my grammy makes her pie crust with oil. i usually use butter in my pie crusts, but this recipe is VERY easy. if you're afraid of making pie crusts and resort to the store-bought ones, i urge you to at least try this one. it's so very simple. and it tastes really good with this particular pie.

CRUST:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup canola oil
3 T. cold water
Roll out between 2 sheets of wax paper.  Remove top sheet and flip onto the pie dish.  Carefully remove the other sheet and work dough into dish to fit.
Bake at 450 for 7 to 9 minutes.  Remove and cool.

FILLING:
1 cup crushed berries
3 tbls. cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
In a saucepan mix sugar and cornstarch. Gradually stir in water and crushed berries stirring constantly until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir one minute.  Put aside to cool. 

When crust and mixture have cooled place whole strawberries (de-stemmed, and point-up) all around the inside of the pie crust then pour the mixture on top. Chill for about three hours.  After chilld, I added another layer of whole berries around the inside of the perimeter of the crust.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Apparently, this recipe is good with raspberries as well. I think that's pure decadence, and since our berry farm has black, yellow, and red raspberries as well, I just might have to try it!

thanks to grammy for the very easy and very delicious strawberry pie recipe. the older boys helped me while adam napped and we all ate it for dessert last night while celebrating father's day with my parents. mmmm mmmm, good! mom and i picked a few more pounds of strawberries this morning (as soon as the farm opened!) and rowan and sawyer just helped me clean and de-stem them for freezing. i'm looking forward to the fresh taste of strawberries in december. or january.

me: "rowan, father's day is on sunday - what special thing should we do for daddy?"
rowan: "um...i think we should get him a present."
me: "that's a good idea. what do you have in mind?"
rowan: "um, i think he needs....a new car!"
(and he's never seen a episode of the price is right in his life!)

later that day...after me suggesting we buy daddy a new fishing pole...

me: "so rowan, would you like to go fishing with daddy this weekend?"
rowan: "yes! can sawyer come?"
me: "yes, but you'll need to share your fishing pole with him."
rowan: "okay. but not with adam."
me: "i can stay home with adam while daddy takes you fishing."
rowan: "no, i think adam should come with us to go fishing."
me: "okay. then can i come along with you guys?"
rowan: "no. you can stay home. you can stay home and make dinner."

i guess i know my place.

until recently, i was one of the ones stating that "christian fiction" is an oxymoron. i felt it was in the same category as "christian music" or "christian television." 

but i was wrong.  lauren winner came to our church for a weekend retreat/workshop a little over a eyar ago, and she suggested authors and books in the "christian" category of fiction. i've read a few and i can safely say that there is such a thing as a great work of christian fiction.

i found a blog holding something called the "christy challenge" based on this year's awards given to christian books - non-fiction and fiction.

here is the definition of the challenge. join in!

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i am also about 50% of the way through my list of books for the spring reading thing, which is due to "close" on the last day of spring - this month! yikes! the warm weather keeps me from reading too much (as do three buys little boys!), but i will report on the books i'm reading and almost finished with at the end of the challenge.

adam turned 1 on sunday. he took his first steps the day before. his first babbling-word is "dadadadada" and tonight, we realized that his first words or phrase is "chick chick chick..." we took our dinner scraps out to the coop this evening, calling "here chick chick chick" like we do all the time. when we got to the coop, he dove down from my arms which is his way of saying, "get me down! i want to be on the GROUND!" i walked him around and he kept saying, "chick chick chick!" going to where the chickens were walking around. over and over.

the chickens win over "mama."

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i've been searching for a pick-your-own berry farm since we moved here. obviously i didn't look hard enough since there is a MASSIVE strawberry and raspberry farm a 5 minute drive away from us. FIVE MINUTES AWAY! and i've been looking in counties surrounding us, not realizing there were acres and acres of beautiful berries right under our noses!

so, right before dinner tonight, we packed the boys up in the van and within five minutes (did i mention that this farm was veryclose to our home?) we were smack dab in the middle of a gorgeous berry farm with cow fields, a few barns, and farmhouses speckled around us.

we had four containers and between kenny and i and the two older boys, we brought home approximately 5 pounds of berries for $7.16. the fields were packed with bright and dark red berries. i was worried about the crop since a friend wrote about a recent trip to a pick-your-own field in a neighboring county and it was slim pickings due to late frosts. we have two huge containers of fresh berries in the fridge. we'll probably consume them by tomorrow or the next day, but we're going back in a few days to get more berries for dehydrating and freezing for winter.

so...hit me with your best strawberry recipes. i have a good strawberry bread recipe, but any muffins, pies, crumbles, crisps, dried fruit recipes...send them on over!

it's what i found after leaving them alone for just two minutes...

yes, the boxes of christmas decorations and the easter baskets with empty easter eggs are still sitting in the corner in our living room. for shame.

this is a great article in yesterday's pittsburgh post gazette.

since bringing our chickens home as baby chicks, we wondered how easy it would be to raise them from such a young age. it's so very easy, as i alluded to earlier. so kenny and i have had a few conversations lately about raising broiler chickens as chicks, and then processing them ourselves for our freezer at the ripe old age of around 9 weeks old.

we eat a lot of chicken, and it would be so much nicer to know just where are chicken was grown, fed, and killed in a "chickene" fashion ("chickene", pronounced "chick-EEn" is my word-equivilent to "humane." chickens aren't humans, so you can't use that word to describe a "nice" chicken killing). what better way than to raise and process them ourselves?

but then there's that small problem of actually killing the chicken. i've heard of a few local farm families that'll do it for you for a small price (cheaper than buying chickens in the grocery!). and you can watch and learn for future use.

fortunately, the chickens running around freely in our yard right now aren't broilers (unless one of them turns out to be a rooster!). so they're safe from the knife. they'll provide us with free-range eggs, and companionship. next year we'll make the decision whether or not to bring home a few dozen broiler chicks.

geez. my bon jovi-loving-10th-grade self wouldn't believe just what i've become in my adult years.

no more plants eaten again today. a quick post as it's been a long evening, already!

a picture of the coop that kenny designed and built. it sits behind our barn. that's the egg collecting door on the right. hopefully, we'll be able to figure out how to get free-range chickens to lay their eggs in their nest boxes, and not around the yard. our country neighbors just laugh and shake their heads at us. :)
 

one of our araucanas. this one is very fond of jumping up on people. it did it for the first time the other night to a friends who was visiting for the day with this family, and then again tonight on my mom. it's quite disconcerting. i'm thinking it's a compliment since we're suspecting this chicken to be the top of the pecking order.


a golden buff, walking merrily along.


tonight, we harvested our first leaves from some heirloom lettuce seeds given to us by my friend serina. the leaves are still small, but it's time to thin, and they're so deliciuos at this stage - packed full of flavor (and vitamins!).

our summer vegetable garden was growing by leaps and bounds. and then...just like THAT...90% of our beans disappeared. we noticed a few of the leaves chopped off on monday, and by tuesday morning, we had ten left of the forty-some plants that had grown to three inches tall.

yesterday, we noticed one of our beautiful broccoli plants was eaten to a stalk...and then i stumbled upon something else growing in our garden: a nest of five itty, bitty baby bunnies. they must be one or two days old now, and they sit nestled under our three strongest lima bean plants. *sigh*

what do i do with my need-to-save-the-baby-bunnies heart, and my newfound love of all things gardening and growing our own food? folks out here would tell us to drown the babes without thinking twice...they're mama could be the culprit of our missing beans plants! however, we've spotted three groundhogs on the premises over the past few days, and they're more likely to eat beans and broccoli than rabbits. apparently. and we couldn't care less for the groundhogs.

kenny sprinkled cayenne powder over most of the plants last night, and nothing disappeared overnight. so the bunnies are staying put for now. until we give in and decide we are growing food, not bunnies.

in other farming news...does anyone have any experience growing rhubarb? i picked some up at our local farm stand a few weeks ago and made rhubarb sauce, which i love. kenny never had it before. i guess it's a taste that one needs to acquire? i'd like to grow it...but don't want to wait years and years to harvest. does anyone know if i could get a splitting from a plant and would it transplant well for a harvest as early as next year?

* THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: the baby bunnies are gone as of this morning. it looks as though the mother took them to a safer place...or the neighbor's cat had a really nice breakfast. *

it's the spring/summer edition of smithical. after several technical difficulties over the weekend, i believe we're finally re-launched! we still have a few minor kinks to work out, but they really are minor, so we're back...minor glitches and all.

more later, but we enjoyed some spring thunderstorms driving home in the car from a pig roast last night. yes, that's what they do here in the country for big parties...pig roasts and corn mazes. okay, we didn't have a corn maze, but the pig roast was fantastic. the boys enjoyed looking at the pig roasting (rowan: "i saw his teeth!") and they even enjoyed the shredded pork (sawyer: "i ate pig tonight!").

thanks to the tip from jack in the comments section way back on this post, i was well aware of the fact that i was missing out on a live performance by martin sexton. but we had a great time celebrating the 40th birthday of a good friend. one of these days i will drag kenny to see martin sexton.

enjoy this day of rest.

i don't know what it is about the evenings that kenny isn't here for the kids' bedtime...but they pretty much suck the big one.

today, however, was fabulous. kenny sent me out first thing in the morning to "do whatever i wanted" so i discovered new roads as i drove, listening to my favorite radio station. then i happened upon the best nursery i've ever been to. rows and rows of perennials, annuals, HUGE hanging baskets, herbs, and vegetable plants (heirloom!). if our garden hadn't already been planted, i'd have walked away with a lot more than i did. i only walked away with $19 worth of annuals - ivy, petunias, impatiens, and a GORGEOUS begonia plant that i just kept potted in our hallway. i want to look upon its glory every single morning as i stumble downstairs for my first cup of coffee.

we had a great rest of the day (except for the fact that we're in the thick of the really big, bad whining stage with the two older boys. perhaps this is subject for a different post altogether, but kenny and i are so over the whineys. when do kids grow out of it? and please, no smart remarks like, "liz, you're 34 and you're still whiney!" i already know that.) and then kenny headed off to bible study. at which point, momma is alone against three boys.

tonight, the two older boys decided that they were dying of thirst. just two minutes after they each had a cup of milk. they were so thirsty that rowan told me, "i'm so sad that you won't give me a drink." i told him that if he didn't whine about it for five minutes, i'd get him a cup of water before i turned out the lights. he succeeded, and he had his water. then he told me that the water made him even thirstier. when i said, "no more water, rowan" he told me that he was sick. and then sawyer said that his back hurt. and then adam decided it was his turn to cry. i gathered them altogether and brought them downstairs. i changed adam's diaper (he was...um...smelly), and told the boys to put on their rain boots. so we all traipsed outside to feed and water the chickens for the night.

at least the chickens have learned that bedtime means bedtime. we headed out to the coop with 15 chickens following us (waddling! they waddle like ducks!) to the squeals of joy from the boys. i put their food and water in the coop and half of them hopped up in. the rest followed us back to the house.

"take two" of boys' bedtime. the older two were alseep within minutes of me leaving the room for the second time but adam wasn't going to have any part of this sleeping thing. and he let me know by his wails. so i did what dr. ferber teaches parents NOT to do...i went and picked him up and brought him downstairs. we sat on the front stoop and chatted for a while with the chickens. then i sang him a few songs, and after 15 minutes, put him back in his crib. he protested all of 2 minutes and was asleep soon after.

at this point, it is about an hour and a half AFTER the boys' normal bedtime. i go outside to check the chickens and they're all huddled in the corner of their coop like good little girls. i lock them in for the night and head back to the house for a relaxing evening hour before my own bedtime.

five minutes pass, and sawyer starts to cry. i go to him, find him alseep and rolling about in bed. i tuck him under his sheet, give him a kiss, reassure him of our love for him (even when they sleep, i tell them i love them...can't hurt, right?) and come back downstairs. five minutes later, another sawyer episode. fifteen minutes later, another one, but this time, he's awake and telling me he needs a drink. i rub his back and he's asleep in minutes.

that was five minutes ago. i'm just waiting for yet another cry from the room. maybe we should skip the soft serve ice cream after dinner from now on?

as i predicted, the warm air and sunnier skies have kept me (and the entire family) outside instead of inside reading and writing. and i find myself having a hard time finding something to blog about. so...do i leave the blog alone for a while and let it grow cobwebs until the cooler air returns, or do i just write about what has been keeping us busy? because what has been keeping us busy is basically what i've been blogging about for...oh...the past five entries.

are you sick of hearing about the gardens and the chickens and my boys? if you are, you are invited to read the next highlighted blog in your bloglines account. because this entry will be no different than the past few. if you're still around, i'm flattered.

last friday afternoon, friends of ours from pittsburgh took time out of their busy lives to come to our home and help us figure out just what we have growing in our gardens. the perennial gardens just have us perplexed. our friends gave us amazing advice on how to treat and relish and enjoy our bushes, gardens, and trees, and identified many of the gorgeous flowers growing in our beds. we feel so much more confident in our ability to keep our grounds watered, fed, and beautiful in the years to come now that we know what we're housing in our soil.

several colors of foxglove, purple miniature iris, white iris, lupin, poppy, and jack-in-the-pulpits are our strongest plants, and are becoming my favorites. i'm waiting for the poppy to break open its bloom...but everything else is opening up. i honestly don't remember half of these flowers in the garden last year.

and our row of peonies? there are literally hundreds of bulbs bending their stems over to the ground, covered in ants. i read that you can cut them when their bloom is full, but not-yet-opened, so i cut and brought a few inside (after is hook out all the ants). they smell incredible. and they are slowly opening up now that they're in a vase.