Normal Days

It's just a normal day.  Nothing special.

After a week off while we worked hard on other things, we are back to the discipline of homeschooling.  The kids are scattered around the house doing their school work and my evening holds the promise of correcting papers.

Preserving the harvest is an everyday job that I seem to only remember every other day.  After the green beans are picked, they need snapped and blanched.  I don't think I've gotten it all done in one day yet.  After picking in the morning, I leave the bucket somewhere and discover it the next morning.  Ack!  These beans I finally finished today actually waited three days.  We picked them Friday, snapped them Saturday, and then I forgot to blanch them until today.  That's a long time!  While they sit around, they lose some of their tender freshness, so we'll pay for this forgetting in flavor.  I'm making a new resolution to move faster.

We're getting a full gallon bag of these green beans every three days.  I just love how the freezer is filling up of these wondering vegetables.  Everybody in the family likes green beans and they are one of the highest producers in the garden.

We are making a cake today, so it begins with a fine grind on the wheat.  I'm amazed we can get such light and well flavored cake from whole wheat, but the grind must be just as fine as we can get it.

Today is nothing special, just normal cooking and schooling and being family.  These are days that are easy to disregard, but it's in these typical normal days that real life happens.  The breeze is cool this morning but the sun is shining.  The chickens are scratching.  The cows are grazing.  The children are feeding their minds and bodies.  It's a good day.

Trellises

Here it is July and we are finally getting the green bean trellises put up.  My husband sank two posts and then screwed in a top bar.  My daughter and I ran twine from the top bar around a lower bar, held in place just by the twine.  It's not very sturdy, but it doesn't need to be.

After we got the strings all done, we helped the little green bean runners find their way. They are already several feet long, so it wasn't too hard to wrap them around the twine.  There is something about these wooden structures that makes the garden seem complete, although we only got half of them up.  Tomorrow it will look so nice.

It occurred to me that I wanted to start some seeds the first of July for a fall crop — Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and echinacea.  I put these out, nice and wet, in the full sun.  If it gets too hot, I'll bring them inside for the heat of the day.

We have one week left before we start our new homeschooling "year" with still a lot left to get ready.  I just love the beginning of new year, so many new books to look forward to, so many new interesting things to explore. 

Lessons Learned

After twelve years of homeschooling, my love for this lifestyle has grown, but I've also made some whoppers of mistakes.  Along the way we've learned a lot.  Here are a few of them:

#1  When the child is resisting their work, blame the curriculum, not the child.  After several years of watching the difference between serious foot dragging and speeding through challenging work, I now realize what a tremendous affect curriculum has.  But I didn't know that at first.  I cringe when I remember how I used to berate my oldest for not working harder. Now, when a child isn't learning effectively, or isn't working hard, we switch to something else as quickly as possible, until their eyes get that sparkle of enthusiastic learning.

#2  Schedule matters.  Some people name a flexible schedule as one of the benefits of homeschooling, but we have found that we are more successful when we stick to a regular schedule.  Morning is hard-core school time.  After lunch is quiet, personal work.  We follow a 36-week schedule, just like the schools, but we are able to decide which weeks we school and which weeks we don't.  Negotiating those breaks is a family affair.

#3  Everybody needs rest.   My tendency is to do too much and wear my children out in the process.  I have learned to honor their authentic need for rest, and mine.

#4 Get the best.  When faced with several different curriculum choices, I can't count how many times I've bought the cheapest, didn't like it, bought the next, didn't like it, finally bought the best.  Just get the best from the beginning.  Many of my favorite curriculums are not cheap, but I've learned that we save money in the long run if I just get the good stuff in the beginning.  We spend about $3,500 a year on materials for our five children.  That's the equivalent of tuition for one child at a Catholic school, so we're doing fine.

#5 My time matters.  Sometimes the materials we choose from are about the same for the children, but the way they are organized makes a big difference in my life.  With five children homeschooling, I don't have the luxury of spending hours planning every day.  Materials that take little preparation make this lifestyle sustainable.  I've learned to argue with myself when I say, "oh, it'll be OK."  

CURRICULUM

After years of trying lots of different things, these are our tried and true favorites:
Sonlight — history and literature.  Sonlight is so good, so easy to use, and makes my kids happy.  It's easy to be enthusiastic when your kids beg you, "just one more page!"  The instructor guides are easy to use and save me hours of preparation.   My husband and I love the books too.  We have a running joke that the two of us arm-wrestling over who gets to do history or read alouds with the kids.
Teaching Textbooks — upper level math.  We started Teaching Textbooks several years ago with Pre-Algebra.  I have one daughter who excels at math and another who has a pretty hard time.  Both like this curriculum and both like math after using it.
Institute for Excellence in Writing — writing composition.  After watching my poor daughters get lots of practice at writing badly and feeling unable to help them, we stumbled upon this writing approach.  In one year their writing has gone from poor to very good.
The Idaho Adventure — Idaho history.  State history is important to me because the history of Idaho is the history of my family.  After using two books that were pretty disappointing, we laid out the money for this book and discovered that it was magnificent. 
Sing the Word — Scripture verses set to really good original music.  As part of Sonlight's Bible program, they schedule listening to these pieces.  After a few weeks, my daughters have the verse well memorized and it's a great way to start our day.

We use other curriculum pieces that we like:
Hey Andrew, Teach me Some Greek — biblical Greek.
Christ our Life (Loyola) — catechesis.
Singapore Math — elementary level math.
Think a Grams — critical thinking.
Grammar Ace — grammar.
Simon Peter School Scripture Study — Bible study.
Keyboarding Skills — typing.
Sonlight Science — elementary level science.
Artistic Pursuits — art.
First Language Lessons (Peace Hill Press) — grammar.
All About Spelling — spelling.

And then there are some that we're using, not excited about, and actively searching for something better:
Rosetta Stone — Spanish.  We have found that Rosetta Stone is fine for the first level, but after that its weakness begin to compound.  This year we will try Tell Me More and see what we think.
CLE Chemistry (Christian Light Education) — chemistry.  After two other curriculums didn't work for my teenage daughters, we settled on CLE Chemistry and it's getting the job done, but nobody is raving about how much they love Chemistry. 

Finish Line Collapse

Last night my ten-year-old twins came running in, "Christina and beefy have bloat!"  I hurried out. One look at beefy and I could tell he was fine, but I wasn't sure about Christina.  I walked her while the twins ran for my husband.  After a few minutes of walking, we decided she just looked full, not bloated.  We are so sensitive right now.

Today we officially end the 2010-2011 school year.   Rather than bursting strong across the finish line, it feels more like stumbling and collapsing right on top of it.  We have gone straight for nine weeks and that wears us all out.  There is fun stuff in our curriculum, right up to the end, but I think we all get tired of it and just want to be done.

Now we have three weeks off before starting "next year."  We already have all the books sitting on the shelf and I get three leisurely weeks to get everything organized.  I enjoy this planning time the most, I think.  I get to go through new books, figure it all out, and set up the schedule.  Plus, nobody'll be asking me questions or to correct their work.  That's probably what I like the best.

My older daughters will be studying Christian history.  They'll be reading novels I know of, but have never read: Jean Eyre, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde, Pride & Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, Treasure Island.  Plus I'm swapping in some classic autobiographies: St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius Loyola, and Dorothy Day.  I wish I could read everything with them.

Coming to the End

The baby chicks seem to have quadrupled in size at two weeks old.  They are growing so fast.  We opened up the other end of the brooder to give them more space.  We may be pushing it to go four weeks before moving them to shed outside.  They are easier to take care of in the garage than outside so we'll wait as long as we can, but they get more flighty when they are packed too tightly and these cardboard boxes can't grow any bigger to give them more space.

Yesterday I made cheese #58, a colby.  The process is smooth in my head, I remember all the steps without looking, but I still messed it up by heating the curds too quickly.  Dang.  Hopefully it will still turn out good.

Our cheeses have flavor comparable to the expensive "specialty" cheese at the store, even the mild ones.  The flavor isn't strong, but it's well developed.  My husband has been making toast with melted cheese for years, which I never much enjoyed, until we did it with these homemade cheeses.  Wow, it's good!

Fast food in our lives means food that we've cooked another day.  Today we're making a big pot of stew for the freezer.  When the day has been busy with weeding or cheesemaking or canning, it's nice to pull something out of the freezer and dinner is ready in 15 minutes.

Our children follow a year-round schedule for schooling.  Most of the time they are enjoying being off while their friends are in school, but next week is the last week of school around here and my daughters have five more weeks to go.  I'm anticipating a little bit of a hardship with that.  Even though we only take a two week break in between "years," there is something about getting to the end of the year that even wears me out.  I find myself trying to condense stuff to finish a little early.

Baby Garden

My little plants in their jiffy pellets are getting too big, but it's not quite time to put them outside.   I transplanted them into bigger pots.  These are really big pots, so I put two per pot.  It will give them room to grow for a few more weeks until it's warm enough outside.

My plants in the basement are outgrowing their spot under the lights.  A friend pointed out that the average last frost in Boise is May 9th, so we decided it's time to get these guys used to sunlight.  Yesterday they were out for two hours.  Today they stayed out for four.  Tomorrow will be six, and on until they can go the whole day without being traumatized.

Those big leafy things on the edges are celery.  This is not a good climate to grow celery — they need a long cool season without frost.  Here we've got eight weeks at most between last frost and intense heat.  But, I'm still giving it a try.  Even if they're small, they will be great in soup next winter.

Christina's milk is different every day.  Over the winter when she ate hay, the milk and cream levels were pretty consistent day to day.  Now things are fluctuating a lot.  The cream level swings between a shallow ¹⁄6 layer up to a think ⅓ layer.  Her production has stayed up at 4½ to 5 gallons a day for the last three months, with no drop off as we expected.  My theory is that as the pasture grows, it feeds her so well that her production has stayed up and the cream level is the result of the different stuff growing in the pasture.  We originally planted with a "pasture mix" that had different kinds of grasses and legumes.  Last fall we overplanted with alfalfa.

Tomorrow my two teenage daughters take their first AP test.  They have been working all year getting ready for this test but their teacher (me) is inexperienced and the preparation hasn't been smooth.  Homeschooling has so many benefits, but one of the draw backs is that the teacher is always inexperienced, kind of like parenting.  I pray my daughters don't pay the price for my lack of experience.  By noon tomorrow the test will be over and then two aching months of waiting for the scores begins.

Garden Time

Today we planted celeriac.  It's a relative of celery, with the same flavor, but it grows into a big root like a turnip that you cube up into cooking.  Celery is really hard to grow in Idaho, although I've started some just to try.  Celeriac will have a better chance of getting mature before the heat hits.

It suddenly occurs to me that it's March 10th!  Ack!  I need to get onions started too.

Those lettuces we started in January are big and producing well.  We are regularly eating salad now.

My ten-year-old twins are studying magnetism and did a cool experiment. First they set this up, a magnet pulling a paper clip up but a thread preventing full contact.  Then they put different things in the empty space to find out what could disrupt the magnetic field.  Now that is science!

It has dried out a little and we'll try to get out into the garden today. 

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.

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.

A New Schedule

Today is a good day to make cheese, but we don't have quite enough milk.  Jerky's old enough that we decided to milk all four quarters this morning for the extra.   It filled more than a single bucket, measuring out at 3-1/4 gallons.  Carrying two buckets into the house was a new challenge.  I was a little worried how the cows would handle the schedule change, but Christina took it in stride.  Jerky wasn't quite so accepting, but did fine.

I'm out of sterlized milk and it's time to culture a starter. I started by canning quarts of milk.  30 minutes in a boiling water bath and they are sterilized.  Today I'll culture mesopholic for cheese.

We out grew out little cheese frig and got another.  These are wine frigs so we can set the temperature at 55ºF and the racks allow good air movement.  The red cheeses are the waxed ones — cheddar, colby, and jack.  The yellow ones are italians that dry to a form a rind — parmesan and romano.  My husband pointed out that if I want to make more cheese, he could build a rack and stack these frigs right up the wall.

Those cheeses without wax get mold easily.  I'll wipe any mold I find with vinegar.

Today we'll also churn butter, bake bread, make something for snack like zucca bars or brownies, and then we need to figure something out for dinner.   And our newly three year old son starts formal homeschooling.  It's just read an assigned story, listen to a nursery rhyme, and play with blocks, but he likes having a "schedule" like his big sisters.

Life Without TV

We are successfully getting water out to the cows with hoses. This is a big improvement over carrying buckets. And with the new stock tank, we only have to fill it every few days instead of twice a day.

When my husband and daughter were filling the water it was just above freezing and overcast.  My husband was dressed appropriately but our daughter's internal combustion must have been working well.  Not only was she wearing only a tank top and skort, but she swung her arms around as she waited.  I remember the days when I could have pulled that off.

Most every evening we pause for reading aloud.  My 9-year old's are studying early American history and we just finished Johnny Tremain.  While I read they take turns churning the butter.

With our evenings full of reading, butter churning, and milking, we haven't watched TV in over a year.  When people hear all that we do on our little homestead, they wonder how we fit it all in.  Freeing up those several hours a day the average person dedicates to TV makes it easy. 

Only a few years ago I was a high-functioning TV addict.  I watched regularly but I still held a job. I couldn't imagine going a few days, let alone a week without TV.  Now that I'm fully detoxed, I have to admit that I don't miss it much.  In fact, I don't miss it at all.  I have time for good novels, for cooking great food, and for doing things with my children.  I'm a little embarrassed to remember those hours of stillness, letting my consciousness be lead around by commercial interests. We still watch movies, but commercial-driven TV is a thing of the past.

Valuing the Everyday

Our two rows of plants resulted in 22 pumpkins. Most are decent sized, but not big.  I need to look up the expected size for the variety we used, because maybe these are the size they are supposed to get.  Different varieties grow different-sized fruit.  Or, they might be small because they almost drowned from irrigation water in the low area I planted them.  Today I'll cook one up and see how they taste.

The pumkins had mud on them.  We lined them up under the eve to dry.  When we can knock the dirt off, we'll move them downstairs to cure for two weeks before moving them to the cellar for long term storage.

The homeschool curriculum we use includes lots of historical novels. Some, the girls read on their own and others we read outloud.  With so much handwork to be done, we often combine it with our reading.  Our book this week is The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  My twins get enthralled with the story and aren't happy when the chapter ends.  I've never read it so I'm enjoying it as much as they are. 

One of the twins fills the chicken feeder each morning before opening the coop door.  It's a good system that gives the kids responsibility and spreads out the work.  The down side is that we sometimes deal with emergencies.  This morning our daughter let us know that the food was gone.  Not low, but gone.  My husband had to run out and fill the can with the help of our older daughter.  We buy wheat, oats, and ground corn from a local elevator and mix it ourselves.  The chickens won't starve.

Redirecting my life toward the land has made me face several assumptions I didn't even know I had.  I'm learning things that were common knowledge a hundred years ago, but they are new to us.  These are skills that do nothing more than keep people fed.  Is that the point?  Is it just about feeding or is actually about something more important?  I realize that I've assumed it is for something else.  People are fed so that they will do something big and important.  Or they will support a spouse who will.  Or their children will.  Just feeding seems so small and insignificant.  I've heard people talk about how important parenting is because their children may grow up to great, and I realize that they also think just plain parenting isn't enough, it has to lead to somebody doing something great.

Does God agree?  Is God only feeding us so that one of us will do something great?  Jesus said that God "causes it to rain on the just and the unjust" (Mat 5:45) as a sign of God's concern for all people.  This life on the land is teaching me that it really is about feeding us.  Period.  Nobody has to be "worthy" to be fed or even prepare for something great.  Feeding and loving are the point.  It seems that God is teaching me the value of the everyday, the value of my own life, with or without great things on my resume, and about the abundance and tenacity of God's love.  You'd think it was an easier lesson to learn. 

Education for Fun

We are coming to the end of our three-week homeschool break.  These long breaks are good for the kids and they are good for me.  With four children to keep up with, I miss things in the rush of normal weeks.  These breaks give me time to reflect and redirect.  After nine years of homeschooling, I have grown sensitive to children resisting work.  I used to think it was laziness or being obstinate, but now I tend to think that it's a curriculum problem.  I hate to spend money to replace materials, but it's better than more trauma... and I love to review new stuff. 

Language has been difficult for the twins.  They are such good readers that it seems out of sorts for writing to be difficult.  I got them First Language Lessons and Writing With Ease from an author who wrote a wonderful history series.  It seems simple and easy to do with the potential for really deep learning.  Easy and effective, that's what I like!  I printed out some samples from their website and the twins enjoyed what they did.  So, we dropped the money and got the whole thing.

My older daughters have been using a classroom Chemistry text and are starting to have problems.  I haven't found many options for high school science and have felt stuck with what we have.   But they're having troubles so I searched some more.  I chanced upon a mention of Singapore Science's Chemistry.  We use Singapore Math for younger grades and my oldest used the Junior High level science.  I also found some online video lessons from Khan Academy that we might use to supplement.  We have a cabinet full of laboratory equipment and chemicals, but it seems that whenever we switch, they always need different stuff.  Switching means that I have more homework getting the labs figured out and it's feels messy to me to switch in the middle of the year, but I remind myself that this kind of flexibility is what makes homeschooling so good.  Remember... remember... remember.

The older girls are studying U.S. History with Hakim's History of US.  I've read much of it myself and loved it.  They decided they'd like to add in some additional preparation and get ready for the AP U.S. History test.

As I got the schedules ready for next week, I finally worked in the Kids Greek that the twins have been asking for.

When we started our break, I was so tired and ready to be done with homeschooling for a while.  Now I'm having to exercise will power to wait until Monday.  Watching kids' eyes glisten as they figure something out is one of the most amazing things to witness.   Seeing their look of confidence as they share something they've learned fills me with pride too.  It's so much fun to homeschool!

Wait!  Right before our break, we decided not to start the next read aloud for the twins because it was just beginning the book.  We decided to start it a few days early and be on schedule for the first day back.  I don't have to wait!  We'll start reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond tonight.

(My 13 year old looked over my blog post and said, "Education for Fun!  You call doing a timeline fun?!"  One of the 9-year-olds said decisively, "she calls everything for homeschooling fun!")

Lets Start by Mowing

Our last child fell to the stomach flu.  It was another mostly sleepless night, but the main activity has subsided and she is resting now.  I am the only one who hasn't fallen, but today I don't feel great.  A week of less than my share of sleep and more than my share of work has taken its toll. 

At dinner last night there were only four of us — two children gone, one in bed, and one moved out.  One daughter commented on how empty the table felt, "and this is the size of a normal American family."

I love having a large family.  I love that our house is full of energy and warmth.  I love that we are together most of the time, not pulled away to school or the office.  But there is a downside to so much life — illness takes a long time.  This bug that takes a person down for three days has lasted two weeks in our family.

As our daughter lay in her sick bed, we gave her some good news. The injured chicken starting walking.  This is the daughter who named the hen Soody.  Last night we let her into the garden with the rest of the flock and she held her own.  She still kind of sinks sometimes, but she walked around capably and even ran at one point.  Thank you God that we don't have to kill that chicken.

This was a week off of homeschooling.  We had big plans to get some things finished outside, none of which got done.  With the majority of the family recovered, we started by mowing the lawn for the first time in a long while, maybe since July.  When it's hot the grass doesn't grow as much and I congratulate myself at the lower carbon-load by not mowing.  But it's not hot any more and we waited too long.  The kids cleared the lawn off and then watched from inside while I drove the machine. Only once did my husband have to fix it.  The job was huge.  Bags had to be dumped every pass and the blower filled up several times. 

Our compost pile is in with the chickens.  I read that chickens make great compost turners by digging through the pile.  Not having to turn the pile ourselves is pretty compelling so we have given it a try.  At the least, the chickens love the fresh green grass and they do kick it around.  Next spring we will have to move it out for one year before it's used.  I've heard that fresh chicken manure, which they add regularly, needs a year to compost before it's safe to put on the garden.

We feed our chickens a mix of wheat, oats, and corn that we buy at a local grain elevator.  It's cheaper that the pre-mixed stuff at the farm store and I like that it's just straight grain.  Yesterday when I went out to check on Soody, I noticed that the chicken food barrel was almost empty.  I pointed it out to my nine-year old who usually feeds them and she said, "oh yeah, we're almost out."  So yesterday afternoon my husband and I made a unplanned run for grain.  While we were there, we drove past a livestock shed and I noticed ears sticking out.  I looked closer and discovered several large pigs housed in the shed.  I pointed it out, "look, there are pigs right there and you can't even smell them." Hmmmm.......

Slow Pepperoni

After three days curing in the frig, we dried the pepperoni.  We rolled the meat into two-inch diameter logs and put them on roasting pans.  Using wax paper makes it easier to get them shaped.  The first time we tried, it really was a big mess.  After all the meat was rolled, we put them a "warm" oven (170F) for seven hours.  The kids commented several times during the day that they craved pizza.  Tomorrow we'll run them through the slicer and freeze most.  From the six pounds of hamburger we started with, we'll probably have about four pounds of finished pepperoni.  New pepperoni with homemade Christina mozzarella on whole wheat crust... I'm beginning to crave pizza too.

Things are still slow moving at our house.  The stomach flu has subsided, but energy is low.  Homeschooling for the younger ones today was only the things that we could read outloud to them.  One of the benefits of homeschooling is that things don't have to stop when you're sick, like missing school, they just slow down. 

Another benefit of homeschooling is freedom of movement.  My 15-year-old often moves outside to study when the weather permits.  The gentle sounds of outdoors, the light breeze, and the cool feel of grass energize her and make her feel whole.  I am reminded of the days sitting in classrooms when I was young, longing to be outside.  My longing wasn't to get away from the learning, but just to get outside.  I am so grateful that she is able to satiate that feeling.

We made spaghetti for dinner.  I made pasta for the first time less than a year ago and now I always make it.  It takes about thirty minutes to make a batch for dinner and it tastes so good.  After mixing 2-3/4 cups flour, 3 eggs, and enough water to bring it up to 3/4 cup, the fun begins.  I have the extrusion attachment for my KitchenAid, but I prefer this hand-crank pasta maker.  First you roll the balls out flat and even in a wide setting, then roll them through a fine settling.  Lastly, crank them through the spaghetti cutter.  I just dump them on a towel while I get it all done.  After throwing them into boiling water, they are done in three minutes.  We dined on spaghetti with homemade Christina ricotta and cottage cheese.

Salty Coffee

Weird.  Raising food means dealing with what you’ve got.  The milk and cream from Christina’s last milking tastes like somebody spilled salt in it.  We have milk and cream in the freezer, but it won’t be thawed until tomorrow. So this morning I drink salty coffee or I skip it.  That’s OK.  I can deal with a little salt.

One-and-a-half gallons of salty milk...hmm... I’ll make yogurt and see if it’s OK.  If not, I guess it’s chickie food.  (check out Recipes Page for making yogurt)

Usually home grown food is better than what we’re used to from the store.  The watermelon we ate yesterday was perfection — sweet, juicy, and crisp — picked right off the vine.  Well, the second one was perfect.  The first one had a dot of rot on it, but I figured I’d just cut it off and the rest would be fine.  The knife sunk in and all at once liquid flooded the counter.  I whisked the fruit to the sink and we threw down towels.  After the crisis was over, the twins took the rotten watermelon to the chickens, who swarmed it.

We don’t count eggs anymore.  We used to count daily and be amazed that we just had to go get them.  For free!  But now our chickens are laying a dozen a day and we are having trouble keeping up.  The books says that hens will lay a lot less when it gets winter dark, so I’ve been freezing some.  This morning I found almost 4 dozen eggs in the frig.  Too many.  While breakfast was cooking, I broke 5 eggs in a bowl, beat them, and poured them in a one-cup tupperware.  After I filled three, I took them out to the freezer.  Tomorrow I’ll pop them out and store them in a bag for winter.  We still have two dozen left.  I need to cook something that uses lots of eggs.

Homeschooling amplifies every parenting issue.  I got hit by that stick again.  I found out that the twins have been skimping on the work they do by themselves — only reading half of the assignment, only doing half of their Rosetta Stone, only doing half of their recorder practicing.  I think back to yesterday afternoon and the barrage of “Mama, can I...” that flooded me while being assured they had finished their work.  It makes me so mad (and hurt).

When the kids were in school, if they didn’t do their work, I was frustrated and worried, but not personally hurt.  Now that I’m the one giving assignments, their laziness feels like a personal insult.  I’m not good at separating my hurt feelings from an impartial analysis of their educational situation.  It’s one more instance of my poor mothering.  Now I taste salt and despair.

The conflict unearthed, contrite faces look at me as they go through their work.  I’m still upset, but they are so cute.  Reading about magnetic fields, a simple experiment was explained and they looked at me hopefully.  We laid down two books with a bar magnetic between them and paper over the top.  We sprinkled some iron filings and there it was.  OK, now I’m not as upset with them. 

The Last Day

We milked Christina for the last time today.  Well, until November.  But it feels like the last time.  Seven weeks ago when she arrived, I longed for this day.  Milking our first week was an ordeal.  I had read lots of books but had milked only twice in my life.  I felt incompetent and overwhelmed.  At the end of each milking I remember thinking, "oh my God, I have to do that again in 12 hours!"  I had to hold on for seven weeks and then it would be over. 

But today I don't feel relieved; I feel sad.  I'm not overwhelmed any more.  I've learned how to grab the top of Christina's teet and pull with a satisfying gush of milk and cream.  I've learned to love the taste of her milk, more than I ever thought I would love milk.  I've learned how to make butter, yogurt, ice cream, sour cream, and cheese.  And I've felt cared for by a large brown animal with dark eyes. I've seen God's abundance in the simple grass transformed into milk and cream just waiting for us.  All we have to do is go get it.  But tomorrow it won't be there.

After moving from the dairy and feeding us for seven weeks, Christina gets these two months off to grow strong for the birth of her calf.  On or about November 18th we'll go through our first calving.  Another first.

I've felt so called to this life of sustainable living but it's been a year of crazy firsts.  I'm a city girl.  There's no farm or livestock in my past.   We've read lots of books and had wonderful people with real knowledge who have helped us along the way, but we've been living a sitcom learning so many things the hard way.   Only a year-and-a-half ago this all started when we moved to a house on 1.5 acres.  Now we've got a big garden, 14 laying hens, about 20 meat chickens in the freezer, a milk cow, and a beef calf that will be ready for the butcher in another year.  We've rejected most every disposable that had been part of our normal American life (except toilet paper, good God!).  We've reduced our energy consumption by putting in sky lights, switching to low-energy appliances, hanging our laundry to dry, and learning to live with heat in the summer and coolness in the winter.

It has only been as we've intentionally moved to this life that I've realized how dependent we have  been on modern food systems.  I carried an assumption that since I had money I had a God-given right to the food I bought and that it would always be there — magically, just always on the shelf, ready to be bought.  But the truth is that I was profoundly dependent on the labor and intelligence of others, many of whom don't have the money to eat as well as I did.  I also had become dependent upon the practices that provide cheap meat, food in boxes, and ingredient names that look more a chemistry supply list than God-created food.  Food was a factory product.  I was a committed Christian who had lost touch with with the God who feeds us.

Today I am slowly moving to dependence on God the Creator... God acting on this land, growing things in their own season, as is proper and right for the plants of God's creation.  What I used to see as just plain old land, a source of dust and dirt and weeds, I now see as sacred ground, as life-giving, as a way to find God.

Our family-life has been redirected toward the fertile soil.  My nine-year old twin daughters begin their day by "getting up the chickies."  Early in the morning in their outdoor shoes, they fill the feeder, open the coop door and rush out of the pen.  They love the chickens but are still a little intimidated by them.  Our 15-year and 13-year old daughters have become competent milkers, taking over my spot in the evening milking with their Dad.  Our 2-year old son has learned to play in the yard while we work in the garden right beside him.  He joins his sisters when he can talk them into it and squeals, "Christina," every time he sees her.  Our 19-year old son moved out this summer and shares little in this adventure, making me struggle with how do you be a family member without being a household member.

Our lives have taken on an easy rhythm of caring for animals, homeschooling, cooking, harvesting and back to animals before the night slows the tempo into satisfying rest.  Our family life has become centered around food and family rather than clocks and schedules.  Sabbath rest is an exciting freedom from weeding, harvesting, and cheese-making giving time for lazy eating, movies, books, and music.  But every day is each other.

Even our education has moved into the family.  We've homeschooled for several years, off and on, but there is a contentment in homeschooling this year that I've never felt.  Learning, a life-long activity, has become interwoven into the life-long activity of eating.  After trying lots of different things, we've settled on a curriculum that uses lots of narrative.  Starting our third year with Sonlight, I have fallen thoroughly in love with their approach and don't plan to ever use anything else.  Immersion into history and historical fiction makes deep learning nearly effortless.  After many years of mistakes, we've learned how to push enough to create the excitement of challenge but not the despair of burden.  Watching their eyes spark as they grasp a new concept and their shoulders square as they approach a problem with confidence is a constant source of joy for me.  My husband and I joke that each evening we arm-wrestle to see who gets to homeschool the girls the next day.

Our two months "off" begins.  We can leave if we want, only needing someone to feed the animals while we're gone.  Our milk will come from the 20-gallon store in the freezer.  My arms will rest and heal into a strength that I hope will prevent the carpal tunnel from returning.  Although we are approaching the equinox, it feels like we have entered the winter solstice and will wait for the silent land to wake up.