our kitchen. Mind you, it's a tiny little thing. But there's one lime on it already, and it blossomed last week:

Isn't it pretty? There's no such thing as fresh citrus here in Colorado unless one finds a creative way to grow it. I figured this was a little more interesting than just a basket full of bananas and oranges, no?

Of course, neither of us have the slightest idea how to actually care for the poor tree. I didn't bother looking up the growing requirements for an indoor citrus plant before I bought it - what fun would that be? So now we get to learn how to hand-pollinate (which will be tricky, since we don't know which blossoms produce which fruits. Hmm...) We're supposed to mist it every day because (ha!) citrus trees require a lot of humidity. Have you ever been to Western Colorado? Our humidity is usually right there at a stable 0%.

I've done a fair job of growing plants outdoors, but indoors it's another story. Our house plants often go two weeks (or longer. Much longer.) before I remember that they need water. This tree came to the wrong house if it needs water on a regular basis. Which of course, it does. Darn tree is more demanding than the dog or the cat.

Anyway. Our citrus tree has a blossom! It's exciting, anyway. :o)

Homeschool: Long Division

2011-12-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

Homeschool math, in the style of The Oldest.

6,408 / 3

"Six thousand four hundred eight divided by three. Three goes into six two times. Two times three is six, and six minus six is Look, I see a starling! But starlings aren't usually around 'til spring. I wonder where his family is? Six minus six is zero, bring down the four. Three goes into four one time. I wonder if Tchaikovsky wrote The Nutcracker or Swan Lake first? Four minus three is one, bring down the zero. What are we having for dinner tonight? Ten divided by three is three, three times three is nine, subtract and get one, bring down the How come it didn't snow last night? It's cloudy today, maybe it will snow tonight instead. Bring down the eight, eighteen divided by three is six, six times three is eighteen, subtract and What time is Cora's dance class today? Subtract and get zero, so no remainder. So 6,408 divided by 3 is 2,136."

Holiday Traditions: Proof that I'm Sentimental

2011-11-26T05:57:00.001-08:00

As if anyone needed proof that I'm sentimental.

I'm a firm believer in giving Thanksgiving it's due, and waiting until afterward to begin the Christmas season. However, I also don't waste any time.

The Day After Thanksgiving is Christmas Decorating Day.

I sometimes get up early to shop, though this year I didn't. Then I make a yummy breakfast, and the fun begins. First we undecorate from fall, dust and vacuum, and then out come the Christmas goodies. Daddy hauls the boxes up from the basement while the girls and I open them and the fond memories start coming back to us.

For the girls, the memories are from last Christmas, or a couple of years ago. For me, some of these decorations spark memories from my own childhood. Christmas has always been such a happy season, and my memory bank is filled with wonderful rememberings from sweet times we shared at Christmas when I was young.

I remember when my mom would finally get sick of a decoration and would let me have it for my own room. There were these little cardboard houses, a cardboard glittery sleigh and some plastic reindeer that I would proudly display on my dresser each year. Oh man, were they ugly. But I didn't realize that at the time.

I remember one year my dad brought me home a teeny little wooden nativity. I'm not sure what happened to most of the pieces, though a few are still floating around here somewhere. As a kid though, I treasured that little set. It made me feel so darn grown up to have my own decorations in my room, and it meant even more because it was my dad that had given it to me.

And I remember the really ugly decoration, the elf sitting in a little holly-covered ball that was to be hung dangling from somewhere or another. I loved him. And I remember pulling him out, hanging him up, and my mother wrinkling her nose and shaking her head. He certainly wasn't her favorite, but I thought he was adorable and I remember insisting that we still display him even after he'd outgrown her fondness.

A lot of the decorations in my house are the same ones my mom would pull out year after year when I was a girl. She finally got so tired of them (and I was no longer there to insist that she use them) so she handed them over to me. Some aren't real pretty, but I don't care, and my girls don't care. Each one is special, each one sparks a different memory. And now it's all back in style, anyway: it's called "Vintage Christmas Decor." :o)

Here's a train (I think) my aunt made. I'm not sure how old it is. Each year a wheel or a little piece of candy has to be hot-glued back on. When I was little, it went up on the mantel over the brick fireplace every year.

And these embroidery hoops. Seeing them takes me back to the living room where I grew up, and that's a happy place to remember.

I remember being five? or six years old, amazed at how heavy this Santa was. Cora did the same thing this year, picked him up and said, "Whoa, he's a really heavy Santa."

And the stockings - one with reindeer, one with santas, one with ornaments, and two checkered ones, all lined up on hooks along the mantel of the brick fireplace from that wonderful living room. I picked the ornament one each year. This year, Cora claimed it.

To my girls: don't give away the decorations that have fallen out of style. Some day, you'll latch on to the memories they bring back to you, and you'll be glad you still have them. And I promise, they'll be 'cool' again some day, anyway.

And to my mom: thanks for all the wonderful Christmas memories you've given me. I don't think you even know how many sweet things I remember, but they are all centered around the amazing job you did making the whole Christmas season a special one for us.

Knitting Bits: A Rooster That Won't Attack

2011-11-26T05:29:00.000-08:00

The girls still talk about Mr. Tweets almost every day. They really miss him, and will tell anyone who will listen all the happy stories about him. They end with, "Yeah, and then Daddy killed him, 'cuz he got mean." That's usually enough to render a look of mild shock on the face of whomever they are speaking with.

Anyway, I've always wished I could bring him back as he was before he got mean, and as I was surfing Ravelry one day, I found the perfect solution: The Knitted Chicken.

He won't attack. In fact, he'll even cuddle if you want.

I made the tail feathers a bit larger than the pattern called for, and crocheted an edge to make them seem more "rooster-ish."

And I crocheted some poofy feathers on top, since our mean ol' rooster was a Polish show breed.

I'm not sure which girl will get him, but he'll be a Christmas gift they'll likely both get a giggle out of.

Pattern: Spring Chicken by Jacqui Turner
Yarn: Scraps of black and white held together
Needles: size 10, and H crochet hook when needed

Break Time!

2011-11-22T20:25:00.000-08:00

How is it that we always end up so busy? And so often, it's with "big kid" stuff for the Big Sister.

So Littlest One and I took a "little kid" break.

It was much needed, and great fun.

Sometimes I wish I was a "little kid" too. :o)

FO: The Just Plain Sweater

2011-11-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

I suppose for every successful knitting project, there must be at least one unsuccessful one.

I finished The Oldest's "Just Plain" sweater more than a month ago. It's hung on the mirror in my bedroom since then awaiting buttons. After seeing how it came together, I had no motivation to bother with sewing buttons on, but she finally insisted. She selected six mismatched black vintage buttons from the button jar. And now there is a finished product.

Mostly, I hate everything about it. I really don't like purple. I can't stand this flimsy chenille yarn. The sweater doesn't fit nicely at all, being far too wide around. And I even somehow managed to make the buttonholes crooked, because I'm awesome like that.

So it's not the prettiest sweater I've ever made. The up side is that she doesn't seem to notice the awkward fit, or the crooked buttons. She just feels the softness of this wretched yarn, and sees a shade of purple that makes her heart go pitter-pat. So I guess it's not a total failure.

Homeschool Bits: Quill and Ink

2011-11-16T15:04:00.000-08:00

While we were in Missouri, we discovered the novelty of black walnuts. Being as we're Westerners, and they don't grow wild here, we'd never seen them before. Chloe had a great time collecting them at the park at Alley Spring.

We put them in a bag, brought them home with good intentions, and ended up leaving them in that bag on the front porch for six weeks. They were rotten and slimy and gross. I was ready to toss them. But when I was reading about how to make black walnut ink and dye, the first step is to... leave your black walnuts in a bag to rot. Heh! Awesome. On to Step 2, then!

We put the rotten walnuts (maggots and all. No joke*.) in my five quart soup pot.

(I thoroughly wanted to ruin the pot, so I'd have an excuse to get a new stainless steel one. It didn't work, the pot's just fine.) Clad in rubber gloves and craft aprons, in our very oldest of clothes, we stabbed the walnuts with steak knives repeatedly until they were fairly broken up.

Then we brought them inside, filled the pot with water, and boiled it for a few hours.

Now, they say to boil it for 8-24 hours. I was working with two impatient little girls, and a time span of one afternoon to finish this project. We boiled it for two and a half hours, and that was plenty.

I mashed the husks up a bit more as it boiled, and when we were satisfied with how dark it was, I strained out all the nasty sludge.

Then we made our quill, using a feather from the geese The Daddy shot this spring. I'm not going to go into detail here, because if you Google "how to make a quill" you'll find about forty five thousand how-to articles on the subject. Suffice it to say, it's not hard. We had the best luck with an Exacto knife.

We all took a try at writing with the quill.

It was surprisingly easy. Chloe wrote a letter to her great-grandma that we visited in Missouri. The downside was not being able to erase!

History, science, art, penmanship and grammar all rolled into one activity? Awesome. And the actual hands-on time was only about half an hour.

===
*Yes, maggots. Seriously nasty. If it wasn't mentioned specifically in the blog I used as my general instructions that there would be bugs and larvae of all sorts, I don't think I could have continued. But by the time they'd boiled for two and a half hours, we couldn't tell they were in there any more. Not sure if that's a good thing, or if it's even more disgusting...

The House-hunting song.

2011-11-15T07:16:00.001-08:00

Oh give me a home
Where the elk and deer roam
Where my children can happily play.
Where never is heard
A loud neighbor's rude words
And rain dampens my garden each day.

:-) I was feeling musical, so I wrote us a farm-hunting theme song.

A Love Story: A Girl and her Yarn.

2011-11-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

I feel compelled to tell you my happy knitting project story. It's been a long time since I finished a project I was so darn smitten with. This story is far too long, considering it's about yarn. But hey, at least there are pictures.
===

When I take a trip now, instead of buying souvenirs that are going to sit on a shelf and collect dust (because I have too many of those already!) I try to buy a ball of yarn. It turns into something useful, and each time I use it, I have a chance to look back on the trip fondly.

So when we were in Birch Tree, Missouri (population 600-something) I found a local yarn store called The Twisted Thread.

The fact that there was a local yarn store at all in a teeny little Ozark town thrilled me. Mostly, she carried Cascade products, which I can easily buy at home, and aren't all that exciting to me. But! There was this shelf! A shelf of gorgeous, hand dyed (and even some hand spun) yarns! Colors galore, I tell you. But I knew just what I was after. I wanted a ball of hand dyed yarn that was going to remind me of the amazing fall colors of the Ozarks.

And lo and behold, there it was, the "Fall" colorway. Sumac red, Sassafras orange, the gold of hickory and dogwood. It had all the colors of the fall I was so enthralled with there in Missouri. And it was hand dyed by someone local to the Ozark region. And it was cashmere.

So anyway. Enough about the yarn, with it's gorgeous drape and ultra-soft feel and.... Right. So anyway.

I bought my ball of yarn, finished enjoying the fall in Missouri with my sweet grandmother, and came home to start looking for the right pattern. I knew I wanted a shawlette/kerchief. You can't do too much fancy lace work with hand painted yarn, so I was looking for something simple to show off the pretty colors. I looked for over two hours at Ravelry's options, was about to shut off the computer and give up completely, when I saw Simple Things.

The name hooked me first - Simple Things are what I live for. I looked at the pattern some more. It was named after a quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder! Our trip included our stop at Laura's home! It was clear to me then, this project was meant to be.

And so I knitted it. And lemme tell ya, knitting with cashmere (even just 10% cashmere) is a pleasure every knitter should experience at least once. This yarn is like butter, I tell you. It took a couple of weeks, but now I have this piece I am just utterly tickled with.

Oh my. Just look how those colors melt together, and yet still stand out from one another. I am completely sold on hand-dyed.

The shawl is hanging in my hallway, when I'm not wearing it. I get a lot more satisfaction out of it when I walk by it forty times a day than I would if it were hanging in my closet. It won't stay there forever, but at least for awhile. I'm calling it part of my "fall decor".

And so goes the story of a girl and the yarn she fell in love with. I love stories with happy endings. :-)

===

**Note: The picture above the pegs is the painting of Laura's house that my grandmother gifted me. Isn't it so pretty?

**Another note: check out Morandia's MIB Fibers if you want your own ultra-soft skein of cashmere/merino yarn. I'm sure she can help you out.

Thoughts on Gift Giving - for the kids

2011-11-12T05:39:00.000-08:00

The holidays are coming. We're being bombarded with even more marketing than usual, the toy aisles at Wal Mart are full and spilling into the walkways, and the newspaper advertisements include actual books of pictures of toys intended to make our children beg for all the things they don't even actually want.

Over the past several years, I've become completely jaded when it comes to Christmas gift giving, especially to my kids. It's exhausting, it's irritating, it's wasteful and expensive. I want to make a change this year. I want to give them less, but not have them feel like they're missing out. But how to do it? When you set the standard for eight years, how do you suddenly turn around and just stop?

Honestly, I've always tried to keep it fairly simple. At least, compared to the insane barrage of gifts I was presented with each year as a child. The rule has always been six gifts - each month through the year, I would purchase a gift (something I found on sale usually) and stash it away in The Christmas Closet. (The six remaining gifts were for birthdays.) Doing it that way avoided feeling that extra pinch at Christmastime, and kept me from buying stupid things at full price during the holiday season. And until my oldest was about six, it was a really good system. But around that time, her interests became more specific - and on top of that, they changed more frequently. You can buy a three year old girl a Barbie in February and know she's going to love it come December. Not always so much with a six, seven or eight year old, who is fascinated with dinosaurs in February, but by December is over the dinosaurs and on to an obsession with horses.

So we need a new system.

My goals for this system: to discourage excessive want and materialism, and instead encourage appreciation and value; to provide toys and other gifts that will provide a full year's worth of enjoyment; to avoid adding to the already significant amount of Kid Clutter in our home; to not go broke.

I want to go down to four meaningful gifts for each kid (and by meaningful, I don't mean expensive.) Four is still probably an excessive number, but we better take this slow or we might all have a panic attack. One of those gifts will be hand made, all the better if it's made from recycled materials. One will be educational, something that will be used during school time to make learning a bit more fun. One will be something I find used - clothing or toys. (Is giving used items as a gift tacky? Eh, not to kids. Read Money Secrets of the Amish for a great view of this.) And the last will be a toy or something else they're really wanting.

This seems totally doable, right? I distinctly remember the year I was twelve, and when the presents under the tree were all opened and tossed aside, I looked one more time to make sure there was nothing else, and I was really disappointed. I'd already made out like... well, like a spoiled adopted kid whose parents wanted her to know how much they loved her. And I wanted more? Disgraceful. The let down was awful - going from the huge high of More Stuff to... done. I think a lot of people from my generation have a similar memory. We want to avoid that for our own children... so we've decided the best way to avoid it is to give them even more stuff! How much sense does that make?

So how to inform my kids - especially the oldest - that we're going to help build character by giving them fewer gifts? This can't go over well. They've got strong characters, but only Christ himself could accept that bit of news without feeling any disappointment.

My hope is to replace that huge pile of gifts with a huge pile of family traditions and togetherness. Remember in my last post, when I talked about quality time together as a family being the most important demonstration of love for my oldest daughter? Well, I'm gonna take that and run with it. I'm not sure just how yet, but we'll figure it out. I'm pretty good at coming up with hokey traditions that Two Little Girls love. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Have you downsized your Christmas gift giving yet? How did it go over? If you've got any tips on how to make this less traumatizing for my kids, please do share!

Considering the Amish... through the eyes of an 8-year old

2011-11-10T17:48:00.000-08:00

"What are you reading?"

It's pretty much my favorite question to be asked, whether it comes from a friend or, in this case, my eight year old.

I'm reading Money Secrets of the Amish. It's really a good little book, and I highly recommend it to anyone that tries to live frugally. With this whole possibly-buying-a-farm thing happening in our lives right now, I figure there's no time like the present to tighten the belt and start really hoarding cash. It gets expensive to feed horses and goats, ya know.

Anyway, this led us into a great discussion over breakfast about who the Amish are, how they live, what they believe. Have you ever considered how that life looks in the eyes of an eight year old? (Okay, maybe not any eight year old. But my eight year old.)

*The Amish dress modestly, in long skirts and head coverings. This wasn't shocking to her. She thinks my sisters-in-law are the most beautiful women she knows. They dress modestly, in long skirts and head coverings, and to my daughter, their style of dress encompasses all that is feminine and beautiful. The only down side? "When I wear a long skirt, I trip going up the stairs."

*The Amish have a deep faith in God and live by what the Bible says. Again, she sees no problem with this. She loves Bible stories. She loves knowing what God tells her to do, and trying to do it. Mostly, she just loves God, as much as she understandsHim.

*The Amish work hard for the things they have. Even the children are expected to help. These girls see our Daddy gone to work fourteen or eighteen hours a day, mowing and tilling and such on his days off. They see me doing housework day in and day out. And they know how to carry their own weight. My girls do a good number of chores each day, each having her own responsibilities. Working hard might not be their favorite thing, but it's not anything they can't handle. They've proven to us (and to themselves) that they can.

*The Amish don't drive cars. They use horses and buggies to get around. Horses and buggies?! Is there any downside to that? Not that any eight year old can see.

*The Amish don't have a lot of physical, material stuff. They keep what they need, but not much more. The downside? We love pretty things, fancy things, lots of toys. The upside? They don't spend half their day putting away all the unnecessary belongings that get left all around the house. Less time cleaning? That's a big plus, to this Momma and her girl!

*The Amish don't have TV, or video games, or anything else electric. Not even electric lights. No TV? No video games? No problem - we use our TV about once every month. We don't own any video games. And no electric lights? Oil lamps and candles? Well, that sounds like about as much fun as riding in a horse drawn buggy!

*As a result of the way they live, the Amish have more time to spend together as a family. Working or playing together, Quality Time speaks more loudly to my daughter than anything else. Time spent together is at the top of her list as far as the things she values. When I have the time to sit down and really listen is when she feels the most loved, the most connected. There can be no down side found to more family time. It is, undeniably, the most valuable thing any of us have.

I could see the gears slowly turning as she digested this information. Sure, there were some downsides (like those long skirts tangling around skinny little-girl legs. And chores.) But the negatives were dwarfed in comparison to the positives. I could already tell what she was about to say, so I spoke first.

"We are NOT going to be Amish."

The excitement that was building was immediately replaced with a frown. "Aww man, 'cuz I was just gonna say, 'We should be Amish!'"

===

So, totally, not ever gonna happen. But just as with any culture, there is no harm in learning. The Amish deserve immense respect for their faith, their values, and their way of living. They have so much to teach us, if only we'd give them a chance.

Do check out the book. It's a rather enlightening read.

The Teeniest of First Steps

2011-11-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

After the Crazy Month of October, we'd agreed that the far more relaxed month of November would be a good time to begin taking some steps toward The Farm Dream.

It's a dangerous dream, this farmy one of mine. If I'm not careful, I can spend hours daydreaming about our Farm Life-To-Be. Acreage. Animals. Barefoot little girls wandering through rows of vegetables. It's an easy dream to get caught up in. It's also not an easy one to realize.

But today, we took the first step. We called a mortgage lender to begin the process of pre-approval. Tomorrow, we'll have an actual price range to work with, and we can start chatting with a real estate agent.

It's the teeniest, tiniest of first steps. But it's a step.

A farm? Can we really handle a farm?

Sure we can. If anyone can, it's us. Right? I mean, maybe. I hope so.

I keep reminding myself it could still be a Very Long Time before this becomes any sort of reality. Selling a house takes ages these days. Finding another house could take as long... or longer, if we end up building. No reason to get all excited. This is a long, slow process. We're talking maybe even years.

Don't get excited. Don't get excited. Don't get excited.

I'm not excited. I swear. Those daydreams aren't sneaking into every waking moment of my daily life. I promise, they're not.

Don't get excited. Don't get excited. Don't get excited.

My heart isn't set on plowing fresh ground in the spring. I'm not thinking about packing. I'm not looking at advertisements on Craigslist for horses. Or goats. Or anything else.

Don't get excited. Don't get excited. Don't get excited.

I'm not even sure we're ready for this. Really farming? I mean, not really farming. Still hobby-farming. We're not ready to make a living this way. Yet. But it'd be a lot closer than the homestead-in-the-city we're currently farming. It'd be a whole lot more work than what we've got now. Really? Are we really sure we're ready to take this on? Huge, huge responsibility.

For Heaven's sake, I'm practically panicking. And all I've done is call a mortgage broker. There is absolutely no good reason to be getting all worked up yet. It's just one teensy, tiny little step.

Still not getting excited. Really. I'm not!

Tonka Trucks!

2011-11-07T14:40:00.001-08:00

A gift of toys speaks loudly to children, doesn't it?

I'm not one to buy my kids a lot of new toys. Not because I want them to "do without" by any means - we're just blessed with generous family that overwhelm them with gifts at holidays and birthdays, and those toys keep them entertained for the remainder of the year.

But Two Little girls deserved a reward this fall. They have waited patiently all spring and summer long for the freedom to dig to their hearts' content in the garden. They have the freedom to go in and out of the garden as they please, but they know they aren't to dig it up until the first frost comes and kills off the veggies. So they waited. And they didn't complain.

Now that the garden is empty of all plants and freshly tilled, they could hardly wait to get in there and dig up that fluffy soil. Since they were so patient, I decided a reward was appropriate:

Tonka trucks make for good times! Especially when there is that much dirt to be moving around.

The beauty of having girls: we get to enjoy "boy toys", too.

This should buy me several hours of peaceful baking and knitting time, and should keep my children covered from head to toe in dirt for days to come. :-)

Garden Update: Tending to the Soil

2011-11-07T06:12:00.001-08:00

My garden kind of sucked this year.

Well, that's not entirely true. We did at least grow enough vegetables to keep us well fed through the summer, and there is a bit in the freezer, but certainly not what I was hoping for, not as much as what I grew last year.

There are several reasons for this:

*The chickens. Backyard chickens are lovely, particularly when they have a fenced yard that keeps them out of the garden. I had this sweet little dream that the chickens would go along, picking the nasty bugs out of the garden, fluffing the soil a bit and fertilizing as they went. What I discovered was that chickens - even just four of them - are destructive little beasts. They ate my kale to the ground, picked tomato plants clean of any leaves, and slept on the carrot greens, laying them down flat. Of course, they may have been eating bugs, too, but I couldn't tell. So we made them a nice yard to live in, and let them out frequently when there is someone out to ~~torment~~ supervise them.

*My laziness. The best way to grow a great garden is to work hard in it. Somewhere around July, when the temperatures got up over 100 degrees, I lost the motivation to spend an hour each night in my garden. The weeds suffocated some of my plants, I didn't bother fertilizing anything, and it showed in my rather meager harvest. I also lacked any motivation to plant seeds in August for a fall crop, meaning what was planted in spring was all we had.

*Lack of planning. When one is working with very limited space, one must plan to make the most of every bit of space. I seriously failed on this one, just sort of planting things where I felt like it. There were huge chunks of wasted space, minimizing the amount my garden could even produce, and making it look like a hodgepodge of plants, instead of neat and tidy the way I like it.

*The soil. This is the big one. Last year's garden was amazing, producing huge vegetables at a rate we could barely keep up with. It was lush and full and just incredible. I imagine those beautiful plants sucked every bit of life out of the soil, leaving it with pretty much nothing to offer this year. A seed can only do so much with soil that is void of any nutrients. Beets that took two months to grow last year barely produced a bulb after four months this year, despite the same exact watering system. I did toss out a couple of bags of store-bought organic mushroom compost early in the spring, but it wasn't much, and certainly not enough to replenish all that was taken from it the year before.

So we addressed that issue yesterday. I spread a barrel of homemade compost in the worst areas first - composted kitchen scraps and chicken manure, good ol' "black gold" filled with the best nutrients of all kinds. The problem with homemade compost is that you never have enough to really make much of a difference. So we also hauled home a truck-bed load of horse manure. (This is one of the benefits of having a mother who keeps horses. She's always got plenty of poop on hand, and is always willing to share.)

I hauled the manure into the garden with a wheelbarrow and spread it around while my sweet, hardworking husband tilled it all in thoroughly.

And of course, the chickens were expected to do their part.

Only they kept getting distracted by the swiss chard in the cold frame. Man, that stuff sure pleases chickens.

So twelve wheelbarrows of horse manure, a barrel of homemade compost, and a bit of sand leftover from my beet storing experiment last year has been dug into the garden. The soil out there is dark and fluffy, a far cry from the compacted clay we started out with. Hopefully this TLC will give us the best garden we've ever had come spring - if my laziness doesn't get in the way of my success!

Homemade Chicken Soup - for Marcie

2011-11-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

My sweet friend Marcie is "afraid of soup." Her words. I keep trying to imagine this chilly fall weather without the warmth of soups, but I just can't.

So Marcie, here's a good, standard chicken soup recipe. From scratch.

Start with a whole chicken. (Don't panic. You can so do this. Nothin' to it.) Open the packaging, remove the giblets (if it comes with them, they'll be in a plastic bag stuffed inside the chicken. If it doesn't come with them, don't worry about it.) Rinse the chicken with water inside and out, just to get the excess juice off.

Stick the chicken in the crock pot (I use a 5 qt crock pot, which leaves room for lots of broth.) Fill the crock pot with water. Put the lid on, turn the crock on high, and walk away. Thoroughly ignore your chicken for six hours.

An hour before dinner time, chop your veggies. Start with some kind of onion (or scallions. Or leeks.) Dice up the onion, and dice some kind of root vegetable. Carrots are good. Or parsnips. Or both. In a big soup pot on the stove, heat a drizzle of olive oil. When it's hot, add the root veggie and the onion. Stir and cook until it's soft. Expect about 10 minutes.

Now add some other yummy stuff: a cup of frozen corn, a chopped green bell pepper, some diced zucchini, handfuls of shredded greens, a couple of chopped tomatoes, some diced celery stalks. Whatever you have is great. You want about four cups of this stuff, but don't measure, and don't sweat it. Use up leftover bits of fresh veggies in the fridge or freezer. It'll be fine. Stir it all together and let it cook for another couple of minutes.

While that's cooking, go to your crock pot. Measure out six cups of the broth. Pour that into the pot with the veggies. Simmer it on medium high.

Using a slotted spoon, take out the chicken legs and thighs. Your chicken should be falling apart by now, so this shouldn't be hard. It's not an exact science. Put the legs and thighs on a plate and use two forks to sort out the meat from the bones. Put the meat in the pot with the veggies and broth. Toss the bones in the trash. Oh, and turn off your crock pot. You're done with it for now.

Let the soup simmer for the better part of an hour. Season it with salt and pepper, and whatever sounds good. I like thyme and basil and garlic powder. Taste and season, taste and season. You'll know when it's right.

When the veggies are just about soft, if you want to, add in some kind of grain. I love brown rice (already cooked, usually leftover from some other meal) or you can use a package of egg noodles if you want chicken noodle soup. Continue simmering until the noodles are soft, or until the rice is heated, about 15 minutes.

So it takes about an hour and a half, not including the time spent sticking the chicken in the crock pot. But you don't just have to stand there for an hour and a half. Check it every so often, stir a bit, and leave it again. It's really pretty simple, and you'll have plenty leftover to reheat.

This makes 6-8 hearty servings.

===

After dinner, go back to your crock pot. Use your slotted spoon to remove the rest of the chicken carcass. You can pull the breasts off to use in another meal, and whatever other bits of meat you find. Put the rest of the carcass in the trash. You've gotten good use from it.

If you have a strainer, put it over a glass jar. Ladle the broth that's still in the crock pot into the glass jar. You should get about another quart of broth. Let it cool for a couple of hours, then stick it in the fridge. The next morning, skim off the solid fat. Now you have a quart of chicken broth to either use, or freeze for another time.

How to Prepare Chickens for Snow

2011-11-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

Bangbangbang BANG!

My oldest raps a bamboo garden stick against the now-empty metal bird bath.

"Chickens!" she calls. "There will be a meeting for all backyard chickens held in the Sunflower Corner. You are all required to attend!"

Bangbangbang BANG!

Four chickens promptly scatter in opposite directions across the yard at the terrifying sound.

"Chickens! I mean it! This is IMPORTANT!"

"Mo-om, the chickens aren't listening to me."

"They are chickens, honey. They aren't little sisters. You can't boss them around, they won't listen."

Hmph. She will make those chickens listen to her, just you wait and see!

Following is the sight so frequently seen in our backyard: a hen, wings pinned to her side, neck outstretched, racing across the yard, an eight year old monster clomping along behind her in pink rubber chore boots, arms reached out to grasp when the opportunity strikes. This chase always ends the same, with the chicken in the arms of the girl, but those poor hens never stop trying to get away.

One by one, she catches the hens, carries them to Sunflower Corner, and sets them down. Then she turns to find the next ~~victim~~ hen. This could easily keep her busy for the better part of an hour: have you ever tried to put four free-ranging hens in one place, and just tell them, "Stay?"

"Chickens! This meeting is important! You all need to hear this! Your SAFETY is involved!" she cries, as she attempts to keep the chickens herded into the back corner. Chickens, when scared out of their wits, usually attempt to run. She was trying hard not to let them.

"Well, fine then. Never mind! I was just going to explain to you what you should do when the SNOW comes, but you can just figure it out for yourselves." Off stomp the pink chore boots with a very miffed little girl inside them.

===

Snow is on it's way here at our little homestead-in-the-city. The fruits and veggies are packed neatly into the freezer and onto the shelves, the garden is empty and awaiting a fresh tilling before the snow covers it completely. The heater is on, the rice heating packs are ready to warm little toes at bedtime. The sidewalk chalk is replaced by crayons and colored pencils, fresh coloring books await dark, cold evenings. And the the chickens? Well, they'll figure it out.

Missouri Trip: Rocky Ridge Farm

2011-11-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

The reason for our trip was to visit my grandparents in Kansas and my grandmother in Missouri. But we're homeschoolers - if there's a cool place to stop along the way, we're going to stop, and we're going to learn all we can.

Well, it just so happened that we'd have to drive right through Mansfield, Missouri on our way to Grandma Elda's house. Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura and Almanzo Wilder moved about seven years after they were married. Rocky Ridge Farm.

When I looked at the map and realized this, I did a little dance. I think I even squealed a little. Anyone who knows us knows our love for Laura Ingalls Wilder. I've read each of the books out loud to the girls, and they just thrive on the play that stems from pretending to be pioneers. (Cora is always stuck playing Mary, because of her blonde hair, but she can never be nearly as well-behaved as Mary was, and Chloe is always getting frustrated with her because of that!) My reading has gone further than just the books she wrote to biographies, etc. that describe more of who she was as a person, and I've become even more enthralled with the woman that she was as I learn more about her. Wisdom like that is hard to come by.

We arrived at Rocky Ridge Farm after rain had poured down on the area for five hours. It was soggy and damp and chilly outside, but we still enjoyed walking around the grounds, imagining Laura raising Rose out there among the huge native trees, and the trees that Almanzo planted.

The biggest disappointment of the whole place was that no photos were allowed of anything indoors, meaning I have very little to share with you in the way of pictures.

We started with a guided tour through the house, left very much the same way Laura left it when she passed away. Almanzo built the house, and he was clearly an ingenious carpenter. Everything he did just made so much sense, and he did it all with Laura's comfort and convenience as his priority. I'm terribly envious of the baking station in her kitchen - windows on both sides, a counter low enough to knead the bread comfortably, bins below for sacks of flour and sugar and cupboards in easy reach for other ingredients. Throughout the whole house were all the little things she treasured - framed calendar prints on the walls, handmade pillows and embroidery (even some that Almanzo did!) and it was just so perfectly homey and cozy. She had a library nook that looked lovely, another thing I'd love to have some day. Unfortunately, our time in the house was short. Chloe and I could have spent hours looking at every detail, but the tour guide pushed us through in order to make space for the next group coming after us. I would have been content to stay there all day but they wouldn't let us.

After the tour was the museum they've set up to house many of the more precious artifacts from her life - including Pa's fiddle. The real fiddle, the thing that got them through all the hard times of pioneer life, that celebrated the great times. That fiddle held that little family together. It was central in each of the books, as Laura's earliest memory on into her teen years when it was still such a great comfort to her. To see it was really, really special. We also bought a CD in the gift shop of the fiddle being played by a local - neat stuff! We were able to spend as much time as we wanted in the museum, moving at our own pace and taking it all in. There was a lot of "Mom, look! Remember when she talked about....." and "Oh, Chloe, it's the ......." We were both so excited to see firsthand so many of the little things mentioned in the books: Laura's first embroidery sampler (at age four), the lace given to her on her wedding day, the tiny box with porcelain flowers. Cora mostly just followed along patiently, listening and asking questions, though she enjoyed looking at the pictures of Laura and her family, seeing what they really looked like.

We visited "The Rock House" that Rose had built for them after she'd become a successful writer. We could sit on the back porch and imagine Laura there.

And I did manage to snap a quick shot of Laura's beloved blue willow table setting from outside the kitchen window.

Truly, the whole visit was a treat. We were able to, for a short time, immerse ourselves in all of Laura's things, imagine so much more clearly her life after what we know from the books. To be able to add sight to the stories made them that much more real.

I did buy some postcards of the most special things inside the house and museum - Pa's fiddle, her writing desk, the kitchen. And I bought a china shepherdess in hopes of someday having a mantle of my own on which to put her. When we arrived at my grandmother's house later that day, she gave us a painting of the white house, done by someone native to the area. On the back, the artist wrote "I knew Laura as a nice person and as a friend." A painting of Laura's house, done by someone who considered her a friend. Awesome. It will hang in our hallway now, treasured.

Missouri Trip: Bakersville

2011-11-02T06:18:00.001-07:00

Blogging trips is so hard to do - we do so many things I want to write about, and take hundreds of pictures, and sorting through it all and finding the words to describe it all can be a daunting task. But I'm at least going to try, for posterity's sake, you know.

===

In the beginning of October, the girls and I set off on an adventure. And adventure without The Daddy (gasp!) that included driving 20 hours east. There were many stops along the way, all of which I'll eventually blog about, and ending in a little town called Mountain View, Missouri, deep in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks.

One of the stops we made was Mansfield, Missouri. Our main reason for stopping was to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum there, but discovered another little gem close by: the little town of Bakersville, familiar to anyone who orders heirloom seeds from Baker Creek. We've ordered our seeds from them for years, and I'd always wanted to visit their little town. I had no idea driving through that we'd be right there, but plenty of signs led us right to them. And it was such a treat to visit this place (especially for this avid heirloom gardener.)

The gardens were utterly fantastic, and this was in early October, when they were long past their peak. But still there were bright colors in every shade of red and purple and orange and pink tucked away here and there, and flower gardens still bursting with color. I'm not a flower gardener, but this may have inspired me to become one!

We visited on a Wednesday afternoon. It was super quiet, hardly a soul to be seen, but I think that added a bit to the overall effect of the town. The shops were all void of people, meaning we could walk and look and talk to our heart's content without feeling rushed at all. The folks that worked there were sweet as could be.

There were shelves of jams and jellies for sale, handmade crafty bits of all kinds, an apothecary with jars and jars of dried herbs, books on every subject interesting to folks like me, and of course, seeds. Row upon row of heirloom, antique-variety seeds for purchase. It was a gardener's dream come true.

Not only do they grow heirloom seeds at Bakersville, but they grow heirloom chickens. All shapes and sizes and manner of fowl, really. You'd think, seeing as we have chickens in our own back yard, that coop after coop of chickens would get boring fast to Two Little Girls, but no!

I had to drag Chloe away from them. The kind folks at Bakersville were trying to close up for the day, and my daughter was still cooing softly to a cage of banties, telling them how pretty they were. She left that day utterly smitten, determined to own at least one pair of banties next spring.

Upstairs in one of the shops is a Seed Museum.

Seed catalogs, packets, advertisements and other memorabilia from years gone by. Truly, the folks at Bakersville possess an extreme love not just for gardening, but for the history of it. The girls dragged me through faster than I'd have liked, but it was fun to see all this history collected into one place - and there couldn't be a more fitting place for it.

I am so glad we had the time to stop at Bakersville. It was a lovely surprise to find it so close to our planned route. Some day we'll have to make it back and visit during one of their festivals, and see everything in action, but spending a quiet afternoon just exploring was a great experience in itself!

If you garden - or need inspiration to start - check our their website and ask for a catalog. It's the prettiest garden catalog you've ever seen, and you won't be able to stop yourself from ordering at least a few packets of something interesting to try.

More to come on the rest of our trip as soon as I make it through more pictures. :-)

Halloween Costume Cuteness

2011-11-01T04:34:00.001-07:00

Sewing Halloween costumes is always great fun, and this year was no exception. The only change is that this year they're both old enough to decide for themselves what they want to be, and I had very little input. We do make the rule that there will be nothing evil, scary, or mean. That still gives them plenty to choose from.

We had a musketeer:

And a teddy bear:

They had a lovely time trick-or-treating, have far more candy than any children should be permitted to possess, and will now commence to use their costumes for dress-up play for many years to come. Perfect. :-)

Halloween Happiness

2011-10-30T18:09:00.001-07:00

Joy is...

watching Two Little Girls carve their pumpkins.

Ooey, gooey fun.

Sloppy, messy, slimy giggles.

Wishing everyone a Happy Halloween! Have fun, and be safe!

Rawr!

2011-10-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

I'm loving that it's getting dark so early these days. There's no time for gardening after dinner any more. Instead, there's an hour of dark before bed, time spent in the living room with my girls. Last night they ate popcorn and colored, while I read a story out loud and knitted. An evening like that affords its own sense of peace.

===
I keep seeing dinosaur hats on Ravelry and in friends' blogs, and decided it was time to go ahead and make one.

Chloe is modeling it, but I made it for a friend of Cora's for his fourth birthday. No pattern used, one wasn't really needed. More details on my Ravelry if you want to make one.

After Chloe saw it she asked, "Do you think there might have been pink and purple dinosaurs, too?" Add a pink and purple dino hat to my list of things to make. :-)

Coring Pears the Easy Way

2011-10-03T20:00:00.001-07:00

Every once in awhile, I come across some utterly fabulous tip for making kitchen work easier. My friend Katie passed this one on to me, and I'm forever grateful!

If you've ever tried coring pears, you'll know that it's tedious work. Of course, it's not bad if you're only coring a pear or two, but if you happen to need to remove the cores from forty pounds of pears, it can be slow going.

Unless you've got a melon baller.

Just cut the pear in half and use the melon baller to scoop out the core. It makes for the prettiest pear halves you've ever seen, and it's about a million times faster than trying to use a knife.

Do feel free to share any other ingenious kitchen shortcuts here - I'm all ears! :-)

The End of the Canning Season

2011-10-03T19:41:00.001-07:00

Happily, canning season is coming to an end. Aside from possibly one more box of apples, I've finished all I plan to do for the year. And oh man, is it satisfying to be able to say that!

I haven't written much about canning this year, mostly because it's all the same stuff I wrote last year, and the year before that. Nothing's changed much except that I can kick out jars of canned goodness much more quickly with each passing year.

Here's the list of what's in the "pantry" (read: shelves in the basement. Because I have no real pantry.)

Peaches: 16 quarts
Nectarines: 5 quarts
Apricots: 7 quarts
Pears: 10 quarts
Tomatoes: 15 quarts

Strawberry jam: 16 pints
Apricot jam: 3 half-pints
Apple jelly: 5 pints
Peach jam: 8 pints
Cherry preserves: 3 half-pints
Applesauce: 8 pints

Pear chutney: 13 half-pints
Salsa: 19 pints

Bread & butter pickles: 7 pints
Zucchini pickles: 3 pints
Dill pickles: 3 pints

Apple pie filling: 7 quarts
Apple cider: 4 quarts

I just added it up: 152 jars of food. Wow.

Since peach season in August, I've spent about four hours canning each week, usually a couple of hours on free afternoons, after school is finished and the girls are enjoying some free time (or hang-out-in-the-kitchen-with-Mom time.) It's tiring, but not overwhelming.

And I'm done! We'll have enough fruits, sauces, jams, jellies and pickles to last well into summer next year. Feasibly, all I'll have to buy is bananas. We can snack on canned fruits, have them for breakfasts and desserts all through the winter. I've got about 15 pints of dried fruits as well, which make for lovely snacks.

I'm in the mood for a bit of math. Let's see how much all this food costs to put by. Because math is cool, right?

Peaches - 4 boxes @ $10
Nectarines - 1 box @ $5
Tomatoes - 4 boxes @ 5.50
Pears - 2 boxes @ $8
Apples - 2 boxes @8
Strawberries - 8 pints @ $2
Cherries - 2 lbs @ 1.50
Apricots - free from a neighbor's tree

So about $118 in fruit. All the vegetables I grew in the garden. The costs of the other ingredients I'll estimate at about $50, which seems high except that I use organic raw cane sugar for all the fruit and jellies. That also includes the boxes of pectin, and extra vegetables, spices and such for the salsa and chutney. Figure another $30 for lids for all the jars. So about $200, rounded up, for 152 jars of mostly organic food, or approximately $1.30 per jar.

A jar of organic jam costs $4. Half-pints of chutney sell at farmer's market for $6. A quart of organic canned fruit is almost $5.

I have no desire to do *that much math. But clearly, I'm saving money. A lot of it.

And this food is local! Well, most of it is, anyway. I've talked to the farmers, I know many of them by name. I can ask them whether they spray their crops, or use chemical fertilizers. There's the proof that eating organic and local really is possible, and doesn't have to be that expensive. Is it a lot of work? Well, yes... but it's enjoyable work. It's work that allows for time spent chatting and singing with my daughters or friends in the kitchen, and enjoying the feeling of accomplishment that comes from knowing I'm feeding my family well. And it rarely actually feels like work.

More and more moms my age are canning every year it seems, and I love hearing about it! Wal-Mart sold out of their canning supplies this year, along with most other stores here in town. I think this whole canning/preserving thing is really taking off (for the second time around.)

A New Bedtime

2011-09-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

Bed time is sacred in our house. Only on very rare occasions does it get messed with. My daughters are always in bed at eight o'clock. They are permitted to read or do other quiet activities until they fall asleep, but for this mama, quiet time commences at eight each night. Especially now with no more nap times, I need a couple of hours to myself at the end of the day if I'm to maintain the level of sanity I need to actually raise these children.

So it's a really big deal when I write that I raised The Oldest's bedtime. She's allowed to stay up til nine now.

Somehow, when I wasn't looking, this little girl went and grew up! She's matured, become quite responsible and dependable. She was at her real dad's house for a day this weekend, so I was taking care of her chores too, and I realized how much more it felt like I was doing. She's really, truly helpful! Not "little girl helpful" - stirring the bowl of muffin batter or haphazardly shoving her own clean clothes into drawers - but truly helpful, honestly making a difference when it comes to keeping our home neat and tidy.

She feeds the chickens and the dog, she empties the dishwasher and loads the rinsed dishes, she sorts the recycling, puts away all the laundry except Mommy and Daddy's, makes her bed and (mostly) cleans her room. At any time I can ask her to dust the living room or clean the bathroom and she'll do a great job of it. During this harvest time, when I'm in the kitchen for a couple of hours on most days, she's often in there helping me. She's peeled ten pounds of carrots in one sitting, she peeled, pitted and sliced a whole 20 pound box of peaches for canning, she dices tomatoes for the freezer.

Obviously, it's not that she does all of that every single day, but she does it as needed. And here's the kicker - She does it with a good attitude!

Okay, well, mostly. But ya know, there are times that I want to pout about washing the dishes, too. Usually she's standing next to me cheerfully going about her tasks. It's not infrequent for her to come to me and say, "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

What a blessing this little girl is to me.

And so, I raised her bedtime to nine o'clock. Staying up late is special to a little girl, and this little girl deserves it. Staying up later means you're more responsible, and this sweet girl has become amazingly responsible. It gives her a whole hour of time without her sister, time to play just what she wants without interruption. It gives us time to chat if we want to, or to sit and knit quietly together.

Seeing that my girl is growing up is killing me. I'm not ready for her to move into the "young lady" stage yet, and she's nearing it quickly. But seeing her grow up, and seeing who she is becoming, is utterly heartwarming, too.

Knitting Bits: Yarn Shopping with the Oldest

2011-09-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

With the cooler weather we've been having, I've been struggling with my desire to ignore the garden and knit instead. I gave in. The garden is in sad disarray as I sit cheerfully in the shade and knit to my heart's content.

I took Chloe yarn shopping for her winter sweater today. I learned a few years ago, after I spent two weeks knitting an adorable sweater for her, that she is not the type of girl to overlook comfort for the sake of cuteness. It was a bit scratchy, that cute little sweater, and so I had to beg her and bribe her every time I put it on her. She wants a sweater that is loose fitting, with sleeves long enough to cover her hands, a hood, and the softest yarn one could possibly find.

So we spent half an hour scouring the yarn aisles at Hobby Lobby this afternoon. We were after something worsted weight, and purple... unless she changed her mind on the color once we got there. After years of watching me in a yarn store, she's mastered the art of fondling yarn. She walks along, hands out, squeezing skein after skein of purple yarn. If one feels like it may be soft enough, it must endure the next test: she rubs it on the inside of her forearm, and then on her cheek. That's enough to make most of the yarn go right back into the bin. Of all the yarn varieties that Hobby Lobby had to offer, only two passed the cheek-rubbing test. And of those, only one had a shade of purple she thought was suitable.

And so I am now knitting a top-down raglan cardigan out of plum-colored velveteen plush yarn. Top-down allows me to make the sleeves just the right length, and I've altered the pattern to include a hood. No lace, no cables, not even appliqued flowers - "just plain", said my Little Girl who is clearly growing up. I did convince her to let me use mismatched antique buttons down the front, because "just plain" isn't in my vocabulary.

I'm happy to be knitting again. :-)

A Houseguest

2011-09-20T17:30:00.001-07:00

We had a house guest visit us in the kitchen this afternoon. We weren't expecting her, and so she took us quite by surprise.

She seemed a bit perturbed that we had moved her food source indoors. She marched across the counter and promptly began exploring. She found the dish soap fascinating.

As much as we enjoyed the impromptu science lesson, and would have gladly had her stay awhile, we thought she'd appreciate being replaced in her cozy home in the basil pot.

Fall Dresses for Little Girls

2011-09-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'm still on Housework Hiatus.

I finally gave in a bought Little Girls, Big Style by Mary Abreu. I've been eying it for some time now at the local fabric shop. And then I used it to make some dresses for Two Little Girls for fall.

Cora's is the Knotty Apron dress - an attached faux apron and knots instead of buttons on the straps. Love how it makes her look like a little peasant girl.

Chloe's is the Pocket Pinafore dress. I had to alter the pattern up a couple of sizes - the book only goes to a size 6. The straps attach with suspender clips.

I love the book, and highly recommend it. These patterns are super simple - primarily rectangles cut and sewn and gathered. Anyone who can sew a straight line could make these outfits without much difficulty. I will say that the amount of fabric called for was way more than what I needed. I have tons of leftover fabric.

The best thing to do with fabric leftover from little girl dresses?

Make doll clothes, of course!

I used an old McCall's doll clothes pattern, altered a bunch, to make exact replicas of the girls' dresses. Basking in the glory of being a mom to little girls. :o)

Notes on Preserving: Frozen Eggs

2011-09-11T21:13:00.000-07:00

Wanna see something gross?

Yum... egg cubes!

I realize how nasty this looks (and sounds) but chickens don't lay nearly as many eggs in the winter, and that's not too far off. So I'm trying to be proactive. I looked at many different articles about freezing eggs and settled on this one from Chickens In The Road. The technique is simple - crack the eggs into a colander, smash the yolks, and let the eggs drain through into a bowl. The resulting mixture is then poured into ice cube trays and frozen. Two cubes is about equal to one egg.

Note: eight year old little girls love cracking eggs. Two dozen eggs kept mine happily busy for half an hour.

I don't plan on cooking up a batch of scrambled eggs with these, but I figure they'll be useful in all the winter baking that we usually do.

I've also heard that you can just stick whole eggs in the freezer and then thaw and use them successfully. Has anyone tried that? What other methods for preserving eggs are there - I'm open to suggestions!

FO - Flowers of Fall

2011-09-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

This whole homeschooling-homesteading mom thing is really putting a damper on my love for making things. I vaguely remember having time to knit, once upon a time ago, but it hasn't happened any time lately.

With the cooler fall weather settling in, I finally put my foot down and made some time to do a bit of knitting. I rebelled against the housework, even threw the to-do list in the trash. Then I poured myself a glass of wine (at 3:00 in the afternoon) and camped out in my favorite Adirondack chair beneath the shade of the elm tree in the front yard. It was lovely, and so very needed for my sanity.

And the product of my relaxing afternoon made it all the more satisfying:

Flowers of Fall hat by Brownie Knits

I love giant flowers on Little Girl heads. Makes me wish I was four so I could rock the giant flower look.

Four!

2011-09-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

Littlest One has been four now for nearly a month. You'd think the novelty and excitement of this new age would have worn off a bit by now, but it hasn't. Four is a very big deal to her, and she would like for every person that she comes in contact with to know it.

Every store clerk that has checked us out since August 15th has been notified of this change in age. "I'm four!" she exclaims to each cashier. Of course, this is met with, "Oh, what a big girl you are!" which pleases her tremendously.It doesn't matter who it is - a neighbor we meet while going for a walk; the lady next to us in the cereal aisle; the girl cutting our fabric selections... always, she must announce, "I'm four years old!"

Today I told her that maybe she doesn't need to announce her age to every person we meet, that perhaps she only tell them her age if they ask how old she is. "But," she said, "what if they forget to ask me?"

Ah well. She is four, after all. :o)

Notes on Preservation: Freezer Veggies

2011-09-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Someone asked for some of this information, so here it is.
===
One of my goals this fall was to learn to use a pressure canner. It never happened. So, as in years past, I'm working to freeze as many vegetables as I can before the first frost hits.

Vegetables (except for tomatoes) are low-acid foods and cannot be canned safely in a regular boiling water canner. I've heard a few horror stories about pressure canners, and they intimidate me, so I never found the courage (or the time) to learn to use one.

Knowing how much to freeze is a hard thing to master, and I'm still in the process. The one best tip I can offer is to keep records. For each garden season I keep the following records in a 3-ring binder in plastic-covered sheets:

Amount of each veggie harvested (usually noted in pounds with hash marks. You can get a cheap scale at Wal Mart for about $15. I love mine and use it constantly.)

The cost of any produce I purchase from local farmers or stores (so I know if I should wait for a lower price. Keep in mind that the cost of food goes up slightly most years. Don't wait too long and miss the best price!)

The date of the lowest price I've found. Some veggies are only at a really low price for one week out of the summer. Don't miss that week.

The amount I preserve, the method, and the date, and also the date I use the last one. If I use the last bag of diced tomatoes in February, I know I better do twice as many the next year if I want to make it to August.

I also keep notes each year of what varieties of certain vegetables I want to grow again and which ones were disappointing, and I make notes of how many pounds of wild game we're able to put by.

I can't tell you how often I look back at these records. I can tell how much more we're using (as our girls are growing!), what season to start looking for certain produce items, when the best time to go tomato picking is, how many pints of salsa we eat each month... anything I want to know is there in my records. I realize my records sound anal, but they only take a minute or two each night to update, and they are invaluable.

For our family of four, here's what I've got in the freezer so far for this year (some grown, some purchased from local farms:)

14 lbs of green beans (in 3/4 lb packages)
50 ears of corn (cut from the cob, 2 cups per pkg =24 pkgs)
8 lbs of beets (in 1lb packages. I wish I'd planted more beets though.)
18 1-cup packages of spinach, kale, chard, and other greens
5 lbs of kohlrabi (in 1/2 lb packages. It's not our favorite, but it's an easier and more space-effective alternative to broccoli.)
8 cups grated zucchini (I'll do more. It's good for zuke breads and such.)
2 lbs diced bell peppers (I'll do another 2-4 lbs before the season ends.)

I haven't started freezing tomatoes yet - I decided to save that for next week. I needed a break. So I'll write the tomato post then, and carrots will be frozen in the next few weeks, too.

Based on the above totals, I can tell you that we've grown and preserved enough for 6-8 months' worth of soups, stews, stir-fries and side dishes. Hopefully by then we'll have peas and greens and other early veggies coming out of the garden again, and we won't be forced to buy too much from the stores.

I'll try to keep up regularly with preservation notes, since I know so many folks are trying to do this now.

PS - it thrills me to hear how many people are adopting this way of life. Everywhere I turn I'm meeting people who are canning and dehydrating and freezing and buying local, organic produce in bulk. I'm so proud of all of you!

The Bible in 90 Days

2011-09-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

So I'm doing the Bible in 90 Days challenge. Hence the reason my blog is so neglected - every spare moment of my day is now spent reading the Bible instead of rambling about my not-very-exciting life.

I'm nearing the end of 2 Samuel right now, one day ahead of schedule. It averages out to be 12-13 chapters each day, an hour to an hour and a half of reading. That can be pretty rough some days, when I'm already trying desperately to keep up with schooling two kids, preserving the garden harvest, and keeping the house presentable. Most nights I look forward to the reading. Tonight I was so exhausted I didn't even want to pick up my Bible, but I managed.

Reading it this way is so different from any Bible reading I've done before. It's fast - there isn't time for cross-referencing and deep consideration of the meaning behind specific stories or verses. It's just reading for the face value, for the story that develops. I've never considered the Bible to be a sort of novel before, but that's how this approach makes it feel, and it's really quite fascinating. I'm finally able to really register whose son is whose, and you get to know the "characters" of the story in a different sort of way. It also paints a disturbing picture of just what life was like back in the early days of civilization, what little regard they had for life (especially female life) and how harsh the lives they lived really were. We're all just a bunch of sissies now, aren't we?

Deuteronomy dragged on painfully. Actually, about half-way through Exodus to the end of Numbers were all equally boring and took significant will power to finish. It seemed that in one chapter, God told Moses "blah blah blah blah rules", and then the whole next chapter was Moses repeating it verbatim to the people. The Torah could have been cut down by half if he could have just written, "And Moses told the people of Israel what God said." But apparently he didn't think that would be effective. I suppose we do learn by repetition, don't we?

Joshua got to be more interesting, until I got sick of reading about conquest after conquest. Ruth is always a pleasant read - I enjoy the love story there. I do enjoy the parts of Samuel that are about Samuel, but once it gets into Saul and David and all the fighting, my eyes glaze over and I have to really work to read. I've never been one to enjoy reading about fighting and war, and this is page after page of tiny print all about... fighting and war.

I realize most Bible in 90 Days bloggers write daily or at least weekly about their reading... honestly, I'm wondering where they find the time. I'll update here and there, but mostly I'll just be frantically trying to finish one more chapter before I move on to folding more laundry or correcting a math worksheet or canning more tomatoes.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's successfully completed this challenge, or who is working on it - I can use all the support I can get!

The First Day of School

2011-08-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, where did the summer go? I can't believe we're starting school already. Not that we ever really stopped - we kept up our 6 weeks on/1 week off schedule all through summer. But today was the day that we cracked open the crisp new books, started some new units, and officially began third grade and preschool.

Here's the basic rundown for what I'm using and teaching this year:
Math: a Beka Arithmetic 3
Language: English for the Thoughtful Child 2
Science: 1st semester will be spent building an animal notebook based on the classification of living things, as well as plenty of ~~camping~~ nature study.
History: 1st semester focuses on American History from after Jefferson to Buchanan, using Stories of America Volume 1 (a Charlotte Mason based text)
Fine Art: starting with Renoir, then Rossini for poetry, followed by Vivaldi. We'll spend 2-3 weeks on each artist.
Penmanship: a Beka Penmanship 3, cursive writing
Spelling: a book I found in our basement stash, it's pretty generic
Literature: Misty of Chincoteague and the rest of the series if she loves it.

We'll also spend time journaling each day, learning handicrafts and kitchen skills, gardening, dance class and 4-H, and chautauqua in the spring. I'm happy with the goals we've set out for this year. I've got our days scheduled out down to the half hour, which is tedious but is the only way we get everything done. Instead of taking as long as it takes to complete an assignment, I'm allotting a reasonable amount of time and assigning unfinished work as "after-school work". The only tests I'll give are in math and spelling, and mostly just because she enjoys them.

And for my Big Preschooler: a focus on learning numbers 1-10 by sight and being able to write them, learning all the letters, writing them, and knowing their sounds. Aside from that, we'll just do plenty of living and playing with a focus on hands-on educational games and activities. She's in charge of fixing the morning snack each day (with help as needed) and does plenty to help around the house and garden. Preschool and kindergarten are both really relaxed at our house - I only assign as much "school work" as she seems to want to do. There will be plenty of time for learning later!

Here's wishing everyone a smooth, successful school year, whether at home or elsewhere!

Homeschool: Grammar Lesson

2011-08-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

Having children correct grammatical mistakes in sentences is a common way of teaching them to improve their own grammar. It's been proven an effective teaching method time and again, and it's one I use frequently for my eight year old, who has a terrible habit of forgetting to capitalize the beginnings of sentences. I tried a fun new twist on this method this week, and thought it'd be worth sharing.

Do you remember, as a kid, how much you loved to hear your parents tell stories about their own childhoods? In fact, even as an adult, I still love to hear those stories. My kids are no different, always asking about things I did when I was growing up. It's just fun to imagine your parent as a child, I think. And it also makes us adults a little more "real" to our kids.

So I started writing stories from when I was a kid in one of Chloe's school notebooks... without any capitalization or punctuation. I told about the backyard I had when I was growing up, about how the neighbor kids and I made up a "fort", about the kinds of fruit trees and bushes and flowers back there. I wrote about playing Intellivision video games, about my favorite Barbies, and learning how to ride a bike. I told about a time my best friend and I had a fight, and about how I always competed in penmanship at school with a boy named Justin, about my dear friend Samantha that moved away in the fourth grade. Silly little memories most of them, but those "little things" are the stuff of life, and make it easy for our kids to relate to us as actual people.

Correcting the grammar of those real life stories makes it all the more interesting. She looks forward to these grammar lessons now, because she gets to learn a bit more about me, instead of just fixing pointless sentences that hold no real meaning for her. And it's also inspired her to write out some of her own memories, willingly practicing her writing and journaling skills.

So, it may be worth giving it a try. Even the most boring childhoods are fascinating to our own children - and it can be fun to dig up those fond memories and share them with your kids.

Experimenting in the Kitchen: Kefir

2011-08-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

A fellow foodie friend recently gave me a wonderful gift: a small handful of kefir grains.

By now, most folks know at least that kefir is good for you. It resembles yogurt in taste, though it tends to be much runnier in consistency (unless you make it with cream.) It's filled with all the good probiotics that our bodies are void of, but desperately need to really be healthy.

You can buy kefir at the health food stores, and it does taste quite yummy, but if you look at the ingredients list you'll realize how much has been added to it. And what most people aren't yet aware of is that kefir is really, really easy to make.

I'm an occasional yogurt maker. If I have half a gallon of raw milk left at the end of the week, I'll turn it into yogurt before it spoils. Yogurt isn't inherently difficult, but it takes effort and time. Kefir doesn't. There's no heating to just the right temperature, no keeping it warm for 8 hours. It's really simple: pour milk over the the kefir grains in a glass mason jar. Cover the jar loosely (I use a tea towel) and set it on your counter overnight (or longer.) We seem to like about 18 hours of culturing time, but it's not an exact science. I usually start it in the afternoon and it's ready the next morning. (Try setting your phone alarm to remind you when it's finished. As much as I hate to admit it, technology does have it's upside.)

After 12-18 hours, you'll have a jar of mild-tasting kefir. I should admit to you right now that I can't stand the taste of it plain. But I also can't stand the taste of yogurt, nor can I even manage to stomach a glass of milk. Dairy products gross me out, with only a few exceptions. So the trick for me is to find ways to use the kefir, to gain benefit from it, without having to actually taste it.

I've been doing that in the form of kefir smoothies. To serve a mommy and two little girls use approximately:
2 bananas
1.5 cups of any other frozen fruit or berries
1/4 tsp stevia
1.5 cups kefir

There's also strawberry milk. My children, living in a world primarily devoid of red dye 40 and processed foods, have survived until now without strawberry milk. A sad thing, really, as I remember what a treat strawberry milk was when I was growing up. With kefir, I can still offer them the yummy treat:

1 cup kefir
1 Tbsp homemade strawberry jam
Blend with a hand blender and serve. Way better than Nestle Quick.

Kefir can be used as a substitute for buttermilk in just about any baking recipe. I've altered my grandma's buttermilk pancake recipe to use whole wheat pastry flour and kefir. Admittedly they're still not as light and fluffy as the ones made with white flour, but I was happy with the result. And kefir also makes a great base for creamy salad dressings. We had kefir mixed with salsa on top of a taco salad, and it was really fantastic.

So the learning curve isn't necessarily in learning to make kefir, which is easy as can be, but in learning to use it. We're managing though. Both of my girls will drink a glass plain if I offer it to them, though they'll also eat a bowl of plain yogurt quite happily. But finding tastier ways to offer it is a fun challenge, too.

Is anyone else out there using kefir? What are some of your favorite ways to add it to your family's meals?

Olathe Sweet Corn

2011-08-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

It's preserving season here in the Miller Household, and today's project was local corn.

I refuse to grow corn. You have to plant a whole lot of it in a big cluster to really get much of a harvest, and my little garden just doesn't have the space for that. That, and the earwigs that inevitably take up residence on the corn stalks seriously gross me out.

But we live just two hours away from Olathe, Colorado - known ~~only~~ primarily for the amazing sweet corn they grow there. Such great corn, in fact, that the town of Olathe has patented the seed for this particular variety, making it illegal to grow anywhere except in Olathe. And then each summer they have a big corn festival (because Coloradans are just that cool) and they give away thousands of ears of corn to the festival goers.

What the festival goers don't eat, they sell out of the backs of trucks and in local supermarkets. In the past, I've seen Olathe sweet corn sell for 10 cents an ear. It never did get that low last year and I missed it entirely waiting for that price, so this year I bought it for 20 cents. Still not a bad price.

We started with 20 ears today - shucking, cutting the kernels off the cob, and freezing in 2-cup portions. A lot of work? Eh, sort of. But it's fresh corn, and it's local. If you aren't growing your own, it's the next best thing.

20 ears of corn took the girls and I about one hour to shuck, cut, and package. We got about 17 cups, which is the equivalent of 8 1/2 cans of corn. Total cost was $5, so there's an immediate savings there. Also consider the fact that this is frozen fresh corn, so the nutritional value is much higher. Definitely worth the hour spent working. I plan to buy another 40 ears tomorrow, and that should set us for the winter. I tend to use frozen corn mostly in soups - rarely do I serve it as a side dish for a meal, unless it's corn on the cob season. I'd also really like to freeze a couple sacks full of corn on the cob and see how it heats up - most folks say it's pretty good.

Tip: go to Goodwill and buy a new game for your children, and promise to play it with them just as soon as the corn is shucked. It's amazing how fast they can work when they want to.

Homeschool tip: purchases like these make a great math class: If corn is five for a dollar, and I'm buying 20 ears, how many dollars will it cost? If I put two ears of corn in each pot of soup, how many pots of soup can I make with 20 ears? How many ears of corn should we put up if I want to have two pots of soup each month for the next year, with two ears of corn in each pot? And so on, and so forth. It's a good way to prove the importance of learning the multiplication tables!

And so there you have it... an entire post written about corn. I must be really, really bored.

A Garden Update, depressing as it may be.

2011-08-06T06:07:00.001-07:00

Man, it's been a rough garden year. We normally would have half a freezer full of vegetables by now, and it just isn't that way.

Happily, I'm at least harvesting enough to feed us... though it's still just cold weather crops that are coming in for the most part. The beets are finally getting big, two months later than they normally do. I can think of three reasons for this: the strange cool spring we had, the excess amount of rain, and the fact that my soil is probably a bit overworked and is lacking nutrients. Hopefully I can cure the nutrient problem this fall by using the impressive amount of poo my chickens produce as a fertilizer.

Tomatoes are tough this year all around. I'm growing all heirlooms, which makes them not all that tough when it comes to diseases. Curly leaf virus is going around town, transmitted by a leaf hopper. Two of my plants have succumbed to it now, and I'm watching the others. There's not much I can do about it, aside from just pull the plant and hope for the best for the others. I've also got a bit of blight on two of the plants, the result of the dampness and humidity this year that isn't normal for our area. I only planted twelve tomato plants, with the hopes of eating fresh tomatoes and making salsas and sauces, with the majority of my canning tomatoes being purchased from a local U-pick farm. But so far, I'm still buying all the tomatoes we eat. Handfuls of cherry tomatoes are about all we're harvesting as of yet.

The chickens completely decimated the kale - I didn't even bother trying to revive it, it was hopeless. The chard keeps trying to come back, and it'll just start to get big enough to think about harvesting when the chickens escape again and devour it. I'm harvesting carrots and beets as we need them, plus a few extra beets for pickling. The green beans are coming on strong now, even enough to put a few bags by for winter. I've got parsnips this time for the first year and dug a few yesterday, but haven't tried them yet. I've heard they taste best after a frost.

So yeah... sad times in the garden. After last year's amazing production, I'm a little bummed, but one never knows from one year to the next what difficulties and struggles will befall them. I was all prepared this year for the cabbage moth invasion... and it never came. I planted my squash in barrels in the front yard to avoid squash bug infestion... and they don't seem to be as much of an issue this year for anyone. Instead it's too much rain and heat - two things I can't really fight.

I'm making plans for the fall garden, to be planted next week - greens of all kinds, beets and carrots, and possibly broccoli. It's the greens I miss the most - the chickens destroyed every last bit of anything green and leafy that we tried to grow early on. and I'll just hope for more success next year, I suppose.

The Silence is Deafening.

2011-08-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

We said goodbye to Mr. Tweets the other night.

Please pardon the blurry photo. It was taken through a window
screen because I was afraid to actually go outside with him.

He turned really, really mean. If we walked by the chicken's yard, he'd rush the fence and try to attack our feet. We couldn't let the hens out, because if he got out he'd race around trying to attack us. He finally escaped a couple of days ago, flew over the fence, and was out all day. I tried to catch him (wearing rubber boots, long sleeves, and gloves) but I couldn't. He kept flying up toward my face, and I wasn't fond of the idea of having a chicken claw at my eyes. Even the dog was afraid to go out - if she did, he chased her around.

He used to be such a sweet rooster. He'd hang out with me while I weeded the garden, cooing and cawing occasionally, crowing if I said, "Who's my pretty rooster?" in the stupidest baby-talk voice you can imagine. He'd happily lay on his back in my arms as I stroked his chest, nearly falling asleep with his head in the crook of my elbow. He'd run up to us when we went outside and wait for the attention he knew we'd give him.

And then, the hens started laying. It started out mild, he'd only attack strangers. And then he went after Cora. It only got worse from there, until it got to the point where he'd attack anything that walked near him.

So I had Andrew do away with him the other night. The girls and I left the house so we didn't have to watch. Chloe was pretty upset for a short while, but she knew it had to be done. Cora did a little dance - she's glad to not be afraid to walk outside anymore, and to be able to play with the hens again.

I'm a little sad. I know I said we weren't getting attached to these chickens, that they're just livestock. But I couldn't help but get attached to the rooster. And I absolutely loved listening to him crow. He had an impressively loud, high-pitched crow. I'm sure the neighbors are relieved. But I really did love it. Happily though, my neighbor still has her rooster, and I can listen to him instead. Aside from that, I'm not too upset. We can let the hens out to wander in the evenings again now, and the girls are enjoying their chickens again. It was a sad choice to make, but the best one.

In other chicken news - Goldi is (miraculously) still alive after her ordeal. She's laying an egg every day now, and though they are a bit bloody still, they seem to be coming out just fine. Between the four hens we're getting a solid two dozen eggs each week, meaning we're effectively drowning in eggs already. It's a good problem to have... I'm pretty sure my neighbors think so, too.

Surprise!! Littlest One is Four!

2011-07-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

Cora's favorite thing in the whole world is surprising people. When Daddy gets home from work, she insists that he close his eyes so she can lead him through the house to a "surprise" - anything from cookies she helped bake, or a picture she drew, or an art project she made. She just loves surprises.

So it only made sense that her fourth birthday party ought to be a surprise party. Oh, and was she surprised! It was absolutely killing me to not tell either girl as I made plans and bought decorations. A nice big group turned out, nearly thirty people in our back yard. Andrew took Cora for a hike while Chloe and I got everything ready and got the guests situated in the back yard. I made a big deal out of it - "I've got a really big surprise for you, are you ready? Okay, close your eyes..." and I led her through the house to the back door.

I'm happy to say that she didn't cry. I was afraid she would. She was certainly surprised though, and it took a few minutes to really register what was going on. The nice thing about a surprise party for a little girl turning four is that she has very little concept of time, and no idea how soon her birthday is coming if you don't tell her. It worked out so great!

We were lucky to have all of the cousins in town, plus a small handful of other friends. The kids had a blast on the slip 'n' slide, and played some fun games. I didn't do much of a "theme", but I did try for some fun old fashioned games like the clothespin drop, potato sack races, and three legged races.

And the spoon game was fun, too - passing an M&M from one end of a line to another, using spoons in their mouths and no hands. Even the grown ups got in on this one, and it was great fun to watch!

The menu was all of Cora's favorite foods: watermelon, corn on the cob, sweet potato fries, and mac 'n' cheese. We added hot dogs in to round it out, and everyone seemed pretty satisfied ,despite the rather odd conglomeration of menu items.

The cake topped it all off. My mom is amazing. Once upon a time ago she made cakes as a little home business, when all us kids were at home. Every cake was always a work of art. It's not something she does often anymore, and I'm not sure she was all that thrilled about making this one, but it was incredible, and everyone really loved it. Especially my sweet Littlest One.

And Cora had no doubts about who all those presents were for (unlike last year). She received some really great, really creative gifts.

Huge thanks to all the friends and family that made this the best birthday party ever. My sweet girl sure did enjoy herself, and I think most everyone else did, too.

Garden to Table Challenge - Spicy Veggies & Noodles

2011-07-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

Again with the raving about The Food Matters Cookbook - I don't think we've yet tried a recipe from it that wasn't great. And I love that I own a cookbook that includes recipes for everything I have coming out of the garden at any given time - currently spring onions, garlic, carrots, squash, green beans, and hot peppers. The veggies are stir fried, then tossed with brown rice noodles and a sauce made of coconut milk, peanut butter, honey and soy sauce. Seriously good, and I don't even like squash.

The best part of this book is the options he gives for substituting. If you don't have peanut butter, try almond butter, cashew butter or tahini. If you don't have zucchini and eggplant (as the original recipe called for) try any summer squash, green beans, etc. You never end up hunting for some strange ingredient at the store - most recipes can be created by the things any healthy eater already has in her pantry and fridge. Creative recipes using 'normal' foods. I like that.

===

For dessert: remember the strawberry lemonade from last summer? It also makes really good popsicles.

Meet: The Toads

2011-07-24T20:12:00.001-07:00

Living in the city is not conducive to activities like finding toads in one's garden. Between all the dogs, cats, weeds, dry lawns, and concrete, cities just don't make good toad habitat.

So we decided to import some.

Meet Hopsy and Giant Joe, two toads the girls caught at their grandma's house last night. We brought them home in quart-sized yogurt containers and set them free in the cold frame.

Of course, they weren't in the cold frame when we woke up this morning. But as I was harvesting garlic this evening (a long-overdue task) Hopsy leaped out from under my hand and scared the bejeezus out of me, as toads are wont to do. Giant Joe was nearby - finding both toads still in the garden made the girls quite happy.

We wanted them to know they are welcome and encourage them to stay and live here (as opposed to going next door and being eaten by the neighbor's chickens*) so we made them little toad houses.

Small flower pots, decorated with flat glass marbles (because we decorate just about everything around here,) and buried a bit. It gives the toad a dirt floor, shelter from the heat of the day, and the terra cotta stays damp and cool, which toads like. Of course, black widows also like dark and damp areas, so maybe we're just encouraging poisonous spiders to come live in our garden. We'll see.
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*My neighbor clearly does not value her tomato plants as much as I do. Either that, or her chickens haven't found them yet... or she hasn't caught them. Regardless, her ten chickens still roam her yard freely. I'm a control freak, and I love ripe tomatoes that haven't been pecked to death by chickens. My chickens have a lovely little fenced yard now, and are allowed to run free only when I'm there to watch them and chase them from the garden.

Chicken Troubles

2011-07-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

I'm about to get all kinds of TMI on you. I'm talking seriously gory. If you have a weak stomach, or very little interest in the care of terribly sick chickens, you should skip this post. I am happy to tell you though, that I didn't take any photographs of the experience I'm about to detail, so you won't be forced to look at them. You can use your imagination. It will be plenty.

Our sweet Goldilocks is our handicapped chicken. For a reason I never did determine, back around the time the girls were feathering out, Goldi developed a strange limp/wobble sort of problem. She walks a few steps, then wobbles and falls back. She carries her wings loosely at her sides instead of tucked up neatly like the other hens, and her tail is always down. It's like she has such weak muscle structure that she can't support herself. I know this is a common problem with meat chickens, but she's a laying breed, and isn't exceptionally large. She's never seemed unhappy though - she eats and drinks as well as the rest, and seems to manage alright despite her handicap. She's particularly well loved for being one of the more calm and gentle chickens... probably because she's too slow to run away when a Little Girl wants to hold her.

Anyway. So that's Goldi's back story. We've always known she wasn't well. I haven't expected her to live very long. But we've loved her just the same.

Well, Goldi laid her first egg yesterday, and I could tell by looking at the egg that it was a struggle for her. It was covered in blood, mucous, and feces. Most eggs come out quite clean, but this one was really gross. And I noticed she was starting to get poo matted to her back side, never a good sign. I went out today with a tub of water and a rag to try cleaning her up a bit, and what I found when I lifted her tail almost made me gag. Egg binding mixed with a prolapse. It was an egg, hanging from her vent, still completely surrounded by the vent tissue. Her insides were hanging out of her body, with an egg stuck in them. Cora said, "Mom! Goldi's laying a red egg!" I promptly sent both girls inside.

Then I geared up for playing chicken-doula. With rubber gloves on, I oiled my fingers and massaged the tissue surrounding the egg, trying to lubricate it enough that the egg could come out. I soaked her in a warm bath with lavender and olive oil, massaging the whole lower half of her abdomen. The awful part was that she didn't mind. No healthy chicken likes being put in a tub of water, but she just relaxed and let me rub her. When I let her up, she stumbled a bit and walked sideways, but then righted herself and walked away... egg still hanging from the vent, with bits of intestine squeezing out alongside it.

It was at the point that I called my husband and let him know he'd need to plan on putting a chicken down when he got home from work.

And then I went back out... and the egg was out! Another nasty, bloody, slimy mess laying on the ground, but it was out! I looked at her back side... and it was awful. Not as awful as the egg just hanging there wrapped in bloody vent tissue, but clearly a good bit of her insides were still hanging out of her body. Some research on the internet, and some advice from the ladies at the BackYardChickens forum led me to the next move: using a gloved finger, lubricated with Preparation H, to push the prolapse back into her body cavity.

I decided my husband's finger was the one we should use.

He was able to temporarily incapacitate the bird by tucking her head under her wing and swinging her slowly around in circles in front of him, a trick taught to him years ago by a family friend. (Thanks, Mr. Bonnell!) It didn't hurt her at all, only made her too dizzy and disoriented to fight for a minute. And any sane chicken - even a hurting one - would fight if you were shoving her organs back inside her rear end.

She laid amazingly still. Her vent was so swollen it was a trick to get the intestines back inside her body and to actually stay there. Poop was running out as we did it, which I tried to wipe away with a rag, but it was impossible to get it all off. I'm worried about it causing an infection. Oh my god, I wiped chicken poop off of chicken intestines hanging out of a chicken vent. There are a lot of things I never thought I'd do in my life. But I never even considered this one.

It was an awful, horrific process. It was bloody and poopy and gory. Amazingly, when it was all over and it appeared that the vent sphincter would actually hold the intestines inside her body, she got up and walked away. Ten minutes later she was happily pecking at some spinach and cucumber, and drinking a healthy amount of water.

So we didn't put her down. Yet. I'm worried that with whatever condition it is that she has, that makes her so weak and wobbly, this will be an ongoing problem. And I have to say, as much as I love our sweet, handicapped Goldi, I have no intention of pushing her intestines back inside her body every time she lays an egg. That is no life for a chicken to have to live, and no life for me to have to live either. If it happens again, we're going to have to put her out of her misery.

And so for now, Goldi is locked in a separate area in the coop, where the other hens can't peck at her rear end until it's had time to heal. And so the stupid rooster can't force her to mate, which is seriously the very last thing the poor girl needs right now, and the first thing he tried. She's miserable, locked away from the rest of the flock like that, and it's going to be a rough couple of nights until she gets used to it. But it's what is best for her.

So say a little prayer tonight for our sweet Goldi-girl. Two Little Girls are going to be broken hearted if she doesn't survive, though I've done my best to prepare them for it.

This chicken-raising is some seriously stressful stuff! Probably more trouble than it's worth. But we love all of our girls (and our rotten rooster) dearly, whether we ever intended to get attached or not.

Garden to Table Challenge - Tomatoes

2011-07-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes are finally here! Well, not mine... my darn heirlooms are so slow this year it's almost painful. Lots of green ones, but none ripe yet except for a small handful of cherry tomatoes that never even made it into the house. So I bought a couple at farmer's market, and they were delicious.

Sometimes the most simple food is the best tasting. After a long, busy day, there wasn't time for a big, complicated dinner, but that was just fine: fresh summer tomatoes really don't need big and complicated. They just need a little basil.

The Summer Sandwich:

1 loaf of asiago and sundried tomato sourdough bread
garlic cloves
fresh basil leaves
slicing tomatoes
grated mozzarella
butter

Split open the garlic cloves, crush them slightly to release their juice, and rub them on one side of each slice of bread, then spread butter on one side of the bread.

Put the bread butter-side down in a large skillet and top with mozzarella cheese. Cover the skillet, then cook on medium until the cheese is melted and the bread is starting to toast.

Layer a couple of basil leaves (I used one green leaf and one purple leaf for each small sandwich) and a tomato slice on each piece of bread, top with more buttered bread, flip, and cook just until the bread is toasted on that side too. This method gets the cheese melted and the bread toasted, but keeps the tomato and basil from cooking too much.

And there you have it. The easiest summer sandwich in the world. So simple, so satisfying.

Two Little Girls, Two Little Dresses

2011-07-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

I have hardly sewed a thing this summer. Honestly, we've just been too busy, between camping and school and gardening and other summer activities. I haven't had enough free time to sit down at the sewing machine, or to pick up knitting needles.

And then I got really sad, because my kids are growing up so fast that I'm missing out on opportunities to make them cute things, and I put aside other less important things (like laundry, and mopping floors, and pulling weeds) and I sat down at the sewing machine with a stack of fabric and a few ideas bouncing around in my head.

This is what we ended up with.

Patchwork apron-style dresses with appliques on the bodices depicting the meaning of each girl's name.

Cora, derived from Kore, is sometimes used as a name for Persephone, a Greek goddess. You can Google the whole story if you want it (it's a good one), but Persephone is known for bringing spring to the earth each year - which I depicted in the form of a sunshine. It's also fitting since I always tell Cora she's my sunshine. And Cora also means "maiden" or "feminine", making pink the most obvious choice to accompany the yellow sunshine.

And Chloe, while also another name for the Greek goddess Demeter (who was Persephone's mother, and believe it or not, my choice in these names was completely unintentional), but Chloe also means "small green shoot." So fitting for all that this sweet little girl is.

The backs lace up corset style, with elastic in the back panels of the skirt. These dresses will fit for years.

The details: I used 1/4yd each of 6 fabrics for Cora's (size 4), and 1/3 yd each of 6 fabrics for Chloe's (Size 7.) I didn't follow a pattern, but didn't need one. A simple bodice shape is cut, plus the same shape for a lining. The two are sewn together and turned and topstitched. The skirt part is just 6 panels of fabric gathered a bit around the bodice with an elastic panel inserted in the back. I added ruffles and appliques and pockets because details are fun.

I love the result. Little girls in long dresses make me happy.

The County Fair 2011

2011-07-21T06:00:00.001-07:00

The county fair is running all this week, and we made our visit yesterday afternoon with a couple of friends. The up side to going to the fair in the middle of the week, earlier in the day is that there aren't as many people. The down side is that you're walking around in 98 degree weather with very little shade.

We didn't enter anything into the fair this year. Summer's just kind of gotten away from us, and to be honest, I haven't had that much time for knitting and sewing. I'm too busy teaching math lessons and driving little girls around and everything else that comes with being a homeschool mom to two kids. Anyway, it was sort of nice to just show up and see the exhibits and not have any stress involved. Breaks are good sometimes.

We did manage to get involved in the watermelon eating contest. Have you ever watched little kids eat watermelon as fast as they can? It's hilarious. Good ol' fashioned entertainment.

Cora did her best, but only managed to get down two slices in the 5 minutes allotted. She was very concerned about picking out the seeds before she took a bite.

Cora's friend Liam - also three - wasn't so much into the madness of it all. Or maybe he was overwhelmed. Anyway, he was cute as he slowly munched on his bit of watermelon.

Chloe impressed me with her 6 slices in 3 minutes. She had great fun, I was glad we did it. Homeschoolers don't get the opportunity to 'compete' very often. I think it was healthy for her to try something, not win, and learn how to walk away with a great attitude about it all.

And of course, there were rides, as per our summer tradition. I stood sweltering in the heat for three hours with the kids while they rode everything, sometimes going two or three times. Totally worth it though - love watching my little girls have a great time.

In Which I Demonstrate My Sentimentality

2011-07-16T16:20:00.001-07:00

Cora and I inspected the peach tree last night, looking for baby peaches that survived the late frost we had this spring.

I found one and pointed it out to her.

The sheer excitement on her face at seeing that little baby peach, and then another, and another, was just priceless. Here eyes got big, her mouth turned into a little pink "O" that was quickly replaced by the biggest, happiest smile. She raced around in circles, barefoot on the grass, singing a song about how much she loves peaches. Then she raced back up to me and asked if we could share a peach with Mr. Tweets, because she thought he would really like just one, and that we could eat the rest. I told her no way! But that we would eat the peaches over vanilla ice cream, one of our favorite summer treats. This set her off racing in circles again, singing and giggling and laughing excitedly at the prospect of peaches and ice cream in her future. Then she came barreling straight at me, threw herself into my legs, wrapped her arms around me, looked up at me, and said, "I love you. You're the best mommy in my whole world."

It was a little thing, a little moment, but one to savor. Little girl excitement over something so simple, but a pure and thorough sort of excitement, sprinkled with love and gratitude for good measure. Is there anything more beautiful?

Life is full of what I think of as "moments to keep." Little, insignificant moments in life that really aren't insignificant at all. They're what make it (almost) bearable to watch our children grow up before our eyes at a rate much faster than we're comfortable with. Life - parenting, especially - is full of stress and worry and frustration. But these little Moments to Keep bring us back from the negative, give us a little piece of happiness to hold on to, remind us that life really is beautiful and lovely and happy... at least, sometimes.

Homeschool Field Trip: Leadville

2011-07-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

We did a "quick" day trip to Leadville, CO yesterday, opting to stay home and act like responsible homeowners this weekend instead of going camping again.

Leadville might be the most historic mining town in Colorado, with fascinating stories of the many famous people that lived and visited there. It was a great lesson in some of the more "colorful" mining history (we had lunch in a building that used to be a brothel), though of course we kept that toned down when explaining it to the young ones.

Our main reason for going was to ride the train. The Leadville C&S railroad goes along a stretch of track through some of the old mining community, though it was hard to see much of it. The girls enjoyed the train ride though - it was a neat experience for them, especially the three year old, who is very much in the "Transportation Stage", fascinated with all things that move.

We also took some time to drive around town and see a few historic sites. There are tours for many of the historic buildings in Leadville and we would have loved to go on them, but time was limited (it's a three and a half hour drive to get there in the first place.) So we appreciated them from the outside.

We did stop at the cemetery for a quick geocache, and enjoyed the story behind this grave:

Note the name below Texas Jack's - Wm. F. Cody Buffalo Bill. He erected this grave stone for his friend. Neat to see.

When I was in the fourth grade, I remember having to do a whole report on California history. It was a huge project, learning the state flower and bird, the history of California, some of the geography. My hope is that my own girls will never have need of such a report - that they'll have seen and touched and felt it enough in real life that they'll never question the heritage of the State of Colorado.

Forts and Hide-outs

2011-07-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

The difference between a three year old and an eight year old:

When a three year old builds a fort, she posts a sign that she insists says, "Welcome In!" She walks around the house inviting (begging) anyone and everyone to come into her fort.

When an eight year old builds a fort, she posts a sign on it that says, "Secret Hide Out. No one allowed. Espeshily Sisters."

A chicken update

2011-07-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

Just in case you're dying to know how the chicken situation is coming along...

See those? Those are cute little itty-bitty chicken eggs! Our girls are laying. I'm so proud of them.

Two Little Girls absolutely love checking for chicken eggs. Actually, they love anything to do with the chickens. They run out several times a day to see if anyone has laid an egg, and hearing, "Mom! There's another egg!" is music to my ears. A little girl rushing to the back door with a still-warm egg in her hands and a big smile on her face makes this whole project completely worthwhile.

And because I had eggs, and because I've recently figured out this whole pie crust thing, I made a quiche:

Fresh eggs, homegrown spinach, homegrown onions. Store-bought cheese because I was lazy, and bacon. It's really a shame I don't eat eggs. That's a lot of work for a dinner I won't even touch. But it did showcase the first fresh eggs nicely.

I thought the chickens would lose their novelty. Most of my friends have chickens, and all of their children are basically over them. But not mine. Still, every single day when school and chores are done, the question is, "Can we go out and play with the chickens?" They haven't figured out yet that chickens don't actually play. They truly love these chickens. Whoever said chickens aren't cuddly just never forced them to be. Most of them are tame enough that they don't run away, especially from my oldest. A few come running up to her, waiting for the love and affection she will inevitably shower them with.

However. Chickens are a pain! So much of this project I'm irritated and frustrated with.

For instance, you know that sweet picture painted by the stories in magazines like Organic Gardening, where they talk about how your chickens will eat the bugs from your garden and scratch the soil up and walk around fertilizing it for you? All of this is true... and for a few days, I was thrilled to see my chickens doing such useful work in my garden.

Until they ate my Swiss Chard. Glorious, huge rainbow chard stalks reduced to... well, rainbow colored stalks. They've eaten every bit of leaf on every single stalk. They ate the kale down to stumps, and have started in on the beets. They tore the lettuce apart completely while looking for earwigs to munch, leaving limp, rotting lettuce leaves in their wake. They've torn down the climbing beans, they take naps on the fluffy beds of carrot tops, and there are holes pecked in some of my green tomatoes. Chickens have voracious appetites, and they're not going to limit themselves to pesky bugs. They want those greens! The up side: my chickens must be the healthiest chickens in town for all the fresh, dark green leafies they're eating.

So last night, we built them a pen in the corner of the yard. More space to run around than in their coop, plenty of green grass, sunflowers, and weeds to eat. (It's truly a shame we can't teach chickens to identify weeds and eat only those, isn't it?) And now the girls get the job of chasing the chickens across the yard to their pen from the coop every morning. And when I'm out working in the garden in the evenings, the chickens are welcome to join me... but only for a short time, not long enough to decimate any other crops.

And the rooster. Oh, my sweet, pretty rooster. I love him. He's gorgeous, and he has such a personality. Except that he attacked my mother when she was trying to care for them while we were away. And now he's been chasing my three year old across the yard, sending her screaming up on top of the picnic table. He loves me. He loves Chloe. He realizes Andrew is a very large man and could do significant damage. But Cora isn't all that intimidating to him. I gave her a big sunflower stalk to use as a weapon, and gave her permission to smack him every time he runs at her. He's not very far from the stew pot, that one. It'll make me sad to eat our little friend, and not to hear his crows every morning... and afternoon, and night... but I won't have my kids afraid to play outside for fear of being chased by a rooster.

So anyway, that's the chicken situation here on our little urban farmstead.

Summer Adventures 2011 - 4x4 driving

2011-07-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I used to be adventurous. Or maybe I was just stupid.

I used to love riding along on the four-wheel-drive roads my husband loves so much to explore. Steep drop-offs inspired awe, not terror. Jostling and bouncing over the bumpy, rocky roads induced laughter, not nausea. Sadly, all of that seems to have changed.

Ouray is known for the Million Dollar Highway, twenty three miles of narrow, winding road with sheer cliffs just inches from the edge of the roadway, and no guard rails. I've ridden and driven over it enough times that I ought to be comfortable with it. I've always been fine with it before. Maybe it's just my increasing age giving me the sudden ability to imagine every single thing that could possibly go wrong. For whatever reason driving the pass this time really creeped me out.

And Red Mountain Pass wasn't even the half of it this time. Check out this road:

You have the pleasure of driving under the rock overhang, still dripping with water from an earlier rainstorm. The road is narrow and one lane. Mostly, you just have to hope no one is coming down, or someone's going to have to back up. And backing up on these roads isn't fun. I know this from experience, as we had to back all the way down one of them when we discovered a snow slide was blocking the road, and there was no spot to turn around without falling off the side of the mountain.

Anyway, back to the road with the crazy rock overhang (it's the Yankee Boy Basin road, for those here locally.) It's a popular road, busy even, on the Fourth of July weekend in Ouray. It was somewhat comforting to realize that thousands of people drive the same road and have survived it. And then we got to the top, and we found this:

The kind of scenery that can only be found at the end of steep, sometimes scary mountain roads.

More wildflower species than I could have counted, with thousands more buds because we were just a couple of weeks too early for the height of the wildflower season. Two waterfalls rushing together into a creek cascading down into the deep valley below. Surrounded by mountains on all sides, a perfect mix of lush green and jagged rock cliffs. Nature at it's finest.

Was it worth the trip up that awful road? Probably. I felt increasingly better seeing tour trucks going up and down the mountain all afternoon.

I wish I could stop my brain from playing out all the awful scenarios that could come from the 4x4 excursions (mostly the scenario that involves the truck falling over the edge. It's an awful scenario to think about.) I trust my husband, and I trust his driving... but I don't trust other people much. I'd much rather be hiking, on my own two reliable feet, but there are some places we just couldn't hike to in a day, places like this. I'm glad we've got the truck for stuff like this. I think.

Summer Adventures 2011 - Geocaching

2011-07-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

I keep trying to explain geocaching to friends, and I keep getting the same response - mostly a bunch of smiles and nods and "uh-huhs." You know, the raised eyebrows that resonate with "Yeah, that sounds like fun. Not."

So let me try it again, this time with pictures of my personal favorite caches from the past couple of weeks.

Geocaching is a sort of "treasure hunt". There are caches placed all over the world. A cache can be anything from a film canister with a log in it to a big rubbermaid container. The larger ones are generally filled with "treasure", items not usually of much value, toys, keychains, other trinkets. You're welcome to take any item you find in a cache, so long as you replace it with something of your own that is of similar value. If you look at geocaching.com and map your area, you'll see what I mean. They're everywhere.

Our favorite caches are the ones that take us on incredible hikes and drives to places we never would have gone otherwise, places we didn't know existed. Like this:

A 130-year old narrow gauge railroad bed through the Red Mountain mining district in the San Juan mountains.

It's such an interesting way of exploring your world, and in cases like this, of exploring history. We could look at pictures, like this one of a train on this exact same railroad:
And we will look at those pictures, but what better way to really understand the magnitude of this accomplishment than to walk along it, see it for ourselves?

We hiked a little over a mile on the way to the cache, which was placed near this turntable:
The only one of it's kind in the Rocky Mountains, tucked away amidst the ghost towns of the Red Mountain mining district.

The "treasure" of this hike wasn't the cache. It was the experience of walking the path of miners over a century before us, imagining the life they lived, the work they did, admiring their determination to send a train through country that was hardly accessible by horseback, all for the desperate desire to strike it rich on gold or silver. It was seeing firsthand how much the earth can change in 130 years, how she can "bounce back" after being exploited, trees and undergrowth once again taking over their rightful ground.

I realize not everyone can come to Colorado and follow this particular trail, learn these particular lessons. But everywhere, there are little "secrets" like these, secrets that can be known to anyone who cares to find out. I encourage everyone to give it a shot. Not every cache is as interesting and as exciting as this, and you don't even always find them, but each is fun in it's own right.

===

Here are some other photos from interesting places where we've found caches recently.

A faucet piped into a hot springs near Chattanooga, an abandoned mining town outside of Silverton, right off the Red Mountain Pass. Who would've thought you'd ever find bathtubs on the side of the Million Dollar Highway with naturally warm water pumped in? We figure it was put there in the 60's... and the faucet still turns on and off! Too cool. Unfortunately, the "hot" springs are only lukewarm now. But still neat to see.

This cache was near the top of Cottonwood Pass, outside of Taylor Canyon near Almont, CO. The view up here was amazing. I mean, we see some pretty incredible views doing the kinds of things we do, but this one was just awesome. There aren't words to describe it. 12,000 feet at the top of a mountain, and then further up for the cache, looking out over the Collegiate Peaks with Taylor reservoir in the distance, mountains and valleys on all sides. Breathtaking.
This picture was taken after we drove through a lake to find a cache.
I'm all about gorgeous, pristine lakes at 11,000 foot altitudes. Can't say I'm crazy about driving through them, but you know... there was a cache on the other side. Happily, it was shallow and all went well.
In this one we're hiking up over an avalanche, north out of Crested Butte. You read about avalaches, how dangerous they are. But you don't quite understand the reality of that until you walk along and look at the hills above you, trees snapped off at ground level or uprooted entirely, a solid bank of snow who-knows-how-many feet deep when it settles. The whole side of the mountain was basically cleared of vegetation. We never did find this cache - after traversing the avalanche we discovered we'd have to cross a raging, icy river. Not a good plan at the height of spring run-off, so we gave up.

These are just a few of the caches we've found in the past couple of weeks, along with all kinds of other adventures in the Colorado mountains. I think we found something like 40 caches altogether between both recent camping trips. Each one took us to somewhere worth seeing - a creek inlet, a beaver pond, lots of very old cemeteries, the tops of mountains and down along creek beds, ghost towns and thriving mountain towns.

You'll find your own treasure in it - some folks love to dig through the caches and see what others have left. Others love the hunt once they get to the point where they should be looking. Some crazy ones love the whole concept of 'micros', searching for minuscule capsules hidden in very public places, often impossible to find (I hate micros.) Our treasure is the discovery that happens while we're getting to the cache. All it takes is a GPS (or a downloadable app on your SmartPhone) and you'll be off and running. Do give it a shot. And let me know how it goes!

Summer Adventures 2011

2011-07-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

Please forgive the neglected state of my blog - we've been too busy having blog-worthy adventures to write about them.

We just got home from the second of two back-to-back camping trips, first to Taylor Canyon and the Crested Butte area, and then to Ouray for the Independence Day celebration. We had so many 4x4/hiking/geocaching adventures I don't think I could ever tell you about all of them. But I'll post photos of some of the highlights of our trip over the next few days for the family and friends that are interested in seeing them. It'll take some time to go through all the pictures though, so bear with me.

In the meantime, I've got to share this one little success:

Dutch Oven cooking. Hooray, we figured it out! And its not actually that hard, though I was nervous to give it a try. We successfully made the enchiladas above, and the peach cobbler below, using a dutch oven and some hot charcoal. So. Cool. I'm in love with cast iron now, and want more.

That's it for now. I need to make a dent in the massive laundry pile on my bedroom floor before I sit for too long in front of the computer. It's good to be home, but it'll be better when all the chores and housework are caught up!

Faux-fossil Memory Game

2011-06-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

I love playing homemade games. It feels organic and old fashioned, and I like it. My kids like it too - there's a satisfaction in knowing they're playing with something they made, not a kid working in a sweatshop in some foreign country.

This is a project I made up myself. We do a lot of fun projects that I read about in books and online, but it's not often I come up with something on my own that I think is worth sharing. Enjoy!

Today's project: Fossil Memory

We started with homemade playdough, colored with Kool-Aid.

2 cups flour
2 cups salt
2 Tbsp cream of tartar
2 cups water
Kool-aid packets

Mix together all the ingredients except the Kool-aid. Add more water or flour as you go, you want it to be the consistency of play dough. Divide the dough into six balls - if you have six colors of Kool-Aid. Knead the Kool-Aid into the dough. Best do this outside - the smell of the Kool-Aid gave us headaches after awhile. You could also use food coloring, and avoid the headache.

Put your dough in plastic bags and set aside while you...

Go on a nature walk.

Check out your back yard, or the neighborhood, a park, or wherever. Add interesting things to your basket as you go, so long as they are less than 2" in diameter. We ended up with flowers, leaves, rocks, shells from our collection, a pine cone, a piece of bark, etc. We made ten sets of memory stones, but I suggest finding more than ten things - some don't make as nice of prints as you'll hope.

Bring your nature back to the table, and divide each color of dough into four equal pieces. Roll them into balls, then smash them down so they look like flat stones. In each piece, press one of your nature objects, leaving a "fossil" imprint. Make two of each print, but make them on different colors. Otherwise it's too easy to match them!

Let the "fossils" dry all day (and all night, if needed.) Be sure to turn them every so often so both sides are getting air.

Then, lay them out in a square and take turns trying to match fossils.

Fun stuff, huh?

Other thoughts and ideas:

If you need it to be more difficult, make them all the same color. This difficulty level is perfect for my three year old, a little to easy for the eight year old.

Consider making a set for each season, based on the changes you see in nature. Fall would be great for harvested veggie bits, seed pods, etc. Winter has acorns and feathers and berries, and spring is full of all kinds of natural bits.

Or, make a set for different areas. This project would travel nicely, and I look forward to making a set of stones the next time we go camping. Just add water, find nature, and away you go!

The dough would roll out nicely into a sort of plaque, where kids could press all the little bits of nature they come across and make a nice decoration for a table top or a wall.

Have fun!

Garden to Table Challenge- Rhubarb Pie

2011-06-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I am a Pie Making Failure. There are a lot of domestic, housewife-y things I do a good job of, but making pies has never made it on that list.

But lo! What's this?

I've made a pie! A pretty one. And even better than being pretty... it tastes good, too.

I bought some rhubarb at the Farmer's Market, since it was about the only thing I could find that I hadn't already grown myself. I've only ever purchased rhubarb one other time, and the resulting cobbler wasn't all that good. But I gave it another go, and I'm glad I did.

I also (gasp) turned my back on the pie crust recipe my mother gave me, the same recipe every woman in my family uses to make incredible pies. It felt a bit like sacrilege, but I had to do it - mine just never turn out like hers do. This time I followed the recipe from my red and white checkered cookbook. The only change I made was using whole wheat flour. Which was probably pointless, considering the other main ingredient is Crisco. Pretty sure Crisco negates any health benefits of whole wheat flour. But whatever. It was really good.

The recipe:

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Filling:
2 cups chopped rhubarb
2 cups sliced strawberries
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup raw cane sugar

Mix it all together until the fruit is well coated. Set aside.

Crumb topping:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 Tbsp. butter

Cut together with a pastry blender until crumbly.

I'll let you find your own pie crust recipe... mostly because I can't remember exactly how much of everything I used, and also because pie crust recipes are easy to come by.

Press the crust into a pie plate. Dump in the fruit. Sprinkle with the topping. Cover the edges of the pie with foil, bake for 30 minutes. Take off the foil, bake for another 30 minutes. And there's your pie.

Garden to Table Challenge

2011-06-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

I've totally fallen off the bandwagon with Wendy's Garden to Table Challenge. My excuse is that I seem to have forgotten how to cook Summer Food. We're still eating soup four times a week, because it's all I can seem to remember how to make. Well, and salad, because we've got a Lettuce Problem again in the garden. (I really need to learn to plant in succession. But that requires more planning and patience than I usually possess.)

So anyway, I'm sharing a soup recipe with you. Because soup is still good, even when it's 90 degrees outside. Just turn on the air conditioner before you get started, or everyone in the house will be sweltering before it's even time to come to the table.

It's garlic scape season. If you haven't had garlic scapes, try them. I saw some at Farmer's Market last night, so they're available even if you didn't plant garlic last fall. They remind me of garlic chives, only bigger and bolder. Like green onions, but with a distinct garlicky flavor. We tried them chopped raw in a salad last week, and learned that they are probably better cooked. But do give them a go, they are a delicacy!

Potato Scape soup

1 quart chicken stock (plus extra for thinning)
5 or 6 potatoes of a creamy variety (try Yukon Gold) peeled and roughly chopped
6-8 garlic scapes, diced
1/2 medium onion, diced
1/4 cup butter
salt and pepper
If I'd had white wine on hand, I would've added half a cup. But I didn't, and it was still good.

Melt the butter in a big soup pot. Saute the onions and scapes until tender but not browned. Add the potatoes and stock. Boil, then reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are very soft. Use a stick blender to whir the soup, leaving some chunks but making it fairly smooth and creamy. Salt and pepper as desired. Serve with slices of fresh, buttered bread. It's a good dipping soup. This soup will thicken the longer it sits, so eat it right away, or be prepared to thin it down with more chicken stock.

Next week, I'll shoot for something a little less... um, warm. Like strawberry-rhubarb pie, because I bought rhubarb on a whim last night at Farmer's Market and now need to figure out what on earth to do with it.

Happy Local Eating, everyone!

The Knight in Denim Armor -or- Cats Are Really Stupid

2011-06-09T09:04:00.001-07:00

See: Stupid Cat

Can you spot the Stupid Cat?

Stupid cat tried to get chickens. Smart dog stopped it. Stopped it real good, as a matter of fact.

Note that the utility pole is in the corner of four yards. Three of those yards are home to large dogs. Stupid cat was too scared to even try to get down... and I'm pretty sure it couldn't have, anyway.

I sat in the kitchen and watched it for awhile. And then Two Little Girls woke up and saw the sweet kitty stuck up on that pole, dogs barking at it from all angles. They went in and woke up the best Knight in Shining Armor they know.

What a good Daddy.

And what a stupid cat.

Who needs Barbies?

2011-06-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

Who needs Barbies, when you have a rooster with such fabulous 'hair'?

"He needs to be beautiful, so he can come to my party."

Because it's perfectly normal to comb your rooster's feathers.

Okay, maybe it's not.

Unless you're a three year old girl with a comb and a rooster handy. Then it makes perfect sense.

Rise and Shine!

2011-06-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I were sitting outside, enjoying the spring air and watching the kids play with the dog. The chickens were in their coop for the evening, and I was enjoying listening to the sweet chicken noises emanating from their cozy little corner of the yard when suddenly...

"Honey, what was that noise?"

"I think it was a chicken."

"Chickens don't make that kind of noise."

"Roosters do."

"But I don't have a rooster. I got pullets. Maybe it's Miss Tweets. Maybe she makes different noises because she's a different variety of chicken?"

"Yeah... the rooster variety."

Sigh. Sadly, there's no denying it. Miss Tweets is undeniably crowing, odd though it may sound.

In looking at ~~her~~ him I can't believe we didn't figure it out before.

But he's always looked So Different from the other chickens anyway, we just assumed it was his breed.

But no... no. That's definitely the sound of a young rooster practicing his crow. He's tremendous fun. If we crow at him, he often crows back. I can't tell you the enjoyment I get out of listening to my children running around the yard crowing - in addition to the rooster. I'm sure the neighbors love it just as much.

We're going to try to keep him. There's something cozy about waking up to a rooster crowing in the morning, even though we live in the city. I'm not entirely sure all the neighbors feel the same way, but the ones we've talked to don't mind him. And the ones behind us? Well, if they're going to spray my garden with Roundup, they deserve to be woken up at five thirty every morning by the sound of a juvenile squawking rooster.

Memorial Day Weekend

2011-05-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

It was windy this past weekend, not at all pleasant for laying around in the back yard in a bathing suit sipping strawberry lemonade and reading a good book as I'd originally intended.

But when life gives you ~~lemons~~ wind...

Daddy had great fun flying the stunt kite.

Chloe almost got carried away by the stunt kite.

On Monday we decided to try running away from the wind by going for a drive to Silver Jack Reservoir. We did succeed in escaping the wind...

And instead found some snow. The snow was actually falling here for a short time.

We found a geocache at a historic cemetery in Cimarron, Colorado.

We found another geocache on a lovely little hike near Big Cimarron campground. The dog had splendid fun as well.

We saw some beautiful scenery...

And plenty of deer.

When we attempted to cross Owl Creek Pass, we saw this:

It's always disappointing to see fallen trees across the road when you look out your windshield. And we didn't bring the chain saw. Sigh. We had to turn back the way we came, which was not nearly as interesting as I'm sure the top of Owl Creek Pass would have been, though we did get another view of the pretty scenery. We spent a total of nine and a half hours in the truck. It's a good thing we like each other.

And since we spent The Whole Day driving yesterday, the girls and I made our Memorial Day cake today instead.

They ate the watermelon Cora was so desperate to buy from the store. It lived up to her expectations.

Overall, it really was a lovely long weekend. I hope everyone else enjoyed plenty of great food, relaxation, and great family time too!

Beautiful.

2011-05-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

Since the last post showed my kiddo with rags in her hair, I thought it only fitting to post a few pictures of the finished product.

Please don't think I EVER allow my eight year old daughter out of the house with make-up on. I don't. Except when it's picture day at the dance studio, and make-up is part of the costume. I had fun getting her all made up though. Ninety percent of the time Chloe is my tomboy, with her hair hanging in her face or a limp braid down her back, usually with food or paint smudges on her face and dirt under her fingernails. And I love her like that. But she sure does clean up nice, doesn't she? Looking at these pictures causes a little bit of panic to set in: my little girl is growing up fast!

And here's a picture of the Littlest One, all done up and trying on her costume.

I'll post more pictures from the actual performance in a couple of weeks. :-)

A Belated Mother's Day Craft

2011-05-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about my mother in law is her true love of handmade gifts... especially if the girls are involved in the making of them.

With that in mind, we had fun making her Mother's Day gift this year: handmade cloth napkins "stamped" with real flowers.

I sewed the napkins first - 10" squares with the edges narrowly hemmed. Nothing fancy, but my standard napkin "recipe".

Then the fun began.

Using Tulip Soft fabric paint thinned with a couple of drops of water, we brushed the paint onto real flowers and leaves cut from a bouquet from the grocery store, and a few cut from our own plants that are blooming.

And then we "stamped" the flower image on the napkins.

The girls had tremendous fun picking out which flower they would do next, and getting paint all over their fingers.

Please pardon the rags in her hair. It was picture
day at the dance studio.

And the result was very pretty, I thought.
There were a dozen napkins total, though I think the girls would have happily painted them all day if they could have.
And Grandma seemed very happy with the results, which is really all that mattered.

The Trials and Tribulations of City Gardening

2011-05-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's going to be a miracle if my garden actually manages to produce anything this year.

Certainly my lack of motivation is about half the problem. For some reason, planting carrots just wasn't high on my list of Fun Things To Do this spring.

But that's only half of it.

Then there are the neighbor's cats. Or the stray cats that have adopted my neighbors, because they set out food for them. They eat at the neighbor's house, then come on over to the giant litter box in my backyard to do their business. So far, they've dug up my cucumber seeds, my entire cold frame, half the beets, half a row of beans, and my second planting of lettuce. I go to all the work of fluffing up the soil to plant, and it would appear that freshly-fluffed soil appeals to cats in search of a pooping spot. Nice.

And of course, city gardening wouldn't be complete without wretched, Round-up wielding neighbors, would it? For the past three years no one has lived in the house behind us. Each year the weeds grow waist high, with no one coming along to even bother with mowing them down. The weeds go to seed, the seed blows through the fence, and gives me more work to do in the garden. For three years I've been fighting the good fight, though admittedly I've done my fair share of grumbling about it.

But no more. Oh no, the new renters will not let those weeds grow! Nope, instead, they'll spray them with Round-up, right up to (and through) the fence. "Never mind the poor girl on the other side of the fence doing her best to grow organic vegetables for her family to eat," they say. My spinach and turnip greens are now covered in yellow spots where the overspray landed on them. The tomato plants I've nurtured from seed for the past three months are riddled with dead spots.

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GARDEN WITH THIS?!

Ahem. Please, excuse my outburst. But seriously, I'm peeved. I think I'd rather be out in the country, fending off deer and rabbits and raccoons.

As we speak, my sweet eight year old is out in the back yard, nose buried in Little Bear's Outdoor Adventure Guide for the All American Boy. She's studying the trap-building chapter with the intention of luring neighborhood cats into the backyard so that they can be trapped.

I sure hope it works.

Garden to Table Challenge - Week 3

2011-05-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

This week's recipe comes (again) from the Food Matters Cookbook. I'm starting to feel a little Julie & Julia-esque, except that I'm serving Mark Bittman recipes every night instead of Julia Child. I suppose I could rename these posts "Julie & Mark"... except that reminds me too much of my ex-husband, and that creeps me out.

So we'll stick with The Garden to Table Challenge.

In keeping with the Bacon Makes Everything Taste Better theme, I present to you:

Asparagus Gratin.

It's wild asparagus season again. We're lucky in that we can spend twenty minutes driving down a country road and come home with enough asparagus for two meals. Tonight's original meal plan was grilled snow-goose breast with wild rice and steamed asparagus, but after an afternoon spent thinning carrots and weeding in the hot sun, and Daddy not being home for dinner, I decided to go for something lighter and simpler.

Asparagus Gratin (I'm not copying this word for word because the book is in the other room and I'm lazy.)

1 1/2 lbs asparagus (I did about half a pound for the girls and I.)
3 Tbsp. olive oil
salt & pepper
2 slices bacon, chopped
1 Tbsp. minced garlic (I used fresh. Well, garlic from last year's garden, which isn't actually fresh, I suppose, but seems to be holding on pretty well after being stored for nearly a year.)
3/4 c homemade breadcrumbs

Roast the asparagus in a couple tablespoons of the olive oil and some salt and pepper. The book says 400 degrees, but I had potatoes in the oven at 350, so that's what I did and it worked. While the asparagus is roasting, cook the bacon in the last tablespoon of olive oil til crisp. Then add in the garlic and breadcrumbs and cook and stir until golden.
When the asparagus is tender, sprinkle the topping on it, then broil it for a couple of minutes until the topping is nice and toasted.

I served this with Parmesan Potato Rostis.

I'm not going to give you that recipe because it has absolutely nothing to do with local, seasonal food, and honestly I'm feeling a little bit funny sharing so many of Bittman's amazing recipes here on my blog. Once again, check out his book. I realize that rostis and asparagus gratin probably don't go together. But I promised The Oldest that I'd make rostis again sometime this week because they are her New Favorite Food.

And for dessert:

Homemade vanilla pudding with fresh fruit. In addition to it being strawberry season, raw milk is also in abundance at our house. Pudding uses it up nicely, and is a little more of a treat than plain yogurt. I had no idea how easy it really is to make pudding from scratch until I gave it a go. Try it. You'll give up Snak-Paks for good, I promise.

I used this recipe I found on allrecipes.com and was really happy with it. It doesn't involve egg yolks, which was a plus.

What are you cooking this week? If it's from your garden, or is local and seasonal, Wendy wants to hear about it at the Garden to Table challenge. Come join in the fun!

Homeschool Notes: Field Trip!

2011-05-14T06:52:00.001-07:00

Mostly, homeschooling at our house looks like this:
But now that the sun is out and the weather is warm, none of us have the patience for this Sitting Still Indoors business. Once in awhile we just can't do it anymore. On those days, homeschooling looks more like this:

A trip to Rifle Falls for a picnic and nature walk was a whole lot more fun than practicing multiplication tables and tracing letters, to be certain.

We had a lovely discussion about fossil fuels and our consumption of them on the way to Rifle as we drove past the rigs. "But, um.... won't we run out of gas eventually, if we get it that way?" Exactly, darlin'. You keep on practicing riding that two wheeler.

We covered more topics than I can count- stalactites and stalagmites and the formation of caves from mineral deposits; the nocturnal habits of bats in the caves;

This is her "There is no way I'm going in that cave
and I can't believe you're even crazy enough to suggest it" face.

A study of birds, where Cora quickly learned that blue jays will happily eat cinnamon rolls; watching bugs skate around in the water below the falls, and seeing that if a moth gets wet, it can't fly anymore; And we learned that waterfall water is really, really cold and refreshing.

we watched and identified butterflies, plants, flowers, and fungi (because homeschoolers are known to carry field guides around in their backpacks.) We even stopped at the fish hatchery (where I failed to get the camera out) and we got to feed the fish and talk to a lady about their life cycle. (Because when random strangers learn that you homeschool, they take it upon themselves to teach your children something. Am I the only one who's noticed that?)

A giant mushroom growing
on the underside of a tree trunk.

And on the way back home, we even said all the multiplication tables. So we didn't end up skipping math, after all.

And of course, there was the study in compass reading and the use of GPS when we stopped for a few geocaches while we were in the area - three micros, for any of you that enjoy caching. Micros are so hard for me. It was exciting to find three in one day, with the help of the Daddy.