My parents made it here safe and sound.  We are so happy to have them here.  We went and saw My Sister's Keeper yesterday afternoon.  It was a tear-jerker for sure.

The same old things have been going on around here in the day to day.  The weather has been a little cooler during the morning and early afternoon then warming up mid afternoon.  Here is a picture of our weather station thingy that tells us the indoor/outdoor temp, how to dress, the time, and the humidity.

My daughters are busy baking cookies and boiling homegrown potatoes to make a homemade potatoe salad.

We are going to visit my sister today and have dinner there.  I better get things in order.  Write more later. 

I didn't know how to make butter before buying the cow.  My son actually researched how and taught me.  I don't know what I thought butter was, but I definitely didn't think it was like this. 

First, we pasteurize the milk by bringing the temperature to 200 F for 15 seconds.  You only have to get the milk to 165 F for 15 seconds but I like it more pasteurized to get more cream.  The milk is in a double boiler (two pots separated by water) to get it to temperature.  Then we cool the milk quickly.  After the milk is cool the cream is on the top and is yellow and thicker than the milk.

Though the picture is foggy you can see the amount we get in a days worth of milking.  This is a pint jar.  Put the cream in the fridge to stay cold until you are ready to make butter.

We wait to make butter until we have a pint of cream.  Then we put the cream in a quart jar and shut the lid.  Shake the cream up and down in a rocking motion for about a half an hour and this is what you will see when you open the jar.  The butter will be floating in chunks (above).

Put ice and water in a cereal bowl.  Spoon the floating butter into the ice water but try not to get milk into the bowl.  Work the butter between your fingers or with a spoon while in the ice water to remove any additional milk (this only takes a couple of minutes).

You can put the butter in a mold like this (above) or in jars (below) or whatever you want. 

Each of the jars holds about a 1/4 lb. of butter.  It takes 3 milkings (day and a half) per jar of butter.  We are very happy with the butter.  It tastes great.

Blessings, Brenda

Here is a picture of my youngest daughter, as the flower girl, in a wedding we just went to.  This is the dress I had to make.  It is kind of hard to see the middle where she is holding her purse full of rose pedals.

Here are my ten daughters at the wedding.  The sun is shining in some of their faces making it hard to see a couple of them clearly.  I am not a good photographer.

These are my four sons.  I did an even worse job with the sun here.  My youngest son is doing one of those dog growl smiles....Oh boy!

I went to our little towns Trading Days and found this little amber candle holder that I love. It takes a tea light size all the way up to about a two inch diameter candle.

My parents are going to be here on Tuesday.  I am so excited...did I mention that I am so excited?  Well, I am!

I am planning next years school year out.  I am done buying what I needed as far as books go.  I will share my school plans in one of my upcoming posts.

Blessings, Brenda

I am so excited!  We got high speed today.  I already uploaded some pictures and BOY O BOY is it different than uploading on dial-up.  I hope to be able to post more pictures now to better show how we live.  The high speed thing in so many ways contradicts our lifestyle.  I mean, how many people do you know that are dresses only? how about have 14 kids?  Bible believing, Bible living really from the heart? How about living simple?  Garden growing, cow milking, cloth napkin using, cooking from scratch, homeschooling, frugal....etc.  But everyone knows someone with high speed.  I feel like we are the unordinary meets ordinary...I feel blessed.

On another note...

Here is our little bird we are feeding.  It is now outside in the chick cage flying around and getting stronger and ready for release.  It needs to eat on its own first and it isn't eating on it's own yet.

These are pictures of my butter mold that I found at an antique store.  It holds a pound of butter at a time so I haven't started using the butter mold.  We have been using our butter as we make it with little left to mold.  So soon we hope to mold our own butter as well as just make it.

Here is a visitor to the food dish in the turkey run.  It kept running down the tree, eating out of the dish for a while then run back up the tree. The squirrel did this for over an hour.

Well, I will be taking pictures around and getting some more on here.  If there are any things you are wanting me to take pictures of just comment and I will try to get them on.  I love reading blogs full of pictures. 

Blessings, Brenda

I have been trying to upload some photos onto my blog, but with dial up some days are difficult.  I am not complaining because at least we have dial up. I was able to upload a dish strainer full of washed eggs.

There is even a turkey egg tucked in the back (the speckled one).  I have pictures of the butter mold I found at an antique store.  My daughter brought in a baby bird that had fallen or jumped from it's nest.  It is in the mudroom screaming.  We fed it chick starter from a dropper and it loved it.

Tomorrow my husband is bringing most of our goats to auction.  We are going to keep our numbers down to about 5 nannies and 1 billy.  I am so done with the goats especially after getting the cow.

Tonight for dinner we had hamburgers with homemade burger buns, our garden fresh tomatoes and onions, and fresh french fries.  It was a good home cooked meal that satisfied the soul.  We are having two of my daughters' birthday party tomorrow.  Hannah turned 9 on the 11th and Isabel turned 10 on the 15th.  It is amazing how time flies.  One day I will wake up and I won't have any little ones anymore.  What a sad day!!! 

Today has been another productive day.  We milked 3 quarts this morning;  processed the milk. 

I did laundry all day and organized my sorting system for the laundry.  I like to really sort the laundry.  It is easy to super sort the laundry when you wash as much as we wash.  Wal-Mart sells a two pack of sorting hampers.  They hook together.  They are tall and thin so a lot of them fit in a relatively small area.  I bought 8 of them.  I have a demin, dark, 2 pastels, white socks, white clothes, reds, and towels/sheets.  I would like to have a delicates sorting hamper also, but for now we put the delicates with the reds and I am careful to check everyones sorting before I just shove them in the washer.

We are loving the milk cow.  Everyone is adjusting to the milk and loving it.  It isn't as easy as you would think adjusting to the farm way of eating.  It took us a while to adjust to the fresh eggs.  Now that we are used to them and I don't buy anything else, we love them.  Same with fresh meat.  When you first butcher something it isn't just cook it and eat it.  You have to get past the mental block and the taste difference.  Nothing tastes the same from the store and home made, home grown, or fresh.  There are different tastes and textures and smells.  The milk has a different taste and smell.  We have adjusted pretty fast to it.  I refused to buy milk and have encouraged the kids to like it by letting them add chocolate a couple of times before bed.  I never buy cereal and I bought cereal a couple of times to get them excited about the milk.  I let them add milk to instant oatmeal (we buy the kind you cook) as a treat.  I give them the option of milk in between meals instead of just water like we usually do.  It helps.  Each kid came to their own way of getting used to the milk at their own time with a little encouragement.

Then I made a chicken, rice soup for dinner.  I haven't made a soup in at least a month.  It sure hit the spot.  My daughter made a cake, another daughter made muffins, then after dinner I made butter.  It didn't seem too hectic and we even were babysitting three kids today.

Oh, I almost forgot!  My youngest daughter got asked to be the flowergirl in a wedding and I made her dress for the wedding.  I worked on that on and off all day, too.  It is made and I am relieved.  The person getting married asked me if I would make my daughters dress.  She brought me the fabric.  It is a silky pink.  Anyway, it is done.

I talked to my dad and mom today.  It always lifts my spirits to talk to them.  I feel connected again.  I better get going.  The raccoons are still alive and seem to be doing okay.  One is much nicer than the other.  We handled the nice one today a little more, but the hissing, screeching, growling one we are watching for rabies.  That's all I need through all of this is to get rabies.  Lord have mercy!

Blessings, Brenda 

As any farm knows there are always plenty of cats around.  If we are having them someone is...in this case these are kittens we took to help lower the cat population at my sisters place.

We are all working hard and these three are relaxing and sleeping all day long.

Our garden is growing like crazy.  This is a picture of the potato plants starting to bloom.  They are going to be ready for harvest soon.

The potato plants are a sturdy, pretty plant.

Blessings, Brenda

As far as I can tell everything went as it was supposed to.  My daughter had the iodine therapy and now we wait to see what happens to the thyroid.  She needs lots of prayers through this. Thanks for the nice comments and messages.

We have been having storm after storm.  We actually saw a tree get hit by lightning.  It was loud, then a bright light then the tree parts kinda popped.  It was scary and amazing at the same time.  I am still a little shocked by the whole scene.

Everything on the cow front is going good. I am so excited with this new part of life.  I wonder what direction life will take us next?  I am thinking a beef cow next.  I want to keep walking in the organic, self-suffient direction.  I would like to eventually can all the vegetable we could eat in a year.  For now that isn't possible.  We did have enough bell pepper for the year and I am confident we will have enough onions if we freeze them diced like we did the bell peppers.

I am going to check on Isabel and make sure she knows I am still here and caring.  Blessings, Brenda

Today was an extremely productive day.  I am exhausted and so are all of the kids.  Besides learning the milk cow thing, we are still having to fit life into the day.  We got almost 7 quarts of milk today.  Here are a few pictures of the shoot my husband, son, and nephew built for us to milk the cow in.  Remember our cow has horns so we had to figure out a way to milk her without her being able to get us with her horns.

See the opening at the far right.  The plan is for "Vivienne" to walk into the shoot toward the bucket of grain at the far end of the shoot.  We have the gate at the end open so she isn't walking into a dead end.  We then shut the door behind her and she is kind of trapped (except she is determined and strong).  The ropes are for her horns (to keep her to the end of the shoot), and for her back legs (so she doesn't kick), and then one for the gate. 

This is looking into the shoot.  She actually did extremely well tonight.  She followed her calf (we walk the calf down the shoot first) into the shoot without any hassle or jumping and yelling (me or the cow).

Here you can see the back gate that we slide closed when she is in the shoot.  The black bucket flipped upside down is the milking stool.  My husband (actually my son and nephew did the work) made this in a couple of hours. 

We processed the 7 quarts today, made some butter (I will get pictures on after my daughter's ordeal is over...maybe Monday), did lots of laundry, butchered 4 chickens, made homemade potato salad, we had hamburgers with homemade french fries for dinner, harvested all of the onions (over 400), braided the onions together in bunches of 10, hung the onions in the garage on the garage door hooks, diced up all of the red onions and put one cup of onions in baggies and froze them, washed the flour sacks for milk straining, packed for the days away from home, preregistered my daughter for her appointment tomorrow, made cookies for dessert, and all of the regular chores around the house and farm.  I am ready for bed.  Pray for Isabel and her appointment tomorrow.

Blessings, Brenda

If there is one thing this here farm has it is eggs...now God willing it will be milk, too.  Yesterday we got 1/2 gallon (from one milking) and today a gallon and a quart (total for the day).

Isn't that beautiful?  It isn't a lot of work processing the milk so once we get "Vivienne" into the shoot it isn't any problem to milk her.  We made a shoot that we lead her into so she doesn't get us with her horns.  She can't turn around in the shoot so she is lined up ready to be milked.  We put her calf at the end of the shoot to keep her calm.  She is getting better each time.

On Thursday my daughter is going to have her thyroid killed because she has Grave's Disease (super over active thyroid).  She is going to have radioactive iodine treatment.  Please pray for her and us that everything goes according to God's will.  She is nervous and I am nervous.  She has to stay away from everyone for three days while the radioactive iodine goes through her system.

I am exhausted today.  We also had to put down one of our horses that had the EPM.  He had it in the past and got somewhat better with treatment but recently contracted it again and went down hill fast.  (Our horse Asa was my little boys horse and he is devastated)  

Have a great night, Brenda 

Well we added a member to our household.  Our jersey cow and calf were delivered this morning.  She is a beauty.  Her calf has a sweet face. 

She is huge in person.  She doesn't look as big and protective of her little calf as she really is.  What an afternoon trying to get to know her.  Thank God for my husband who is familiar with these huge beasts.

We were told to separate her from her calf all day.  We then milk her in the morning and evening.  This sounds easier than she made it.  She isn't used to people, number one.  She didn't want to be milked, number two.  I am not Ma on Little House on the Prairie, as much as I try, number three.

This adorable little calf is the size of a large dog.  When I was moving it to the corral, she took me for a walk.  I could barely hold her never mind move her if she didn't want to go.  She ended up stepping on my foot, leaving a big bruise.  My sister didn't help by almost peeing her pants laughing so hard at the scene we were creating.  Anyway...we milked her and got about 1/2 a gallon.  We are just trying to condition her to this new way of life.  I am praying (and I hope you will too) that she will like this new way of life and cooperate with us.

What a day!!!  I did pasteurize the milk and separate the cream.  I am so excited to get the hang of all of this.  The jersey milk is a creamy yellow.  It tastes very much like milk we are used to.  I have never worked so hard for a half gallon of milk before.  After a little conditioning she should eventually produce 6 gallons a day (I would be happy with 1-2 gallons a day or a half a gallon without the foot injury).

Blessings, Brenda

Hello from Texas.  It is beautiful out here.  With all of the rain and storms that have passed through here over the last couple of weeks the fields are green and lush...plus full of bugs.  We have been busy gardening, schooling, and life.  Here are a few pictures of the garden.

Here are some onions at the top and some of the potatoes at the bottom.  This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago.  The potatoes plants are up to my waist. 

We planted almost 500 onions.  We have been harvesting them as we needed them. 

Tomorrow we are getting a dairy cow (jersey).  She and her calf are being delivered in the morning.  I am so excited, yet a little nervous.  We have been researching making butter, cream, milk, etc.  I know that as of tomorrow there is a cow to milk.  Pray for us as we get used to this new part of country living that we haven't adjusted to yet. 

We decided to sell the goats and get a couple of meat cows and a dairy cow.  The dairy cow is first so we can start with the milk for the kids.  Next in the future months we are looking to buy young black angus cows for meat.  I think this will be easier than the goats that hate to be where ever you put them. 

I did go and buy a new washer and dryer.  With the string of storms that passed through I had to go to the laundry mat for ten days.  I spent $20 dollars every couple of days doing our laundry.  It became financially irresponsible to throw that money away.  I decided to buy the washer and dryer so that on bad weather days I could dry (or if I was just lazy).  I am so happy....It is my favorite purchase so far (well, not nicer than the wood burning stove).

I hope to start blogging more, I know I keep saying that, but I really mean it.

Blessings, Brenda

Well, I am in Las Vegas.  It has been a whirlwind of activity.  I am so thrilled to be visiting my mom, dad, and brothers and their families.  I miss my sister and her family back in Texas.  We do almost everything together.  In the past we have always vacationed together, but this year we came at different times.  She is going in August.

My daughter went to the prom.  She had a great time.  When we get back to Texas my other daughter goes to a prom there.   

We leave for Texas on Friday.  I will be glad to be back home, but sad to leave my family.

Baseball was a long day.  It was opening ceremonies at first, then we had the first game.  He is so little against all of those older and bigger kids.  We lost, but Caleb had fun.  He loved wearing the uniform and playing the game.

Today is my mom's birthday.  She is 66.  I love and miss her sooooo much.  Happy Birthday, Mom!!!! I hope your day is relaxing and a dream day to you.  If the weather is warm and not windy you could get a cup of coffee, sit in the gazebo and read a good book.  We can't wait to see you. 

It is super windy here.  Yesterday was so hot, we opened up the windows to let some air circulate, but by night we had given in and turned the air on a little to cool the house off so we could sleep.  This morning it is 60 and cool out.  This is the crazy Texas weather we have learned to love.  Unpredictability is something living in Las Vegas never prepared me for (at least not as far as the weather goes).

We leave for Vegas in 8 days.  I can't wait.  I miss my parents, my brothers and their families so much.  It is amazing how much closer I feel being farther apart.  I don't think I appreciated what I had my whole life.  My whole life my family was right there and it didn't seem special it seemed normal.  Now with the 1200 miles between us I appreciate our time together.  I am so excited.

Well, I will try to take and post more pictures soon. 

Blessings, Brenda

Today was a nice, warm day.  I worked a little bit more in the room we are remodeling.  I went to lunch with my husband and dinner with my sister.  It was a nice day.  My sister stayed and the kids played baseball.  I talked to my brother Mark and his wife today, too.  It was so nice to touch base and feel connected again.

Tomorrow is my youngest son's baseball game.  He is so excited.  My daughter Emily got her learner's permit for driving on Wednesday.  She is so excited. She is the 7th kid to get their license in the family so it isn't as exciting as it once was.  I have more drivers than I know what to do with.

Spring is springing and everything is green.  I am sure excited about the warmer weather.  My son Jordan has the garden started and growing great.  He has been researching different things to do and it is getting better every year.

Blessings, Brenda 

Well I have finally taken some time to take and post some pictures.  We are busy getting ready for our trip to Vegas to visit with my family.  I am sooooo excited.

Here are some pictures my daughter took the day we were in a tornado warning.  No tornado ended up touching down, but there were some in the air.  It was quite a black sky.  This is in the direction of my sister's house.

Here is one of the hens with some of her chicks.

Here are a few of our new goat kids.  There are 11 of them left.  We lost a few more this time than we would have liked.  They are doing great and getting big, fast.

My daughter Amber made this cake.  My daughter love to bake and want to master cake decorating.  It came out beautiful (not bad for a first try at this type).

We are working in the family room (formally my bedroom).  Here is the new fireplace wall.  We primed and painted the dark bricks white.  We added a 6 X 6 mantel, which the fireplace didn't have one before (just a shelf).  Then did some decorating.  The paintings are my uncle's.  It made the room seem even larger than it is...and it is a good sized room.  When the rest of the room is done I will add more pictures.

This is my favorite.  I found this at a junk dealer.  It is a double washing basin.  It still had the hoses to keep the water from draining and to drain it out.  I do not do all of the laundry here....there are days when rotating 5 loads from the washer to the clothes line is more than I can get done, nevermind hand washing for 16.  I am doing some specific things in it and use it regularly.  I love doing it in the warmer weather.  The winter was too rough outside.

Everyone is doing good and healthy.  I hope to post more regularly. I love the spring and have spring cleaning fever.  We leave for Vegas on the 13th of April.

Blessing, Brenda

I haven't been blogging lately.  Everything is good over here.  I have been busy and trying to keep things running smoothly.  I have been taking pictures and will post some tomorrow.  I hope everyone is doing good and having a great time with the spring weather. 

Blessings, Brenda