Memory of Today

I once heard a description of calling that it is your soul reaching out to your future best-self having a memory. 

Last year at this time I was hungry for our first year of growing our own food and homeschooling.  Many pieces had been around a long time, but this year would be the first time it all came together.  Where the pasture is today, was only dirt with the promise of seeds laying in wait.  Our first eggs were coming into the house as the chicks we had raised since day-old's matured into layers.  Our garden spot was mostly cleared and reading for tilling.  Homeschooling had been a fact for many years, but the children's studies were disconnected.

Last year I felt a strong calling to growing our own food.  I yearned for a big garden, with large variety, enough to feed us all.  We started plowing, planting, pulling weeds, harvesting, and preserving.  The summer was a parade of fruits and vegetables coming in the house to shell, blanch, freeze, can, and cure.  Today we eat full-flavored food, still glistening with the touch of God bringing them into being.

Last year I felt a strong calling for a milk cow.  I yearned for the pasture to grow and the shed to be built.   My husband went along somewhat reluctantly, but he's used to going along when I'm passionate.  The other day as we were milking together in the morning sun, he said, "I'm so glad we got Christina."  We drink the best milk we've ever tasted, almost a gallon of cream a day, and our days pulse with cow affection.  Our cows hug, wag tails, and feed us deeply.

Last year I felt a strong calling to the family life of homeschooling.  We had been homeschooling for years, but I yearned for a new choreography of learning, working, and playing together.  Learning had been segmented, the way it was when I was in school, but we gently found a new dance of learning and living.

All of these were magnetic forces pulling on my heart, things that felt crazy but succulent.  At the time it was scary.  What if it wasn't calling?  What if it was just infatuation with an idea?  Friends shook their heads, disbelieving we would voluntarily work so hard.  It did feel crazy, but the feelings were so persistent and somewhat intoxicating.  We were afraid of regret, but we proceeded.

Today we have no regrets.  Our life doesn't feel crazy or foolish.  We don't feel trapped into hard farm work; instead we feel freedom, gratitude, and a strong sense of things being right.  Today we are satisfied.

Last year maybe I was feeling a memory of today.

On Strike for Spring

After a decent nap, I spent some time in the sewing room and finished all the cutting.  Here is a whole quilt in neat little piles.  Now I start piecing them together.  I love how designs emerge as pieces come together.

My husband made his second attempt at a romano.  Thank God we have so much milk that an extra three gallons is nothing. Learning to make cheese is not a quick process.  I think it can only be done by rich people or people with a cow.  You go through a lot of milk figuring things out.

We moved those giant cabbage plants outside.  I'm optimistic they will be OK in this little greenhouse.  It will give them a little protection while they wait for the garden.

And it's going to be a wait. This morning we woke up to more snow.  By this time of year, I'm usually out in the garden getting beds ready, but this year winter has held on longer.  Last year we had hoops up in early February growing radishes.

Combined with our blahs, we are taking this as a message from God to go on strike for spring.  God will bring spring one way or the other, but it's an opportunity for us to be part of it.  I once heard a great explanation of how prayer works.  God doesn't need our prayers to realize something needs to be done, but God puts those prayers on our hearts so that we can enjoy sharing the goodness of answering prayer with God.  Count me in!

Overwork or Late Winter?

The tireds are taking over us all.  I've been feeling stretched for a while, but now the whole family has it.  Even my camera has joined in; the batteries died this morning.  We all need a charging. 

So today we slept in until 8am.  We'll do it again tomorrow and Saturday and Sunday.  Yesterday I stepped away from all the things that needed to be done and spent some time in my sewing room with fabric, iron, and seams.  I think I'll do it again today.

My husband's first romano was a bust.  As he finished stirring and cooking the curd, he realized he had forgotten to add the starter.  That's a deal breaker.  It might form into a cheese but if we let it age it will taste like nothing, or bad.  So we drained it for cottage cheese.  Today he'll try again.

Perhaps our lack of energy is about late winter.  Many of the people on my homeschool forums are expressing similar blahs.  Lent starts in two weeks and is very full. I think I'll take advantage of these blahs to declare a bit of freedom from the should's and rest up a bit.  After all, God didn't give us sabbath rest and the liturgical seasons for no reason.

Cheese Making and More Cheese Making.

It seems that we are still catching up on milk.  Yesterday we made a parmesan. Today we make a romano.  Tomorrow we'll make a cheddar.  We know that Christina's production will decrease, so now is the time to be making all this cheese.  Later we won't have the milk.

The pumpkin is going to be a four day project.  Yesterday we cleaned and baked.  Today we scooped, pureed, and froze.  Two full pans of fruit yielded about seven quarts of stuff for the freezer (each quart will make four pies).  Tomorrow we'll repeat.

Our homeschool calendar is year-round.  We take breaks as they suit us, not trying to match the public schools.  Our labor-intensive living combined with teaching and correcting work takes a tole on me.  We have been going seven weeks straight and our next break isn't for another two weeks.   I hope I can make it.  I used to conveniently get sick every time I needed a break, but this clean living of ours doesn't provide much sickness.

Light & Pumpkins

My daughters did a cool science experiment today.  They are studying light and color.  We have a prism that breaks light apart, but this is a neat way of putting it back together.  They stuck this spectrum on a pencil and give it a hardy spin.

The color almost completely vanished and turned white!  What a cool way to put light back together.

Our pumpkins in the cellar are starting to look sorry.  It is late February, so they've held up pretty well, but it's time to get them cooked and in the freezer.  There were probably a dozen left.  We got one big batch in the oven today but it will take another day to get them finished.

Today we are attending a tour of the Statehouse with about fifty other homeschoolers.  Some homeschoolers do lots of field trips and activities, but we don't.  We emphasize "home" in homeschooling, but it's fun to do trips like this once in a while.

Coping with Abundance

With egg production coming up, today we used the last of the frozen eggs.  I froze beaten eggs in one cup increments, 5 eggs each; they work perfectly in cooking.  Rather than letting this one thaw out, I thawed it in milk as it warmed up into pudding.

Now that we are through the "dry period" of eggs, we realize that next year we need to freeze more and put them where we can find them.  We had many slim weeks on eggs.  Then I found another two bags in the freezer with eight cakes in each.  Shesh.

Last Friday I helped on a girl scout sleepover with my twin's troop.  Milking went fine with us gone, but my husband didn't skim or pour any milk.  We got home Saturday evening and by Sunday morning there were twelve gallons of milk in the frig!  I got busy and today we are down to a respectable four.  I skimmed cream, poured drinking milk, sold two gallons, got a parmesan started, made pudding, started butter, and got this batch of fromage blanc going. It cultured overnight and today it drains.

Today my husband will make his first parmesan, with me looking over his shoulder. You may pray for marital peace.

Those little plants are growing like mad!  This being my first success with indoor plants, overgrowth is something new for me.  I could probably put these cabbages in the garden, they are pretty cold hardy, but the garden spot isn't ready.  I have a little outdoor greenhouse, more like a green-cubbie, that I think I'll put them in.  They should be able to wait there until mid-March when the garden is ready.

With most of Friday and all of Saturday and Sunday busy doing other things, today is a full day of catching up.  We are baking bread, making cheese, and cooking snacks.  It's the burden of abundance, but a what a wonder burden it is.

Everyday Ketchup

We ran out of ketchup so it was time to make more.  I had no idea how easy ketchup is to make.  It's anther food mystery we've uncovered.

We stewed some tomatoes and onions for a while and then put them through a food mill.  Smooth sauce was left.  I boiled some cinnamon, cloves, and celery seed in vinegar and then let it soak while the tomato sauce continued to stew.  After straining the vinegar mixture, I put the pure liquid into the tomatoes, added some salt and sugar, and stewed it down.  It's the most flavorful ketchup I've ever had.

I was supposed to start another batch of plants two weeks ago, but I finally got them done today.  These are lettuce from seed we collected last summer.  I didn't keep the varieties separate so they are all mixed up, but in a month when they're ready to plant, we won't care.

I only collected a few seeds last year.  This year I want to do a better job saving seed and I'm intentionally buying only heirloom seeds.

We are filling up the frigs with cheese.  Today I made cheddar, our favorite.  After culturing and cooking the curd, they are pressed several times, getting turned and redressed each time. At first they are pressed at low pressure for only ten minutes.  Then a little higher for ten more.  Then higher for two hours.  And finally at 50 lbs. pressure for 24 hours.  This is after only the first pressing.  They stick together, but just barely.

Eggs Are Back

Last night my sixteen-year-old daughter came in from putting the chickens away and said, "now I don't want you to get all excited or shriek or anything," and then showed me the basket full of thirteen eggs!  13 eggs!  That's an egg from every hen minus one.  Wow!  It was just over a month ago we were getting zero to two eggs a day.  Today we had scrambled eggs for breakfast.  I think I'll make a custard.

After that amazing day on Tuesday when we were digging out the stump wearing shorts to stay cool, a snow storm blew in.  It came in with hail and thunder, very dramatic, and settled into snow overnight.  At first I was discouraged with cold and snow again after such a beautiful day, but instead I'll think of that warm day as a little nod from God, "I remember summer, I'm bringing it."

The lettuce growing in the basement is finally big enough to harvest.  We had our first salad.  Because it's growing in potting soil, it probably is pretty thin on nutrients, but it tasted so good.  I wonder how many days we'll have wait for the next harvest.

Dedication to buying organic and fair trade has some challenges.  Right now it's baking cocoa.  It's hard to find fair trade chocolate for cooking that doesn't cost a fortune.  I found Frontier organic fair trade cocoa in bulk at a decent price.  We bought six pounds for $13.90/pound.  This should last us a while, maybe half a year or better, and we don't have to worry about going to hell for supporting child slavery to harvest our chocolate.

Dirt Freedom

The temperature was mild and we took advantage of it.  There is a stump hiding in our garden out behind the barn.  Everybody got a shovel and started digging.  After we get it exposed we can hack it out or the neighbor offered to pull it out with his tractor.  After only a few minutes of digging, jackets came off and the work went pretty well.  It sure did feel good to be outside working in the dirt.

I have finally figured out how to freeze grated cheese.  I know, many of you are shaking your head at me because you figured it out long ago.  After you grate the cheese, freeze it on cookie sheets and then put it in bags.  We've been having trouble with cheese all melding back together even in the freezer and that makes for frustrating pizza days. Now the cheese stays loose and separate.

Our cream cheese is turning out good every time.  It tastes a little different than the stuff in the store, but as that store memory fades, I'm finding how much I like this cream cheese.  It also makes the best frosting I've ever made. 

Today our twins turn ten years old.  One of them celebrated by doing her first two-handed milking.  She did really good!  Milking takes a lot of coordination and some strength, so it's not small thing that she can do it two-handed.

We are living a subsistence life, the kind of life that I've heard put down my whole life, I've heard called poor. But we don't feel poor.  After years living in a cash economy — making money at a job and spending money for our necessities — this feels like greater freedom and a more secure wealth than I've ever experienced.

Crackers: Food Mystery

Living on our own cooking rather than boxes from the grocery store has lead to the uncovering of many food mysteries — like crackers.  I had no idea how easy crackers were to make.  I posted the recipe in Other Recipes if you'd like to try them.  These wheat crackers taste just like wheat thins, except better.  You can roll them out, but I used the pasta maker to make them all the same thickness and then score them on the sheet before they baked.  The kids sat down and ate all of them in one sitting, no kidding.

My almost ten-year-old twins (ten tomorrow!) are studying light and color.  Our main bathroom has no windows and makes a perfect dark room for light experiments. Here they are exploring translucence versus transparence.

Much of our life is very normal life with kids, often needing to do two things at once.  When the little one needs cuddling, you grab them, even while you're doing something else.  The blessing for me is that with the growing arm strength from all our hard work, I can hold our three-year-old while stirring.  I couldn't have done that a year ago.

The day is already full.  I started some cream cheese and sour cream.  Milk for yogurt is warming on the stove.  A cheddar is pressing.  We'll grate some mozzarella for pizza.  And we have a stump hiding just under the surface behind the barn in the garden that we need to start digging out.  It's supposed to rain, but we'll see if we can beat it.

Cow Watching

Yesterday morning Christina acted strange. Beefy had jumped on her while we were getting ready to milk, which he hasn't done in several weeks. During milking she startled, knocking into me and I leaped out of the way. I was fine, but she seemed nervous.  These were all signs that she was coming into heat.

It has been 19 days since we gave her the series of shots to push her into heat and breed her.  I called the breeder and he said to watch for her standing still when beefy jumped on her. But the cows spend so much time in the shed with the hay that we figured we'd easily miss it.  So we moved the feeder out into the pasture where we could see them.

We spent the day with someone stationed at the back window watching the cows.  Occasionally the cows disappeared into the shed and we'd run out to peek, just to find them napping.  During the day she displayed every sign of heat — lots of movement, mooing (it was kind of a cross between a moo and a growl), nervousness, and walking the fence like she was looking for something.  But we kept waiting for that definite sign — standing still when beefy jumped on her.

About 4pm, I was downstairs and my daughters came running.  "Beefy jumped on Christina and she didn't move."  That was it!  I called the breeder and he said the best time to breed her would be this morning, so he's on his way.

Since we breed her a few weeks ago, it's a little disappointing that it didn't take, but we're actually grateful.  Now we've seen her in heat naturally and we can identify it.  Next year we'll put a steer with her from the beginning.

We marked 19 days on the calendar to keep watch.  Hopefully this will be the last time this year we see her in heat and she'll calve on or about Nov. 16th.

The Value of Cloth

We opened our first cheddar that I made with the new press.  It has holes in it, which is frustrating, but the flavor was so good.  It was mild, but it was a mild of a nice sharp flavor.  We assume this one will age very well, so we cut up half to eat now and re-waxed the other half to age longer.  I had to wax a colby anyway so it was handy.

I don't know why these cheese have holes in them.  I wonder if it's because the curds are a little too firm.  I'm going to try cooking them at a slightly lower temperature and see if they knit together better.

With six children ranging from three to nineteen, we have always kept clothes as kids grew out of them.  But over the years the clothes have gotten mixed up so I finally tackled the job of organizing them by size.  It was a big job and I need a rest.  Twenty one tubs later, I know where sizes are and where to put things away.

I have been quilting for most of my adult life.  Our neighbor gave us a bunch of flannel she got on sale but doesn't think she'll use.  We pulled out the ones we like the best and I found a relatively simple pattern.  It was good to smell the steam of the iron, feel the warm cloth, and run my fingers along seams.  For me sewing is almost meditative, and addicting.  I want to go back right now and keeping working on it!

People used to have few clothes but value them a lot.  Now we have so many clothes that most suffer from keeping track of them all.  Quilting is a nice retreat into the value of cloth.

Enough Jars

Every time we make butter it's a little bit different.  I thought we would figure it out and it would be the same each time.  But that's not how it's happening.  Today the butter broke into little beads but then didn't come together into the big chunks that make it easy to knead.

I usually scoop the butter chunks into ice water and then knead it into a butter block, but these little beads would be tough to chase out of the ice water.  So I grabbed them by handfuls and gave them a good squeeze before dropping them into the water.  The buttermilk streamed out.  Afterward, it came together well and made a beautiful chunk of butter.

Most of the hay we moved has been eaten up so it's time to move hay again. 

As were planning how to move it, these words came out of our sixteen-year-old's mouth, "I just love moving hay."  After the shock wore off, she explained, "well, I love driving the tractor."  I think her sisters enjoy riding in the trailer too.

We got a batch of gallon jars last summer when we got Christina.  Back then she was producing less milk and jars weren't leaving our house with people buying milk.  We've been suffering with not enough jars for over a month.  Every day I  counted clean jars and quickly used up milk to free them up.  When we broke a jar last week I didn't know if we could make it.

Yesterday our jar order came in.  Praise God!  It is so good to know we have plenty of jars and I don't need to count anymore.  I can make cheese when it's handy instead of as soon as the jars are needed.  Today we rejoice!

The Goodness of Chores

I think we're getting pretty good at bread-baking.  Every two days we grind four-and-a-half cups of wheat with our fancy new pedal grinder.  Often my teenagers will sit with a book pedaling away.  This grinder makes a finer flour which makes a nicer loaf.  I get it all mixed and kneaded, let it rise, and bake it.   Fresh bread with Christina butter is a regular indulgence.

Our pediatrician says that children who have chores grow up happier and more responsible.  Our children have a lot of chores.  Each morning begins with everybody doing something — the older ones heading out with us to clean the cow shed, walk the cows, milk Christina, and get out hay, while a younger one scrambles some eggs and makes oatmeal.  The girls take turns feeding the chickens and getting them up.   They grind flour, churn butter, and help water the cows every other day.   Each evening two girls head out with my husband to milk and clean the shed while another child gathers eggs and closes the chickens up.

Each time we work outside, all or most of the children are outside helping.  Today was bright and warm and we finally got the leaves off the back yard.  The girls raked leaves off the patio and into the yard while my husband vacuumed them up with the lawn mower and dumped them in the garden.

Our lifestyle requires that everybody work and contribute.  Sometimes the kids gets overwhelmed, but most of the time they carry a sense of being needed, of being effective, and of being a real contributor to their family.  They have developed a low tolerance for silly stuff, something I've admired in "farm kids" for a long time.  They are truly responsible, often reminding us what needs to be done (like it's time to move hay).  Those are things that money can't buy.

Finding God in Family LIfe

Finding God in family life is one of the most difficult and one of the easiest things to do.  It’s all about where you look.

Our children run the gamut from preschooler to young adult.  With six children spaced out over 17 years, family prayer has been a constantly evolving, and constantly tested, part of our family life.

When our oldest was young, we used lots of the “family prayer” books with limited success.  Often those prayer times were more exercises in sitting still than intentional time with the divine.  In spite of the struggle, some prayers we kept no matter what, and we discovered that routine made things smoother.  Dinner time prayer, which we do every night, has no resistance, and even occasional inspiration.  Same with prayer to start our homeschool day.

We’ve learned some things about prayer over the years, namely that prayer is much more about God’s initiative than ours.  When we sit down and “do” prayer, God takes the opportunity, but it’s not the only time that God is present to us.  God is with us all the time, always acting our lives and the world around us.    

A year ago our family made an intentional move “back to the land” to live sustainably.  We live on 1.5 acres in Boise, have a big garden, chickens, milk cow, and beef cows.  We have rejected all things disposable.  The food we don’t grow ourselves we buy fair trade, organic, local, and in-season.  This life has changed the way we eat and work.  It’s also changed the way we pray.

Living close to the land gives us new opportunities to notice God.  When we plant seeds, the kids naturally pray for God to bring the rain and grow the seeds.  Thanking God at meal time takes on a new tenor when we buried the seeds, saw them germinate, and harvested the food ourselves — we saw, with our own eyes, the miracle of God providing for us.  When our milk cow calved and both Mama and baby were in trouble, our children’s prayers to save them was heartfelt and later their gratitude for fresh milk deep.  Without trying, we notice God’s activity — the wind, the rain, the sunshine, the changing leaves, the maturing fruit, the growing animals. 

Biblical stories hold a new power for us.  When we hear that the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few, we remember the green beans last summer that came on so fast, every day trudging out to pick them and every evening snapping and blanching.  When we hear about seeds falling on good soil and poor soil, we remember plants that grew and plants that didn’t.  When we hear about the Good Shepherd, we think of our animals who are so dependent on us for their health and well-being.

In this winter season, our daily routine takes us all outside into the cold and dark.  We milk, clean the cow shed, feed and water the animals, and collect eggs.  There were gifts waiting in the dark that we didn’t expect.  My teenagers now track the movement of the planets.  We all are newly aware the phases of the moon.  The recent lunar eclipse held a relevance for us because we had become familiar with the night sky.

These notations of God’s activity are prayer.  In fact, they turn our days into prayer.  When we are grateful for the weather, the food on our table, the beauty of nature, that is prayer.  When we treat our animals with compassion and responsibility, we are acting righteously and pleasing God; that is prayer.  When we see the warmth of family love as a reflection the love of God, that is prayer.

Our “recipe” prayers became deeper when we regularly were noticing God peeking out from behind every day life.  The prayer grew potent and intensified our awareness.  Our homeschool days begin with family prayer, and we’ve found that variety keeps things fresh.  Right now we are using “Children’s Daily Prayer” from LTP.  We’ve also done Lectio Divina on the readings of the day and we’ve used Ignatian imaginary prayer as we read straight through the gospel of Mark.

Family prayer is at it’s best when days are filled with noticing God. Children are masters at seeing things that have become routine to adults.  When teenagers notice God, it comes with an authenticity that makes God seem bigger.  When parents remain committed to prayer day after day, year after year, it echoes the persistence of God.  Finding God in family life is all about where you look.

More Food Than Wrapping

Saturday was warm and sunny so I finished a two-year project: pruning the grape vine.  This vine must have been planted 35 years ago when my in-laws built this house, and it seems like that's the last time it was pruned.  The trunk is big and the tangle of branches seemed endless.  Last year I got half of it pruned and gave up.  But now it is done!  

In an hour I had it cut back hard and ready to grow in a more humane manner. This is a table grape and they dehydrate into very sweet treats.  As I was pruning it seemed that several of the branches had established new roots.  If they start growing, I may dig them up and move them.

We have some herbs that have been drying and drying and it's finally time to do something with them.  I crushed up all the basil and got it in jars.  We definitely need to grow more next year.

I finally made that pumpkin chocolate cheesecake.  It turned out really good.  Actually, I like it better than regular cheesecake.  My husband had three pieces.  And the best part — the kids aren't all that enthusiastic so we might get more than one piece.

My daughter went to a dance and they needed me to chaperon.  As the kids were eating snacks with more wrapping than food and puts lots of energy into being entertained, I thought how different our life is.  We have more food than wrapping.  We have more love than posturing.  And what a wonderful life it is.  All I can think is that God must love us very much to call us to this life.

I Don't Have Patience for Patience

I made that colby with slightly lower temperatures, which means the curds had more moisture, which means they were bigger, which means they hardly fit in the cheese mold.  I careful scooped them in and pushed them down.

The round thing on top, the follower, also got a good pushing to get it into the cheese press.  In the end, the cheese came out larger than normal but looking pretty good.  I wonder if it will be better.  But I have to wait two months to find out!  This waiting months for feedback is tough.  I don't like waiting.

Speaking of little patience, the cows drink out of the hose when we fill their water.  They run up, wanting the freshest water and will stand there and drink out of the hose.  Here is beefy getting his drinks as the water came in.  Even when we were bringing buckets of water, Christina would get right in there and drink out of the bucket as we were trying to pour it. 

Now I know why we like these cows so much, they make sense to us!

A Good Day

We got out the first cheese I made in the new press, a monterey jack.  It is a little more crumbly than we expected, almost a dryness to it, but the flavor is good.  I looked back in my notes and this cheese did get too hot in the curd cooking stage.

We suddenly have more milk in the frig than I expected so I'll make a colby today.  I'll be extra careful not to let it get too hot.

Just a month ago we were getting 0-2 eggs a day.  Now we are getting 5-7.  Plus, I found another bag of eggs in freezer, so we had scrambled eggs for breakfast.  Last summer we had eggs every morning and the kids complained.  Today they wolfed them down and begged each other for more.

The temperature has been low but the sun has been shining.  Yesterday when my husband and girls went out to fill the cows' water, jerky was napping in the sun.  My daughter grabbed the camera and got his picture.  One of my nine-year-old's is working on training jerky to ride.  She leans over him and slowly puts her weight on him.  Of course, the first time he just flopped on the ground, but today she got on him, sitting up, and he took several steps before she got off.

My husband spotted a recipe for pumpkin chocolate cheesecake in our favorite cookbook, Simply in Season.  Yesterday we made cream cheese.  Today we'll bake up some squash.

As I write this we have milk warming on the stove to become cheese, a roast in the crock-pot, squash in the oven with egg shells along side that we'll grind up and give to the chickens.  The older girls are downstairs doing their school work while the twins are at the table reading an Usborne science book.  The little one is helping his Daddy with laundry and then they will read some stories.  The sun is shining into the dining room and we are warm.  What a good day.