I was having a conversation with my mom today. I was driving to pick up a new animal... more later on that.

"Mom I was driving down a dirt road on my way to Navarre, and there were ruts down the center. Just the center, so that if someone is coming from the other way you both have to go to the right."

"Well yeah." She responds, mom lives in Tn-enough said.

"So I wondered, I had to drive down the big middle of the road. And do they have the big middle of the road to everyone or do some people call it the middle?"

"Everyone calls it the big middle."

"You are sure? Even people up north and north west?"

"Well no they dont but I mean everyone and they dont count."

"Oh so just people like us count. Because we are cornbread and chicken and front porch sittin?"

"Yes."

Glad to have that cleared up.

Can and Can't

Our living room is often full of comfortable blankets and good books, there are art books, pattern books (ottobre), of course the atlas. We all need to know where we are, where we have been and where we are going.


The dining room has 4 pieces of furniture, 3 sewing tables/counters and a 1 large school desk. This sewing table can be stowed but the others cannot.


School table, Tad is working on art in a special sketch book. He is done with math, thus the Math-U-See blocks out.

When mommmy sleeps, Nathalie will tattoo her head with an orange antelope! This is a wear off in 2 wks tattoo... Lovely.

Kitchen

Playroom

Sleeping room.

So can, and can't. I can have an immaculate house and run a homestead well and make the children's clothes. I can have an immaculate house and homeschool well and make the children's clothes. I cannot homeschool and homestead make clothes and keep an immaculate house. So which one goes to the dogs you ask? None of them. Homeschooling, gets first priority. Then the house, clothes and homestead follow. All the livestock are clean, fed, and watered. We pay attention to them and muck out the barn. The weeds ran away with the garden and we have to find a "weed solution" next year. The barn yards, well they could use some weed eating around the barns and some of the buildings are pretty cluttered.

Some days the house is so super clean. Now, the bathrooms (not pictured) are clean, the kitchen as you see is neat. The beds are not always made, there are always Lego's out in the playroom. Today the playroom is a scary mess!!!

I make the clothes because I have an aversion to buying them. I mean I just hate seeing them in store bought clothes when I can make them so well on my own. My mom and sister send neat t shirts sometimes, with different states and attractions or funny sayings. These are fine. But other than that, I prefer to sew. It makes me happy to see them in what I created.

There you have it, I cannot do everything completely with nothing failing. Who can though? I mean unless I had a lot less to do, less irons in the fire. I don't want less to do, I want for us all to have the opportunity to enjoy all of this.

Wait!!!

My last recipe is missing the egg!!! Must add one egg, egg substitute and water or cornstarch (1 tablespooon cornstarch 2 water) in order for these to not fall apart. Sorry about that to whomever has made them!

Granola recipe

Meant to post this by request. This is our granola recipe, well one of them.

1/2 cup butter (can use margarine)
1/2 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup brown sugar or organic turbinado
1 1/2 cup wheat flour
1/3 cup wheat germ
2 cups oatmeal-not quick
1/2 cup coconut optional, replace 1/2 cup oatmeal
1 cup rice krispies
1 cup uncle sams wheat cereal or other wheat cereal
1/3 cup flax seeds
1 cup dried fruit
1/2 cup chocolate chips or butterscotch chips

Mix thoroughly, spread on oiled baking pan or stone, bake at 350 for 20 min. Take out, let sit 10 min and then cut into bars before it sets up too long. It will get hard to get them off of the pan.

Enjoy! My kids would eat these all day if I let them, if you are going to let them eat more than 1-3 a day leave out the flax seeds.

Chickens

These are the children's chickens. We bought 24, but I didnt watch the girl closely as she loaded the box. She wrote my order on box top, loaded in little chickens then charged me. Well so I ended up with 20. 4 chickens short.... Of the 20, 6 were guineas but one has died. They are eating from 2 old cat feeder bottoms and one small box.


The kids care for them almost completely, I taught them how to load them up into the small cage you see at far right of photo, close it up, and then carry the coop out into driveway, sweep/clean floor in garage and put new old boxes, paper sacks or newspaper in bottom of the coop for warmth. Then they put them back in.



We were feeding them in this proper hanging chicken feeder, but they get stuck in it! They can get in, and cant seem to get back out! So they poop all in their food! This other way works better for cleanliness and each baby can get enough eating space.

The chicken coop is a temporary PVC and chicken wire coop, its roving so you are supposed to move it about. Its upside down right now, so the ceiling, chicken wire, is their floor. This isnt comfortable but the boxes make it fine to walk on and its easier to go into the coop this way, step over. When they can fly up a bit and are a bit bigger, they will go to a roving outside yard/house. Right now they need the heat lamp and the warm garage at night.

They literally drink a gallon of water a day, the kids check on it 3 x daily on avg, sometimes only 2 if busy or gone. But they keep them in water! They drink so much Tad found a 2nd waterer in the garden shed today and it is in there too just in case they drink so much they run out. The cat litter box was their idea for a "warm cozy snuggling home." The chickens agree and love it! They burrow in the thick wood chips in there and snuggle up in one heap and sleep. They wont use it if you put it directly under the heat lamp though.

The wood chips are amazing for absorbing, both odor and wetness. Sometimes they spill water and of course they pee/poop and its ick! Yes there is zuccini in there, or was. They ate it all! It was an overlarge one from the garden, they LOVE veggies. And fruit, the goats do also so any scraps are eaten. They dont eat the skins, but every other day the whole coop is cleaned out so the veggie skins dont get smelly or gross.

This is Tad and Nathalie's own project. They have to raise and care for these, they care for the 10 out in the big yard also. They teach them, they can pat their arm and the chickens will jump up. Tad is teaching his 2 roosters to sit on his shoulder when he pats it. They feed and clean them, and when the guinea died Tad disposed of it. I would have, but he said he would so I allowed him to. They do help care for the goats, a lot, but the chickens are their gig. When their chickens have chickens, they will raise them to sell and they have to cover their own feed and rent space from us and then they can sell their chickens.

Bulk Cooking

Her little cheesy toothless grin is cute though she will look at pictures of herself and walk away sad! I am not sure why. She says Tad is better looking than her, but he says the same of her so they are both just low on ego...
Today we did a lot. Yesteday we mowed the whole lawn (which is huge), cleaned up the yard, went to the dump (we have 4 trashcans every 4 mo bc we recycle SO Much so we dont pay for trash pickup at 40 $ a mo! ), and did school work. Oh and some sewing. So today didnt want to fall behind in that trend.

I cleaned out the fridge and made a lot of foods that needed to be made up

This included a gallon of smoothie, photo exhibit 1. We drink this daily when its made.

Made breakfast energy bars on my new pizza stone and man they come out nice! Much yummier, puffy and chewy. Way better than a cookie sheet!!! These are a healthy well balanced breakfast. It has dried fruit, peanut butter, oatmeal, flax seed, whole wheat cereal, honey and a spinach torn up super fine. My kids like spinach, but this is a fabulous way to get in extra. Yes its in the smoothie too. This is one of the best foods a person can eat, fresh spinach.


My kids eat about 2 of these a day bc I stop them at 2, they make a great snack with applesauce or other fruit but the flax seed.... well lets just say dont over eat them!

We did school today as well as a makeup for (I think) thursday. Could have been wednesday. The kids are doing great with their curriculum, the singapore math and sequential spelling are a hit. They are enjoying the unit study written by friend Diana and I am enjoying the ease of it being done for me!

We have brome grass up in our feild! YAY!!! I planted this, well we planted this, in an almost 2 acre area by hand. The goats were not eating the weeds in there, so we planted new after paying a small fee to have it tilled. It is coming up and its beautiful! I will have free food for aprox 8 mo out of the year this way. The goats eat the brome well into winter, bc until snow covers it, its just dry hay that wasnt cut.

Okay so off to finish my bean, rice and spinach/red pepper wraps! These are great to make ahead and freeze. We take out several for quick lunches and once again, getting veggies, protien and grain from one yummy meal.

I made soap

My bars of soap cut up! I know they are not perfect, I spread it too thin. I used a glass pyrex dish as my mold. Frank made some very nice soap molds, but they are large. They are for full batch soaps. This is a tiny batch, I wanted to try my hand at this. It was spread too thin though because I should have used a smaller glass dish.


This was my first batch, it is having trouble setting up. I didnt blend it long enough, this was my favorite smell that no one else likes. It smells as licorice and has oatmeal in it!


This is my 2nd soap, it is anise sage soap. I used blue food coloring to make my kids smile, and what actually happened is it turned purple. Now I should have used wax paper in here. I thought that it would come out fine with just oil but it broke up, the first bar broke but after that worked well.

Pretty pretty.... My kids are in love! I am in love with my lovely cutco knives which I used for this.

I can share my recipe if anyone is interested!!!