Green Bean Harvest and Canning

Today was one of those days where I just wanted to pinch myself.  Some people may think that this simple, organic life that we live is crazy, but I rather love it.  Sure, we have our moments just like any family, where I'd like to ship my children off for a few weeks.  Then I take a breather and look out my window.  Usually one of my children is doing something cute or funny, and I have to remind myself how truly blessed I am.  I really am!  

After piano lessons for Alegra and Josiah, we went home to get a quick bite for lunch, then start on the job of the day.  Today the produce stand was closed, so all the beans that were left over, we canned.  Friday's customers get fresh picked beans, so we needed to take care of these, so they weren't wasted.  All of my children helped in some way.  Some more than others of course.  We did have some fighting with a couple of them ready to quit the job, but they quickly adjusted themselves and got back to work.  Diella stayed home and hauled jars upstairs and started washing beans.  She is such a great helper!  

Time for everyone to work.  They were real troopers.  I didn't end up with as much as I was hoping, but I'm sure we'll have more throughout the summer to get the rest of our winter stock up done.

Then just as two are fighting, I go over to start some coffee because I just needed a calming moment.  I looked out the window to see Benaiah standing with a homemade fishing pole at a hole that he filled up with water.  Wondering what he was doing, I asked, "What are you doing?"  To which he replied, "I'm fishing for alligators".  Now if you know Benaiah, you know that he doesn't talk right (we're working on that).  I had to ask him what he said to make sure I heard him correctly.  Sure enough, he was fishing for alligators.  I'm so glad he didn't catch one!!!!

The rest of my evening I didn't capture on camera, though I wish I would have.  After supper, while the children did their supper chores, Jonathon and I sat on the porch swing and discussed more of our dreams for our farm.  Slowly but surely things are coming together.  It's so exciting to dream together!!!  As we were sitting there our neighbors from around the corner and across the field came riding down the road on their horses.  Saphira sure enjoyed watching them go by.  She was so cute watching.  After awhile, here they came back, only they came right into the driveway and up to the house.  Best treat ever!!  It was nice to visit with them and enjoy watching their horses.  Such a great night for a ride and for a visit from the riders.  

As they left, Jonathon's sister came to take the children to Stroh for ice cream.  So, off they went (except Saphira) and there we sat again on a quiet porch.  He walked over to visit with his brother who was mowing and Saphira and I played with the kitten who had jumped up on the swing.  She sure loves that little kitty.  After a bit the children came home and we all walked over to his brother's house to look at some rocks and just enjoy the evening outside.  A walk around the farm to check on the elderberry bush and other herbs, is so delightful to me.  It truly refreshes me to see how many natural things God put around me to help my family.  

Back into the house to check on my beans.  Fourteen quarts done, all sealed, and ready to save for a cold winter day.  Love when I use lids over again and they all seal.  I know, probably shouldn't do that, but it does work, and I don't have to spend extra money.  :)

Everyone ran off to bed, I sat down to check a few things online, and I looked out the patio door to a beautiful moon.  As I stood there and watched, a bat was flying in the back yard.  Now, usually I'm not a fan of bats, but that one was doing a fine job and catching bugs, I just know it.

I really enjoy where we live.  The sights and sounds are so lovely.  The neighbors are great, which helps.  The dreams can come to life, and the children can be a part of that, hopefully something that will be truly a blessing to us and our community.  Time to close things up and head to bed.  A work day tomorrow, blueberry picking, and maybe some fun in the evening.  Our days get full, but I wouldn't want them any other way.  

Sewing Party for Diella's 10th Birthday!

It's known in our family that when a child turns 10, there will be a party.  I don't like to do parties for everyone for every birthday.  It just seems like a little much for me.  I think living a whole decade in our family is a big deal though, so I try to do something special to celebrate it. 

Diella picked her theme and came up with some of the ideas too.  It was fun working with her to get her party ready.  She really enjoys sewing and has been wanting a sewing basket for quite some time.  We went shopping and after looking through actual sewing baskets, she decided that they just wouldn't hold enough of her stuff.  We ended up getting creative and found that tackle boxes have lots of little compartments and plenty of space for all of her goodies.  Sewing basket found, now we're ready for the party! 

This table was set up with lots of goodies.  Our party favor bags on the end were ready to be decorated, the papers in the center were awaiting to be filled out, and the jar on the end with buttons was a little game for the girls to guess how many were in there.  The winner got to keep the button filled jar.  

 This paper said, "Diella is "sew" special because......

The girls were to fill the center with things that made Diella a special person.  They were really cute!

 How many buttons do you think were in this jar?

 Grandma Deborah made these hoops for decorations.  Diella picked out what she wanted it to say and the flowers and colors to go on them.  She is a girl who know what she's likes.

 With fabric paint, the girls decorated their party favor bags.

 Creativity ran wild at this party!

 They each got their own drink with a button top lid. 

 Cake pops that were supposed to look like spools of thread.  I should have made the balls look more like a ball of yarn.

 A simple snack to start the party while the girls were busy with their projects.

 Fun pages to color and a word search that was all about sewing.

 A great group of girls!

 The last project was sewing felt initials onto felt.  We also provided the pieces for girls to make flowers too.  Felt flower petals, leaves, buttons, and initials ended up making this hoop project very cute!  They had so much fun being creative with these.  Great job girls!

 Forgot to mention that Diella wanted this to be a girl and her mom party.  No boys allowed.  I think we all enjoyed not having the rowdy boys running around.  I think we'll have to do this more often.  :)

 Their finished hoops.  So adorable!

 Time for gifts.  If the girls wanted to bring a gift, we asked that it be something that she can put in her sewing basket.  Such fun things they brought to help fill her basket.  

We are so blessed to have such a great group of girls who enjoy the simple things in life.  I love that they all enjoy playing simple things and hanging out doing imaginative and creative stuff.  I pray they all continue to walk in righteousness as they grow older.

Blessings to you Diella!  I pray you have many more decades in our family!  Oh, and if you guessed how many buttons were in the jar, the answer was 92!

Homemaking Class- Cooking 8



Chocolate Chip Cookie #1



Chocolate Chip Cookie #2- After chilling the dough.



Chocolate Chip Cookie #3- Adding an extra 1/2 cup of flour.





 Our cookie experiment has come to an end.  Good thing since I'm starting to feel rounder in the wasteline.  : )  We took the same Betty Crocker recipe that we started with, and this time we added some extra flour.  The girls definitely got a much softer and fluffier cookie.  Next time, we'll make them bigger.  Their last attempt at the perfect cookie came with 3 testers.  They gave rave reviews, and one of the testers even said he'd take a dozen of those cookies as part of our payment for chickens.  Great job girls at improving a recipe and learning what to do to make it just right.

We also had some other baking to do today, so rather than learning more new terms, we reviewed some of the things they've already done.  Alegra made more mini pies for me for a Celebration coming up, and this time we allowed the boys to help since they were soooooo bored.     

 Looks like they enjoyed helping, doesn't it?  Little brother got a little carried away with the flour.  I'm surprised it wasn't on his face.  : )  They both took their turn at rolling out dough and cutting out top crusts.  We finished up the cookies, the pies and finished off with two big batches of granola.  What a day!  And one of our taste testers brought us eggs, so that's what we had for supper.  Scrambled eggs complete with garlic, onions, and peppers.  Yuuuuummmmm!

Homemaking Class- Cooking 7

Today we started talking about some of the cooking terms that are used.  To help the girls gain a better understanding of what the terms mean, we put them to use in our meal this evening.  Here is what the chalkboard said for the binders:

Cooking Terms

~Al Dente-  Firm but not mushy.  Use with pasta and vegetables.

~ Au Gratin- Browned or crusted top, usually with cheese, bread crumbs and a rich sauce.

~Bake- To cook food by surrounding them with hot, dry air as in an oven.

~Boil- To cook in water (or another liquid) rapidly bubbling.

I decided that we would take one dish and use all of the terms for today, so we made a chicken noodle casserole.  Now I'm not much into using "cream of" soups, but we did for this one and then discussed healthier alternatives and how we could make our own sauces for the noodles.  The girls boiled the noodles til they were Al Dente.  Then they made a topping of bread crumbs and butter to have the Au Gratin term in there.  We of course baked it in the oven before tasting it.  It tasted as good as it looks!

I think tomorrow may be a big day in the kitchen with another chocolate chip cookie experiment needing to be done, and I'd like to get some granola made and prepare the food to cover their terms for tomorrow.  I think we're going to have a wonderful smelling kitchen tomorrow!  You'll have to stop by!  : )

Homemaking Class- Cooking 6

Today's Cooking Skills we turned into two days.  It seems that my girls needed some experience in using the rolling pin.  By day 2, they did a great job at getting the correct thickness and rolling out dough.  Here is what we did for our next lesson.  

~Rolling out dough with a rolling pin.

~Cutting shapes with cookie cutters.

~Grease pan by using papers from butter (this teaches frugality also)

~Grating cheese

This is another reason we don't include the brother.  : )

The girls made some of the best, soft, sugar cookies I've had (other than Loft House- we'll have to work on duplicating that one).  We have an abundance of plain yogurt from getting it on sale at different stores, so I've been looking for recipes that I can use it in place of sour cream.  These sugar cookies were perfect for it, and we also substituted half of the all purpose flour for whole wheat.  They turned out great!  If you want to give these a try, here is the recipe.  Sour Cream Sugar Cookies.

Day 2 we did some more rolling out of pie crust.  With a Celebration coming up, my good friend Casie and I have been experimenting in the kitchen to have not a very good success with what we've been trying.  So, I thought I'd try these mini apple pies tonight and see who they turned out.  They were fabulous!

I was going over the pie crust recipe with Diella while Alegra took some pictures.  Isn't this picture neat!  She is so creative in her picture taking.

Diella loves to be in the kitchen and has mastered some pretty delicious things.  Alegra mentioned the other day that she would like to be famous for some recipes but just doesn't know what.  Diella makes killer no bake cookies and some super amazing garlic bread.  So, I told Alegra that she could master apple pie and her response was, "only if it tastes good".  : )  Well, these fit the bill.

We cut strips of parchment paper to put in each muffin cup to make the removal of the pies easier.  Then we pressed in the circles she cut out of pie crust, filled with apple mixture, dobbed with butter, and sealed another crust on top.  Ready for the oven!



And this is why we don't let this brother help us either.  He loves knives.  The sharper the better.



Aren't these the most adorable pies you ever did see?  We only did two of them with the lattice top crust-too much work!  : )  I also want to add that I did not use the recipes crust recipe.  I used my grandma German's recipe for the crust.  Also, we guessed at how many pounds of apples we had and just went with it.  I used 4 BIG apples, my grandma's crust recipe and we made 24 mini pies.  I might add though that a few of them didn't get full tops of crust, but just a small circle as we were getting low on dough.  But they still turned out great!  Oh, and the recipe doesn't specify how long to have them in the oven.  We had them in for about 25 minutes.  If you want to try these, here's the recipe.  Mini Apple Pies.

These girls are learning some great skills.  And I'm looking forward to when I can step out of the kitchen and let them run the meals.  That's the girl.  They can cook up a storm while I sip my iced tea and lounge in the sun.  Okay, that probably won't happen, but it will free up my time for other things and not be so busy with all the household duties. 

Also, if you just follow our family in general and not just the homemaking class, you'll be interested to know that Oreo our steer, is getting to be a little stinker since we've moved to the farm.  He's become quite the escape artist.  Jonathon's brother Jeff helped me out last night get him back in and worked at the fence since Joanthon was still at work.  Thank you Jeff for lending a hand.  Oreo's been scanning the area, trying to find his escape route and trying his best, but with no success.  It just might be fixed!  But despite all that, Oreo is still needing butchered and if he figures out another weak spot in the fence, well, he will be butchered sooner than later.  This is perfect timing with the girls learning cooking skills.  Meat is a part of meals and it's great that they'll be learning first hand about the quality of meat, how we get hamburger and then we'll have to of course use it in some delicious recipes.  I'm sure we'll post on butchering day as it will be bitter sweet.

Homemaking Class- Cooking 5

Today the girls learned a lot about eggs. 



On the chalkboard:
~ Cracking Eggs
     * Butter pan so eggs don't stick
     * Make sure no shell is in pan
     * Crack on the edge of pan, place thumbs inside and gently pull apart.
     * Salt and pepper
     * When egg begins to firm up, flip it, 

~Spread butter and jelly on toast

This was our lunch and was so delicious!  We even had a double yoke egg which they thought was harder to flip, because it was so much bigger.  Looking forward to our chickens coming to live with us, so we can have more eggs on hand for these two great egg cookers.  : )

Homemaking Class- Cooking 4

It's time to go over some basic kitchen cooking skills.  Each day we will go over a few important things that they really should know how to do.  We are including Josiah when he is available to participate because in his words, "I might need to know how to do that in case you are sick some time".  Good enough for me.  : )

You can see on the board what they wrote in their binders for today.

The girls made personal pizzas with hamburger buns, sauce, meat, onions and cheese.  Nothing fancy, but it gave them practice spreading the sauce, and sprinkling the cheese.  And they were delicious!

They also demonstrated their ability to peel carrot and cut them up into sticks.  And this is why I don't include Josiah.  He wasn't the safest with the knife. 

And then they made dessert too.  They whisked some pudding mix and milk and we made some peanut butter crumble by putting peanut butter and powdered sugar together until crumbly.  Is a delicious topping on top of pudding and cool whip.

Today was a good hands on day for them.  More skills to learn and check off their list.

Homemaking Class- Cooking 3

Lesson #3 was more cookie baking and an experiment with our chocolate cookie recipe.  I figured we could just use a tried and true recipe of someone else's or we could experiment and really learn what different things do to the consistency of our cookies.  So, for lesson 3 we kept our Betty Crocker recipe the same, only we chilled the dough for an hour or so.  Here is our results, and what else we discussed during this lesson.

Our new and improved "chilled dough" cookie.



Our first attempt at chocolate chip cookies, following the recipe to a T.


Well, we did figure out that the recipe says to bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes.  We found that our oven works best by doing these for 9 minutes and taking them out to sit on the tray for a bit.  Our experiment round #1 made softer cookies but still lacked the thickness that the girls were hoping for.  But they were glad for the less crispy edges.  But we figured that was because of the baking time.  So, really, this recipe turned out the same even with chilling the dough. 

We also discussed butter:
~1 stick DOES NOT equal 1 cup
~The better qualities of butter in flavor and health
~In order to cream with sugar, it should be at room temperature, that means taking it out of the refrigerator and letting it sit on the counter for awhile.

So, we are still out to perfect this Betty Crocker recipe just the way my girls want them.  Next experiment will be adding 1/2 cup more flour and seeing what that does to our dough.  They are certainly learning more by experimenting than just trying new recipes.  And they are having so much fun doing it!  That's the important part, aside from growing in knowledge in the kitchen. 

Homemaking Class- Cooking 2

For today's lesson, we simply went over some of the suggestions that others gave us on our cookie making improvements.  I don't want to overwhelm the girls with too much, and it's just not doable to have them in the kitchen everyday making something along with detailed insructions by me.  So, for today we discussed cookie suggestions and that we would try one suggestion tomorrow with another round of cookie making, and we discussed and they wrote the cooking tips below in their binders.  I love having a chalkboard in the kitchen/dining room!

If you can't read the above tips, here they are:

~Read the directions in a recipe all the way through before you start cooking.

~Anything that touches raw meat should be washed.  Including counters, utensils, serving dishes and towels.

~Wash hands often.

~Wash towels often.

~Check to make sure you have all ingredients and the correct amounts for your recipe before beginning.

Homemaking Class- Cooking 1

Just to break into the class with ease and some fun, the girls worked at making some cookies.  They used the recipe from Betty Crocker and boy were they delicious.  They tasted wonderful, but just weren't as soft and chewy as the girls were hoping for.  We set out to figure out what they needed to do differently to make them just how they wanted them.

 One thing I noticed and pointed out to them was that they handled the dough too much causing it to be really soft.  After reading other's suggestions, we learned that it's best to have the dough chilled.  That will be day 3's experiment without changing our recipe at all
. 

And we had to include the little Miss in our cookie making time.  She was so cute sitting in the chair, with her apron on, watching all the commotion.  : ) 

So for lesson 1, we worked together in the cookie making process.  I pointed out different things such as:

~Fractions in measurements and what if we were doubling the batch or cutting the batch in half. 
~They learned how to use the mixer and get the mixer attachments out of the machine, safely. 
~They learned how far apart the dough should be placed on the cookie sheet and why.
~When to take the cookies out of the oven and how they'll keep baking a little after being left on the cookie sheet.
~Not to leave the oven door open too long.
~How to use the oven.
~Set the timer.
~Eat one when it's warm and with ice cream.  Delicious!

Introduction to Homemaking 101

This year I decided that after we moved and got settled in here at the farm, I needed to start a homemaking class for the girls.  They are super excited about it!  Probably the excitement will disappear when they have to start the cleaning portion of the class, so I started with a fun section, "Cooking".  I know cooking and baking are totally different, but I've lumped them into the same category.  And who wouldn't be excited when we started by making chocolate chip cookies.  I pray that by the end of this class the girls will know how to do everything they need to know for going out on their own.  At least the basics will be covered, and they can learn the other stuff as they need to. 

We will be covering lots of fun and not so fun things. : )  The sections of their Homemaking Binders will be Cleaning, Cooking, Dinner Time, Menu Planning, Hospitality, Sewing, Laundry, Crafts, Frugality, Entrepreneurship, and a special section that I am labeling as "Wailing" taken from the portion in Jeremiah 9:17-19 (we will talk about attitudes and our hearts for others).  I'm so excited to see where my girls will be when this class is over with.  I foresee some big changes and much growth. 

If you want to follow along and teach your girls the same things we are going over, feel free to follow our blog.  I think it's going to be a lot of fun!  Also, if you want to make it a curriculum for other years, I am hoping to put all of the lessons together in one section of this blog, so that they will be easy to find and refer back to.  Let me know if you are joining us with your daughters.  I'm sure my girls would love knowing who is following their journey of learning how to care for their home and family.  And if you live close by, maybe at the end we can do a party with all the girls who have joined in the fun.  It would be a great time to show some of the crafts you've done, sewing projects, recipes you love, and how this helped your family and daughters.  I hope many will join us and take the step to teach their daughters what the schools don't and what it seems like we just don't have time to teach.  It's important, so we're doing it!  Please join us at raising up daughters with hearts to serve their families and those surrounding them.