Life (around our home and garden)

Hello, dear friends. I hope you are all well.  (Today it seems I have time to put up a blog post!)

We finished school over a month ago.  I say "finished" which really means I was all done, so I ended with the little girls and supplied the older three with a list of what I wanted them to complete for the year (mostly math lessons).  Last time I checked, one of them had finished their list and the other two are nearly there....  and I'm okay with that. 

I have yet to do our end-of-the-year evaluations or testing, so I need to do those sometime soon.... but for NOW I am enjoying rest and summer and gardening.  And the older kids are enjoying sleeping in.  Our teens (Ella and Isaac) really love to stay up late, talking to us and snacking and then head to bed and reading for another hour or two, and then sleeping in until afternoon.  It's summer so I am happy for them but am wondering how they'll transition back to real life in the fall.

Ella finished Driver's Ed in June, so she's happily driving us all around town with her permit, when she's not babysitting, which she loves to do.

Here is what else has been going on around the home front.  We planted our garden late May.  Here's a photo right after planting:

(I'll try to get an updated picture because it does NOT look like this now at all.)
 
Each of the kids chose a crop this year again:
Ella | carrots + romaine 
Isaac | cucumbers + lettuces
Isaias | beans
Adelia | sugar snap peas 
Audra | flowers

They are responsible for caring for their little sections of the garden and as they harvest (and as I use or enjoy their harvest), I will pay them.

In addition to what the kids have going, I added tomatoes.  They have been my favorite to plant for the past couple of years, so this year I went all out and purchased several varieties to see what grows well and what I like best. In addition to my standard choice of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, I also potted two of each of the following varieties:

Cherokee Purple (Heirloom)
Brandywine
La Roma
San Marzano
Early Girl

Happy tomatoes in the garden.

(For whatever reason, in my (very limited) experience, tomatoes seem to do better in pots than directly planted in the ground, so my garden is full of pots of tomatoes.  I had placed some pots in other areas around our patio and back garden, but the ones in our garden space were doing so much better that I've since moved all of the pots into our garden space.  It's a wee bit crowded in there but I'm hoping they'll all thrive now.)

My first bouquet of peonies this spring.  I love them so much!

I decided this year that I wanted to use our back garden (which in previous years has been planted with corn or pumpkins or squash) as a cutting garden, so I did a bit of research and decided to go with zinnias and dahlias this trial year.  Here's a picture of our back garden space all ready for planting (props to Mark, for throwing up walls to hold the dirt):

I purchased my zinnia seeds from Johnny's Seeds in early April, ordering:
Benary's Giant Lime
Giant Dahlia Flowered Mix
Queen Red Lime
Oklahoma Pink

I started them indoors under a grow light and when they got tall enough, gradually introduced them to the outdoors. Then I moved them for a couple of weeks to these pots until planting into the ground:

And just this week, snapped this picture:

(Those are my dahlias in the foreground.  I have two (Melody Dora and Claudette) that are SO happy and one (Cafe au Lait) that keeps wanting to die on me, which is of course the one I was MOST excited to see bloom!  Gr.) 

My zinnias that are about a foot and a half tall now.  Two have flowers already and many are nearly-there.  However, according to my best resource on this subject, (this website: Floret Flowers, and her beautiful book Cut Flower Garden) it's time for me to pinch those flowers and I'm procrastinating because it's so hard to think of removing those precious flowers!  I am assured that pinching encourages the plants to begin branching low and will ultimately produce longer stems and perhaps more blooms. It's on my list for this week.

The other really exciting news around our little backyard garden and farm is that in the nearly-ten years that we've been keeping chickens, we have always wanted to allow one of our hens to be a mama.  We can't have a rooster in the city so we never have fertilized eggs, but occasionally we will have a hen (usually one of our Buffs) go broody on us and we've wished we could get ahold of some fertilized eggs for her.  Well, this year the opportunity presented itself-- a co-worker of Mark's mentioned that she had eggs and we had a broody Buff-- our sweet old Elizabeth-- and so we jumped at the opportunity.  She had been broody for five days already and then we set twelve eggs beneath her.  We marked them with an "x".  (Note: I cringed at the number Mark brought home because I was a bit terrified that all twelve might hatch and we do NOT need twelve more chickens in our yard (!!!)

It was a bit tricky because Elizabeth was sitting in the favored nesting box, so the other hens kept trying to wrangle their way in to lay, but she patiently shared space with them and kept sitting.  She was such a good mama.  She would get up and come out once a day for about five minutes to stretch, drink a lot of water, and eat a bit, and then she'd be back in to settle on her eggs.  A few eggs were broken in the process, so we would remove those and any (unmarked) eggs our other hens were laying. 

A chick has about a 21-day life cycle, so when it had been about 19 days of her sitting on the eggs, we began watching more closely.  It was at this point that she stopped coming out for food or water at all, and we also closed off the back of the nesting box so that the other hens would stop pestering her.  Then we kept running out and checking on her, offering her water and telling her what a good job she was doing, and listening for little peeps. 

On the 23rd of June we heard peeping and saw one little head.  A bit later we saw two.... then three... and out of the seven eggs Elizabeth was still sitting on, six ended up hatching.  They were adorable, poking their little heads out from her feathers!  Audra (8) pretty much camped outside her nesting box for days.  Elizabeth stayed put in the nesting box for a couple of days until all had hatched (she kept sitting on #7 for a full day but then eventually got up and left it, and sure enough, when we checked, the baby chick had died at some point within the egg).

This was her a few days ago: 

It has been so fun for us to watch her with her chicks.  I keep telling Mark that I doubt any family has had as much joy as we have watching this whole process.  It has been such a delight.  She is such a good mama, those first few days, breaking up their food and setting it before them, clucking to them and nudging them to eat and drink and now teaching them to forage.  It's my favorite thing to watch how she'll call them her side and they will duck underneath her feathers for safety or at nighttime.  And also I love this stage (above) of them climbing all over her.  

One more thing before I end this ever-long blog post: Mark and I were able to get away recently (to the ocean, of course; my happy place) to celebrate our 20th anniversary!  I am so thankful for this man.  He remains my best friend and I love doing life with him.  It is a good thing, marriage, and I am so thankful to God for blessing us with the gift of one another and the grace to live out each day of these past twenty years. 

~

Love to you and yours!  I'd love to hear from you if you're able to say hi in the comments.  :)

Garden: growing

from when we planted, just six weeks ago:

 

 to this:

Garden markers

Garden, planted.

We planted our garden one week ago:

Our garden right after planting.  What was green then: Isaac's volunteer pickling cucumbers (upper left), our happy rhubarb plant (upper right), and our spinach starts.

One of the things that delights me these days is an early-morning walk through the garden.  Just so I can peek to see if any tiny plants have poked their heads up through the soil into the light of day.

I seriously love this.

Just two days ago we saw the first sign of green.  Our rows of romaine and butterhead lettuce were taking shape.  Nothing new the next day, but last night we spotted some cucumbers, and by today the sunflowers were also coming up.  This evening I walked through the garden and snapped some pictures:

a row of butterhead lettuce

cucumber

sunflowers.  (how much do you love that little seed right there, tucked over the green plant coming up?)

And so our garden grows.

I'm still on the lookout for our beans, carrots, and the dill.

May poem

Vegetables

The country vegetables scorn
To lie about in shops,
They stand upright as they were born
In neatly-patterned crops;

And when you want your dinner you
Don't buy it from a shelf,
You find a lettuce fresh with dew
And pull it for yourself;

You pick an apronful of peas
And shell them on the spot.
You cut a cabbage, if you please,
To pop into the pot.

The folk who their potatoes buy
From sacks before they sup,
Miss half of the potato's joy,
And that's to dig it up.

~Eleanor Farjeon

Springtime!

Hello friends,

I hope all of you are well!

We are so enjoying this lovely spring weather we're having.  It's been positively summery!  Sunny days, blue skies, flowers all abloom, clothes breezily drying on the line, picnic lunches in the yard, and the kids happily playing outside for hours on end.  *love*  I am so grateful.

My girl with her snail family. {Ew! to the snails!  But I love this girl and her affection for all living things.}

I think we're all much happier when we can have lots of outside time, and while my kids are usually happy to play outdoors no matter what the weather, the rainy days definitely make for much shorter outdoor times.

(This little pile of Salt Water sandals by our back door makes me so happy.) 

We've been reading lots of good books, and I want to update you on those, too.  I will.  And we've been taking advantage of our warm days to get outside and do nature study, so I'll post some photos of that soon, too. 
  

Have a wonderful day!

~Stacy

First day of school

We just wrapped up our first day of school.  We're easing into it this year, so we aren't doing every single subject this first week, but this is what today looked like:

We woke the kids up at 7:45.  (This is the first time we've done this.  Every other school year we've let them all sleep until they wake and then we begin school-- which just meant that some days we were starting breakfast really late.)   This way we can maximize our morning time, which is when we do most of our work.

Breakfast was at 8:30, and Mark had asked the kids to do three things by the time they came to breakfast:
-make your beds
-get dressed
-have a 10-minute devotional time

We hope our kids will have a habit of spending time with Jesus before they leave our home, so we're providing a morning time for them to have devotions this year.

For the little girls (5 and 4):
I set out a basket in the living room containing children's Bibles along with some paper and colored pencils, and we showed them their "spots" on the couches last night and talked about sitting quietly and looking through the Bibles or coloring during that time.

For the older kids (11, 8 and 8):
They each took their Bibles and found a spot to read or pray.  Toward the end of that time I heard Ella singing some hymns from our bedroom (where she'd settled herself) and it so delighted me to hear that early on in our day.  :)  Isaac told me later he'd read the first chapter of Genesis, the first chapter of Matthew, and three Psalms.  Fabulous!  Isaias read the words to some hymns and then prayed.

I nestled in on the couch next to Audra with my Bible during that time, but ended up hearing all about every.single.picture she was looking at, which was perfectly fine with me.  :)  It was a sweet time.

I made pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins for breakfast-, and we also had bacon and hot cocoa (with whipped cream).  I set the table last night and had made some paper place mats for each of the kids, so they were excited to see those and they all ended up hanging their place mats on their walls after breakfast.  :)

Ella's place mat, now on her wall.

During breakfast we read from Hurlbut's and did narrations.  This is the way I've been doing narrations: I've assigned each child a colored bead and then I shake them in my hand and draw one.  For example, Ella's color is pink, so if I draw the pink bead, she begins narrations until I tell her to stop.  Then I draw another bead, and work my way through all five.  Sometimes I switch it up and have them draw a picture or make a little booklet of the Bible story we've read that day, or act it out- but those types of narrations take longer, so most of the time we just do a verbal narration using the beads for "turns".

I keep this by our table for easy narrations.  (Toothpick in a ball of playdough to hold the beads when we're not using them.)

We played some classical music while we did after-breakfast chores, and then the plan was that I would do storytime with the little girls on the couch while the older three finished up their chores.  But Ella, Isaac and Isaias all zipped through their chores so that they could be there, too, so we all gathered on the couch and read picture books from our latest trip to the library.

Then the older three headed to the table to do some math.  They're all doing Rod & Staff this year.  Mark and I decided to limit math time to 20 minutes.  This is to keep their lessons short and to keep their attention focused.  (I'm hoping this will limit the dawdling and doodling and staring off into space during math time.  So this year it's: "Here is your work.  You have 20 minutes to complete this lesson." - and it's their responsibility to be attentive and complete it in the time allotted.

While the older kids did math, I sat with the little girls in the living room and did 20 minutes of school with them.  We put stickers on a big letter A and Adelia and I practiced forming A's.  First we traced a sandpaper letter A and then formed A's on a rice tray, and then she wrote a couple.) 

Adelia is definitely behind Audra in these types of things, though she's a full year older.  Audra has been writing her name (and all sorts of other things) for well over a year but Adelia struggles to make one legible letter- and gives up easily and with frustration.  Generally she's quite too busy to sit still and work on anything for longer than 2 seconds, so that's part of it.  But I can tell it bothers her and I know she lacks confidence, so we're working on her letters, one by one- and with lots of encouragement.

some of our memory work pages

Then we all began memory work.  Instead of the memory work box we've done for several years, each of the kids now have their own memory work binder.  Each binder has a "review" tab, containing all of the things we've memorized over the years, as well as the new stuff we're memorizing.  The binders were a big hit.  The kids were amazed to see all they've memorized, and it's nice for the older three to be able to read along with me as we do so, and Adelia and Audra just felt pretty special that they had binders just like the big kids.  :)

memory work: catechism

Are you familiar with the Clarkson's Our 24 Family Ways?  Mark and I used that as a springboard to make our own family ways.  We used many of theirs but tweaked it a bit- adding some different verses, omitting a few and adding some of our own.  So we're introducing these week by week and discussing them.  We'll memorize verses to go with them for our new memory work this year.

We then worked on a little history- introduced the ancients and did a little reading about the Egyptians, and the kids all chose books from our history book bin on Egypt and looked at them for awhile, and then we were done for the day.

It was just after 11 when we finished so we played games: UNO, Apples to Apples, and a few of the kids started a game of Risk.

Next week we'll add in copywork, dictation, written narrations, science, picture study, poetry, some Shakespeare, notebooking, and geography. (And maybe a few other things that I'm forgetting at the moment.)

It was a wonderfully peaceful day, and I am thankful. Oh, and BONUS: I got all the ingredients for beef stew in the crockpot by 1:00, so we'll have yummy stew later tonight for dinner. 

Not super tasty-looking when it's all uncooked, but give it 5 hours and it will look good!

Ella ran out to the garden to get me some of her carrots for our stew, and she came in exclaiming that this carrot was "fair-worthy" so I took a picture.  :)

Fall!

I know fall isn't *officially* here- and the weather around these parts is decidedly more summer (except for the nights and early mornings) but I decided this morning that I'm officially declaring it fall and decorating accordingly.  Here's what I've done:

-The kids and I made this cute fall banner the other day and I hung it this morning.  I love it because it is fallish but also schoolish.  :)  So that's perfect since we're going to start school sometime this year.  *grin*

-I'm making a yarn wreath to hang on the window frame above the mantel.  I've never done this before and I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm giving it a go.  I'm envisioning something like this (scroll down to see the finished wreath) but I didn't exactly start with a round wreath.  Mine was definitely more flat.  So... we'll see how it turns out.

 
-I went out to the back garden early this morning and picked all of our gourds and whatever pumpkins I hoped Mark wouldn't notice were missing and decorated our window box.

That might be all.  I tried to convince the kids to make me a scarecrow:
 "Kids! {excited voice}  I have a great idea!  You can all make a SCARECROW!!"

And they all just stared at me like I'd gone bonkers.

I think it might be a little outside of their realm of something they want to tackle on their own.  Or maybe it's just that I'd interrupted their imaginary game and now just isn't the right time.  I'll go with that and try again another day.

Happy FALL!

NOT back-to-school activities

Everyone seems to be heading back to school this week.

Not us, though.

We're drying fruit.  (That's school, right?  The girls are helping.)

Our bounty: mostly apples and prunes, but some bananas, blueberries and pears in the small jars

Audra, my early-morning helper yesterday

Adelia and Ella, my early-morning helpers this morning

I have several boxes of (free-to-us) apples and prunes sitting on my kitchen floor ---oh, and in my fridge, too, and in my mom's fridge!--- so our trusty dehydrator is hard at work.

Mark has a hard time seeing any food go to waste, so as he's out delivering mail on his route, and walking through peoples' yards all day, he sees apples lying on the ground, and he knows the people who live there, obviously- so he'll ask them: "Are you going to use these apples?" and well, they aren't. So we've gone out to his route to pick some and my mom and brother-in-law have prune trees, so we've got plenty of fruit!

Homemade fruit leather

God has been so generous to us this season- our garden was more productive than ever, and we've been able to put up so much food, and we keep getting more from others, too.  A couple of weeks ago my aunt and uncle offered us green beans from their garden, and so we went out and picked and after canning it all we ended up with 16 quarts of beans.  Then this weekend they called again and had extra corn, so we got nearly 50 ears of corn, and my aunt had already done the work of husking it all.  What a gift!  So now we have corn in the freezer, too.

 

Corn for the [exceedingly grateful] chickens!

I do hope to post more about school soon.  And next up is the "Part 2" of our chore system.

Oh, and: comments are back on.  In order to try the no-comment thing I have to remember to turn off the comments on each post, which I kept forgetting.  So nevermind that.

Hope you have a great day!
~Stacy

Garden notes, end of July

{Found this in my drafts folder from last week.  I'd forgotten to post it.  So here it is, a week later.}


Two days ago I went out to marvel at my sweet peas and saw aphids.  Little green MEAN bugs.  I cut the stems that were thick with aphids and tossed them, then went indoors to research what else to do.  What else to do is apparently this: fill a spray bottle with lukewarm water and two teaspoons of dish soap, then spray plants.  So I did.  I've noticed that the sparrows are flitting all around my sweet peas lately, too.  And now most of the aphids are gone.  Maybe it was the sparrows, maybe it was the spray solution, but I'm happy they're leaving.

 ***

Isaac's pickling cucumbers are (beyond) ready, and his dill has just been growing steadily and waiting patiently for the cucumbers to catch up, so we canned dill pickles tonight.  I've never canned pickles before so we'll see how they turn out, and perfect it as the years go by.

fresh from the garden

sliced

canned: 6 pints

*** 

We also pressure-canned 4 more quarts of beans tonight.  Have I mentioned that the pressure canner scares me?  I worry about all that pressure and watching it so closely.  So Mark does that.  I just get everything ready for him.  The regular old-fashioned canner?-- that's my domain.  I feel entirely comfortable with that.  So far the only thing we use the pressure canner for is green beans (which I love having as a side veggie for a meal during fall and winter months).

Ella did a second planting of lettuces last week.  I wish we'd done it a month ago, but oh well.  I am so thankful she took the initiative and did it, because it's been on my list for several weeks and I have not taken the time to do it.

We see pumpkins and squash and gourds growing in our back garden.  

Our raspberries are coming to a close- but I'm still getting about a cup or two every few days, so I'm freezing those small batches.

That's all for now.

Sweet Peas

Several months ago I told Mark that one of my goals this summer was to add beauty to our backyard.  Our first big project was our cottage side-yard, and we're still in process on our other big project (picket fence around the garden), but one of my smaller to-do items was to grow some sweet peas up the chicken wire that borders our back garden (containing pumpkins and squash).  I am happy to report that I can now check that off my list.

THEN: These little plants began as seeds on my back porch, and this picture shows them probably two weeks after transplanting.

NOW: Cheery, colorful sweet peas that make me happy.

Canning!

We picked blueberries this week.

Audra picked 14 berries (exactly: she counted) and then declared that I should fill up her bucket while she ate her snack in the shade.  Adelia wandered the row and crammed blueberries into her mouth but not so much into her bucket.  She also wanted me to fill her bucket.  Isaias sat in the shade of the blueberry bushes and ate blueberries the.entire.time.  I did not look at him once without seeing his mouth full.  My stomach hurt just looking at him.  But he was also (somehow) a hearty picker, so I was grateful.  Isaac was hot (it was awfully warm) and picked about 1/5 of a bucket but insisted it was more like 1/3.  :)  Ella picked steadily and cheerfully the entire time and about matched my own picking speed.  She won't eat a one but she loves to pick!

Washed blueberries on the table

***

This morning I was in the garden early, picking green beans and rhubarb.

With the rhubarb, I canned some jam:
4 jars of Rhubarb-Lemon jam, using this recipe.
4 jars of Blueberry-Rhubarb jam, adapting the above recipe.

I've been diligently recording everything in our Garden Notebook this year- which will be SO helpful come next year!- and these jars will be added to what I've already preserved this summer, listed below:
14 jars of Strawberry freezer jam
10 jars of Strawberry-Rhubarb jam, canned
13 jars of Raspberry freezer jam
4 jars of Peach-Raspberry freezer jam
Still to come: more Rhubarb jam and Blackberry jam.  Mmm!

I also canned 4 quarts of Dilly Beans today, using my mother-in-law's recipe, below:

Dilly Beans

For each quart-sized jar:
4 cloves garlic
4 heads of dill
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Boil:
2 1/2 cups water
2 1/2 cups vinegar
2 T salt
*the above will cover 2 quarts of beans, so adjust accordingly

Pour over beans, process in canner for 10 min.

These were my Dilly Bean helpers:

Proud dill farmer, and adder of garlic and dill to jars

Snipper and overall canning assistant, which included encouragement whenever there was a stressful moment.

Oh! And last week we canned 9 pints of green beans.  (Much more to come, judging by our garden.)

Audra, proudly cutting beans (into itty-bitty sizes) ;)