Home with all my heart

The baby’s chillin’ in the sink, entertaining herself with various kitchen utensils, the older three children are out climbing a tree they named Sheena (after my old horse they barely remember), Royal and Blue are playing blocks in the living room and I’m cooking dinner. Tacos. When in doubt (and short on time), tacos.

Lately when I’ve been in the kitchen I’ve gotten a serious case of bloghead, so I thought I’d better get some of it out. Who wants to hear about my life in the kitchen?

Ground Beef

I’ve been buying about 10 five-pound rolls of ground beef at a time. Someday I’ll make the break and buy grass-fed cattle off of a friend and have it butchered and packaged… for now - Walmart. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. Anyway, we have a system, the kids and I. We cut the rolls into thirds, throw away the plastic and wrap each lump with freezer paper, label it, throw it in the deep freeze. When we cook, one package usually makes two meals because I mix it with beans.

Beans

The kids and I could eat mostly beans, but you-know-who would freak out if there wasn’t some sort of critter flesh in his supper (biblically clean, of course). Thankfully, he has nothing against beans (and, I daresay, he’s pleased with my frugalness). I buy organic dry beans from our local garden/health food store. I soak two pounds of beans at a time and when they’re soft I drain and rinse them, spread them on a cookie sheet (covered with a flour-sac type towel, whatever you call them) and freeze them. When frozen, I break them up and put them in a freezer bag. Thus, they are ready to add to any dish.

Tacos

We have tacos or taco salad at least once a week around here. I cook up my beef (w/ chopped onions if I have time), drain it and add beans and spices (chili powder, paprika, garlic salt, cumin, onion powder if I didn’t add onions, dash of oregano, cayenne). Sometimes I add canned or frozen sweet corn (less and less now as I haven’t found a source for non-GMO). I add a little water for cooking. If I’m out of salsa I add a can of diced tomatoes while cooking and omit the water (salsa served separately). I simmer for 10 minutes or so while preparing the fixin's.

The children like to shred cheese. Cheddar, monty-jack, pepper jack, or farmer cheese. We usually buy farmer cheese instead of cheddar because it doesn't have dye in it (why would we want bright orange cheese? Really?). Walmart doesn't carry farmer cheese, so we buy it up and freeze the extra when we shop at our only other grocery store (Country Mart - Blue calls it "Crunchy Mart").

We all like sour cream or plain yogurt and mild salsa. We either have lettuce (from our garden in season) or whatever I happen to be sprouting at the moment, usually alfalfa (but I'm experimenting - beans, millet, broccoli).

We keep tortilla chips on hand at all times. Organic, non-GMO when we can get them. Sometimes we fry up corn tortillas, but not everyone likes those and they take more time. Our favorite is fresh whole wheat flour tortillas, but they really take time and forethought. Sometimes, sometimes I'll buy the whole wheat kind at the store.

Another thing we like that adds sweet, zesty zip is BBQ sauce (homemade - I haven't found any locally that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup or loads of refined sugar in it - and none of it's as good as mine anyway!). Sounds strange, maybe, but it's sooo yummy.

Sprouts

I haven't been doing this long, but I'll be doing it the rest of my life. There is no reason not to try sprouting! Any idiot can do this and it is a great way to provide fresh greens in season and out. I use alfalfa sprouts any way that I would use lettuce. I use a quart jar with the canning ring. I cut out a bit of window screen from some scrap I had and hold this in place with the ring. Put your seeds in the jar (quantities vary by seed type - I use about a 1/4 cup of alfalfa), cover with water and let soak a few hours or overnight. I do this right on the windowsill by my kitchen sink. I drain and rinse in the morning and several times throughout the day (the screen keeps the seeds from falling out, did I say that?). After I drain, I keep the jar on it's side to keep the seeds spread out a little more. In a couple days the sprouts are about an inch long and have a little pair of leaves. I give them a final rinse, swap my screen lid for a regular lid and stick it in the fridge where it keeps for about a week. Someone who has more experience could fine tune this...

I wake in the morning early and always the very first thing
I sit up in bed and stick out my head and I sing and I sing and I sing!

-a child’s poem

I always wake up early on Sabbath. I’m excited to get the barn chores done and spend some time writing (I get bloghead something fierce Sabbath mornings) or sewing, which I don’t usually get to do during the week because there are so many other things that have to be done. But today is Sabbath. The week’s work is done. I am at rest.

I heard my wood thrush signing this morning just before the sun rose. It was 4:45am. I know it happens every year, but I remain amazed by the change of seasons and the shortening and lengthening of days. I was amazed last night when I plopped down on the couch (“it is finished!”) and looked at the clock. It was almost nine. It was just getting dark out. What’s that, like 16 hours of daylight? Tomorrow’s the longest day of the year. I would love to visit someplace like Alaska to experience the different rising and setting of the sun. Well, and a lot of other reasons, but I think that would be neat. Excluding the first ten years of my life when I lived in VT (and one month in Australia, and a week in CA), Missouri’s climate is all I’ve known. I’ve been reading Gardening When It Counts by Steve Solomon and he talks a lot about Cascadia, the area west of the Cascades in CA, WA and OR. I’m fascinated by this stuff, especially when I consider how things grow in other places. Why oats grow better farther north, watermelons further south. The climate, the soil types… Okay. I’m a nerd.

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I’m trying to remember to categorize my entries now. When I do remember, it’s sometimes difficult to do. My life is my life, it’s all intertwined, it’s hard to separate the garden from the kitchen from the children from the spiritual. What about when I’m scattershooting? I guess I should have separate category for that.

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This laptop thing is working out really well. Since I’m not giving it a primary place in my life anymore, I realized I haven’t installed a bunch of stuff on it. It’s a really clean system. I download my photos from the camera using the Windows program. I’m using the new Works word processor that came on it (that was something I particularly wanted). I uninstalled a bunch of games. I’ve copied some music to it. The only thing I actually installed is the accelerator for my EarthLink account. I use the generic dialer with my EarthLink number, name and password, and I use the Internet Explorer for browsing. I like it simple. It boots up in a flash and does everything without hesitating.

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My goat kids are getting big. They’re two months old and I think tomorrow I’ll start weaning them from their mama. I might let them out with her in the morning and then pen them up after lunch. Then I’ll add the evening milking. We’re ready to have more milk! Farra’s excited about having her goat bred for the first time this fall. Her goat’s a little wacky, but so was Dessy at that age and she has mellowed out into a perfect sweetie. They definitely like routine and I find they do what you want more willingly when you want the same thing regularly. Farra and Atira are in charge of staking the goats out and making sure they have water throughout the day. They also do evening chores all on their own. They are very diligent, responsible young ladies (when I remind them) and I’m very, very pleased with them.

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In other farm happenings… We’re down to nine guineas now, maybe eight? I think Bobby said we lost another one to traffic. They love to roam. Are chickens just that much smarter… or that much dumber? They rarely even go near the road. The joke should have been about guineas.

My main flock is down to ten hens, no roosters, of different varieties. This is their third spring and I’m getting only five eggs a day, but they’re big and lovely eggs. And I can’t tell who’s laying and who’s not so I just keep feeding all ten. Earlier this spring I brought home a dozen pullets and the eight that made it have grown into nice young things. I told myself and told myself to wait, that the feed store would have chicks much cheaper at the end of spring, but I couldn’t do it and bought those about mid-spring. Sure enough, soon after that they were selling straight runs of all varieties for 50 cents a piece. Doh! So I just bought a dozen of those, too. Figure we’ll butcher all but one or two roosters and keep any hens. I’ve been trying to discover breeds that have gentle roosters and have heard Buff Orpingtons fit the bill. So eight are Buffs and it looks like two of those are roosters. We also go two red somethings (Rhode Islands or New Hampshires) and two more Rocks. I love variety, don’t you? We should have plenty of blue and brown eggs this fall. My laying hens now all lay white eggs.

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Our Dane/Shepherd pup is getting big. As though we expected anything else! Three months old, her back is even with my knee. She probably weighs 35-40 pounds. She looks more like the dane side, we think. Her ears kind of want to stand up, but can’t and so they mostly stick out and the tips flop down and it’s utterly ridiculous looking. I’ll post a picture when I can (my camera’s plum out of juice and I keep forgetting to buy batteries). I was apprehensive about having a puppy, but it’s going very, very well. She loves her crate and a simple, “Torah, go to bed,” sends her right in. She sleeps in it at night and is content in there when we eat or when we leave the house. She and Murphy get along wonderfully and they play and play but she prefers to be near us. We keep her with us as much as possible and just like children she’s more responsive because of it. She has the greatest temperament. Definitely more like a Dane than a Shepherd (nothing against German Shepherds, I like them. But they aren’t as laid back, they’re much more demanding). She’s just what I love in a dog. Like any puppy she chases the poultry and goats a little, but it’s because she wants to play, not because she wants to eat them. Watch dogs awhile and you can tell the difference. We expected this and keep an eye on her, letting her know it’s unacceptable behavior. This is one of the reasons we wanted to start with a puppy instead of an older dog who already has a taste for feathers.

Another thing. Aside from a few puddles and one pile on the rug during the first two weeks, she has not gone potty in the house. I’ve found that puppies born and raised outdoors are much easier to house train than those born and raised indoors. I guess they just go where they’re used to going and if they’re used to going in the grass then your job is that much easier.


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My mower is back from the shop and I finally mowed my grass for the first time this year. What I’m able to with all the brush piles and fallen trees, anyhow. I do enjoy mowing and the look of a fresh-cut lawn, but I wouldn’t waste much space on lawn if I had the option. I think if I had the money I’d fence our whole property, put a gate across the driveway and let the goats go wherever they wanted (the garden is fenced in, and the orchard would have to be) and I’d mow only a small area of it. It’s been fun with the kid goats roaming around free. The buck harasses the puppy all the time and they’re very curious about the house, coming up onto the deck to check on us. Goats are sure a pleasure.


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I don’t know if I ever wrote about my potato adventures, so here goes…

I have never grown potatoes, never even seen a potato plant (at least, if I did I didn’t know it). Mom says she gave them a try when I was a kid but they didn’t do well or weren’t worth the trouble or something. Potato growing is a mystery to me. Personally, I find that very funny, being as it’s a staple crop all over the world. But it’s true. I searched through all my gardening books and they were all very vague. I figured this was because I’m the only idiot in the world who has never grown a potato or even seen a plant. I was determined to overcome this lack of knowledge and plant the goofy things in my backyard. Well, first I thought, “Okay, garden fresh tomatoes are better than store tomatoes, sure, but aren’t potatoes going to taste like dirt no matter what?” But I ran that by an older sister in Yah, Elwanda, who assured me that there was indeed a difference and touted the combination of new potatoes and green beans fresh from the garden. I figured it was worth a shot. Somewhere in here I started buying red potatoes instead of the traditional brown spuds and noticed a big difference in taste and texture. Now, about planting them…

Well, there are some things I would do differently than I did. But I think I did pretty good for someone as clueless about The Ways of the Spud as myself. I’ve learned a little more since planting (Gardening When It Counts had a great bit on potatoes). I should have dug my trenches a little deeper and given them a little more space. As it was, I could only hoe the dirt up around them once. So my yield won’t be great this year, but now I know. We also are battling flea beetles pretty good and they hit the potato plants right off. I don’t believe in spraying chemicals, so I sprayed garlic and that helped. My plants are healthy enough that they weren’t affected much by the beetles. And as I’ve noticed elsewhere in the garden, nature corrects itself. I had a lot of beneficials move into the neighborhood and the beetle population dropped dramatically.

I read that when they bloom, you can begin to harvest new potatoes and when the plants die back, after a light frost or two, you can harvest your monster spuds. We had to try this new potato thing. How wonderful to dig around in the dirt and pull out food. Real food. Delicous, melt-in-your-mouth, life-giving food. Who knew? I’m hooked. I hope to devote a full quarter (at least) of my garden next year to spuds. (Incidentally, I’m growing Red Pontiacs.)

Another note-worthy garden veggie is Farra’s red cabbage. I wasn’t going to grow any kind of brassica this year after battling cabbage worms over a meager harvest of cauliflower and broccoli last year. I’ve never tried growing cabbage. We visited our friend’s garden/health food store and she gave us several red cabbage plants that one of her children had accidentally dumped that morning. “If you take them home and put them right in the ground, they might make it,” she said. I gave them to Farra. The only thing we had growing at the time was garlic. Farra planted six by the garlic and one by itself in another bed that is now growing popcorn. They are doing fantastically. The are absolutely beautiful (again, pictures when I can). Not a cabbage worm in sight. Are we just growing too few to mess with? Garlic and onions are suppose to help, and the six have garlic on one side and onions on the other… I think next year I’ll plant the garlic an onions along every bed instead of by themselves. Anyway… I bet red sauerkraut will be interesting.

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I could go and go, but that’s enough for one sitting, I suppose. I’ll go read scripture with the girls (Bobby and the boys are camping) and eat some popcorn and leftover pizza, then go “convocate” with some friends. There are a couple families in the area visiting and so today looks to be even more enjoyable than usual. One of these families just spent a month in Belize. They’re scoping out their options. They’re not the only ones. Didn’t this used to be a country that a large majority of people wanted to live in? Now I hear more and more of people looking elsewhere because of the way things are going. What a world. I sure look forward to Yahweh’s kingdom, don’t you?

6/16/09

Cherokee Pass, Missouri. Just south of Fredericktown, my hometown. It might be considered part of Fredericktown, I’m not sure. There’s a gem of a flea market called “Fred’s Bargin Barn.” There are two parts to his store; a big wood framed, gambrel style barn and an even bigger pole barn addition on the back. Well, there were two parts, prior to the storm on May 8^th. The back section looks like it got kicked in by a giant. I talked to a friend who happened to just finished working on the roof of the back section when the storm came and destroyed it. They all ran to the front of the building and were safe. He told me Fred was under-insured and doesn’t have the money to rebuild.

One can see the effects of the storm everywhere in and around Fredericktown. Metal barns and sheds are still scattered across fields and yards. Every other house in town has a blue tarp on the roof, awaiting repairs. Every third house has a roofing company’s sign in the yard. Everyone has at least one stump, all that remains of their favorite shade tree, most have several.  In the woods there are trees snapped, waiting for their tops to go ahead and fall and begin the decomposing process. Some are leaning like a stiff breeze might blow them over. There are piles of brush in all the ditches. We just drove past the town cemetery and there was a man taking a picture of a massive oak that had fallen. The few big trees that shaded the grounds are lying down, resting in peace with the folks under the tombstones. There’s scaffolding in front of the flower shop; I guess they’re finally getting around to repairing the brick front. They’ve had signs up since the storm saying, “No, the sky isn’t falling, but the bricks might so, please use the back door.” The “we have generators” signs in all the hardware stores have been replaced by, “we have chainsaws” and “we have stump grinders.”

The yards in town have been pretty well cleared of the tree debris. For a few days there was a smokey haze over the town while they burned all the townies’ logs and brush on the town‘s “back forty.”. Head outside town where there are more trees and you see things going a little slower. Like us, a lot of folk heat their homes with wood so as the trees are cleared out of the yard they’re bucked, split and stacked. We have room to pile the brush so we pile it until it’s dry enough to burn. It’s a more time consuming process than having someone with a tractor and dump truck scoop it up and haul it away. Road signs are still cock-eyed or down completely.

We’ve had a lot of thunderstorms the last few weeks and each one makes me a tad nervous. When the forecast says, “damaging winds” I nervously eyeball the trees around our homestead. Was that black oak leaning like that before the big storm? That sassafras wasn’t, I know. A little rain to soften the ground, a strong wind… what will it take to bring more down? Mom and I agree, we’ll never look at trees the same way again. Living in the woods doesn’t seem as safe and snug as it did a few weeks ago.

Mom and Dad were talking about how nothing surprising really happens anymore. They rescinded the statement; a tree falling on their house was pretty surprising.

We know a lot of guys in the construction trade and most of them have been pretty busy since the storm. Guys, like Bobby, that were really hurtin’ for work. Steve’s been keeping Bobby busy, but we’ve also had two others tell us they’d put him to work if he had any down time with Steve. Steve pays well enough that when he has any down time we just work at home. There’s no end of things to do.

Not everyone’s busy, though. Ran into a roofing/home improvement friend at the store on a rainy day and joked with him about not being out roofing. This man has been going back and forth to TN for work because he can’t get any around here. I’d seen his signs all over town after the storm, but he said he hasn’t been getting many calls. He even advertised. He did a few bids for folks who needed them for their insurance company, but not much work. I got the go-ahead from Bobby and we’re having this friend do our roof. It’s a little more than Bobby can tackle and Steve won’t be freed up to help until the end of the summer and then his family will be hard at work preparing to move. So it’s good for all parties.

There’s no hurry on the roof except that we have to get the house repairs done before the bank will give us what’s left of the insurance money, the money we save by doing the work ourselves. We are planning to use some of that extra to fence in an area for the goats, since our fencing all came down in the storm and wasn’t covered by the insurance. We’re growing a little weary of staking the goats out each day, especially now that it’s so hot. But we do get so much more milk than leaving them in the barn and feeding them hay. And I’d feel bad leaving them penned up all day.

Bobby had a couple days off earlier this week and we did some repairs. When we moved into our house it had a 12’ sliding glass patio door. A  4’ door with a 4’ fixed pane on each side of it. The screen has been in disrepair for some time and so we usually keep it closed up, which is dreadful because there’s only one window in the room. We’d been wanting to take it all out to put in a regular 6’ patio door with a window on either side of it. It got damaged in the storm so the insurance paid for it. Yay! We got the door in and everything framed. Still waiting on the windows to come in. I’m very grateful.

The only other insurance-covered item is the deck that the above-mentioned door opens onto. We talked to our roofer friend but he was going to charge a bit more than we had to spend and we know most of it’s labor. Most of it’s labor I can do, some of it’s not. When he’s done on the roof I’m going to see if he can just do the framing on the deck. I should be able to do the decking and the rail. My parents are great deck builders… maybe it’s in my blood?  I can hope.

6/16/09

I suppose it’s somewhat humorous that having the time to write and the inspiration to write don’t often coincide in my life. (Humorous is a better option than depressing, don’t you think?) I’m currently riding along in my van (having talked Bobby into driving - he doesn’t care to drive this beast) and we’re still about 45 minutes from home. It’s a beautiful evening, cooling off nicely, we just had a wonderful visit with some friends, and I have nothing in particular on my mind. When I’m at home, cooking, cleaning, schooling, sewing, gardening, goating, chickening, and whatnot, I usually experience what I call bloghead. I know I’m not alone in this experience, but don’t know what others call it. When I see and experience things throughout the day my brain automatically begins to format them to share on the blog. Words and phrases come together on their own, rearranging themselves to best capture my thoughts, the best way to present it in writing to my audience. I understand that this is common to writers. I understand that photographers experience a similar thing. “This would make a great photo…” Good bloggers experience both, I think.

Apparently there is a very short expiration date on the phrases turned and mental images formed. A “write by“ date, if you will. Mine stay fresh and pliable in my heat up to about 47 and a half hours. If I haven’t got it written down by then, it’s lost forever. I can sometimes still work with an idea past that time if it’s a real gem, but it doesn‘t come as naturally. Emotion-based rants and rabbit-trails, good or bad, are very short lived. That’s good for the bad ones (too many times I’ve posted after having been rubbed the wrong way - reacting instead of acting. A good rule of thumb is “sleep on it“), bad for the good ones (too many times I’ve lost a beautiful or inspiring bit because I didn’t take time to write it out).

When I have time to write and no particular subject or inspiration, I do what other bloggers call scattershooting. A little of this, a little of that, mostly updating on the latest homestead happenings.

I cracked up laughing when I read a friend’s recent post. He stopped his regular blogging to devote his time elsewhere, posting only an update at the end of each month. I'll leave you with what he shared when the first month ended:

“You might be wondering what I’ve been doing with all those hours of freed-up time that I would have otherwise been using to write blog essays. Well, mostly, I just sit alone and stare blankly into space, my mouth slightly agape, only occasionally blinking, thinking about what I would be blogging about, if only I were still blogging.

Such thoughts used to spark freely along the synapses and flow through my dancing fingers, out into the vast and bustling cyber-realms, there to be discovered (and mostly appreciated) by a precious few. Now, however, the sparks only short-circuit and ricochet about in my cranium. Marlene says my head has developed a slight Parkinson-like tremor.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying the retirement. It just takes a little getting used to. It is surprising, really, how much of one’s identity can get wrapped up in a blog.
You might be wondering what I’ve been doing with all those hours of freed-up time that I would have otherwise been using to write blog essays. Well, mostly, I just sit alone and stare blankly into space, my mouth slightly agape, only occasionally blinking, thinking about what I would be blogging about, if only I were still blogging.

Such thoughts used to spark freely along the synapses and flow through my dancing fingers, out into the vast and bustling cyber-realms, there to be discovered (and mostly appreciated) by a precious few. Now, however, the sparks only short-circuit and ricochet about in my cranium. Marlene says my head has developed a slight Parkinson-like tremor.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying the retirement. It just takes a little getting used to. It is surprising, really, how much of one’s identity can get wrapped up in a blog."