All in a Day's Work...

Posted on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 02:56

The kids managed to pick over a gallon of raspberries so we made freezer jam. I tried to follow the recipe but simply cannot use that much sugar at once, so I put in less than a third of  the sugar. It might make it a bit runnier, but hey, health is worth a little runny jam. Actually, I didn't think it was too runny and it was plenty sweet enough. We have twelve pints of jam.

Christina was begging to make bread yesterday and I put her off until today. Just as we were about to start an email came from my sister-in-law in Africa with a couple of recipes for Rosemary bread. We made the first one called Rosemary Olive Bread. We had several messy accidents... but the bread looks delicious. Can't wait to try it!

Steve sprayed the garden last night with some mild stuff. Didn't work. We picked salad and a great big savoy cabbage. We brought the veggies in the kitchen to clean and ended up dancing all over as the earwigs came crawling out and were running all over the place, even up my legs. We KILLED them all! Have to spray the stronger stuff tonight.  I've never grown a big cabbage like this before. I think I am going to make cabbage pockets with it.

Yellow Barn Update

Posted on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 09:51

We haven't finished the barn yet. I need my husband's help and recently when he has had a day off there are more pressing projects. I had hoped that he could help me on it Thursday, but I realize the sprinkler system is in more dire need of help than the barn. So, again here is what it looked like:

Here is what it looks like right now:

It is an improvement. However there is a hole at the back that needs fixing up and Steve plans to put up white trim where the seam in the metal is above the door. Eventually we would like to put up doors. The wagon is full of growing pumpkins. They will be overflowing soon! The soil sort of settled so they are deeper in the wagon than I had planned.

It's a Cherry Operation!!!!

Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 12:59

McKenzie pitting

      All four food dryers are humming away full to the brim with cherries! It's that time of year again. This year we are doing more cherries than usual because we are drying a lot of fruit for our trip to Africa.  The area we are going to be in Tanzania is not known for its abundance of fruit... Since we are going with 28 people for 2 months we thought it wise to take along some nutritious, homegrown food. We pitted about 80lbs of cherries. Kristen and her girls came over and we did it in record time. I think we started at 8 am and were cleaned up by 11:30.  I do most of the pitting since I mastered that little gadget last year. Kristen kept the sorting crew going and the rest cut cherries in half to dry quicker. The kids entertained themselves by playing "I Packed My Grip" in Swahili! It was very funny and takes a ton of concentration since they were playing the words in the translated English alphabet  order. Very difficult to accomplish as you get further down the alphabet.

Kristen, Christina and Dakota washing, sorting and stemming     They are all cherries from Kristen's dad's orchard. He gave us mostly vans (dark colored)... they are his pollenizers and he doesn't sell them. He gave some rainiers, too but we split the box for fresh eating. We decided we could be queens for a day, 'cause get this: he sold two tons of rainiers to Korea for 50 cents a piece!!!!! Yup! Each cherry is 50 cents. Pure gold!

     A lot of cherries were frosted badly  this spring, so those who have them are really doing well. I guess I wouldn't want to have to buy cherries in Korea! Wonder what the cost of other food in Korea is?  Nikki and Shane and kids are headed there to be missionaries teaching English next month for 2 years. They better get their fill of cherries right now.

Brianna and McKenzie pitting and halving for the dryer racks. Vanessa and I are not pictured.

Tried a New Recipe

Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 12:35

Tried out something new on this gang and they loved it. Sweet Potato Quesadillas are the latest hit at this house. I picked an onion from the garden and sauteed it with fresh garlic and oregano and then added grated sweet potatoes (not yams) and cooked for a few minutes along with a little salt and cumin. Next I made a batch of cashew melty cheese - as we don't eat real cheese. I spread a spoonful of the potato mix on half of a flour tortilla and poured a little of the cheese on it, closed it up and toasted it  on both sides in a pan with a teeny bit of coconut oil.  They looked so good that DH said, "You better get a picture of that".  So here it is.

Lasagna Garden Picture Update

Posted on Friday, July 4, 2008 at 01:54

It's the 4th of July. About time to assess this garden experiment. So the photos have been collected and we went from this:

To this:

We've had our battles. We still have battles to win. But the overall judgement is this:

BEST GARDEN we have ever had on this piece of land! 

 Steve is just as impressed as I am. He keeps saying, "Why didn't we do it this way before?" Well, the answer to that is, we didn't know. Thanks to the Lasagna Gardening Book we now know!

We are eating our fill daily of the greens, salads onions, cucumbers and herbs... Looking forward to the almost ready zucchinis and cherry tomatoes. Looking forward to plenty of tasty garden produce all summer long.

How Do You Use Rosemary??

Posted on Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 09:24

     I have a nice little rosemary plant in my garden. It is beautiful. I hardly want to pick the herb because I don't want to ruin its perfect shape. I planted it because I use rosemary when I make oven "fried" potatoes.  It was a tip from a friend and I have been using it ever since. I would like to know how to use it in other dishes, but so far my research has mostly turned up ways to use it with meat and we are vegetarian. I read that rosemary is versatile :-) Okay, show me how!

     Like almost all herbs it is native to the Mediterranean. It's related to mint, basil, marjoram and oregano. It sort of reminds me of pine needles.  I thought it was interesting that herbalists use rosemary to treat dizziness related to inner ear trouble. My Dad just had that problem... wonder if he tried rosemary? Rosemary contains chemicals called quinones, which have been shown in studies to inhibit carcinogens. Thus, this herb is ranked high on the list of cancer-prevention and reduction foods.  I'd really like to figure out how to use it more.

     I thought I would share how I do my potatoes using rosemary. We eat a low-fat, no grease diet for our health's sake and this is a nice alternative to fried potatoes. We had them for breakfast this morning and I snapped the picture just before they were completely devoured!

     I use red potatoes because their skin is smooth and so quick and easy to clean. I also love the flavor of red potatoes. I cut out the eyes and make sure there is no "green" skin. Cut the potatoes up into small chunks in a bowl and add a tablespoon of olive oil, a shake of salt, garlic and onion powder, paprika, and rosemary. I don't measure. I just toss the potatoes really well in the bowl  to lightly coat them with oil and if it seems like it needs more of something I sprinkle more.

     Preheat the oven to 400. If you have a non-stick cookie sheet this is the perfect time to use it, otherwise I use parchment paper, or if I have run out, like this morning, I pam the pan well. I baked the potatoes for 15 minutes and turned them and baked them again for 15 or 20. I have speed bake on my stove that I use on the last 15 minutes to crisp them up nice and golden, but if you don't have it, just bake a little longer.

     Serve with ketchup or just Spike seasoning salt. Unsausage and scrambled tofu goes really well with these potatoes and I will often make this meal when I have company.

An Interesting Garden discovery

Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 10:30

I was crawling around in my garden tonight after dark with a spray bottle in one hand and a flashlight in the other looking for earwigs. I wasn't finding too many, thankfully. They are there.... just a few here and there. Not millions covering the ground like before. I was carfully spraying each one I found with insecticidal soap and spraying around each garden bed. A bat kept swooping by my head which I didn't appreciate very much, and there was a weird noise that had me puzzled. There is a huge elderberry tree by the garden and every once in awhile we have to cut it back because it want's to grow out over the garden. I kept hearing a constant noise coming from the tree almost like raindrops falling through the leaves. All the birds were asleep so I knew they weren't making the noise and anyway, there would have to be a whole flock to make this amount of noise... Finally, I crept close to the tree and shone my light right on the blossoms. The elderberry has huge clusters of flowers that are flat and about the size of a dinner plate. They were CRAWLING with earwigs! The noise is earwigs chewing and falling from the branches!!!! I went around and sprayed every cluster I could reach, but the tree is huge... If I didn't have the same earwig trouble at the lower garden where there is no elderberry tree, I would begin to think that the tree was my real problem.

Wild Berries

Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 03:54

The girls went berry picking this morning along the irrigation canal. There are so many berries!!! They picked a gallon of saskatoon berries. Yes, we know they call them service berries here, but we are die-hard Canadians, uh....hm.... despite that  American T-shirt! Saskatoons  sounds so much more exciting than  service berries.

We made jam from a recipe I found online. It was so seedy that we ended up straining out  tons of seeds after I had already added the sweetener. I used a sprig of mint to enhance the flavor and we have 12 pints of very yummy jam. Brianna thinks the texture is weird. She says it's grimy, but I say, " that means dirty...come up with a better word!"

Saskatoons are high in Iron and Copper...I don't know if I need to eat copper?! They used to be a pretty important food to the Natives Americans and they used to use them to treat stomach aches and liver problems. We added some sugar so I doubt this will be of any medicinal value but it sure will taste good on toast....and they were free!

The girls also picked a couple of quarts of wild currants. They sure are a pretty color, but my, they are so dry that after boiling them in a cup of water I have only about a cup of liquid strained from them. Not enough to make anything and certainly not worth the time and effort to pick. They are just so pulpy and seedy. The seeds are not as big as the saskatoons, but a lot of them.

Home Pressed Oil

Posted on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 07:04

Check out this sunflower oil my brother made! I am quite impressed. I honestly did not think he would get this much pure oil from that pile of sunflowers.Here is the link:   Kibidula Pilot There is some interest in HOW this oil was made... here's a pictures that was not on his blog but they had shown me... Remember, this is made in Africa.Do you still want to make your own oil??

Simple Stuff Like Parsley

Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 11:33

Besides being the world's most popular herb, parsley is packed with nutrition. I always grow parsely and I often munch on it in the garden. This year I planted more than usual. Yesterday I harvested a great bowl of parsley  and washed and chopped it to dry in the food drier.

I have a huge food drier. It's fantastic and I can dry a ton of fruit all at once, but for this little stuff I sometimes feel like I might be wasting energy to have just a few trays full at a time. Well, lucky for me, a friend was yard sale-ing Friday and found this cute little food dryer with 5 trays for only $10. She brought it over and I decided to give it a try on my parsley. It worked great. Today I have a nice container full of dried parsley. I use a lot of parsley in my cooking and for winter use it's great to have lots of the dried stuff on hand.

Did you know that parsley contains three times as much vitamine C as oranges? Or that it contains twice as much iron as spinach, is rich in vitamin A and K and contains folate, potassium and calcium. Did you know it is a good source of protein? Obviously you need to eat a fair amount to reap the benefits, so I do make use of this great, easy to grow nutritious, tasty herb.

Pasley is also recognized for its cancer fighting potential. It contains four chemicals that fight cancer:   ·         Polyacetylenes·         Coumarins·         Flavonoids·         Monoterpenes.

So eat parsley!

Marine Biology Camp

Posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 12:40

I've been meaning to write about this for a few weeks, ever since we arrived home from Rosario. Friends of our invited us on a 4 day get-away. Steve couldn't take the time off work, but seeing I've been bordering on the edges of burnout for the past few months, I decided to go and take advantage of the rest offered.

It was a restful, educational and peaceful experience. Our friends arranged for our cabins and each family took main meal to prepare food to feed our gang. As we arrived in the parking lot of the camp I was surprised to see a teenage boy I knew from Canada. Turns out his family - 5 homeschool boys, another family we know and their kids as well as another family they had brought along were there for a special marine biology class they had arranged.  They promptly invited us to join. So our 8 kids along with theirs added up to 20 kids.

Andrew Rice , of  www.AcademicsAndAdventures.org, is a great teacher. He had the kids attention in the classroom and he even had them dissect. He took them out to a point and helped them discover the marine life along the shore. It was a -3.8 tide that day, so it was perfect. Later her helped them understand the scientifc process of identification using a dichotomous key. He had the kids identifying all the various beautiful seaweeds using a a dichotomous key. He  did an indepth comparison of land plants and sea weed. He had them dissect a clam and identify and draw their findings. He went into detail about the different tidal zones of a sea shore.

Vanessa's Homeschool 8th Grade Graduation

Posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 09:03

We are very proud of our daughter Vanessa. The Lord has blessed us with a wonderful daughter who loves Christ so much that it has shaped her whole life and has made her the person she is. Everyone loves Vanessa! That was quite evident by the outpouring of love shown her at her graduation last night. Before she was even conceived my Dad made it a matter of daily prayer that God would, out of the "thousands of potential little personalities and characters", give us just the right child. One that would be a Samuel or an Esther - dedicated to Him. As the years go by it has become more and more evident that He answered that prayer and we are very grateful.

The little ceremony was simple. She planned it all. A little friend, Ellie, played the processional on the piano while two homeschool 7th grader friends walked up the isle with Vanessa. The one 7th grader, Garhett, had the open prayer, the other, Natalie read the scripture. Then Vanessa gave a little speech. I will share it with you because it blessed my heart.

Thank you all for coming this evening to celebrate where God has brought me to in my education, what He has done, and is doing for me.

             Homeschooling has meant a lot to me, and I want to say thank you to my parents who were willing to give up their time for me to homeschool me. They have done far above and beyond what most parents are expected to do for their kids so that I could develop the talents God has given me. I am so blessed to have dedicated, godly parents, who have taught me themselves, not only academics, but music, how to work, and most importantly how to have a relationship with Jesus, and to prepare for His soon coming, because school here on earth is the just the beginning of my education. We will continue to learn in heaven for eternity! In the book Education it say, “There every power will be developed, every capability increases. The grandest enterprises will be carried forward, the loftiest aspirations will be reached, the highest ambitions realized. And still there will arise new heights to surmount, new wonders to admire, new truths to comprehend, fresh objects to call forth the powers of body mind and soul.” 

            As I finish my 8th grade and enter high school  I have the opportunity to continue to work with my music teachers and writing teacher; the homeschool group and choir; my family and my church family as I plan to continue homeschooling. I, excitedly, look forward to every opportunity that God has for me to learn these next few years. Someday, I would like to continue my music education. I also have a passion for mission work especially in Africa, and I would someday like to teach both music and academics to these kids, or be a midwife. I want to do something for those orphans, who if they fail grade seven, have no opportunity to continue their education.

            Homeschoolers, our parents have given us a chance in life that many, many children don’t have, I want to challenge you to take advantage of the education that God has given us.

            Though I have many goals in life my greatest goal is to be like Jesus, the one who loves me, and died for me, and who’s preparing a place for me in heaven, and is coming back to take me home. He’s done the same thing for you. Can you find any greater motto than to be like someone like that? The song my sisters and I will sing and play talks about my goal and motto. I hope that it would be yours too.

To be like Jesus. To be like Jesus.

To be the one I was created to be.

To be like Jesus.  To be like Jesus.

My earthly goals fulfilled when I'm centered in His will.

May all who see my life find Him in me.

Next my husband got up. He put on this scrub top that he had been given to wear at Vanessa's birth. It is white and says "Coach" on it in red. And right in the center the midwife had stamped Vanessa's tiny inked feet when she was born. He spoke about milestones. He shared from a story in Samuel and the milestone that Samuel had set up and called Ebenezer saying, Hitherto has the Lord helped us. He presented a stone to Vanessa with the text written on it.

We showed slides of Vanessa growing up.

Of course I don't have room for all of them here.

We had a reception with loads of sliced fruit and melons and sweet breads and raspberry tarts and little tofu  hors d'oeuvres. It was beautiful. Some of our friends had decorated. Some had helped with food preparation. Vanessa was completely overwhelmed with the gifts. She had not expected anything.

It was the cutest thing. Vanessa's 10 year old sister, Christina,  took it upon herself to make a matching graduation cap to the dress. She worked so hard on that thing! We laughed about it and let her work on it. We all arrived a half hour before the program at the church to do last minute things. Just before the service Christina realized that no one had brought the cap to the church. She  pleaded with her dad to take her home to go and get it. So off they went with a little friend in tow... the friend tripped and went sprawling across the paved parking lot and gave herself a terrible gash on the knee. So, Steve took her home and bandaged her up. They picked up the cap and returned to the church 15 minutes late!! We waited for them. When my husband was fiddling with the computer to get the slides to show during the program, Vanessa impromptu stood up and put the cap on her head. She explained how her sister had made it just for her and made a little bow and asked how everybody liked it. It was CUTE. Christina was pleased.