Our Family Jots and Tittles

Sunday - Blur- As I sit to catch up on some "Tittles" on early Wednesday morning, I think back to Sunday and it is a total blur. Have you ever had that happen? I am trying to think of what happened that day...reaching deep reaching deep in the recess of my noggin'..........nothing but "fog" resides there. I HATE that!
(Update - Now I remember something...we ate the last of the oatmeal pie an Amish neighbor brought by for us, as "a thank you" for helping them a couple weeks ago. Do you think the white flour and sugar put my brain into a coma? I must say...it was tasty though! You don't think there was lard in that crust do you?????)

Monday- Check Marks on the List - Today was such an exciting day. It seemed like we just nailed down lots of little things that have been in conversation for a long time now. Not finished these things, mind you, but started them. It is the next best feeling to finishing them! Here are couple of those things.

1. We went to an Amish neighbor and put money down on a 12 x 32 shed which will act as our new pantry. It will sit on top of our new root cellar and cold room. (We will post on it when we have pictures to show.) We had seen and talked with him about it before, but I got to stand in one he had on the property thatw as already built....Oooohhhh it was NICE! A huge upgrade from our current 8x20 car trailer we have been using for a year.

2. Decided on one avenue we will go for income to "bring Papa home again", requested our business license, secured our web address, established contact with our first wholesale account for it. It is a work in progress and will take a couple years to come to pass...but it is a PLAN that has been activated. An object in motions, stays in motion...right?

3. Received our bulk grain co-op order and chatted with friends in the process (always a beautiful thing when you here the crackle of a friend's car rolling up the semi gravel road!)

4. Ordered our stainless maple syrup cookers/waterbath canners that we have been shuffling around to find/build/get. (Hope to post more on that when there is more to tell too.)

5. Received our 50 cheap buckets for collecting maple sap. Unfortunately, cheap did mean CHEAP in this case. Hopefully we will get through our first season with these...but we will have to look for another vessel for collection for next season. Almost 1/3 of them were cracked during the chipped shipping process!!

6. The kids layed the last of our tin roof out for our garden row (to kill the grass and prepare it for an initial tilling). The last bit of the fire pit was moved. Elijah started diggin our second 2o gallon garbage cans for mini food cellar, (as seen here in a previous post) we have a third one on deck to go next to it. They a small extention of our large root cellar project and "in the mean time" method of storing some organic produce we buy in bulk as it warms up. we think they will probably function as our "apple cans" once the root cellar is in place, since we want to store them seperatly, because of the ripening effect the apple gases have on other produce in storage.

Tuesday- Friends, Hats and Cement Block, My Tortilla Master
The Watkins live about 2-3 miles away from us, they moved here the same month we did from Georgia. They too are homesteading and Torah Keeping Believers. She is pregnant with her 5th ready to go any day now. They will be having the baby at home (which has been renovated from a garage in a flurry of activity in this last two months). She is "in the window now", we are excited for the wee one's arrival and will be hosting the kids for a few days (or as long as they need/want) when momma goes into labor. Anyway....we had a nice dinner with them here this evening. The table gets extended so you have to squeeze by to get between it and the counters. (Thats what it looks like at our place when we have company.) It is so sweet to sit and talk with friends. The time always passes so fast...before we know it, we are all yawning and little kids are melting down because it is 3 hours past their normal bedtime...it's an oddly beautiful thing! :-)

Met with someone to talk about cement block for the root cellar. It is going to be more expensive than we had thought. (Isn't that always the way?!) We are exploring alternatives and asking around. Suggestions are welcome!!

Knitting (hats to start) is all the (NEW) rage in our house. We have been recently introduced to the beauty of loom knitting and we are very excited to use to make baby items so many of our expecting friends. (Will post more later when we have something to show.) I love working with 100% cotton!

My Tortilla Master (and assistant):
You gotta love the flour all over the shirt...it is a very realistic picture in action! Elijah has become my tortilla master. He loves doing it and does a fine job at it! Our favorite recipe was posted by our friend Carmen. It has become a staple in our home. Here you also see his number one helper and apprentice, Naomi. She is helping him put them in a towel lined Ziplock back to keep them warm and moist for dinner (which will not be for another hour and half later! It works quite well!)

Wednesday- 'Til Next Time Papa decided to take advantage of the warm weather and rent a rototiller and get to turning up some ground in the back yard. We are planning a very large garden by anyone's standards, but it seems MONSTEROUS to us. :-) I hope we survive it. The 'tiller he got was...less than wonderful...but he was diligent. I was glad it was him and not me! Elijah was eager to help and Hailey even gave it a whirl. It was the little kids job to chase the chickens out of the garden (we will have to secure them before seed goes into the ground!) As they were stealing our worms! Most of the while, I stayed inside and finished a baby quilt. (I am hoping to finish the next one this week.) It was only a dent in what needs to be done, but it is a start! Equipment would be SO nice!! Here are Hailey and Elijah, I can't believe we didn;t get pictures of Papa! Next time..we're not done yet!

Thursday- Makin' Hamentashen
The kids and I had fun making Hamentashin today. We made three batches! Apricot, strawberry and aprocot chocolate chip. That was LOT of cookies. They require rolling and cutting out and filling, but its worth it. Gideon, Naomi and Eliana, each ogt to work with momma to make tehir own batch. We had the help of Hailey and Elijah to speed along the rolling and cutting stages of it - which was a real blessing! One tray got a little darker than we liked, so we had to "take care of those". :-) It was a family fun day.

Friday- Preparation Day The kids were so excited about Purim that we were done with all our Shabbat Preparations before noon! We ate (a celebratory) lunch and read some books out side and even went for a walk 'til daddy got home (and we started getting the puppet show stuff ready). Like all my kids, Chazaq LOVES the outdoors. We put him in the farm stroller (which has become cracked, ductaped, stained and she is not looking pretty. Back in the day, I would not be caught dead with my baby in that stroller. Man, have things changed! We bought a little cheap one for "public", but it is so small and rinky dink. We rarely use it. The "farm stroller's" days are numbered though, we have used it hard. If left unattended, our Beagal confuses the wheels for a fire hydrant -without fail and 3 of the 4 barn cats think it is their personal chariot.) Anyway - back to the walk.... We started to see green buds emerging from some plants and we snacked on all the rose hips we could find on our walk (we some rose bushes that line the road on our property) That was a tasty foraging treat! For our "picnic lunch" out doors, we had ants on a log, milk and hamentashen. We had roast chicken, steamed carrots, sauteed spinach and chocolate chip peanutbutter pie for dessert. We prepared muffins for breakfast, soup for lunch and tater bar for dinner for the next day.

Shabbat- Today we celebrated Purim with friends. If you don't know what that is, it the retelling of the story of the book of Esther from the Bible. Unlike the other Biblical feasts, this one is not commanded by YHVH, it was decalred by one of the main characters in the Story, Morichai. But we enjoy celebrating it as it is a wonderful reminder ot YHVH's faithfulness to His people and His people's faithfulness to Him. This holiday is a light hearted one full of meriment, comedy and joy. We like to celebrate it by acting out the story in various ways. This year, we re-did a puppet show we wrote a couple years ago. My kids made 3 pointed paper hats for everyone and all the kids decorated them with crayons and colored pencils. They got to play with the puppets after the show. We got it on video if you would like to watch it (its run time is about 25 minutes). we also had surprise company that day, Troy and Genie, the former owners of our farm. We keep in touch every so often and they like to surprise us with visits, and we like to receive them. They arrived after the show, but got to join us for cookies, fellowship, and dinner. It was a good day!

This post was shared on the Homestead Barn Hop