Snow-covered dirt clods and etc.

We has a sprinkling of snow this morning while I was milking. Kristine came running from watering the goats: "Mama, Mama! It's snowing! I TOLD you it would!" I had nay-say ed her earlier after looking out the window.

We like to celebrate the little things. So since it was snowing, we had to make some Snow-Covered Dirt Clod cookies.



















There really wasn't very much snow--so the sprinkling on the cookies had to be suitably sparse.









She's been just a little bit sick, so I'm not sure what that look on her face is meant to convey. Eating cookies under duress, maybe? 'It's going down, but then...?' LOL poor girl slept this all morning, and only rallied when the cookies were in the making.



This is Allie the Alpine (goat) and Opal the Himalayan (rabbit). They are both very sweet and friendly and perfectly tame. Opal loves to sit on Kristine's lap when she gets a chance and to dig burrows in the garden. Allie won't eat apples, but likes carrots. She's bred and due to kid in February.









And here's the trampoline. This is where Kristine can be found on any sunny day. I've been known to join her from time to time, and we have fun counting how many 'knee-up' jumps we can do in a row.





She also works and works to come up with a new trick to show. This one's a somersault. Very nice.



She really doesn't like the cold, so she pretty much lives in her long underwear. I think she put it on sometime around the first of October and hasn't had it off since. Smart kiddo.

Lena, Midas and Milk

Here she is: Our little Lena. She's a LaMancha, Alpine, Angora cross. You can clearly see the LaMancha in her tiny 'elf' ears. LaManchas are known for their great quantity of milk along with their very sweet, personable disposition. Lena would rather be with a human than with the rest of the goats! She's so-o sweet. She loves to be petted and coddled and generally babied. She won't be old enough to breed until next fall, and then we hope to have a saanen buck to breed her.

Don't you just love that face? It's pretty weird to get used too, but once you've met her you don't even care. Kisses and nuzzles and alfalfa-sweet whuffles are her favorite things. Her face isn't really that puffy--it's her shoulders you see just below her jaw to make her look like she's really got a mouthful.

The angora in her will give her a nice winter coat. All curly ringlets. I hope we don't have to shear her in the spring.

And here's Midas:

King of the Buff Orphingtons. He has a beautiful comb and wattle. Pretty docile too, as docile as a rooster with a harem gets, I guess.

And here's the in-house seniority:

When I bring the milk in to strain and cool,the cats and dog come and arrange themselves decoratively around the kitchen and dining room. Selah the calico usually sits as close to me as she can--preferably on a high stool--and makes the casual comment that perhaps I would be so kind as to share the wealth. If she doesn't have the stool to sit upon, she does her best to weave the message between my legs until I relent out of concern for my balance or irritation at her insistent, repeated demands. When the milk is placed on the floor, she delicately laps as much as she desires while Charley and Bootsy look on anticipating how much she will leave for them. They never challenge her right to the first share and don't complain if she leaves nothing for them. When she has finished, Charley takes his bit and maybe finishes it off. If he's not finished it, and even if he has, Bootsy cleans the little bowl very carefully.

Diggin' a ditch

Here's the masterpiece. We'd had trouble with this area before, and Jon had filled more dirt into this north west facing corner, and it had stopped leaking. Until the storm.

What would be the basement on any other house is the main living space in our house. So the builder thought he'd make it more comfortable (so Jon says) and build it out of wood rather than cement block. Sounds kinda strange to me, but that's how it is.

The corner you see in the picture is like this: the wall straight ahead is wood. The wall on the left is a bedroom added on later and made from cement block as you can see in the pictures below. I think the problem might be where the two materials meet. And the storm dumped such an amount of rain that the gutters overflowed and the rain ran right into the corner. So Jon spent a

couple of days digging out, and then fixing it up somehow--Kristine says it involved some mud 'snowmen' and mud angels (and I think it was a good thing I wasn't there)--and he's already filled it back up. I thought that maybe, since he'd had it all dug out, that he'd put in a back door there. It would be very handy there coming out of the laundry room. (As if we need another half-finished project around here. Isn't that what life's about?!)

This is the closet in that bedroom after he'd torn out the sheetrock and insulation.

We're putting a wood floor in this room--it's half way done at the moment--so I guess it was a good thing this happened now and not after we'd finished the floor.
















This has nothing to do with the leaking back bedroom. It just happened to be on the camera with the other pictures. It made me laugh, so I thought I'd share.

I love Chinese food. But I can't afford to eat it as often as I like, and I hate the crazy recipes and deep frying required to make it myself. So I'm always on the lookout for faux Chinese recipes--ones that don't take any odd ingredients and don't require me to do much more than stirfry.

I came across a recipe for lemon chicken that involved some lemon flavor jello. And it was quick and easy and I had most of the ingredients(except the lemon jello). So I substituted lime jello. It turned out this lovely shade of green, and it was delicious. Kristine protested loudly at the unusual color until I told her she could go without any supper, and then she ate with gusto and asked for more. And Jon gave it an enthusiastic 2 thumbs up. Maybe I'll keep the substitution.

Hail Damage

Almost a month gone by and no word from me. Don't you wonder why?



Well...just look at my plums! They were just coming ripe--and it would have been the first 'real' harvest off this tree.

The hail was golf ball size, and it went on and on. 25 minutes of being pounded with frozen golf balls will do a lot of damage to a poor plum tree. I was in shock for a while over this.



A week later I did manage to pick enough fruit off this tree to make one wonderful plum tort. The best. Too bad there wasn't enough to make a bunch and freeze them for Christmas. Sigh.














How about my tomatoes? They weren't even coming ripe yet--well a few on the outsides, but they were still mostly green. Just beaten to a pulp. What a mess. The chickens got a lot of the worst ones, but we left some damaged ones on the vine to see if they might just ripen up. No such luck. They rotted there. This disaster caused me more distress than the plums--it was a week before I could go out there without crying over it. Whew! Who knew I was so attached to my tomatoes?



We did get about 10 gallons for making tomato sauce--I was very excitted--and then I burned it. Bummer. There are a few more I can still salvage, but nothing like the 50 quarts I was hoping for.

My peppers were looking great this year. And then the hail came. Peppers with golf-ball size holes in them were all that were left. They rotted on the plant. Chickens loved them.

Our beans were done, and our fall peas had just been planted. We should be getting those pretty soon. The carrots are fine and the beets. The ducks got the broccoli earlier this spring, so no loss there (heehee).











And the squash. The winter squash were the least affected, but the vines just look horrible. The summer squash was, natually, completely lost. Good thing I already had my fill of it. How much zucchini bread can one eat? More than you think, originally, but then even that much is too much. Good thing everyone around here likes it.



These squash are just beginning to ripen now. The variety in the picture is called a 'striped cushaw' and is our absolute favorite. It has pink seeds and a pale yellow, very sweet flesh. They are huge--so 4 plants will keep us going all winter long. I bake them whole, and then scoop out the flesh and freeze it in 4 cup servings. That's enough for a meal and enough left over for pumpkin muffins or, maybe a pie.



There was some damage done to the house. Not as much as we'd thought (or hoped?), but enough that Jon's been digging trenches around it and tearing out sheetrock, and generally adding to the mess. Maybe I'll explain more later.



As it is, I guess I'd better be focusing on God's Benefits: No one was hurt. We didn't loose any animals or trees. The tornado that touched down a mile or so south of us, didn't bother us at all. We have insurance for the house. There are grocery stores we can utilize. I don't have to do all that work canning and freezing(even though I love it). We've been needing to tear out the sheetrock anyway--now the insurance will pay for it.



And that's why you haven't heard from me for so long. A lame excuse, I know; but sometimes I gotta retreat from my busy social life and do some self-care. Rest assured, I've had my chocolate and coffee and am ready to jump back in.

God's Benefits

I love the whole idea behind the 'vintage' craze. I think it's about finding things that remind you of a simpler, less busy, more community-oriented time. There's something about using or wearing something that was a common item during my grandmother's day or earlier that really makes me feel like everything I do today has weight or importance for my grand children. It makes me think and slow down enough to make each moment count.

I found a vintage devotional for Kristine. It was written by Frances Ridley Havergal in 1874. She also wrote many hymns, including "Take My Life". This 4"x3" book is called "Little Pillows--Goodnight thoughts for the little ones". But you know, there is so much meat in there that it cannot be read once and forgotten. We've been reading it each month for the last 5 months or so, and loving each little pillow as we come to it. Tonights installment in entitled 'God's Benefits' and I'll post it here as it is in the book.

"Forget not all His benefits"--Ps 103:2

If some kind friend made you a present of twenty pounds to buy all sorts of things with, would you not feel rather hurt if he thought it necessary to say to you, "Do not forget that I gave you this"? Of course you would not forget, you could not possibly be so ungrateful. But what if, after all, you had forgotten, and had all you nice things around you without ever recollecting him, would it not touch your heart if he came again and said very gently, "Do not forget"?

I need not tell you Who and what I mean. You know! Have you been forgetting all His benefits, forgetting to thank Him for them, just as if they had come of themselves? Oh, ask Him now to forgive you this sin of forgetfulness, for Jesus Christ's sake! But now that He has reminded you and forgiven you, ask Him for the Holy Spirit to help you to recollect His benefits instead of forgetting them.

"His benefits" means all teh good things He has done for you, and all the good things he has given you. Try to count up "His benefits" of this one day; and then think of those ofyesterday, and last week and all the year and all your life since you were a little baby! You will soon find that there are more than you can count, and you will begin to see how very much you have to thank Him for.

And then recollect His still greater benefits--the great gift of Jesus Christ Himself to be your Saviour and Redeemer, and the great gift of salvation throughHim, and all His promises of grace and glory!

David speaks of 'the multitude of His tender mercies,' and Isaiah tells of 'the multitude of His loving-kindnesses.' Are not these true and beautiful words? Will you not turn them into a song of thanksgiving, and say, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who crowneth thee with loving-kindess and tender mercies!'

'Now my evening praise I give;
Thou didst die that I might live;
All my blessings come from Thee,
Oh how good Thou art to me!

'Thou, my best and kindest Friend,
Thou wilt love me to the end;
Let me love Thee more and more,
Always better than before.'

Farm Life

Our little farm is a little piece of sanity in the crazy, busy world. Our 3 milking goats are producing 2 gallons a day after one of them supplies all the milk her 2 month old baby can drink.

After the baby is weaned, I suppose we'll get 3 gallons a day.

We have a young buck and a funny ewe we'll swap for another doe goat on the 28th (finally!), and we're having a lot of fun looking though pictures of the available does.

One of the goats we are milking right now should be having more babies around the middle of august(surprise, surprise), so I guess that will bring the saleable milk quantity down a little bit for a little while again.

We're getting 8-12 eggs a day from our 13 laying hens, and are eagerly waiting for this year's 20 hens to start laying (any day, now). We have 80 chickens growing in the pasture, eating their way through the weeds and sod until the target butcher date in Oct.

Our garden is doing nicely--the ducks and goose ate all the broccoli, most of the beets and peppers, and they must have eaten the corn and a few squash plants, so whatever is left by the time everything is ripe, will be ours. Two of those ducks are now in the freezer, and the goose has been exiled to the pasture with the chickens.

All of the milk and eggs and meat chicken are sold at church, and I'm sure we could sell more than we could raise. I have to turn people down every week.

There certainly are enough customers for the small farmer if only he didn't have to fight the big businesses all the time. They are able to advertise and produce a lot more, but certainly not a better product. And, of course, the big government gets in along with the big company for money reasons. In effect, if the government and big business is allowed to go on the way it does and has for the last 20-50-100 years, there will no longer be the productive small farm. There would only be the unproductive hobby farm left, and given time, the big business(wielding powerful money) will convince the big government that hobby farms and anything with any animal that might produce anything edible should be illegal for 'consumer safety' reasons. And then, they will chortle with the evil laugh as they 'earn' even more business. If you would like to know more, check out this site: http://www.nonais.org Here you can find out how to vote for the small farmer and for free enterprise in general. And now, I'll get off my soap box.

Enjoy your day. And your milk and eggs and produce (especially if they came from a small farm)

Tball and art camp

Here, finally are a few pictures from Tball:






I don't have any good ones of her batting or running the bases, but we'll be back at it on Monday. She has 2 more days of Tball, and then it's on to swimming lessons again.

This past week she went to a half-day camp for art. And this is part of what she brought home:



Her 'Fireworks' picture made by shaking a paint brush over the paper. She came home and said it would be a good way to paint the deck.

Jon's sister Sara and her family are here from Texas for a few weeks before they move to California. Their father has spent the last several weeks in the hospital recovering his health and strength and regulating his Parkinsons' medication a little better. He had pneumonia and other complications, but is doing much better--maybe better than we've seen him since Christmas--and can't keep still about what Jesus is doing for him. I'm sure his lengthy stay in the hospital is as much for the people working with him as it is for himself.

And in the meantime, Sara's two girls are just a year or two younger than Kristine; and they love playing together. Both of Sara's girls have great imaginations--Kristine's play is much more concrete and factual--so Kristine benefits is a big way through their playing together. They will be her sometime next week, and I'll get some good pictures.

All in all, we're happy, healthy and busy and hope you are too.