Happy Halloween!... almost.

 I usually wait until it's actually Halloween to post costume pictures, but seeing as I actually have internet access tonight, I suppose I better make use of it.

And so I present: Halloween Costumes 2013

Pippi Longstocking...

And a very sweet little bride. 


True to character, I have one dressed in lace and satin and the other looking super playful.

The Oldest read Pippi Longstocking recently, and helped design her own costume based on what she read. I love how it turned out, and so does she. She even did some of the sewing this year!

Littlest One really just wanted to be a princess (again) but I refuse to make the same costume twice. (Halloween costume sewing is as much fun for me as it is for them, mostly because I never get to make fun stuff like this in real life.) So instead of princess, she went with bride... which is essentially just a princess in white, with a veil and a bouquet. Works for me, and it turned out gorgeous.

The detail on the dress was the most fun I've had in a long time - I even designed it myself with a lace overlay on the front panel, ribbon woven corset-style up the front, and braid trim along the overlay and around the neckline. It really is a real wedding dress, in miniature.

And of course, the most fun comes after Halloween, when they can dress up as often as they want. Makes all the effort worth it in the end!

Happy Halloween to everyone!

Volunteer Work: Farm style

Sometimes, being homeschoolers offers us some amazing opportunities.

 

This weekend, we took a volunteer job at a local living history museum, demonstrating some of the heritage arts that we do at home. We dressed in costume and sat on the porch of a 100 year old bunk house, where we showed knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and finger knitting.

It was an incredible opportunity for Two Little Girls. For as much time as they spend doing these things as a regular part of life, it was fantastic for them to hear the “oohs” and the “ahhs” of ‘city folk’ as they watched such young girls doing them. For me to be knitting wasn’t anything special. But for folks – kids and adults alike – to see my six and ten year old daughters proficiently creating beautiful, useful works of art was inspirational to some.

 

The girls sat with other kids as they came by and taught them the basics of their skills – Littlest One taught many a young girl to knit a chain by weaving yarn on her fingers, and sent each one away with a small ball of yarn to practice with. The satisfaction she got from sharing her skill equaled the satisfaction of the children learning it.

We taught a group of girl scouts how to knit and crochet, patiently demonstrating and holding their hands as they fumbled through the stitches. A couple were so eager to learn that they sat with us for nearly half an hour, carefully making stitch after stitch across rows. It’s neat to think they may go home with a desire to learn a lifelong skill that was nearly lost to antiquity for a few generations.

When they tired of sitting and doing their needlework, Two Little Girls took turns churning butter from fresh local cream and cleaning apples to be pressed into cider for the many visitors. No matter what they were doing, watching them brought smiles to many faces. To see some of the elderly women that passed through smile so big at my sweet girls having so much fun doing what most would consider work warmed my heart. 

And upon the end of our day, when The Oldest took my hand and swung my arm as she skipped along in her pinafore and bonnet, and she said, “This was such a special day!” That made it all worth the effort we put into it. I love when my girls are able to take pride in this (somewhat crazy) life we live. Not every kid gets to do the things they do here, and while it doesn’t always seem special to them, times like this help them realize they get to experience a lot of things most kids never get to.

The museum will close up soon for the winter, but we hope to continue volunteering our time there next year, sharing the skills we use every day with kids who don’t get to see them often. 

Ooey, Gooey Homeschooling Awesomeness

 My children, as in all areas of life, are as different as night and day when it comes to school. They each have their strong points and weak areas, the subjects they love and the ones they suffer through... and neither of them match up with anything. The Oldest picked up reading after about two months of instruction. Littlest One is on year two of painstakingly sounding out Every. Single. Word. But where The Oldest still can't always recall that 8x8=64, Littlest One seems to have a knack for memorizing math facts - and even loves to do it. Flash cards thrill her... The Oldest would rather scrub baseboards.

And so, just when I finally felt like had "This Whole Homeschooling Thing" down, Littlest One came along to dash all my dreams of mastery.

But, as I've worked to find ways to get information to stick in the brains of young children, one concept always rings true: if it involves laughter, fun, creativity, or enormous messes, they will undoubtedly remember what they have been taught. The only problem here is that this means that I have to come up with great ideas each week to keep them actively learning. Not always an easy thing to do. We've done "Memory" type games for sight words, online games for learning math facts and phonics, apps on my phone for sight words and for multiplication drills, and I've spent countless nights searching Pinterest for more fun ideas.

Somewhere between a Pinterest preschool activity and my own brain, this amazing little activity came about, and it's one that's cool enough that it deserves sharing.

I wrote the Eight Sight Words of the Week on little bits of craft foam, using a Sharpie. Then I scattered the bits on the bottom of a glass baking dish:


And then - because I was hoping to win the Cool Mom Award for the day, I managed to bring together fun, creativity, laughter, and an enormous mess, all into one activity: I squirted shaving cream all over the words, filling the baking dish til it nearly overflowed.

Then I handed Littlest One a list of her sight words and a pencil, and set her to work. Her job: find the little foam bits with the words on them, read them out loud, then find them on the list and mark them off with the pencil.


 
It sounds way easier than it really is. I also didn't let her keep the words out when she had found them - I made her put them back in. This meant she was constantly re-finding and re-reading the words.

The other blessed benefit to this activity: it can take at least an hour. Seriously - go get some laundry done, make some dinner.... take a nap, whatever. Your kid will be entertained. I promise.

Somehow, I assumed The Oldest would find this utterly immature and not be interested at all.
 
Clearly, I was wrong. She was desperate to get her hands in that shaving cream. So I wrote out a bunch of her most difficult multiplication and division facts and let her have a go at it.
 
The verdict? Coolest sight word game of the year, so far. The only problem is, now I have to come up with more fun ideas... feel free to hit me up with any you might have!

The Inventory of the Cellar

As the harvest/preserving season wraps up for the 2013 season, I organized the cellar and freezer and took stock of how much food we’ve produced and put by for the year. I was a little more detailed in my record keeping this year than I have been in the past, as I work to figure out how much food we actually need, how much it costs and how much I save, etc. 

These records are purely for my own information, but I’m posting them in case anyone is interested (and also, because if they are on the blog, I won’t lose them.)

In the cellar:

246 jars of food (fruit, vegetables, jams, sauces/salsas/condiments, syrups, soups.)

16 delicata squash (each will provide one meal)

6 large pie pumpkins (will equal approx 20 cans of pumpkin)

22 lbs fresh-stored carrots (with more to harvest)

12 lbs fresh-stored beets (I canned half the beet harvest as pickled beets)

17 lbs potatoes (with more to harvest)

? dried beans (haven’t shelled them yet. Maybe 5 lbs? Not much.)

62 heads of garlic (enough for planting this fall, too.)

75 onions

several bunches of dried herbs (dill, parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, lavender)

8 quarts of dried fruit and tomatoes

24 sheets of fruit leather (equals about 96 “fruit roll-ups”)

 

In the freezer:

5 lbs carrots

2 lbs broccoli

5 gallons of soups

4 quarts of chopped green onions

2 lbs chopped bell peppers

7 cups of spaghetti sauce

14 cups of pesto

I chose to can most of our food this year when it was possible, since freezer space is limited.

These totals don’t include the fresh veggies we’ve eaten through the summer, beginning in May and lasting about 5 months. Most meals were planned around what was coming out of the garden.

Meat:

16 chickens

3 turkeys (yet to be butchered)

1 goat (yet to be butchered.)

(hoping this will total about 40 meals’ worth of food, plus broth for soups.)

(There is also hope still for one -or two- elk this year, which would provide a full year's worth of meat, and enough to share.)

Dairy (year totals)

About 50 gallons of milk (I don’t keep daily records. This is a close estimate.)

About 45 dozen eggs (again, this is an estimate. They slow down in the winter, but produce 3-4 dozen per week during the summer.)

I wish I had the numbers to put a value to all of the food in this house right now, but I’m not that organized yet.

But the total cost of all of it?

$175 in locally, farm-purchased fruits and vegetables that I didn’t/couldn’t raise myself.

$60 in garden seeds

$60 in meat birds

Approx $120 in meat chicken feed

Another $120 in egg hen feed (not including the feed cost of the show birds.)

$240 in grain for goats

Not sure of the cost of jar lids, bought about $24 of canning jars this year, plus spices, sugar, etc. that I didn’t keep records of. Estimating about $75 in those supplies.

So total cost for the above listed foods? $824

Also, figure at least 250 hours of work. At least. Honestly, it’s probably a whole lot more, but sometimes it’s hard to decipher work from play around here.

The amount seems enormous, but when it's spread over 6 months or so, it's not terrible... and if I make the effort, I could cut our monthly grocery bill down to about $100 for 5 or 6 months.  That puts us at roughly $233 per month, eating healthy, organically grown vegetables, pastured meat, raw milk and fresh eggs. I realize some folks live on plenty less than this each month, but seriously y'all, we eat really good food!

 

So is it worth it? Absolutely.

 Raising meat chickens is utterly uneconomical, between the cost of the birds and feed, the amount of work required in the raising and butchering of them… if we could find a way to hatch our own meat chicks and raise our own feed, it would make more sense. (I’ve heard you can raise chickens almost entirely on clabbered cow’s milk. I’m not opposed to trying this when our cow is in milk) Turkeys are a much bigger bang for your buck, even when raised from poults. Goats can be expensive, since grain is a requirement, but the milk they provide for drinking, cooking, plus yogurt, cheese, etc. is so worth it… and goats provide a lot of fun, too. (Most people pay more for a monthly cable bill than we do for our goats, and goats are far more entertaining!) We also raise all the hay our animals will use, and they graze pasture during the spring, summer, and fall. This cuts down significantly on the cost of meat and milk production. It’s hard for me to estimate the value of the egg chickens vs. the cost of their feed, since most of our chickens are show-breed bantams that The Oldest raises for fun (and are therefore worthless when it comes to laying.)

The garden is amazing, though. The sheer number of pounds of food produced with just $60 worth of seeds in incredible. Fresh vegetables all through the summer months and well into the fall and winter. The fertilizer is provided by the menagerie in the barns, the water comes from our irrigation, and the man-power is provided by Two Little Girls and myself. (Bonus: gardening and other farm chores also provide a great daily workout, omitting what some folks pay in gym memberships.)What doesn’t get eaten provides extra feed for the animals. 

Are we anywhere close to self-sufficient? Not at all. Until I can grown my own wheat and oats, we'll still be making monthly trips to the grocery store. Though I have started looking into the details of raising sugar beets, just as an experiment...

When I sent Littlest One down-cellar the other day for a jar of pears, she came up with them and said, “Do you know what I thought when I went into the cellar? I thought, ‘I’m so proud of my mom for putting all this food in here for us to eat.’”

So is it worth it? Yep, you betcha. And it's even kinda fun, too. :-)

Saying Goodbye

It’s one of those hard lessons you hate to have to see your kids learn, and yet it’s not one that can be avoided when you raise animals.

We had to say goodbye to Jasper today. The first baby born on our little farm (aside from chickens) that just couldn't stay forever.

The girls knew we weren’t keeping him. We don’t need a bunch of little wethers running around. We keep animals that have a purpose (mostly) and castrated little boy goats running around don’t serve any real purpose aside from general entertainment. We have plenty of entertainment around here, entertainment that doesn’t jump fences to eat apple trees.

I honestly thought we were pretty lucky. The family that bought him wanted a little pet goat to keep their other little pet goat company. They brought a bag of animal crackers and banana chips for him and cuddled him and exclaimed over his cuteness. And they had a ten year old son. Jasper was particularly fond of ten year olds. He’s going to live on a farm where he can run free and eat weeds to his heart’s content. There couldn’t possibly be a better life for a goat… especially considering most wethers are sold for meat.

But all of that didn’t make it any easier. Littlest One collapsed into a sobbing mess in my arms before they had pulled out of the driveway. The Oldest disappeared, only to be found later up in a tree, hiding and sulking. Two hours later, she still hadn’t spoken, nor had Littlest One’s tears subsided. In fact, what were at first silent tears became full-blown wailing for awhile.

Seriously, the level of drama in this house over the past few hours could have put my girls in the running for Academy Awards.

I sincerely hope they feel better – and calmer – after a good night’s sleep. And I hope that the more animals we sell, the easier this gets.

The Reason Why.

Once upon a time, this blog was intended to document every little special thing that happened in our lives.

And then, our lives changed. Every little thing felt like such a big thing. It *is a big thing. It’s huge, and it’s exhausting, and it’s so special there aren’t words to put to it. And yet, in the scheme of things, it seems so normal I feel like it’s nothing to write about at all.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had internet access good enough to even try blogging. Mountain life, I suppose. And life has just happened – every day, something new, something huge or something small, it just keeps happening, and I can’t find the time or the need to put it into words.

And then tonight. I sat down with Two Little Girls and we flipped through scrapbooks. The books I kept through their Little Years, telling the story of each simple day, rejoicing in the simplicity. And I realized how many special things really are happening, that I’m just not rejoicing in. The Little Things. That’s what this blog is about. It’s not about huge events. It’s not about teaching or sharing important things… it’s about writing the stories of Two Little Girls’ lives, for them to remember later, for them to know how special each day was. I don’t have to have a reason for writing stories. They are reason enough. The Little Things that make them special, in a huge world where nothing seems unique. They are special enough as they are, and it is my job as their mama to remind them of just that.

This is a beautiful life they are living. It seems so huge and significant, and yet so mundane at the same time. But it’s their life, and our life, and it’s special one. One I want to keep writing about, one I want them to remember.

So I’ll write it. Exciting or not, I’ll write the stories. The stories that today seem so mundane, but that tomorrow might seem so special to them. This isn’t for anyone but for Two Little Girls. For the days I don’t want them to forget.

Finding the Fun in Irrigating

It was after dinner. I announced to the girls that I was heading to the field to irrigate, and that they could go out to play.

"Can I come with you?" Littlest One asked. When I agreed, she disappeared in a flash to change from her party dress and princess crown into more irrigating-appropriate attire.

I headed out the door to fetch my shovel. When she met me at the driveway, she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with her little hot pink irrigating boots, kid-sized leather work gloves, and her very own kid-sized shovel. She looked so adorable, I wish I'd had the camera with me at that moment. She slung her shovel up on her shoulder, marched her little muck boots across the lawn, and said, "I'm ready to go!"

And so I joined her, wearing my own boots and leather gloves, and carrying my grown-up sized shovel. I walked along, using the shovel like one might use a hiking stick, trudging along through the knee-high grass. She copied me step for step, through what was waist-high grass for her. When I got tired of swinging the shovel along, I put it across my shoulders. I looked down, and there was my little blonde helper, with her own little shovel propped  across her shoulders. She looked up at me and grinned. "Where are we goin'?" she asked.

We got to the first tarp we needed to move. I put my shovel down and stepped on it so it would stand. She promptly put her own shovel down next to mine, stomped on it, and it stood there - her tiny little shovel next to my big one. She watched carefully as I worked the dam out of the ditch. We both laughed at Huck as he chased the run-away water. Then I carried the tarp and my shovel downstream. She watched as I put the tarp in its new position, sending water flowing over the edge of the irrigation ditch to water the pasture below. Then she skipped back to the second tarp and heaved and struggled until the tarp was free. She dragged it to the spot I pointed out, and then set to work trying to get that little shovel to press the plastic into the mud. "Um... I think I need help." So we worked together.

Then we walked down to see how the next set of tarps were doing. The grass got longer. It was up to her elbows, but she didn't complain, she just clomped along with her shovel up over her shoulders.

"Mom, do you get very lonely when you have to come do this by yourself all the time?"

"No... mamas actually enjoy quiet time. Even when they are working. It's nice to have your company, but I don't mind doing it alone, either."

"Well, just in case, I'll make sure I come out here with you every single day so you're never lonely again. Okay?"

Clearly she can't yet fathom the beauty of a quiet hour spent walking through a pasture. But her generosity was quite moving - she was offering to give up an hour of play time to come work in a hay pasture, just so I wouldn't be lonely.

When she asked where we'd water tomorrow, and I explained that we'd have a lot of work to do because we have to really move water around a lot, she vaulted over a big clump of grass and said, "then tomorrow's going to be the best day of my whole life!"

Back we headed to the house, gloved hand in gloved hand, shovels balanced over one shoulder.

I said a desperate, silent prayer for God to please make me the kind of person I want this little girl to be... because she obviously watches every single thing that I do and copies everything down to the last detail. And then I said a little prayer of gratitude, for this amazing little girl that delights so much in work, that thinks of others and is so willing to help.

I am blessed.

Introducing: Peaches

 It finally happened. He found himself a horse.

Meet 'Peaches'. Her registered name is Treasure Chiquita, and for a couple of days The Oldest tried calling her 'Chiquita', but it just didn't fit. And so, Peaches she is.

She's a registered Morgan mare, about 13 years old. She is, when compared to our other horses, a lot of horse. She's full of energy, she's fast and likes to show it. But she's also brilliant, well trained, (mostly) well behaved, and has a fantastic personality. She learns incredibly fast, and you can tell by the look in her eye that she wants to please you. She's a little nervous, though that's wearing off as she becomes used to her new surroundings. And she's positively splendid to watch as she's grazing on the mountain, her chestnut coat glistening in the sunset. No doubt, she's the prettiest animal on our little farmstead.

In the first 24 hours that he was off work last week, The Daddy had already had her out twice, working with her on loading in the trailer (which she mastered in no time at all,) and taking the girls on a long ride around the neighborhood. It makes me so happy that he has a horse to do that with now, to be out there enjoying all this space along with our girls (on their geriatric horses that Peaches could run circles around.)

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By the age of seven, The Oldest was Horse Crazy and I had read every Marguerite Henry book out loud to her. One of our favorites was Justin Morgan Had a Horse. It's the true story of the first Morgan horse. To be able to trace Peaches' bloodlines all the way back to Justin Morgan was quite a treat, both for The Oldest and for myself.

The Daddy's sentimentality for Morgan horses stems from the fact that his grandfather raised them. The idea of having a Morgan pleases him tremendously. What's even better, he inherited his grandfather's old saddle, and has been using it to ride. He's not the sentimental type, but I can tell it means a lot to him. 

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She's proving to be a good hobby for The Daddy, who has already practiced with her at the rodeo grounds, lunged her in a round pen, and taken her to a trail course to get her used to different obstacles. (I've never seen a horse that is more content to go over a bridge backward than forward, until this one! But she'll get there.)

 He's got that patience-mixed-with-confidence that is necessary to really get a horse to listen, and they seem to work well together. It pleases me so much to see him have a hobby besides hunting, one that doesn't only happen during certain months of the year. I can tell he's excited to have her and really enjoys the time he spends with her. He's always dreamed of owning a farm, and that part of the dream came true... but having a horse of his own to love and enjoy was a part of the dream, too, and I'm so glad it's finally happened for him.

 Welcome to the farm, Peaches. We're so glad to have you!

The Little Things - The Important Things

Ah, what a nice break it's been from blogging! With so much to do, and so little time, writing our little stories has been pushed to the back burner.

If there's one lesson I'm learning from this crazy new life we're living, it's how to prioritize. Children must be taught and fed. Animals must be fed and tended to. The hay pasture must be irrigated and the garden must be planted and tended. Sadly, things like blogging, or knitting, or any of the other little creative bits I used to have time for seem to have been replaced with other activities, at least for now.

Not that I'm complaining. So much satisfaction can be found in the work that makes up every moment of every day. I enjoy it all immensely, and so does our family. What is actually work often feels more like play. I've learned to find incredible enjoyment in my animals, in walking through the sloshy pasture twice a day, and in making cheese and yogurt. Peaceful moments come in the form of enjoying a cold beer on the deck at sunset, listening to the birds singing their goodnights; listening to Two Little Girls making clothespin fairy dolls talk as they adventure through the garden fairy village; watching goats and horses graze contentedly along the edges of the yard.

Not that it's all picture perfect. The never-endingness of it all is constantly overwhelming, and I'm still learning to accept that I'm simply not ever going to have it all done. It goes back to those priorities. Some days school takes priority, and we do a week's worth of math and English to make up for the days we've missed. Other days I realize I haven't shoveled manure in a week, or that the weeds are climbing the pea trellis faster than the peas are. Whatever seems most pressing gets accomplished, everything else is left for another day. I'm learning to remember that it will still be there tomorrow. And some days, play and relaxing and laughing take priority. If they didn't, I'd be a crazy person. And we all know if I'm crazy, my family is too.

So along we trudge, delighting in all The Little Things we do, appreciating the sweet details that tend to fog over the messier big picture. And for now, that's just about perfect.

As life seems to be evening out again, I'm hoping to get back to writing the little stories that make up our little lives... the stories I want to remember, that I want my children to remember, the stories that I hope make a few folks smile once in awhile.

Hee-Haw

We were outside after breakfast this morning, once again attempting to keep the goats inside the goat pen. I was reenforcing fencing with even more twists of wire, The Oldest was hauling rocks to fill in a hole they dug, and Littlest One was trying to herd them all back through the gate. (This part of the story is nothing new. It's a constant, seeing as goats are impossible to keep in any place you actually want them to be.)

As we were working, Littlest One says, "What was that? It sounded like a little donkey saying 'hee haw'."

We stopped and listened.

It didn't take long to figure out what was going on.

Mulan, the very smallest of the new chickens, the Japanese Bantam, was braying like a very small, very squeaky donkey.

Mulan will henceforth be called Genghis. Her His attitude will determine how long he lives.