since all talk around our house lately is of fence posts, types of fence, dairy cows and the family sheep herd, i thought i'd begin a blog series on the steps forward (and backward!) we're taking toward an actual, functioning family (hobby?) farm here in our hills of western pennsylvania.

the two biggest reasons to get a family dairy cow and a few sheep in the same pasture is:
 - the amount of grass that we have and don't want to mow ourselves anymore
 - our own family dairy and free wool!

we've been looking almost everywhere for fencing. right now we're still looking for fence posts. kenny eyes trees that line our woods and wonders if they'll be sturdy enough. we've learend that locust trees make the best posts - as they last the longest without rotting in the ground. this is good to know as we'd kinda like the fence to outlast us!

our barn is old and rusty (not rustic - very rusty and is almost a hazard at this point!) so we want to use the wood from it to construct a smaller, more manageable barn where the pasture will be (on the other side of the property from the barn). it will be big enough to have a milking area, and house the animals at night. we'll reconstruct the chicken coop off this new barn. after the new barn is up, we'll burn down the remainder of the old barn. or the fire department will burn it down for us.

then, once we have the fence and the barn up, we need to buy animals! i've been researching what we need to know before we show up at a cow or sheep auction and i think i want to take a dairy cow farmer with me. we don't want to end up with a mean cow or sheep that run from us each time we come to feed and/or milk them.

the pros outnumber the cons at this point in caring for our own dairy cow AND sheep. but here are the "cons" that creep up every now and then:
 - cows do not take a day off, therefore you cannot have a day off. we have to be around to milk the cow twice a day (some jersey cows go down to once a day after their calf is weaned).
 - the vet bills for farm animals are much higher than house pets. i'm planning some bartering. :)
 - we're going to have a LOT of milk if we can't find enough families to share it with. we'd like to share the milk and have the families donate towards the winter feeding of the cow (when they can't graze) or help us milk when we need a vacation day or two.

we are at the very beginning stages of the process. it could be a year or a few years before we're set up and ready for our family farm to start working. all i know at this point in the game is that our cow will not be named betsy. or bessie or any derivation of the name "elizabeth."  she will have a very cow-appropriate name.

and don't say "betsy" is cow-appropriate name. :)

there is a great post up at Homemaking Through the Church Year that lists different home traditions for Pentecost and also thoughtful posts about celebrating Pentecost.
go there now!

we spent pentecost sunday with our good family friends in our old church this morning. there was a baptism and a lunch following the service, so it was the perfect way to spend the morning.

when we returned home we spent the rest of the day doing what we love to do on gorgeous sunday afternoons...spend time in our yard! if we're not cooking out and/or riding bikes at our local beach, you're sure to find us in our yard. and the boys are sure to be with us, when there is water involved.

here they all are helping daddy in the vegetable garden. this picture is deceiving and weirds me out slightly. because rowan isn't nearly that tall, but i know that someday he will be that tall. or taller. he is actually standing on either a hay bale or a mound (our garden rows are big long mounds and the "valleys" are where we walk between them). thos are lupins in the foreground. the lupins went crazy this year. they're gorgeous up close.
our row of peonies, in front of the barn. i think i'm going to transplant some of them to other parts of the yard as these are not seen from the road, and we need more color in other parts of the yard.

the parade took place in a small town a few miles north of us. our house is just behind those hills behind me.

i never knew how easy it was to make your own pita bread until yesterday.

at some point during our first year of marriage, kenny gifted me with a gorgeous book on bread-baking. it wasn't just any book, it was The Bread Baker's Apprentice. if you're a bit intimidated by bread-baking, i recommend you NOT get this book. i had been searching for a good bread-baking book because we were into our first year of marriage, and i wanted to learn how to make all kinds of breads. i had high hopes of my bread-baking skills. but i didn't want to have to measure my skills. i loved the smell of bread-baking, but i didn't want to work too hard at getting that to happen. so the books i was looking at when we'd browse through a bookstore were on the simple-side of bread-baking.  upon receiving this book, i leafed through it and hid it away because i was daunted by the two-day long recipes it included. throughout the first few years, i'd make a loaf of bread that was tasteless or too doughy, or not "salted" enough, and kenny always asked if i used "the book" to find my recipe. my answer was always "no."

but then he started using the book to make these lovely loaves of white bread, hawaiian bread, whole wheat breads, pizza dough, and dinner rolls. i was being totally outshined in the baking department by my husband. so i finally decided to give it a try. it's still daunting. because of the recipes that include starting poolish the night before, which means being a bit on the "organized" side, and i lost that side of me back when rowan was a few days old. but i have read a bit more than the recipes now and i'm beginning to understand how yeast and flours and water work together to form bread. and it's fascinating. so if you're a bit intimidate by bread-baking, i recommend you TOTALLY get this book. :) you'll learn a LOT. and the photos are lovely.

for memorial day, my mom brought over some steaks for kenny to grill. he was craving hummus, so he whipped up a batch and asked if i would be so kind as to start the dough for pita.

"do you mean run up to the friedman's and pick up a bag of pita?"  i asked.

no, that's not what he meant at all. he knows my relationship all too well with The Bread Baker's Apprentice and told me to look up page 178 for the starter recipe and then LEFT ME IN THE KITCHEN ON MY OWN to do his yard work. so i loaded my ipod with some inspirational music and plugged it in and got to work. i cleaned the counters, swept the floors, put away clean dishes, loaded the dishwasher with dirty dishes, and started a load of laundry. i had no other job to keep me away from thebook, so i had no other choice but to look at the recipe.

and it was SIMPLE. so simple that i'm including it here for you to try. i was done building the dough within 20 minutes. it rose for about 3 hours (when we were ready to make it) and it only took 15 minutes to bake the entire batch (the recipe made about 9 small pitas). i was shocked that they actually looked liked pitas, had a big ol' pocket in the middle, and went very well with the hummus. i'll be making these time and time again. and so should you!

Pita Bread

1 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. instant yeast

1 T. honey

1 T. vegetable oil

1/3 to 1/2 cup water, room temperature

In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt, yeast, honey, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.

Sprinkle some flour onto the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should pass the windowpane test and register 77 to 81 degrees F.

Ferment (let rise) at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size.

Roll out 6-oz pieces of the finished dough into 8" diameter circles (mine were more like 6") slightly less than 1/4" thick. Bake in a 500F degree oven on a baking stone until they just begin to inflate. Count to 10 and then remove the breads from the oven with a spatula before they brown and crisp. When they cool (and slightly deflate), they can be cut in half and used for pocket sandwiches.

~from the Bread Baker's Apprentice

we've been outdoors more often than in. the majority of the garden is in (with the exception of the tomato and pepper plants that were eaten by a vole last weekend). we've had a long stretch of hot weather and no rain, so we've been watering the newly planted garden and flower seedlings every night as the sun sets. it's one of my favorite times of day - warm and heavy light from the western sky sun.  color is returning to the yard and so is my desire to redo the front of the house. we've already torn out 6 yew bushes (or evergreens) at the front of the house, and we dream of a big country front porch someday...but that someday is long off, and for now, i will make the front as lovely and welcoming as i possibly can. this year, we'll be planting some flowers on a newly dug flower bed that lines the front bushes:


here's a closer look. at the front left corner is a patch of day lilies and towards the porch is a big bushy plant of lavender. there is a smaller lavender plant on the other side of the porch and then pure dirt in which to plant more prettiness. one reason i don't like these yew bushes is that they house hornets nests each summer. and we like to use the front door quite a bit. we don't like being greeted by several hornets, however.


before moving here, i knew only about hostas and impatiens. i had no clue that there were amazing plants with gorgeous flowers that grew back EVERY spring and summer! yes, i was oblivious to perennials. and i was unaware at how many gorgeous ones there were. it's not a good idea to have a novice flower gardener buy a house with large perennial gardens. because to me, this plant looks like a giant man-eating weed.





when we do yard work, they hang out with us. normally they play on their bikes, or with sidewalk chalk, or run down behind the house to the jungle gym, so they're pretty tired and hungry by lunch on the days we work outside. today, rowan really did stay outside with kenny the entire time and helped him a great deal with the digging and pulling out grass and carrying soil to the new bed. it was fun for me to watch. at the end of their work, kenny let rowan "drive" (steer) the tractor around the yard. i think he was inspired by the 12-year-old boy driving the vintage john deere at the memorial day parade this morning. ahhhh... country-living. soon enough, prom day will be here and rowan will be driving his date to prom in our newly painted vintage john deere tractor.

and at the end of the day, this is what we look like. please tell me that others' kids look just as "rode hard and put away wet" as ours do right before bedtime (or in the case of the warmer months, right before showers and then bed)? they're dirty, wet, sweaty, ripe, but most importantly, worn out and tired.

ahhh...spring and summer. longer days, more energy, beauty, room to run, and happy boys (and a very happy mama!)

it's true. i married a man who used to eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast most mornings out of the week. it's not my cup of tea, so i never really leanred how to make a good biscuit. i tried once, but i think i threw them out before i had a chance to serve them (hard, brittle, tasteless).

i mentioned mary janes farm magazine in a post that seemed to have gotten lost in cyberspace this morning (stephanie, i did get your comment...i'm glad to see i'm not the only one who reads it!), and the latest issue has changed my biscuit-making future.

for tonight's dinner, i made a biscuit that is light, airy, buttery, and flavorful all due to the recipe included below. what i love about it is that she doesn't use baking powder...she uses good old fashioned cream of tartar. her comment about this is that by doing so, she purposefully leaves out the sodium aluminum sulfate, sodium aluminum phosphate, and sodium acid pyrophosphate found in most baking powders. i can honestly tell you i have no idea what that means, but it sounded good to include with this recipe.... 

enjoy!

biscuit buns
makes 16 biscuit "buns"

2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
6 T. cold butter
1 1/2 cup buttermilk

preheat oven to 450.
in a large bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. using a pastry blender or fork, cut butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized chunks throughout.
make a depression in the center of the mix to receive the liquid. add buttermilk all at once and mix just enough to form a sticky dough (do not overmix).
turn the dough out onto a heavily floured surface and pressout to about 1/4" thickness. dip a 2" biscuit cutter in flour and cut out 32 biscuits. on an ungreased baking sheet, stack two biscuits, one on top of another, to create biscuit "buns" so that you have 16 double biscuit "buns."
bake for 8-10 minutes, or until tops are a light golden brown.

*

i made a 3-bite burger recipe to go in between these biscuits: ground chuck, salt, pepper, fresh chopped garlic and melted cheese...a decadent cheeseburger!  so decadent that i also put a huge green salad on the table to balance out the artery-clogging main dish.

...are posted in two different posts at our homeschool blog.

for the past two years, kenny and i have attended the state homeschool convention in harrisburg which happens to fall on mother's day weekend. last year, being our first year, we were excited to have a day and a half alone together since kenny's parents live not far from the convention and love an excuse to spend time with their grandboys, and we were excited to see what homeschooling "looked like" since we were fairly new to the concept and were only gleaning our information via web sites and friends up until that point. i remember feeling extremely grateful for the adult-only time while we talked (and talked, and talked) with vendors about different curriculums. we knew right away what we didn't want (web-based schooling) and we knew fairly soon into the first day what we loved (lots of hands-on interaction).

our time away from the boys both last year was both fun and difficult, but needed. i'm a big proponent of kids-and grandparent time (without parents) for the sake of all parties involved. i love watching the boys with both sets of their grandparents. and i love having time with kenny to talk without being interupted on a minute-to-minute basis. :)

more information will be up at our homeschool blog later this week about the convention and our plans for next year (and the summer!) if you're interested.

at the end of mother's day weekend i'm completely overwhelmed by how much i have been given - a great mom of my own, three amazing boys to mother every single day, and a husband who is supportive and loving and never ceases to surprise me. there are days that i am not deservig of any mother's day celebration, but in reading one of my blog favorites, i recently read that Grace is where we live.

[i meant to publish this last week...never got around to it!]

the past two weekends were gorgeous - weather in the high 70s two weekends ago, and last week, it reached temperatures in the high 80s. even though we played in the the sun as much as possible and enjoyed the heat (oh, how i enjoyed the heat! after being cold since early october, i stayed out of the shade and soaked up the sun), it felt too much like august, and not enough like april. this past weekend, it felt like april. we had sun and clouds, moisture hung in the air, and it never got above the mid-60s.

our yard was already looking a bit neglected. our grass, thickening with color, was also growing longer, and the weeds were three times the height of the grass. the rest of the garden was beginning to grow many (many!) dandelions and we needed to work the soil. it felt like the best way to sabbath.

i love our garden. i especially love that my husband is the primary gardener. i love the idea of gardening...but the work that it takes to maintain a large-ish, organic, productive garden is BIG. i love planting and watering and picking the fruits of someone else's labor. but the weeding? the fertilizing (fish emulsion is not lovely to smell)? the pruning and thinning and...it's too much for me. i lose interest in weeding after only five minutes - especially if they're particularly difficult to pull.

this is the first year we've planted in march (or early april?). we've waited until end of may to plant a summer garden, but this year we're doing a three-season garden. our onions look lovely sprouting up above the hay, and i can tell the peas and potatoes are loving the cooler temperatures and on again-off again rain (they're sprouting).

while kenny did the gardening, i hopped on the tractor and mowed. i love the smell of freshly mowed grass, but each year i get less excited about all the diesel we use mowing the 6 1/2 acres surrounding us. i look foward to the day we build a fence around half of our acreage for a more environmentally friendly mowing method.

we were blessed with amazing weather this weekend. beginning on thursday, we had sunny days and temperatures in the 60s and 70s.  we were able to plant the rest of our "spring" garden (onions, potatoes, peas, and rhubarb), do some mini-spring cleaning inside and outside, but most importantly, pretend it was the dog days of summer and planned a cookout on the (local) beach.

after a morning of baking (strawberry pancakes for breakfast, strawberry bread, and chocolate chip cookies), we packed up our cooler and picnic basket full of baked goods and cooking tools (grill, charcoal, can opener for the baked beans...), packed up the "speed racer," "reactor," "instep trailer", "diamondback" and "adult huffy" into the van and set off for sand and sun.

the boys talk about their bikes using the names that are written on them. when we're on the trail, you often hear sawyer yelling in his superhero voice: "here comes the REACTOR!" that's his bike. the older boys love the bike trail and have been begging to  bike since the first warmish day of the season. this weekend promises to be in the 80s, so we might be repeating our weekend again.

not just one, but both of my sewing machines died this week. and just when i really got the sewing bug. i've been focusing on knitting and organizing over the colder months, and it never seemed enticing to sit in the cold guest room (where the sewing nook is) and sew when i could curl up under a blanket and knit or watch tv, or begin my love of cheesy british mystery-novels. but now, i want to sew. i have boy's pants and quilts and dolls and placemat-napkin sets and curtains all itching to be made...and my beloved 50-year-old sewing machines are gone. the motor on my green machine is fried, and the table-sewing machine's bobbin is really messed up. REALLY messed up.

i am sure that i could take both of them to a repair shop, but truthfully (and secretly), i'd love a new one. one that sews like a dream...one that isn't 50 pounds...one that doesn't wake the dead. i'll even take a new-used one, as long as it was "born" within the last decade or so.

and now my search begins. goodbye "green machine" and "other-sewing-machine-i-didn't-quite-bond-with."