Maple Grove Farm

A Hot Day . . . A Busy Morning

Update on the Work

This weekend was a both full of work and full of relaxing.  On Friday we ran errands and I bought myself a new sewiing machine.  I have been using the one I inherited from my grandmother.  It is about 60 years old.  It works fine except I have to do the button holes by hand - one step at a time - and that is not my thing.  Every time DH takes it for servicing he comes home and says it is still a great machine and I don't need a new one.  Since the girls are starting to sew and would like to be able to work on projects too, I thought we were due for a second machine - with a one-step button holer.

I worked on finishing up the dresses we started last weekend.  One weeks work of work - 11 dresses and 4 slips finished.  I am hoping that I just have 7 dresses left for summer sewing.  It really mupltiplies fast when you have 4 girls to sew for.  We are starting to look for fabric for fall sewing.  We will plan on making 28 dresses, 12 nightgowns, 8 skirts, and 4 slips for the fall sewing.  Oh my!  Well, just one step at a time.  All I have to do now is find fabric and gather the patterns.

We did some yard work this weekend.  We are working on filling in a part of one of the flower beds with perennials to give it a cottage look, so we planted flowers.  We weeded the herb garden and planted some flower pots to give it some color.  We planted some sunflowers.  We cut back the dead daffodils.  DH is almost finished with the addition to the chicken coop.  We added a second small run for when we have birds we are keeping separate or to rest the ground in the main run area. 

We also took out the tomatoes and put them outside to harden them off.  They are not looking too good.  One daughter was told to water them when she got them outside but she did not and then it was real windy even though they were protected.  I am going to take a look this morning.  My mother told me that I should not depend on a child to water such important plants as tomatoes.  I was so proud that I finally raised tomatoes from seed to a point that they would have produced well in the garden.  Well each year we learn a little lesson.  I am just hoping I don't have to replace them all - 40 plants.

Our focus on work is shifting to weeding.  We have lots of garden weeding to do.  We'll be spending most evenings outside to work on it so that it does not get away from us.  I another month we'll be able to shift away from weeding as the plants take off, but for now we need to give those plants the best possible conditions.  I hope you are enjoying your garden . . .

And the work goes on . . .

It was such a busy weekend that I did not get a chance to post.  I feel like I am disappointing people if I am not on top of posting.  Maybe no one checks.  Anyways, it was a busy weekend.

We had a birthday on Wednesday.  This time it was mine!  We have 4 birthdays and Mother's Day over 20 days.  It keeps us busy.  On Monday was DH's 40th birthday, so we had a BBQ on Sunday to celebrate.  Before we got there though it was a sewing day on Friday and our monthly grocery shopping on Saturday.  We also got a few more plants in the ground.

I got a lot of sewing done between Thursday night and Saturday night - 10 dresses and 4 slips.  I have just a few hems and button holes to finish up the last five dresses.  I am doing some of that tonight.  It was really an assembly line with my daughters pinning and unpinning items while I whipped them through the machine. 

Here is how we did it: On Thursday we cut out about half the dresses.  On Friday, after cleaning up and starting chili and bread for lunch, I began sewing.  My two oldest kept cutting out items.  I did a lot of pinning and some sewing.  We used only white thread to piece all the dresses and for the serger.  Later the girls all assembled and I whipped the pieces through that I had pinned.  At the same time two daughters unpinned items while my oldest re-pinned pieces together.  We had a good time.  I also spent a little instructional time with the two oldest so they got to practice their sewing.

It was a lovely weekend . . . in the end

The weather was sunny and beautiful this weekend.  I dried laundry on the line.  We planted in the garden.  We are nearly done now.  I made chicken stock and canned dry beans. 

Then my oven broke!  Oh my, I was so upset and the customer assistant people were no help; they said look online at their website.  Which frankly, worked about as well as their oven - that was broken.  I was resigned to have to call a repairman, but I thought I would wait unitl Monday to schedule it.  I mentioned it to my sister, who mentioned it to her husband, who called his father (a repair man for the same company that I bought the stove from), and he was able to walk my husband and I through the simple repair to fix it.  Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord!!! 

I use my oven a lot and I didn't know what I would do without an oven for a week or maybe two.  But I use water even more and on Sunday morning our tank that is filled by a spring went dry.  Luckily DH was able to easily blow out the line and it re-filled while we went to church.  Praise the Lord again!

We were able to enjoy the nice weather and the kids loved playing outside.  It was a relaxing day and a joyful day on the homestead.

Garden Work

Work continues on the garden.  I got some herbs yesterday and planted them in pots for the herb garden.  I also got a few more potatoes and onions as well as the peppers I did not start myself.  All I have left to get is some more cauliflower and maybe brussel sprouts.

I have been fine tuning my preserving plan and reviewing it to make sure that I get enough plants in the ground while I can.  I was reviewing vegetables for dinner.  We will have green beans 2 times each week, broccoli 1 time, cauliflower 1 time, spinach 1 time, and either brussel sprouts, zucchini in tomatoes, or peas for the other two days.  This makes up 1 vegetable serving for each day.  I plan another serving each day out of carrots, sauerkraut, corn, pickles, or tomato items.  The last serving will be fresh salad or homemade kim chi.  This provides us with 3 serving of vegetables each day.

For fruit, I often use canned fruit to make breakfast like baked oatmeal or a dessert like cobbler for dinner.  I use dry, canned, and frozen for snacks.  I also use frozen fruit in my baking as well as adding it to yogurt for breakfast.  I have about 600 servings of fruit planned and based on 40 weeks that gives me 15 per week or the 2 per day that I need.

Using this method, I will then plan my menues around 3 vegetable servings per day and 2 fruit servings per day.  I can get almost all of my family's nutritional needs in these areas met through prepserving from my own garden.  The key is to be creative.  While my family loves canned peaches, they would quickly grow old if I didn't present them in different ways - peach baked oatmeal, peach ice cream, peach cobbler, peach pie, peach crisp, dried peaches, peach roll-ups, etc. 

It is possible to feed your family all year long from your own preserves.  Happy homesteading!

Looking Forward to the Weekend

I have a lot of cleaning to do this weekend.  Next Friday the ladies from church are all coming over with their kids for a sewing day.  It is a great way for us to fellowship and we get to work on our projects also.  I am really looking forward to it, but I need to get the house cleaned up and organized in preparation.  If I get some time I also want to get some projects ready.  I may just work on my quilt since I don't have any dresses that have to be sewn.

Our second priority will be working on the garden.  The weather is suppose to be nice and we need to move our plants back outside.  I have a few things that may need to be planted and of course there is always weeding to do.

I am concerned about some of the issues regarding food in our country.  Not only are we seeing prices rising, but now some stores are starting to say they will ration some products.  I will stocking up on pantry items.  I now have about 1-2 months on hand and I will up that to 3-5 months.  I will also can some beans and maybe some soup and broth this weekend.  I want to make sure we are well stocked.  Of course we have freezers full of meat and plenty of canned fruits and vegetables so with a few staples we will be just fine.

Passover, Resurrection, and Other Updates

Saturday night we celebrated Passover with a Seder Meal.  It was a good opportunity for the kids to experience something we just read about.  They were very curious and excited but they were mixing up different Biblical items, so perhaps a visual will help them remember some of the details.  We began with a lighting of the candles and a prayer.  We then reviewed the symbolism of the items on the Seder plate.  We are blessed to have a Seder plate from Israel that some missionary friends gave us.  After the review of Passover we read from Mark about Jesus sending out two disciples to find a place for them for Passover and read through the Last Supper and took communion with them.  It was good.

We have had the most bizzare weather around here - snow.  Now I have lived in this area almost my whole life and I don't ever remember is snowing this late.  The garden faired fine, but we brought in all the plants that we had outside in pots waiting to be planted.  Everything we started is looking really great.  Next year I think I will start the lettuce and spinach in pots that I had to buy starts of this year.  I think my garden planted seeds of spinach have finally sprouted.  I saw our first little asparagus is up when I visited the garden today and the rhubarb I moved is looking fine.  Everything else seems to be fine.  We still have a lot to plant and I am not sure we have enough room, but that is always my concern.

All weekend we worked on putting our bacon in the freezer.  Early numbers show 40 packages of bacon (1 pound each) from the 6 sides of bacon from our 3 hogs.  We used a dry cure of salt and rapadura this time and then smoked them with apple wood.  After freezing, for easier slicing, we gave our new meat slicer and real work out.  The bacon turned out great and we are extremely pleased with the results.

Garden Fury

This is the time of year when I am always frantic to get things in the garden, but at the same time worried about any late freezes.  Yesterday we got some spinach starts and lettuce starts in the ground after our seeds did not sprout.  Our peas were very slow to come up, so maybe the spinach and lettuce will still come up.  We then planted two rows of onions.  This is another item that we have not had good luck with.

Our soil really needs some hummus to improve it, but that is always a slow process.  Every year we mix in manure, but what we really need is some good compost.  I am planning on building two compost bins this summer so we can compost green items like grass clippings with manure.  We have not gotten to this project before, but we really can't wait any longer.  Each year our soil is a little bit better, but it really is a long process.

We weeded a little bit around the peas and worked in the herb garden planting and transplanting a few items.  The girls are excited to plant some flowers around the edge of the herb garden, but we haven't got all the soil turned yet.  We did get all of our seedlings transplated to larger plants.  Everything came up accept the acorn squash - how odd.

After church today we will work on planting potatoes, carrots, and beets.  There is so much to do it spreads over to Sunday, despite our desire to have this be a day of rest.  For now this is a tradeoff we have to make to break the cycle. 

By cycle I mean - I work because we need the money and in order for me to stay home we have to abide for a very strict budget that requires very little for food.  In order to keep our food costs down, we have to grow as much food as we can.  Once I am at home the work can be completed on other days and Sunday can be a day of rest.  So tdoay we work on Sunday so in the future we can set Sunday aside as its proper day of rest.

Away From Home

I am away from home this week and DH is taking care of the kids, who are all sick.  He is doing a great job, but I am so sad not being able to see and hold my babies every day.  It just makes we want to be dedicated to my home and family.

My father called me last night and says he may have found a milk cow for me.  What a blessing that he has been keeping his eyes open for me.  After a year or so of research, I decided on a milking shorthorn.  The only ones I have found were very expensive and they don't come up for sale very often.  My decision is based on the fact that I want to be able to raise the offspring for beef.  I could have also gone with a holstein, but my research showed the shorthorn as having a higher fat content and being better for beef.  I taste tested the milk from others and think we will like the shorthorn.  Jersey was the 3rd option, but we don't like the taste as well and the calves are worthless for beef.

Our garden is coming along well.  Our little tomatoes are growing very well in the house.  We have peas coming up and I may have seen some lettuce poking through.  We have broccoli plants in as well as cabbage and celery.  Some onions were planted and we have more to put in this weekend. 

We need to put in a lot of potatoes.  I saw an estimate today that you need 225 feet of potates per family member.  Let's see 2025 feet of potatoes or 16 rows in our garden.  Um  . .  16 rows?  Where will I plant everything else.  Using my calculation method - 40 weeks of eating potatoes multiplied by 3 times per week times 2 pounds for each serving = 240 pounds.  Each planted pound should yield 10 pounds, so we need to plant 24 pounds.  Based on past experience about 2 pounds planted 1 row.  Therefore I need 12 rows.  Slightly better than 16 rows.  This is a significant part of our garden and I will have to time the planting to make sure we use space as wisely as possible.  I may also interplant the squash that need space to spread out on top and could spread amongst the potatoes where the underground growth is what is most important.

Oh, how I love gardening.  I think it is safe to say the majority of the sewing is done and put away for the gardening season.  I need to make a couple of more dresses for the oldest, but those will get done slowly but surely.  Over the summer I will start prepping the fall sewing by cutting out patterns and cutting out the fabric.

Update From the Farm

We took 3 hogs to the butcher the other day, so we spent a lot of this weekend processing meat.  We took about 90 pounds of ground pork and made sausage and sausage links.  We dry rubbed 6 sides of bacon and made brine for all those hams.  It took us several hours on Friday and all Friday morning. 

We are home from church today because everyone is sick except my niece and DH.  Tonight some of us will try and make it to evening service.  I can't believe I am getting sick again!  Oh, the frustration.  We are praying at every family prayer time for the health of our family.  It really feels like we are being attacked.

The reason I say attacked is because we have been working so hard to make some changes in our family.  We were able to attend an encouragement seminar by the Maxwells.  It was fabulous and we are committed to make some changes in our family.  In so many ways it confirmed the direction we have been following with our children.  This comes in addition to some other changes we have been working towards.  All in all, I am finding us derailed so often from our plans and goals due to these physical ailments. 

Away For the Weekend

Good Things About Being Sick

I am a look on the bright side kind of person, so here is my top five list of good things about being sick:

1. I have gotten lots of sleep, which I don't always get enough of;

2. I have gotten four dresses sewn for my niece;

3. I have got to spend lots of one on one time with each of my children as they have climbed in bed and snuggled with me;

4. I have gotten to think up lots of spring cleaning chores for my older girls to do and then I have got to watch them do them; and

5. I got to watch a Presidential candidate on television make their pitch and I got to discuss it with my older kids.  It was a great learning tool.  They got to hear about all the lovely promises and then we got to talk about how the government does or does not accomplish those things.  It was a great instructional opportunity.  It was great to hear them be able to discern the truth about socialized medicine, scholarships for college, and a host of other programs that will only raise taxes.  My 8 year old said, "they are trying to make us poor!"

On a different note, I have had some sad moments lately as I have realized that some people close to us will never accept our large family.  They have a perception that it is chaos and out of control and they just can't see it differently.  Yes my kids are sometimes challenging, but it is frustrating to find people avoiding us or not wanting to have us over because there are "just so many."  I'm not making much sense, but I just want our family and friends to be as happy as we are that our home is full and that we are so blessed.  Instead, it seems that we are treated differently and that makes me sad.

Sick with Pneumonia

I am sick.  I hate being sick.  I have a fever and am achy all over.  Two days ago I finally went to the emergency room and they did all the tests and confirmed I have pneumonia.  I have been exhausted and resting. 

It is raining and stormy here for the most part and so the only thing getting accomplished lately is inside work.  I was able to finish 4 dresses and 1 skirt last weekend.  I started some dresses for my oldest.  We have two done that just need button holes, but I really hate doing the button holes given how old my machine is. 

I am working on a quilt design for a lap quilt for the girls to work on.  If they start now they should be done with most of them before summer and will ready to quilt it come fall.  I am not sure my 8 year old and 10 year old are ready for such a project because their hand stiching is not very good yet, but we are going to try. 

We started using our soap we made and we love it.  It is so nice on our skin. 

Three hogs are going in to the butcher on Monday. Due to the warmer weather the butcher will do the majority of the work and we'll do the sausage, bacon, and hams.  If anyone knows of any bacon recipes using lactic acid I would love to here them.  We usually do salt and honey, but would like to try something different. 

Looking Forward to the Weekend

We have a weekend of sewing planned.  I have been spending some time thinking about my 4 DD's clothing needs and I need to get some clothing completed before summer.  Each child needs at least 2 good dresses for church and other social occaisons.  Each child then needs about 7 play dresses or skirts.  Only 2 of my DD's have enough and 2 are in need.  Some of them just grow so fast it is hard to keep up.

Before we were dress only wearing, it was much easier to keep up because I only sewed for about half of their needs.  They are just so hard on their clothing.  On a positive note, I was able to buy a serger and expect that the dresses will hold up better now.  I am also planning on making some aprons to help protect their clothes.  This weekend our pastor's family will come over and his wife and I will spend a couple of days cutting items out and sewing.  I expect to finish at least 4-7 dresses and 2 skirts.  My oldest daughter will assist me.  Right now I am waiting on some new patterns, so that it is affecting how many dresses I will be able to sew.

With the high price of fuel, I am glad I am staying home all weekend other than a fire department banquet with my husband.  It really affected my food budget also.  I can tell that others are staying at  home as traffic is significantly decreased. 

With the rising costs of everything, I am focused more and more on raising our own food.  Our garden is doing okay, but not stellar.  I am not sure about some of the problems we are having.  Things are not sprouting, despite the fact they are cool weather items and they have been fertilized and water - spinach and peas.  Every year I have trouble with spinach. 

We will be butchering our 3 pigs that we are feeding out on corn right now.  I will be taking the hams, bacon, and a few roasts and then the rest will be ground up for sausage and ground pork.  These are the two items I use the most of.  I never seem to have enough for sausage and so I have been buying it from the store.  We are also going to buy a whole cow from my father.  After that, we will probably stop buying meat from the store altogether.

I have been working on a list of the items we will be buying at the store and pricing them.  We will be down to only staples like rice, wheat, coffee, salt, etc.  I want to know exactly how often these will be purchased and plan for their cost to make sure my grocery budget is being met.  Other than these items we will have to live off of what we are producing here on the farm.

I have posted often on sewing dresses for my daughters.  Here is a picture of the latest dresses I have been making.  Today I got fabric for two more for each daughter. 

Home Cleaning and General Updates

We've been busy around here cleaning today.  We did our major monthly cleaning.  First weekend we do grocery shopping, second weekend major house cleaning, third weekend decluttering and closet cleaning, and fourth weekend baking and kitchen projects.  After our major cleaning we did a few garden projects including planting some broccoli and cabbage and mulching the berries we planted last weekend.

It is such a refreshing feeling to have a clean house.  I did Flylady for awhile but never could get the hange of zone cleaning, but the home blessing concept has stuck.  Every day the kids do chores based on a district.  We have 3 districts - kitchen, upstairs, and downstairs.  They have a list of 15 items to do in their district and it takes them about 1 hour.  This is the maintenance part of our plan. 

Once a week we do a home blessing that includes vacuuming, dusting, watering plants, mopping floors that don't get mopped daily (the kitchen gets mopped daily), bathrooms, and tidying.  It takes us about 1 hour.  Then we spend about 6 hours once a month cleaning all the bathrooms very well, moving furniture and sweeping/vacuuming under them, scrubbing floors on our hands and knees, cleaning every room, detail vacuuming every room, washing bedding, etc. 

Our house always is tidy and surface clean.  I can't say you can eat off the floor all the time, but we are a country family of nine so you can't expect that!

DH got a couple of pheasants this weekend so I am trying to figure out how to cook them.  I have not cooked pheasant before, but I hear they are tasty.  We also finished up a couple of projects including a chicken plucker that goes on the end of the drill and a cheese press.  Both we are hoping to put to good use soon.  I hope your homesteading weekend has been enjoyable.

Homestead Updates

Here is a picture of our garden area showing some of the work we have been doing.  The lines in the back are where the blueberries and raspberries are planted.  In the front you see the strawberries and to the left is the garden.  You can't really see the grapes, but they are in front of the strawberries.  This is the view from our kitchen.

Now that our first planting is done, we move on to prepping our canning supplies and cleaning our canning area.  A couple of years ago my husband assembled a canning room for me with a countertop, a few hot plates, and some shelves.  It is conveniently located between the canning storage room where we keep jars and items requiring warmer temperatures for storage and our cold storage room which includes our freezers. 

Over the years all of my "craft" items have come to live in this space.  From cheesemaking to soap to seeds, I store many of my items here and work on projects year around.  We have done our annual clean up of this room and have organized the shelves.  I took inventory of my items and found that I have pectin and wide mouth lids.  I will need to order some more narrow mouth lids.  We have also organized all the jars that are clean and ready to be used.  They are sorted by size and we have consolidated the remaining food items.

This is a good opportunity to assess what items we have a lot of and which we are running low on.  It is amazing how our interests ebb and flow and our needs change over the years, but it all gets eaten.  During the next couple of weeks we will also condense the freezers and clean them out.  Probably the month of April we will eat more meals around what is in the freezer in an attempt to clean them up and reduce the items remaining as we enter in to summer.

Soap

Well the girls and made the soap!  We are so excited.  It was fairly easy and simple.  I did not use a hand blender because I did not want to purchase an item the first time I made soap.  Also, I skipped the fancy scale and used my kitchen scale.  Hopefully it will set up fine.  It just seemed wrong to buy a bunch of electricity using special gadgets to make a tried and trued homestead item like soap.

What surprised me was how much money I spent assembling the fats.  They were pretty standard items, but it called for coconut oil which for what I could find was spendy.  On the other hand, this is probably enough soap to last us 6-9 months for bathing.  I do have leftovers to use next time.  We made our own mold out of cardboard box.

Since we were just stirring, it took a while to trace.  I looked up online and found a site that said I could stir for 15 mintues in the beginning and then go back about every 15 minutes until it traced.  That method worked fine and it took about 90 minutes from when we mixed the water/lye solution and fats until we poured it into the mold.  It reminded me a lot of cheese making - do this then check back, do that and then check back, wait, do a little more.

I sewed on the girls' dresses while I waited since my sewing room and project room are next to each other.  I got a fair amount done and while I worked I pondered how so many homestead projects are a result of doing a little at a time and waiting.  It is no wonder we have abandoned this way of living in our immediate gratification society.

Today we are not going to church.  Everyone has been sick and I dragged them around for the last two days doing the monthly shopping.  We need a day at home, so we are going to work on fences and planting.  Happy homesteading to you . . .

As Plans Develop

Last night the girls and I were able to get everything set up to make soap today.  Yes, I did find the lye.  It was stashed in a box in my husbands shop.  I need to get some more of the oils we will be using.  I am trying to determine if I want to buy an electronic scale to measure everything and a hand blender to mix it.

I tried finding a hand blender at Goodwill yesterday, but was unsuccessful.  I did find several other items that I can re-use from others.  One was a very nice pasta maker that I have been wanting for a long time.  It was about half the price of a new one.  I also got a really good pot which I think I will use for scalding chickens when butchering time comes.  DD1 got a little bike which she is really enjoying.  Now she can really keep up with her little brothers.

I don't feel so bad about purchasing a few items that are only wants when we are re-using items that others have discarded.  We are not environmentalists in the common sense, but as homesteaders I think we are more aware of the land and or impact on it.  We understand that all of the things we buy may some day have to meet the garbage can and thus the landfill.  We hate that we have to send things to the landfill.  For about a year we did not even have garbage service but right now we do.

Homesteading really fits in well with reducing trash.  If you replace your canned goods with home canned items, you reuse the jars and only discard the small metal lid.  When you freeze your own meat it is usually wrapped in paper which is a lot less trash than those styrofoam trays meat comes on from the store.  If you use cloth diapers and cloth wipes you reduce that items from your trash. We even use a wide supply of cloth rages and don't buy paper towels.  Cloth napkins instead of paper napkins grace our table.  Think about how much trash is generated by convenience foods.

This morning I got a small amount of sewing done.  I finished half of two dresses.  I have a total of four dresses to finish for all the girls for this spring.  My niece needs more sewing done, so even though I would normally be done with sewing until next winter I have to keep on plugging along until it is all done.

Today we'll be doing our monthly grocery trips.  I hope your homestead is productive today. . .

Today's Activities and Weekend Plans

Today was the big buy.  We headed for the farm supply store and got all the things we need to put in a soft fruit garden.  We already had strawberries, but we needed to add a few more and move the bed.  The old strawberry bed will become the artichoke and asparagus bed, so I also got 10 asparagus crowns.

We purchased 4 blueberries, 8 raspberries, and 6 grapes.  We also got 6 dozen strawberry plants.  The beds are not all prepared.  They have experienced an initial plow but we still need to rototil in some compost.  We'll probably get the plants in on Sunday, but it will take a lot of help from all of us.  One of our biggest challenges will be keeping things watered as we head into summer.

Eight new chicks came home with us.  They are varieties we have not tried before and they will help replace layers when they grow up.  I also ordered 20 of my favorite breed - Delawares.  They are a white chicken that lays brown eggs.  They are tasty to eat and get broody in the spring.  We'll use some of these for eating.

I purchased my supplies to make my chicken plucker.  I'll let you know how it comes out.  We have some roosters that are living in the end times - at least for them.  Finally, I got a few remaining items I need to make some soap.  I just have to find the lye - I kid you not.  I can't remember where I stashed it so that kids wouldn't get into it.

Oh, and just for all your laughs - I had multiple humbling moments while out with the kids today.  Strangers behind us bonded over their common horror at my situation.  Conversations centered around how they were so happy they did not have that many children.  Their horror would have doubled if I had mentioned I had two more at school.  Children ran circles around me, touched everything, pulled candy off of shelves, and cried.  From the chaos one kind woman offered to hold the baby and help me to the car.

I hope you have some fun homsteading projects planned this weekend. . .