Makin' butter

For numerous reasons that I won't get into in this blog, our family was on the search for *REAL* milk for quite a while. We joined a food co-op in the hopes of having access to fresh, raw milk, but the co-op was just starting out and didn't have enough people at that time to make the minimum order from the farm. We're still in the co-op, but just couldn't get our milk through there, so our search continued. Then I ran across a family who owned a single jersey cow and was setting up a small cow share program. I was interested in two shares and she happened to have two shares left. We went up to her small family farm to visit "our" cow. I wanted to see what kind of conditions she lives in and how the milk was handled. Elsie is a well taken care of cow with access to plenty of clean pasture. While we were there we also got to meet their barn cats and their chickens (which they ordered from the same place we're planning on ordering our chickens in the spring, so I also took the opportunity to ask her about that). Everything looked great! So now we travel about an hour away from our home once a week to pick up our "Elsie milk", as Catherine calls it. (She calls everything else "other milk". lol)

Several people have asked about the milk and what we do with it besides drink it, so we thought we'd blog about it a bit. When our co-op order comes in this month it will include the vegetable rennet and kefir starter we ordered. We've made yogurt and soft cheeses in the past, so now we'll get to try our hand at kefir and other cheeses. We've made some of the yummiest ice cream we've ever tasted. We'd like to make some sour cream and cultured buttermilk too, but we only have a couple of gallons a week, so we have to stretch our experiments out a bit.

One of our favorite things to do is make our own butter, which we do once a week.There is absolutely nothing like fresh, raw butter! And it is so simple to make. Someone always asks, and no, we don't own a butter churn. Quite honestly we don't need one. We are only using the cream from about 1/2 to 1 gallon of milk, but that's just about the right amount for our family. As you can see from the picture above, Elsie's milk has quite a bit of cream. That's a half gallon jar and the cream has separated from the milk. You can see the line between the bluish milk on the bottom and the yellowish cream on the top running right through the top of the "B". If we were going to drink it we'd just shake the jar, but for butter, we skim off most of that cream and put it in a separate half gallon jar. I use a large jar to make butter even though it will be less than half full because the butter seems to come faster if there's lots of extra room for it to move in the jar. We let the cream sit at room temperature until it starts to sour (about 12 hours). I usually take it out of the refrigerator at dinner time and make butter the next morning. Once the milk has soured slightly, we sit down and shake the jar. That's it. Just sit there and shake the jar. After doing it a few times I figured out that shaking the jar in a certain way brings the butter faster, but it's difficult to describe exactly how I shake it. Within a few minutes the cream will start to feel a bit "heavy" and you'll see tiny bits of butterfat starting to collect in the milk. Keep shaking! Quite suddenly it will look like this:

At this point we drain the liquid. This liquid is "old fashioned" buttermilk. (Not the same as the cultured buttermilk you find in a grocery store.) We save the buttermilk to use in pancakes, baked goods and other recipes, then we put the butter into a small bowl. We rinse the butter in cold water several times as we work all the liquid out of the butter. When we're done it looks something like this:

At this point we have to go through the ritual of *tasting* the butter. I don't know why, but every single time we make butter we all have to stick a finger in and taste it...and proclaim it the best butter ever, of course. lol Then we salt it and put it into a small glass bowl that we use just for our homemade butter. That's all there is to it! I'm sure spelling it all out makes it sound more time consuming than it actually is. It probably took more time to type this all up than it takes to actually make the butter.

Pirate boy!

My pirate name is:

Iron James Kidd

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Ready...Aim...

FIRE!!



How often do you get to shoot *your* mom and get away with it? LOL Cameron wanted to see if we could actually capture the foam dart coming out of the gun on film, so guess who gets to be the target? He shot me in the forhead a dozen times or more before Cameron decided that maybe we should switch places.




MY TURN!! (insert evil laughter here: mwahahaha!)

Unfortunately I only got about three shots in before Cameron actually managed to actually capture that dart coming out of the gun. But guess what. Mom (that would be me) accidentally deleted it from the camera. :-( Way to go mom. Things got ugly after that and it turned into an all out dart gun war...until we ran out of ammo. Who ever thought that shooting at your family could be such fun! And to think I used to dislike toy guns.

Fairy Crowns for Catherine

Catherine was having a bit of a rough spot yesterday. She was trying to dress up her animals and the darned clothes just wouldn't cooperate! It was quickly becoming meltdown time. I spent a few moments helping her get the stubborn fairy dresses on her cats, but I could see that a change of pace was still needed in order to help her transition, so I opened up the craft closet to see what we had to mess about with and she instantly perked up. From the uppermost shelf I pulled down a pile of wire decorations that we had left over from a kid's craft booth at a festival a couple of years ago and we spent quite a while making crowns for Catherine and all of her favorite stuffies. If Catherine could read this she'd be correcting me at the moment because they aren't just crowns, they're *fairy* crowns! They simply *must* be *fairy* crowns because EVERYTHING is fairy related at our house right now. lol

Thanks to an RPG called Faery's Tale that several of the kids in our homeschool group have been playing, my kids have been fairy crazy for the last couple of months. We've had fairy movie marathons where we watched any movie we could think of with a fairy or fairies in it. (Labyrinth, Fairies, Fern Gulley, The Last Unicorn...) We've read several books, both old and new, about fairies and while looking for new ones at the library we found a cute little series called The Fairy Chronicles. It's about a group of young (mortal) girls who find out they have fairy powers and can use them to create change in the world. My 10 year old was elated to find that one of the characters is even homeschooled! (Not unschooled, but we'll take it.) I pulled out my old copies of Brian Froud's fairy book and other books that had been in storage until now nad got to share some of my favorite fairy stuff from when I was a kid with my kids. We've also been reading lots of fairy lore and myths, looking up information on "real" fairies and other little people, searching online for places around the world where people claim to have seen fairies and other such creatures, and more...all because of an RPG. Just one more example of delight driven learning in action!

Monarchs

We're raising monarchs again this year and it's the first time we've ever had any trouble with them. A couple of them died just as they were changing into chrysalids and several of the smaller caterpillars just didn't seem to thrive. We've done this several times in the past and only had one that didn't make it in all of that time. I can only guess why so many of them have died this year. I can rule out things like pesticides because we harvest them from our own land and we don't use pesticides, so I suspect it has something to do with the unusually hot, dry weather we've had this summer.

These pics are of the first two that emerged from the latest batch. We could tell that the first one was ready to emerge, so we sat around with the camera in hand waiting to catch it on "film". (It's a digital camera but you get the idea.) I got up to answer the phone at one point and just as I hung up my son started yelling "It's out! It's out!" I can't turn my back for a second. lol Then as we were sitting there watching the first one dry we looked over just in time to see the second one crawling out. You can see in the second pic that it's wings are still crumpled and wet. Missed capturing it on film again. The others since then have all emerged while we weren't at home or while we were sleeping, so we haven't managed to video tape a single one. We're down to two now, so it's not likely that we'll document them emerging this year either. But that's okay. We enjoy it nonetheless.

I think it's interesting how we can "raise" so many of them yet never tire of watching them. We sit around them for long stretches of time, watching them eat, sleep, grow, change and emerge. It's just so darned fascinating! One of the most amusing moments was when I got up one morning before everyone else was awake and heard a strange crunching sound. I looked all around downstairs for the source of the odd sound for quite a few minutes before I realized that I was hearing the sound of the caterpillars *eating*. It was odd to hear it so clearly all over the downstairs portion of the house. It also illustrated all too well how *UN*quiet it is around here most of the time! We've had monarchs several years and that was the first time I could recall having heard them munching and crunching away like that. It reminded me of the first time I *heard* snow falling. It was very late at night and I was out walking alone when the snow started falling around me. All of a sudden I realized that I could hear a faint tinkling sound when the flakes landed on the snow that was already on the ground. I stopped and just *listened* for several minutes. Definitely a *WOW* moment. Watching the monarchs has kind of the same effect on me.

"Best Ever" Pizza Sauce Recipe

As much as we talk about pizza you'd think my family ate nothing but pizza, but actually we haven't had it in several weeks. We've been too busy to make it. We just got back from a long camping trip/festival on Sunday and had very little food in the house because I had completely cleaned out the refrigerator before we left. But we did have cheese and loads of veggies from the garden, and we always have baking ingredients on hand, so we cobbled together some of the best pizza we've ever had. The dough was our usual bread machine dough, but the sauce was absolutely killer this time! If only I'd had fresh herbs on hand when I made it....but, alas, my herb garden at the house is only in the planning stages and the pots I have on the back patio have suffered terribly in the hot, dry weather we've had this year. The fresh garden ingredients and explode in your mouth flavor still rated a "Mom, we've GOT to blog about this!" from Cameron and about 20 repetitions of "This is THE BEST, Mom!" from Catherine. Dave even commented on the sauce more than once and said that it would be good on pasta, which is high praise indeed from the man who hates pasta. LOL Okay, enough chatter about how good it was. Here's the formula:

"Best Ever" Fresh from the Garden Pizza Sauce

Saute 1 small finely chopped onion and 2 tsp (or two cloves) garlic in a little oil until the onion is soft. Add a generous handful of grated carrot, one small zucchini or summer squash (grated) and 1 finely chopped green pepper. (I used a large banana pepper for this batch since that's what I had on hand, but bell pepper will obviously work too.) Saute another minute or two then add a couple of bay leaves, 1 tsp thyme, 2 tsp basil, 2 tsp parsley, and 2 tsp oregano. Then add one 6 oz can tomato paste and about 8-10 finely chopped fresh tomatoes and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and sweetener. (I used about 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper and about 1/2 tsp of agave syrup.) It should be pretty thick, but the actualy thickness will depend on the size and juiciness of the tomatoes. We like our pizza sauce really thick so it stays put on the pizza, but if I were going to use it for pasta I'd thin it with broth or water. Absolute ambrosia! (I think we ate half the batch before the pizza dough was done!)

Like I said before, we let the bread machine do all the work for the pizza dough so I made the sauce while the bread machine was running. We use a very basic pizza dough recipe so that we can jazz it up with herbs and spices or whatever, but if anyone's interested, here's the recipe:

Basic Whole Wheat White Blend Pizza Dough
(for breadmaking machines)

1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 1/2 cups unbleached white flour (we use organic from the bulk section of the health food store)
2 cups whole wheat flour (ditto)
2 tsp yeast

Put everything in your bread machine on the dough cycle and let the machine do all the work! We alter this basic recipe by adding herbs and garlic (especially if we're making bread sticks with it). We've also tried things like using beer in place of the water, adding sundried tomatoes and basil, adding chopped olives, and other things like that. One thing I haven't tried yet is adding curry powder to the dough. Curried topping on pizza is awesome but I haven't tried putting the spices in the dough. (Maybe with a caramlized onion and/or roasted veggie topping?)

Something to Do, Boys!

I sometimes love to pick up old children's books because of the different perspective they give on raising children over the last few generations. Sometimes the differences are less than positive of course, but just seeing how many things have changed and how many things stay the same is fascinating to me. Anyway, we picked up a most awesome old children's book at a garage sale a while back that we have been getting a lot of use out of this summer. This particular book was copyrighted in 1916 and is entitled Something to Do, -Boys!: A Book for Wide-Awake Boys. I've tried to google it to see if I could find any other copies but haven't had any success. It is somewhat similar to The American Boys Handbook that has been reprinted and is easily found nowdays, but I think it is much more accessible and understandable without losing the charm of an older book.

The first thing that jumped out at me about this book was the fact that there was only one overtly "educational" project in the book. Only one "educational" project...how incredibly refreshing! It was the very first project in the book and consisted of the plans for making a number dial to help a smaller brother or sister who is "having trouble with number work at school". Yet, at the same time I can see that the editor is becoming aware of the idea that the "educational value" of the projects might be important. One can't help but *learn* something from this book and be *excited* about it, it's true, but at the time it was written there wasn't yet the ovarching educational agenda that is so prevalent today and so the focus of the projects is still on something *fun* to do.

There is such a plethora of projects in the book - from woodwork and metal work to raising various animals, story starters, pictures to color or copy, music, and lots more. Cameron has plans to make the racing sulky and some of the boats because they are similar to the ones he drools over in the expensive Waldorf style catalogs we receive in the mail. We've already made several of the simpler craft projects and played many of the games. The pictures above are of one of the games we played called "scammels". Basically, you take a piece of paper and crumple it up. Then you use a source of strong light (the book recommends playing just after tea when the lamps are lighted *grin*) to project the shadow of your crumpled paper onto a plain piece of paper. Trace the shadow of your crumpled paper very carefully, making sure to get all of the "queer little ins and outs". This is shape is your scammel. Once everyone has a scammel, you fill them in. The game begins when you try to make the prettiest, funniest, or whatever-est scammel. There is a suggestion for using flower shadows to make scammels in the summer. We haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like a good project for one of our nature hikes. There is also a suggestion for having your friends make scammels and sign them as a sort of autograph book. The pictures are of the kids' first scammels (a fairy and a chair), but we've had fun making lots of scammels since then.

Our homestead is starting to take shape!

Here are a couple of pics of our garden taken a few weeks ago...and then yesterday. We have had a very hot, dry spring. We went out and waterd almost daily so we wouldn't lose any of our "babies", but they were still not growing quite as well as I would have liked. Then last week we finally got some real rain and our garden responded by EXPLODING! (Of course, so did the weeds. If you look closely, you can see the lifeless bodies of many of the poor weeds strewn about in the second pic.) But doesn't our garden look fantastic for this time of year! This is not a big garden by my standards. As a matter of fact it's only about half of what it will be next year, but it's the first decent sized garden we've had in several years.

We have had our share of set backs. The hot, dry weather, some seeds that refused to sprout (and other that didn't sprout until we bought plants to replace them!), and the latest - pumpkins that try to overrun every other plant in their path and beyond. We've also had a few territorial disputes with the local wildlife. The rabbits had claimed every last morsel of the chard I was so looking forward to, along with most of the beets, peas and beans, and the deer had begun to nibble on a few things here and there as well before we declared war. I don't mind sharing some of my garden, but when they get greedy it's time to put a stop to it. We discovered an absolutely foul smelling product called Liquid Fence seems to work really well. We haven't had any critter damage since the second application and only a small amount after the first application. We have a lot of critters though, so I have to reapply the nasty smelling stuff every week or so, and it never fails...I *always* get the stuff (whose main ingredient is "putrescent egg" btw) on my gardening shoes. Every single time! I have to leave my gardening shoes on the porch for a couple of days after I spray the gardens.

Before I end this I have to point out the corn patch that is doing particularly well. That was Cameron's doing. He likes to make sure that everyone who comes into the garden sees that his corn isn't just knee high by the fourth of July, it's well over head high! He wanted to plant lots of corn and pumpkins so that he could sell the overflow, and boy did he get his wish. The corn and the pumpkins are both growing like crazy! You can't see the pumpkins in the pics because they are behind the corn and the tomatoes, but we have more than just a "patch" out there. It's more like a small field. We planted a few seeds of five different types of pumpkins plus some mixed gourds. You can't tell from the pics, but we left LOTS of room in between the plants, giving approximately half of the garden space that we had, but the greedy things have taken over their half and then some. And it's only the first part of July! I wonder how big they'll be before the garden season ends. Next year we are going to try planting about the same number of pumpkins but we'll plant them near the crops that will be petering out about the time the pumpkins are trying to take over.

Cameron plans to add chickens next year so he can sell the eggs as well as produce. I'm looking forward to the free chicken manure as a byproduct of this little venture of his. I'm paying a rather hefty sum for the stuff at the moment! We were going to wait until spring to get the chickens, but now I'm wondering if maybe we should get them this year. We will be converting a section of the small barn to house the chickens and will be adding an enclosed pen next to the barn (on the other side from the garden) for them to run. We'd prefer to have free range chickens, but since we live on a busy road and we also have lots of predators like foxes, owls, racoons, and hawks that would just love to get their claws on our chickens and their eggs, we feel a large chicken run is the best we can do. Whether we get the chickens this year or next depends primarily on whether we get the house finished fairly soon, or later in the fall.

We are making lots of progress on the house, btw, but that update will have to wait for another time. We had a very fun but very loooong day today including swimming followed by a 4 mile walk and then several hours on three different playgrounds. I'm tuckered out, but my soon to be three year old daughter (who spent most of those 4 miles in the stroller) is just now getting sleepy. (The 10 year old on the other hand has been in bed for several hours.) It's after midnight now, so I just might be able to get in a good 8 hours if we crawl up to bed within the next hour or so.

Paper Twins

Last week we were outside playing with sidewalk chalk when Catherine decided to just lie down right there on the sidewalk. Cameron asked her if she would like him to trace her and she said yes. They spent the next 20 minutes or so tracing Catherine and then drawing her clothing, hair, etc. As soon as they had finished she stood up to look at "herself" when...it started to RAIN. Poor Catherine was beside herself! "She" was washing away and it really upset her. She stood there in the rain, crying as she watched their drawing wash away.

Then Cameron suggested making another Catherine drawing on paper inside the house. After shedding a few more tears Catherine decided that sounded like an acceptable substitute for the Catherine drawing which had just been turned into colored puddles in front of her eyes. We all went inside and the kids got out the large rolls of paper and colored pencils and began to work on a new Catherine drawing. When they were done she was *SO* happy! (In case you couldn't tell by the light in her eyes in the picture.) We hung it on the wall at the foot of the staircase and she sat in front of it just looking at"herself" for a very long time. Cameron decided that he wanted to draw a picture of himself too, so he took his turn lying down on the large roll of paper while I traced around him, then he drew and colored his own picture and hung it up next to Catherine's. But the fun didn't stop there! They have spent chunks of time here and there over the last week adding to those drawings. All of the space around their pictures are slowly being filled in by smaller drawings, labels, descriptions and diagrams. There are drawings of Mom, Dad, their pets, their house, and their favorite toys, as well as of some of their favorite games like Club Penguin and movies like "Kiki's Delivery Service". Every time they think of another thing that they feel is important enough to be added they get out the colored pencils again and spend another 10 or 20 minutes adding to their creations. It's like an ever changing mural at the foot of our stairs. The drawings have become very important to my kids, especially Catherine. She even had to tell them "goodnight" last night as she was heading up the stairs to bed! (I believe her exact words were "Wait! I forgot to tell myself goodnight! LOL) My favorite part has got to be the word "IMAGINATION" curling out from the tops of their heads though. That just says it all, doesn't it?

If it's Monday, it must be pizza...or is it?

(I'm blogging this topic because Cameron says every Monday night: "We need to put this on our blog, MOM! This one is SOOOOO good! So, here you go, Cameron!)

For many months now the kids and I have been making Monday nights homemade pizza night. I didn't think the kids would ever get tired of pizza! Week after week we made the standard favorites in our household - cheese pizza for Catherine, sausage for Cameron, black olive and mushroom for Dad, and soy cheese or cheeseless veggie for me. Every week we'd follow the same routine. We would come home from our regular Monday classes (swimming and drumming...the only "classes" my kids take) and put the dough ingredients into the bread machine. While the bread machine did all the work we would do whatever it was that we had going on at the time. After the dough was done Catherine would help me roll it out and then we'd each put our own toppings on our individual pizzas and bake them. And every week I heard the same thing..."I love pizza nights!" (from Cameron) and "Yummmm! I love our pizza, Mom!" (from Catherine)

But somewhere along the line someone started to get bored with the "If it's Monday it must be pizza" theme. I'm not sure if it was me or Cameron, but someone decided that we needed to try something new with our weekly pizza nights. A couple of months ago we started experimenting in the pizza department. We still have pizza on Mondays, or at least it *looks* like pizza, but sometimes looks are about all our creations have in common with pizza.

So far we've come up with a few favorites and a few so-so recipes, but no duds. One of our favorites was the cheeseburger pizza with "the works". We've made that one several times because Dad didn't get any the first couple of times we made it. It was gone before he got home! We use catsup instead of pizza sauce and top it with soy burger crumbles and lots of soy cheese. When it's cooled a bit we put all of our favorite burger fixin's on top - mustard, mayo, lettuce, pickles (but only on Cameron's half!), onion, and tomato. Better than a burger imo, especially when the lettuce, onion and tomato come straight from our garden!

Another favorite was the chili cheese dog pizza - a "chef Cameron" creation. Instead of pizza sauce we used chili sauce and topped it with sliced hot dogs and cheese. Served with frosty mugs of root beer, of course!

One of my personal favorites was the Mediteranean bruschetta topping and provolone style soy cheese pizza. We usually have plenty of pizza left over for lunches for a day or two after pizza night, but that night I ate the whole thing by myself!

All of this pizza experimentation started because of an old favorite family recipe. Ever since dh and I were first married 15 years ago we have been making pizza with fresh spinach, feta style cheese, mozzarella style cheese, black olives, and Italian salad dressing drizzled over it in place of the pizza sauce. We were discussing how long it had been since we'd made our "Greek pizza" one night and someone said wouldn't such-and-such a topping be good. The ideas for alternatives to traditional pizza toppings and sauces just started flowing and we started writing them down so we wouldn't forget.

Our next gourmet pizza is probably going to be reuben sandwich style. Or maybe buffalo wing pizza. Or maybe roasted vegetable and pesto. We have a very long list of ideas and haven't decided which one will be next!

We're baa-aack!

There's nothing so frustrating as having a great idea and then not having the time to implement it, is there? Soon after we started our unschooling blog the "outside world" intruded on our little unschooling bubble and demanded to be answered. We received what amounted to an ultimatum from the local planning commission concerning the house that we've been re-habbing for the last few years. Basically, they said "get it done or else". They didn't specify what the "or else" part entailed, but we didn't really want to find out, so we - meaning mostly my husband - have been busting our butts trying to get it done on their schedule instead of our own.

I can't complain too much though. Afterall, before the Planning Commission imposed a deadline *I* was the one saying "get it done or else". (Again, the "or else" part being rather foggy, even in my own mind.) The difference, however, was that my husband could live with *me* being frustrated because *I* don't have the right to take away his permit! lol

While dh has been doing work inside the house, I've been playing in the dirt! I love to garden and plan on growing most of our own food once we move. I put in a large garden this year - about twice the size of the gardens I've had in the past - and I'm at the house planting, weeding, watering, and tending that garden pretty much every day. I'm taking a short break at the moment, but I'll be heading over in a few hours.

Every other week or so I just HAVE to take a break and spend a little time here at the apartment though or it starts to look like a tornado hit the place. It's tough trying to live in two places at once! We seem to be at the apartment just long enough to make messes but not long enough to clean them up. We get up in the morning, get dressed, eat and then leave. Then we come back - often between 10 and midnight - to eat (if we didn't eat at the house), take baths and get some sleep. The next day we will start all over again. It's exhausting and makes me feel very disconnected. It's impossible to feel settled when you can't really call any one place "home".

So, anyway...here we are a few months later and we're still not ready to move in, but we're a whole lot closer to moving in than we were in January! Dh is over at the house today waiting on the inspector to come out and okay the insulation phase of the project. After this we're on to drywall and flooring - the final phase! Woohoo!! I'm still hesitant to set a definite move in date, but I can finally say with certainty that it will be *this* year.

Of all the things we feel we've been missing out on, it has been this blog that we've talked about the most. At least once a day either Cameron or I will say "we should put *that* on our blog!", but then we never seem to find the time to even turn on the computer let alone make any entries on the blog we started with such good intentions. We were talking about what we want to do over the next few weeks though and both of us agree that making time for this blog is high on our priority list. So here we are, back again after a long absence. I'm sure we'll have several more silent periods before we finally get settled in our "new" home, but hopefully not too many. (Cameron's taking a break from drumming for the summer, so we've actually put "blogging" on our calendar in the place where "drumming" would usually be.)