Fortress safe and secure

Proverbs 14:26
Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for their children it will be a refuge.

This verse is on a tattered index card taped behind the sugar bowl.  I saw it again this morning as I scooped mine into coffee.  Yesterday I had fever and aches and cough - like all the other people in my county - so I sat on the couch.  My children schooled themselves and fed themselves and we waited for Daddy to finally come home from school to take care of us.  He texted me to say "don't watch the news, don't let the kids see."  As the cold chill struck me, I answered "uh, we're doing science not news, what??"

So, after Daddy came home and sent me to nap, I got to pray and think.  We're safe.  The same safe we've been.  We live in the same wretched world that we did last week.  There has never been any security for us in the guns Daddy keeps near or the country home or the Ohio address.  Our security comes from a Sovereign God.  He is our secure fortress.

Last week our Voice of the Martyrs magazine came and before I could tuck it away from little eyes, my 3-yr-old asked why the little girl had a hurt arm - and why was it short - and was she sad?  Oh yes, I told her, she is very sad.  But look, she's a precious girl just like you!  Little and soft and see her pretty brown eyes, do they look like Mommy's brown eyes?  And that satisfied my Anna.  But not my 8-yr-old Ruby.

For Ruby there must be answers.  And the answer is that sin and evil live in the hearts of men, in each of our hearts.   Without the Christ, to clean our hearts, the sin and the evil rule - and this precious little girl in the picture lives in a village where bad people came - they came to hurt the people there because they didn't want to be Muslims.  So we prayed for the little girl to be healed and not afraid and to have a strong heart.  And we prayed for all the children in the world who have fear and hurt.

And later last night, while dinner cooked (oh thank you, dear husband), we 6 cuddled on the couch.  Daddy gave the terrible report and my kiddos eyes got very wide.  They have almost no school experience - except that every day their Daddy goes there to "teach the kids".  Schools, to them, are dinner conversation and a fun place to visit Daddy.

We had the conversation again - sin and evil rule in the hearts of men - but there is hope.  Where horror and fear rise up, the hope is still greater.  Here is the question I ask my children when they tell me their terrible fears:  "what if that did happen, then what?"  And the answer is Jesus.  Jesus would take me to heaven.  Jesus would take you to heaven.  Jesus would give me courage.  Jesus loves me and so if I was hurt, he would help me not be too afraid.  I asked Jesus to clean my heart, so I know He did, so I know I could be brave and I would not be a bad guy.

That is our secure fortress, for surely the sin and evil are real, but our King has a fortress in which we can hide.  We have a future with Him, no matter what horror today brings.  And we have hope for tomorrow - there is always, always redemption.  What is meant for evil, is turned miraculously into good.  We are safe.

When my kids are afraid, they cuddle closer.  They whisper, I love you, Mommy.  And that is what I do with my King, in His fortress, I cuddle closer, I whisper "I love you, I need to be closer, thank you for tucking me in" and I draw my children close into His fortress.

Egg Nog and Turkey

Two things my family has been talking about. 1) that yummy turkey, wish there was still some left. 2) when are you buying more egg nog? don't make it, the home-made is gross and lumpy.

So, for number one. The turkey really is awesome. And since my friend Betsy asked for it, I'm sharing!

Best Turkey Ever
Collect these supplies:
2 big bags (I use kitchen garbage bags, tried others, they broke)
Ice Packs
5-gallon bucket or medium-sized cooler
One Turkey - I've used up to 19 pounds

Combine these brining ingredients in a large kettle - bring to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves.
2 quarts unsweetened apple juice
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup kosher salt
4 ounces fresh gingerroot, peeled and thinly sliced
15 whole cloves
6 garlic cloves, crushes
3 bay leaves

Stir in 3 oranges, quartered and squeezed
Turn off heat.
Pour in 3 quarts cold water and let your brine cool so you can handle it.

Prepare turkey (rinse and inspect), then carefully double-bag it and set into your vessel (5-gallon bucket or cooler). Find some children who can hold the bag open while you pour the brine over the turkey - without dropping the bag and losing any!!

Tie the bag tightly and either put in a cool place or pack with ice-packs. I work hard to get the turkey submerged in liquid so I don't have to touch it for 18-24 hours. If it isn't submerged, you'll want to flop it over mid-way so all that turkey gets good contact.

18-24 hours later, gather your volunteers so that you can haul the bird into your sink for a good rinse. Discard all brining ingredients. Pat dry, rub with oil (mine got a coconut oil massage), place in favorite baking vessel. Cover for first half of the baking. Brined birds cook faster - so expect that and check the internal temperature about 2/3 thru your cooking time.

Let bird rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing. Try not to ruin your appetite by eating all the turkey as you slice it. Oh yum.


As for eggnog. We are eggnog lovers. We buy it thick and dilute with whole milk - b/c that makes it last longer and deludes us into thinking it's healthier. I tried to make my own last year. Yuck. Lumpy - something to do with the egg-cooking. Raw is too thin and frothy - also yuck.

But we had victory this week. Yum. Not quite as sweet as store-bought, but that can be remedied.

4 cups of milk (save 1/2 C to dilute egg yolks)
4 egg yolks, well beaten, stirred into saved 1/2 C milk (save whites)
2/3 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Heat on medium, stirring well until it thickens to coat back of spoon.
Remove from heat to cool.

When cool, whip egg whites to soft-peaks. Fold whites into cooled eggnog (adds great thickness).
Add vanilla and nutmeg to taste. Add half/half or whole milk get desired thickness (I used raw cream - oh my!) Refrigerate until serving!

Baked Oatmeal Breakfast

When Anna was born, my Mom baked a giant batch of this baked oatmeal and she served it to me throughout the day. Anna was born at home and one of my lasting memories of that most-lovely time is of my own Mom - she'd appear in my bedroom doorway with yummy food and a big grin. My Mom got to catch Anna - isn't that cool?!

Baked Oatmeal Breakfast - this came from my dear Aunt Jackie in Maine. I love it.

2 C oatmeal (old-fashioned)
1/3 C brown sugar
1/3 C raisins
1 t baking powder
1/2 t cinnamon

1 1/2 C milk
1/2 C applesauce (unsweetened, homemade or not)
1 egg
1 T oil

Combine dry, stir in wet, pour into oiled 8" square dish. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

OR, this doubles nicely into a 9x13. My mom always added finely chopped (or ground) almonds, dried cherried, chopped apples.
You can also omit the sugar and substitute 1T more applesauce for the oil.

Serve hot with milk (and syrup or sugar).

Corn Bread we like to eat

You may have noticed that I like making my own version - whether it be my own chicken, my own vinegar. I like making my own. But we really like Jiffy cornbread and the recipes I've tried are too blahhh (I like it sweet and moist and yellow). So - I googled "cornbread like jiffy's" and then made it my own. Here's how I like it. FYI - I do fresh-grind my own flour - I've also done popcorn and that makes it even better - but usually I buy the cornmeal (b/c it is too loud in the vitamixer and we don't have enough ear-coverage for every kid).

This is a giant recipe - I make it in my big casserole dish (10xsomething)- we devour it at dinner, then have leftover for breakfast.

1 C cornmeal
3 C flour (I use equal parts fresh-ground hard white and soft white wheat berries)
1/3 C sugar (usually brown)
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 C oil
1/3 C butter (can play with this fats ratio - but I like it with at least 1/3 butter)
4 eggs, well-beaten
2 1/4 C milk (I rarely use plain milk. I prefer homemade kefir or buttermilk or clabbered raw milk - today I used mostly clabbered but needed a bit more so added broth!)
(optional - can add 1 C fresh or from-frozen corn for some texture)

Combine all dry ingredients. Pour wet on top, gently stir (it will begin to bubble, so don't over-stir). Pour into oiled casserole dish. Bake 350 for 40-50 minutes - mine is always browned on edges before it is done in the middle - browned is yum.

Season for finishing

This is the season for finishing things.  The trees are finishing their leaves, the garden is finishing its fruit, I am finished cleaning the house (aaah! that was so funny.  I crack myself up.)  Get ready, I should blog more often.  This post is heavy-laden.

Finishing the Apple Cider Vinegar.  I keep blowing through my bottles of Bragg's ACV because I add a tablespoon per gallon of water for the dog, chickens and rabbits.  I think it helps them fend off icky things - who knows.  But I was about to give up on my dosings b/c the good, raw stuff is too expensive. Here's my attempt at making it myself - easy, not hardly stinky.  I'm sold.  I got seconds from the orchard.  They aren't organic (which is bad b/c any pesticides will keep them from making good fermenty vinegar) but since they were the ugly ones, it's likely they got little spray (hence their ugliness).  So we put a half-bushel's worth of cores and peels into that 5-gal bucket, topped it with warm water and banded a thin dishtowel over the top to keep out fruit flies.  It sat in my kitchen for 3 weeks (I am impatient - 6 wks seems ideal), then I strained it out and filled my jars with that appley sour liquid!!  I had to do it, we were out of Bragg's.  But since I think it has more vinegar potential, I saved the mushy scraps, jarred it up with more water and towel-lids, and made a pretty vinegar display next to my mudroom sink.

 Finishing the soup beans.  We didn't weed and we didn't spray and we didn't water.  Hmm, not ideal.  But still we got a load of beans.  We planted 4 kinds:  Black Turtle, Calypso, Jacob's Cattle, and Pinto. We hardly got any of the latter two - maybe because the cows got out one night and munched them?  Don't know.   I do know that this is not cost-effective.  We do this because our daddy thinks it is cool that we can grow soup beans.  We do this to also prove that a lot of great learning/school can occur while one person reads aloud and the rest shell beans.  Also lots of hilarity.  Much more effective than trying to do school while canning tomatoes.

11yr old Peter's hand.

These little hands are cuter, Anna is our best sorter and also our best bean-feeler.

Two cheerful girl shellers.

This is how we dry them on towels on our deck.  Sometimes the shells burst open and the beans fly.

Finishing the hay drama.  We bought a very old, very used set of hay equipment.  I'm still baffled by which is the rake, the crusher-thingy, the cutter-part.  No clue.  I only know I was whispering the h-a-t-e word because my husband was so heart-achy as he and his farm-friends struggled to make the darn equipment work!!  This grass-fed business is hard when it doesn't rain.  So, here is a picture of a beautiful little steer named Tank who is watching his farm-daddies toss 43 beautiful bales of our OWN hay into our barn.

Finishing the chickens.  (warning, don't scroll further if you don't like to eat chicken) We are almost done with our first grandiose chicken raising.  We raised 48 cornish cross and 30 color range meat chickens in pasture-pens.  The spent their first 3 weeks inside (safe and warm), then went out to meet the world of fresh grass and bugs.  Twice every day we (mostly me) hauled jugs of water (ACV included!) up to the pasture, scooted the pens to fresh grass, and refilled their water and feed.  We loved those chickens.  They loved me the most.  We sold all but 5 cornish cross - the color range go in 2 weeks, I'm trying to remember not to sell all of them.  The goal was to pay for our own freezer-filling and make a little money.  I kept forgetting about the freezer-filling when our friends were cheerfully asking if they could buy some.  Next year, we'll just need to do more!!

Ruby is a very skillful chicken-deliverer.  See she's not even worried that the chicken is about to reach up and peck her hand.

I like butchering chickens.  It is simple and satisfying to see your clean bird, ready to eat.  I think it's appropriate that we know what our food ate, where it came from and who made it ready-to-eat.  This is right and good.  Anna and I talked to the Cornish Cross the night before butcher.  We agreed they were probably very excited for their big day - fulfilling the purpose for which they were created.  Anna says she will butcher when she gets bigger.  For now, she swings with her cousins.  We had 7 adults and 15 kids at our house "helping" on butcher-day.  No wonder we think it's fun.

The super-awesome chicken plucker.  See all those feathers?!  This is the men's department - they bleed, dip, pluck and pull. 

This is my table - I like to eviscerate.  It is a personal challenge to get all the inside out  in one piece.  See me concentrating?!  Most of the kids tried this - it's so cool to figure out their organs and see how their system is different from ours.
Chickens are beautifully-made creatures - even these hybrids.

This is my farmer.  He thinks the beard is good camo for bow-season.  We agree to disagree.  I love it when he looks at me like that because it means he thinks my jokes are funny.  This is a serious compliment.

This pen has 7 color range roosters.  These chickens aren't hybrids with giant breasts - they are happy normal birds that don't tip over because of the afore-mentioned giant breast.  They do normal things like crow and scratch for bugs and have beautiful feathers. This one is peaking up at me to say, "water-lady, where did you take my water?"  

Hot lips

After bragging about my awesome hot sauce, oh so tasty and easy to simmer up for my beloved, well, I did wash that pot.  Evidently I hadn't used it since.  Tonight as Isaac faithfully scooped the tender, hot applesauce into a jar, he glopped some on the counter.  I said flippantly, "I just wiped that counter, go ahead, lick it!".  He did.  Next thing I know he's in the bathroom washing off his tongue.  "Blech, something weird was on that counter, Mom."  I didn't believe him.
I finally found the lid for his jar, licked my applesauce finger clean (it is the preferred way to clean around here!) and aaack!!!!  We have a problem.  Spicy, Hot Applesauce.

Oh, how I hope that my pot is not forever-spicy.  Hope Kevin enjoys that applesauce I, uh, made him.  Hope he sees my label when he opens the frig in the early morning.

Do you like this picture of my frig?  This is my through-the-desert frig (not dessert, though it's useful for that too) - it is lasting forever, like the Israelites' sandals did through 40 years in the desert.  That green stuff is the jello for tomorrow's cell model.  The blocks-o-cheese are part of my lovely bulk purchases from my favorite Mennonite grocers!

Salsa-licious

That's a funny title, makes my kids laugh.  Salsa-licious!  And this is a funny post because I haven't tasted it yet!!  It's too spicy - would be dangerous.  But, this salsa wins because it isn't salsa-soup - it's beautiful, lovely - so it wins.

Ruby, my expert tomato-dipper.

My sweet, beloved friend Jess H gave me this recipe.  She makes it every year.  We laugh, because we both like adaptable recipes.  It is essential that substitutions can be made.  We have too many kids to go to the grocery store just because we want to make salsa!!  Substitute freely!!

Salsa

5 gallon bucket of tomatoes (who cares what kind!)  Peel, core and quarter after doing the hot-water-dip-trick.  Jess says you needn't quarter - just squeeze them with your hand as you plop them in the giant pot.  To reduce wetness of salsa, consider squeezing the tomatoes a bit for extra seeds and juice to go into your chicken bowl (oh, this is a compost bowl - my chickens love tomatoes).  Start the tomatoes cooking on low/med heat while you get busy chopping the rest:

6 banana peppers

4-6 green peppers

4-5 medium onions

garlic

cilantro

hot peppers to taste

Add above to tomatoes and stir well.

I used the "garden" method of picking every ready pepper in my garden, donning gloves and chopping them ALL up.  Hence the too-spicy for anyone but husband results.  Jess says hers is always "mild".  That's how I'll do the next batch so the rest of us can also munch.   

  

Before the tomatoes boil, carefully spoon out about 1 C of liquid into a bowl so that you can stir in

1 C cornstarch

1 C apple cider (or white) vinegar

1/2 C sugar

2 T salt

If your reserved liquid is too hot, you'll get lumps.  (I prefer to have less liquid in my salsa, not more, so you don't want to add water just so you can dissolve the cornstarch.)  Stir, stir, stir as you add the cornstarch mixture to your big pot and watch it thicken!!  Woo-hoo!!

Now for the illegal part.  Do not tell the FDA.  Quick, heat up another pot with water enough for a quart jar (or whatever kind you'll use) to lay down in and be submerged.  Get a cute, helpful girl (at least 7 1/2 years old, per Ruby) to help you with that fun magnet wand that retrieves the canning lids from the hot water.  Submerge your first jar and lid (being careful not to splash the cute girl perched on the stool nearby).  Fill your hot jar with your hot salsa, put on the hot lid, screw on the ring, place the jar upside down on your counter for a beautiful display of salsa.  Leave it alone until tomorrow, it will be all sealed and ready for winter-time munchings!!  This made 11 quarts for me - I used about 5 gallons of tomatoes and about 1 gallon bag of hot peppers and 3 green peppers.

Sticky neck

One of my favorite things about cooking with Anna is my sticky neck.

She helps me mix and knead and measure by kneeling on a tall stool.  Or she climbs up to sit on the counter - precarious with my piles being scooted off by her wiggly self.  We just finished mixing the granola up and she was licking the "splatula" clean and scooting a pile of books off the counter.  She screeched because I forgot to give her a bowl-full of raw granola (always her preferred way to eat it) - but I made it up to her with the whole bag of raisins instead.

Who, me?  I'm not sticky!

Reaching back to clutch at a knot in my neck, waiting for the timer to ring for the granola, I discover a smear of sticky brown sugar and honey on my neck.  Anna loves me so well.  It's so nice to feel the print of her sticky baby fingers on me.  They are losing their soft pudge and today she counted all the way up to 9 cups of oats (well, except for missing 6).

Tired and Grumpy

I suppose it is a problem, all these deep breaths and sighings.  Usually a good indicator that I'm being foolish and strong-willed.  My kids are doing that tender, expectant, don't-make-eye-contact dealy where they patiently wait for mama to give it up and ask forgiveness.  Baaah.  I'm so stinkin fallen.  Fallen in a pit of work-till-I-crack.  Fallen in a pit of "does-anybody-see-this-mess?!"  Fallen in a pit of stinking thinking like my kids and husband are supposed to be serving ME dinner and thinking of what MOM wants to do.  Ha, kinda makes me laugh now.  They always so sweetly say "oh yes, I do forgive you, and I love you so much" - just like You, Jesus.  I'm so thankful for that.

Well, the tomatoes are done boiling.  I should go to bed so I can wake up and finish this by starting fresh-better tomorrow.  Jesus, meet me there.  I'll be the bleary-eyed one begging you for a few more minutes before the sweet ones wake up.  I'd like to meet You on the couch for coffee, and then again in the garden, please.  Preferably before it's 90 degrees.

Better Bread

I decided about a year ago to be crazy and grind all our own flour.  That is a radical way to do a whole food (as in that whole wheat berry) - but it's working for us.  So we rarely eat foods made with processed flour - I just bake bread a couple times a week.  We buy wheat berries from the local mennonite grocer and I grind flour before I bake.  I've been getting tired of my old-standby bread recipe, so today I tested a recipe that my cousin Amy in Maine bakes.  And it worked beautifully with my fresh flour (and my typical substitutions).

Honey Oatmeal Bread
1 C oats (I use old fashioned)
2 t sea salt
2 C boiling water
2 T butter
1/2 honey (I used unpacked 1/2C brown sugar)
Mix these 5 ingred together and let stand 1 hr, @ 50 minutes combine 3t yeast and 1/2 warm water.  Let yeast mixture stand for 10 minutes, then mix into oat mixture.
Add 4-6 C flour (I used hard white wheat, Amy uses King Arthur) until dough is workable.
Knead 20 minutes (nearly impossible for me to patiently knead this long!)
Let rise until double (about 1 hr), punch down and roll into 2 loaves.  Place in bread pans and let rise to double.

Bake 375 for 25 minutes!  (delicious with cinnamon, sugar and raisins rolled into loaf - I bet fresh herbs would be awesome too)

Yogurt: the end of store cereal, Part 2

Yogurt!!  Oh, love of my heart, yogurt.  I love this almost as much as homemade granola.  And this sealed the deal: the end of store cereal AND the end of store yogurt!!  What delight: stir in honey, fruit, granola, jam, cookies, or bliss plain.

So, I forget where the inspiration originated.  But this site is where I decided to go for it (it's just bonus that this girl is Azerbaijani)- and this is where I go when I forget the simple process (like when our power is out for a week and then we are on vacation for a week and I forget how to make yogurt, vacuum or do laundry).  Her method is fool-proof, mine is a little faster.  I do have trouble following instructions, I read for content and intent - I'm not hung-up on details ;)  SOO, I will trust that if you are a skeptic, you'll read her instructions.   The only thing tricky about yogurt is remembering it - if you leave it to get too hot or too cold, you just made cheese.  Which is also yummy.

Yogurt at home
1 gallon whole milk with no hormones added 
4 T plain yogurt (from store or last batch - greek or regular - just has to be alive - I've even scraped it from the top of a Dannon fruit-on-the-bottom) (hint: for scaredy-cats do 1/2 gal with 2 T)
whisk
candy thermometer

Choose your heaviest sauce pan - I like my big dutch oven that is heavy-bottomed and has a big heavy lid.  I want it to heat evenly and hold the heat.  Set your "starter" yogurt on the counter so it isn't so cold.  Pour gallon of milk into pan that is on your biggest stove-top burner.  Turn on heat as high as you can without scalding the milk at the bottom of the pan.  Stir with a whisk so it heats evenly.  Watch the temperature - turn it off and remove lid at 180 degrees.

If you are patient, turn on your stove's fan, whisk a bit and keep checking temp until it reaches 115.  If you are me, put some cold water and 2 trays of ice cubes into a plugged sink.  Set the open pan on top of the ice cubes and watch the temp fall!  Set it back on stove-top, or nearby (it's a heavy pot, be careful for sloshing) at 115 degrees.  Add some warm milk to your 4T starter to warm it up a bit.  Whisk that together then pour that into your full pan.  Whisk together side-to-side so the happy little cultures get to spread out and get busy.  Put your lid back (I store my hot lid in my little microwave so it stays warmer), drape a clean-ish kitchen towel over the top and either set it outside (because it's so very hot right now) or into your oven with the light on.  Your goal is cozy milk (as close to 110 as you can - so whisk that starter in quickly), for at least 6 hrs - 12 is lovely.

If you start this as you wash dinner-dishes, you'll have it done before you put the kids to bed.  Leave it in the oven until you are getting breakfast for the kids - it'll be ready!  My favorite is lifting the lid, seeing a nice big crack form in the yogurt as I jostle it to the counter.  I love scooping it into mason jars (or re-used spaghetti sauce jars) and watching the whey puddle up.  It will be firmer after it's cold in the frig.  You'll be amazed at the delicate sweetness as you lick your spoon.  I love to see the row of jars in the back of my frig - it is good for a month - only gets slightly more "plain" tasting as it ages.

My only "fail" was the time I tried it with raw milk.  Don't know what I did wrong, but I the morning unveiling revealed curds and whey?  I put it in my frig in cheese cloth, salted it, poured on a tiny bit of fresh cream and enjoyed the awesome old-fashioned cottage cheese.  Yum.  If it is too cold to culture properly, you'll need a gentle heating to 110 so you don't kill your yogurt cultures.  Or call them a helpful acid and make ricotta.  Yum again!

Questions?

Zucchini Relish

This is Grandma Earlene's famous zucchini relish recipe.  It is deliciously better than any relish from the store and another perfect way to use lots of zucchini - even the enormous ones.

10 C packed shredded zucchini (up to 12 C)
1 large onion chopped/shredded
5 T salt
combine above ingred and let stand overnight (at least 12 hrs), drain liquid, rinse with cold water, squeeze out all the water you can

1 green pepper, shredded
1 red pepper, shredded
can add carrot for more color
4 C sugar
2 1/2 C vinegar (reg white)
1t tumeric
1T ground dry mustard
1t celery seed

Add above ingred to zucc/onion mix in large stockpot.  Bring to boil, simmer 3 minutes, pack into pint jars with 1 inch head space.  Process in hot water bath 10 minutes.

I use my food processor to shred all the veggies.  I also have added hot peppers, to my husband's delight.  Refrigerate after opening.  This makes a great gift - everybody loves it.  We use it on all kinds of sandwiches.  Yum!  Feel free to substitute the veggies - my mom even used all cucumber instead of zucchini and it was super.  I've used mostly yellow summer squash, also.  Could use more peppers with few zucchini too - the overnight brining step really helps keep the veggie crisp.

Baby blossoms and fruit

It's no accident that babies are so precious.  When I step on the trailing tendril of a watermelon arm, I gasp, "oh, I'm so sorry!"  Watermelon leaves are the prettiest: they have long spotted fingers that match their fruit skins, how very clever.  And tiny pale yellow flowers - no hint of the giant fruit they are crafting inside!

Honeybee is making this cucumber very, very happy right now.  You can tell the honeybees by their honey-colored stripes and their soft buzz.  Wasps and other scary insects have much more aggressive brrrrrr sounds.

 I think it is obvious that God made baby animals and baby plants precious on purpose.  I cringe when I read seed-pack instructions to "thin".  What!?  You want me to destroy the babies?!  I ignore the instructions and give each seed its space.  It is in my guts to protect the babies, I lift them up and set dry straw underneath.  They are little treasures.

The cantaloupe's are winning for largest fruit so far - see the striped ball?  It's pretending to be a watermelon.  It better not be a waterloupe - I am wary of cross-pollinating.

Baby Winter Squash - this plant is a gift from grandma - it says "bonbon" on its tag,  Hmmm, a cross between bonbons and giant squash?!  How can that be? Intriguing.

I planted more zuchinni this year than ever in my life (well, that's true for every plant in the garden - this is biggest-ever gardening).  My childhood memories of zuchinni are four.  First, I hated them, yuck, gross, sliced and stewed with tomatoes and onion, blech.  Second, my sweet Grandma Lucille called them zuchskeeny (sound it out and chuckle like we did) and I adored her.  Third, they were very poky plants that scratched my arms and grew shockingly fast.  Fourth, my charming little brother could take a wagon-full down the block and return from his door-to-door with a winsome grin and empty wagon.  Now I am a grown up and I know the truth: zuchinni are more delicious than butter.  Coincidentally, they are quite tasty IN butter.

These baby zuchinni made me jump for joy.

Last year I learned that there are boy and girl blossoms - they are different!  They are also perfect giant blossoms to dissect for a botany lesson, we did that.  Bitty purple green bean blooms would be no good for dissection.

Today I watered each happy mound: zuchinni, spaghetti squash, cantaloupe, winter squash, blonde cucumber, pickling cucumber, watermelon.  I should count how many, I bet there are 40 mounds.  See three of the lacy watermelon mounds there behind my dirty dog Jenny.  She romped (like a lunatic racing back and forth - she is child-like in her obsession with splashing mud) in the trickle of a creek while I talked to the honeybees.

Granola: the end of store cereal, Part 1

I had been conspiring to end store-cereal at our house.  It is the easy breakfast that costs $4 a box.  It's not that yummy or that healthy, not $4 worth.  So I figured I could get by making eggs (from our chickens), toast and pancakes and waffles (from the ground wheat and oats), or hot and fruity oatmeal (and other yummy grains my Mom delivers from Costco).  And then I discovered granola and our lives were forever changed!  We love granola.  Anna mixes it with her hands (and me, too) and eats it by the handful at every stage.  Ruby prefers it raw.  Peter loves it with fresh yogurt (coming soon in "the end of store cereal, part 2").  We like it hot and cold and stale and in ice cream.  It's awesome.

6 C old fashioned rolled oats
1 C brown sugar
2 C sliced almonds, unsweetened coconut flakes, chia seeds, sunflower seeds
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon (or nutmeg, allspice, whatever)
Combine these dry ingredients with spoon or hands.
2/3 C Oil (coconut or other)
2/3 C Honey (or agave or maple syrup)
Pour these wet ingredients over top, stir well with spoon.
Spread in a large casserole dish or 2 cookie sheets.  Bake at 300 for 10 minutes, stir, 10 minutes, stir, another 10 minutes - be careful not to brown too much or burn outside edges.  Have to watch carefully.

Notes:
I've already cut the sugar in this recipe.  These measurements give a nicely glazed granola with plenty sweetness to eat with plain yogurt.  Less sugar may make it more crumbly, but still YUM.  I prefer un-toasted nuts, so you can mix any nuts into the granola at the end or before the last bake.  This keeps more than a month in air-tight container (good luck hiding it that long from your eaters).  I always double the recipe and bake it in 2 large casseroles, on parchment paper makes clean-up easier.  I bake on 2 oven racks, bc crowding onto one rack makes the outsides burn.  I switch their location (top to bottom) at each stir.  My favorite add-in is fresh fruit and raw pecans.  Dried fruit is best added at end so it doesn't burn.

I'm not a food blogger, so no pictures :)

Goodness of hard work

My heart is full.  We spent today doing lovely together-things.  Like everyone putting away laundry!  And Isaac declaring, "I think the toilet is the most interesting thing in the bathroom to clean".  We uncovered our floors, need only to mop them (haha, as Ruby says, "that's for, like, every 3 months or something, right Mom?" Yes, but don't tell people that.) and then we dove into preparation for a great chicken day.  But that's for another day's telling.  The point is, my heart is full of the goodness of hard work beside the people I love.  

Putting the roof on our new woodshed.

I'm so proud of my husband.  He's the kind of man who works all day, drives down our driveway and almost before we realize he's arrived, he's changed into work boots (and a sleeves-cut-off t-shirt) and he's outside working.  So far this spring he's built an enormous woodshed (2 rooms, one for old wood, one for green), cut our giant sycamore tree completely into firewood, created a ginormous garden with 300 linear feet of deer fence (and way too many hand-dug post holes - evil clay), plowed and planted it (with help from his family crew!) - and this doesn't even count all the animal work he's done.  That's for another blog post.  I'm really proud of him.

Just after dropping the giant (dying) sycamore tree so we can start our new garden.

Playing in the tree - next morning I took the kids to the beach, he had the whole tree cut and stacked before we returned.

See where the tree stump is by the dog house?  The kids are relocating our fire pit and you can see the frame on the right of the pastured-poultry pen he built with the neighbor for the 30 broiler chickens we had in the barn.

Plowed and double-axle load of topsoil delivered.

I sawed these lattice boards and nailed them myself!!  Lettuces, dill, sweet peas and 2 cherry tomatoes inside.  These little boxes are for munching.  My goal with the lattice: peas that climb and protection from the chickens.

Sometimes the workers take a little break.

This is Anna in the tomato patch - we planted more than 50 tomato plants.  She's giving Jenny (the dog) an early morning garden tour.  We hoped dog-smell would make the deer afraid to taste our little green miracles until Daddy got the fence up.  Up there you see Jenny surveying a row of baby lima beans.

Why do I home school

A sweet friend asked me for my top 4 or 5 reasons for home schooling as she considered options for her marvelously brilliant young boy.  So here's my response to her, for your reading pleasure :) I do not know why the fool-background color.  I cannot fix it.


yikes.  That is stressful - as I've not entirely convinced my husband of the obviousness of our continued schooling at home.  It's so obvious to me.  Why shove our beloveds into the mad crowd of schools, not when they have Mom's and Dad's who are capable and motivated and the resources are LIMITLESS!

I have a friend you might speak with.  She has a brilliant son who basically smart-ed out of public school - they just couldn't hold him down any longer - he ended up schooling himself (as many home schoolers do when they get up into middle and high school - my Peter is basically teaching himself Latin because I can't keep up with the memory work and so I'm only useful for elaborating on the grammar rules for him).   Her second child was struggled mightily and they tried lots of options and so this crazy wonderful mom is now an expert is some reading/teaching method and consults with people.  Point: she'd love to express the value and possibilities of educating a brilliant boy child from home (like yours!).

Our children were designed to thrive, to learn, to go get after their life-purposes.  Our jobs are to empower them, give them boundaries and opportunities, protect them from harm (physical, spiritual, emotional) and make them ready to do battle victoriously in life and delight in giving glory to God through their work.  Woooo hoo!!!  I get so excited.  I listened to a radical seminar the other day - he said that he teaches his children to read so they can devour the Word of God, to think so that they can decipher it and the teachings of man, and to write/speak so that they can be ready with an answer that makes sense for those who ask.  Yes!!!

I home school my children so that

1.  They grow with wide-eyes-open awareness that all we say and do in life is shaped by our worldview and that we can distinguish the motivations and worldviews of other people.  There are differences and they are important.

2.  To shape their learning to their distinctly created selves - each have amazing strengths and differences and they will obviously learn best when the ratios are in their favor (4:1 is pretty nice, though I'd vote for 10:1 if Kevin would just jump on board ;)

3.  Time is limited - we only have minutes and hours and days before we send them off as adults - let's not squander.  The traditional school day wastes HOURS of their childhood that would be better spent at play (mine were insistent that the stuffed animals MUST play The Great War (WWI) NOW, not after I finished our history chatting - that is awesome, I think).  We learn much while tromping through the woods and doing chores and helping each other.  Chores and school work and family life are not separate - our lives have beautiful unity of purpose - it's all really valuable.

4.  I don't trust other people.  They mean well, but they teach what they know (whether they are a 7 yr old peer or a well-meaning teacher) - and when it all comes down, God holds US accountable for how we instruct our children (Deuteronomy 6) and not the US Dept of Educ or the Church.  Also, the Bible calls children fools - and we all know that they are, that's why we don't leave them alone together for too long :)  So, while it is valuable to learn how to socially navigate, it is not valuable to do peer immersion.  As adults, we choose who to hang with, some adults choosing more wisely than others.  Children are not equipped to do this.  Studies show that a child can rarely resist a marshmallow on a table for a few minutes - they certainly can't resist the allure of their peers or the teachers they long to please.

5.  I adore my children - I'm greedy for them - we have a delightful time together.  It thrills my heart to hear their responses to Emperor Nero, to the drastic difference between Mary Poppins the movie and the novel, to the way the dog "played" with our brown chicken, and to the last birthday party they attended.  I want to walk with them through their childhood, help them to avoid missteps and identify hazards and delight in overcomings together.  It is a high-calling and I welcome that exhaustion.  Oh, to be all used up by loving my husband and children - not a bad deal.  

My husband asks "and what if something happens and you can't?" Well, there are plenty of terrible what-ifs - and we'll deal.  And we'll do our best in that situation just as we ARE doing our best in this one.  That's irrelevant.  We must choose based on today's resources.  So I think you should LEAP in.  Goodness, I've used enough capitals??!

You are welcome to come out and spend the day devouring all my resources.  I found it very helpful to immerse in a few households I admired - it gave me a starting place for buying and planning.  Children are organic (right?) creatures - so the plan must be malleable, seasonal even, and it helps so much to have families you admire to turn to in process.

What am I doing?!

Ha, ha.  That's a funny title.  If you shout it with incredulity, that makes it better.  I'm not, for example, sleeping.  That means the "plan" I'm about to record will not be so smoothly administered tomorrow!  What I'll write is how we homeschool now; it's changed a lot.  I think this is the first year that I really get it: it is my responsibility to educate these children, God is watching, period.  I don't much care what the state has to say, God's standard is, uh, a lot higher.

I learned this year that my learners like to have a list.  So they each have a little book with their daily tasks in it - including chores, music and funny things.  It occurred to me just yesterday that I could write funny things there - and sweet things like "Peter, your diligence is blessing our whole family - thank you for noticing what needs to be done and doing it."  He blushed and dutifully checked that off his list!  Oh how I love him.

For the first time, I made a big chart with each big book/subject listed and all the weeks of the year and it shows me if I am sticking to it enough to finish it this year - it gives me big-picture so I know whats at stake if we blow off a day or week and then I can be accountable to the plan I prayed about and ought to implement.

For the first time, I went away by myself and prayed and prayed and prayed and read through my resources and sorted and made a year-plan for our school.  I guess having a 1st, 2nd and 4th (plus a delightful 2yo!) brought me to the precipice.  Winging it got too scary! (I did not, I did not wing it before, that sounds bad.)

So, what do we do.  In Kindergarten, we learn to read and discover Math is awesome.  My kids have used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and Singapore Math (just started with 1st bc they played math enough to be ready - Ruby did "school" as play and finished some K stuff)  In First Grade - we add History (Truthquest - love, love) and Science (Apologia creation series - all pleasure) and we do those on the couch, all together.  And some other stuff like Latin, piano, violin, map stuff, cursive, copywork, spelling stuff, drawing, singing, guitar.  Not all at once.  Come see me if you want more detail there.  This year we went nuts on Math and they are all 3 doing different (Singapore, Saxon, Life of Fred).  Through the years we've done an assortment of pray/read/memorize attempts - without much consistency.  I seem to have an enemy who is stealing my Bible time - but they all do reading time in their own bibles each day and whenever they want to - that started when we discovered our favorite Bible ever.

A normal day:
6 am I get up to read/pray alone or with prayer partners (our dad leaves before now)
7 am Boys wake to do exercises (per Dad) and shower; girls get jostled awake.
Kids do animal chores while I make breakfast/shower (ha! this is when I'd exercise)
8:30 do Bible study all together (hurray for Bible Bee sword study 2011!)
Kids start on lists and either work independently or with Mom - at the kitchen table or couch or wherever they can focus and not distract each other.
10:30 Dad calls, I remember I should go load wood burner. (or, I have kids going, I get in shower, silly child comes into bathroom asking if I want to talk to him while I shower?!?)
Mom makes bread or preps dinner or does other chores/food (and generally try to distract my learners)
1:00 I notice we haven't eaten lunch and I haven't loaded the wood burner.  Fix that.
Kids get mad and finish whatever they haven't
2:00 Kids are deeply immersed in playing - so much so that I forget to send Anna to bed until I see Kevin drive down the driveway from school (where he is a "real" teacher).  The hours until bedtime are a blur - don't know where they go.  We play and eat and work around the house.  It's good to be together.

I rarely make their lists in advance, but I take big chunks of late-night time to do library book-requesting (for pick up window) and re-routing plans gone wrong.  Everything else we do together, as we get to it.  I also use late-night hours to either re-fuel with blogs and books and to put my Arbonne business into order so that I can grab quick moments to make calls during the day (I shove them into the nooks and crannies and pray they don't derail our focus).