and I already missed a day.
The biz blog has been keeping me busy, so I missed posting here yesterday. If we’re counting ANY blogging done though, I did blog yesterday, just not here. lol
It’s late and there’s too much to say to recap quickly so I’m going to keep this short. Big news today is that our family is considering a new avenue wthin the biz, a true family project. Everyone is VERY excited. It’s nothing big, but very fun. 
No better friends can be found.
It really is true. If you don’t want to go through too much turmoil with your daughters, get them a horse. It’s very difficult to “run away from home” with a horse trailing behind you. No girlin love with a horse, is going to even consider leaving home when she knows she can not take her horsey with her.
This was advice given to us years ago when we got our first two horses, by someone who had horses all their lives. lol
It’s very true too. Although, it must not be ALWAYS true because my own horse came to me because a young girl gave her up when she left home. But that’s besides the point.
Here’s my youngest girl with her horse. The two of them love each other, very much.
On this day, they were riding bareback. I’m so proud of my girl. (I haven’t even ridden bareback yet in my life time. lol Shhh…. I like the safety of that saddle!)
I like this next one, Julia’s talking and Nikki is listening. What a good pony.
Yep, a girl and her horse. There isn’t a whole lot sweeter!
Halloween is over once again. The kids love to dress up, and truthfully if I were more organized, had more time and more money, I’d be dressing up right along with them!
The kids had fun carving pumpkins while mama prayed that no one would slice a finger off. :p
I forgot to mention in my last post that our black cat has come home!
I have no idea where she was all those weeks and weeks, but she came home and behaved like she had never left!
An angel and a cow, could these twins be anymore different? lol
Elsa went as an English Rider. She cheated. She went as the same thing last year. She likes things to be simple. 
Alesia considered going as Cat Woman, but then changed her mind to Zombie Diva instead.
I told her to look like she’s ‘dead’.
She looks quite alive to me.
Joshua also ‘cheated’. He went as a cowboy, again. LOL
Everyone had lots of fun, and got lots of candy.
Balkenbrij… ever heard of it?
It’s a Dutch recipe. If you were to google the recipe, you’d probably find some that talk about cooking pigs heads and all sorts of yummy things that sound rather appropriate for a post that started out about Halloween. lol However, the Balkenbrij I make, isn’t so gruesome, it’s rather tasty actually.
To make our balkenbrij, I make it very much like my mom did while I was growing up. I cook ground pork in salted water on the stove, add some pork grease if I so desire. This time I mostly added just ground pork as I was using up the last meat we had from the pigs we raised a while back.
Then I boiled the water until the meat was well cooked, making sure to keep the meat well seperated into bits. I also added ground cloves. I have no idea how much, I just go by my gut on it. Added pepper too. Then about 1 & 1/4 boxes of pancake mix. Stirred it up real well, and then spread the mixture out in a pan to cool.
Once it’s cooled, it looks like this.
I almost forgot to snap a photo, so this was after I had already started cutting it out into ‘bricks’ to be frozen.
And now my freezer is stocked with lots of Balkenbrij!
And of course, we HAD to taste test it this afternoon, you know, just to make sure it’s alright. When it’s cut into the ‘bricks’, from there you slice it like thick bacon, and fry it.
I almost forgot to snap a photo of the finished Balkenbrij too, so you get a phot of a half eaten sandwich. lol
National Blog Posting Month
Wondering if I can do this. Today is day one. A post every day for a full month. I’d like to try.
I spent most of my day off and on the computer, trying to figure out what’s up with it! Then a friends dh tried to help via messanger as well. I think it’s running better now, but there’s still a silly error I keep getting when trying to update windows. Errr…
When these things happen, I hate computers and I hate having an online biz. Thank goodness I got most of my online work done on Friday and mostly I just have offline things to finish before our Tuesday evening stocking. It gets REALLY bad when things like this happen when I’m trying to upload photos, and print out customers addresses. That’s never good. lol
I also made some Balkenbrij this evening. If you don’t know what it is, google it. Although when I googled it, just to see what others would find, most recipes said it was made from a pig’s head. We don’t make it with a pig’s head. lol I make it with ground pork. I’ll post a pic tomorrow of the finished product!
We went to a corn maze the other day, even went on a wagon ride. It was muddy, but fun.
The colors were vibrant!
Most of the leaves have fallen now though, after a wind storm the other day. Maybe we’ll get some snow again this year.
A friend pointed out that it had been a LONG time since I had blogged. Ooops…
Life is just so up and down lately that I don’t ever have much heart to write. When things are like this, I do a LOT more writing in my prayer journal then I ever do online. I tend to retreat and reflect much more then to want to share with the world other then little snippets here and there. My thoughts & emotions go back and forth between feeling strong and feeling defeated, and that’s not a place I care to drag my ‘readers’ back and forth from much. lol So I don’t write, and my blog gets neglected.
On the other hand though, I feel it’s important that us ‘humans’ share our trials and tribulations, our ups and downs, with one another, so I have this constant struggle within me where I want to share, but yet I don’t. Usually the “don’t” wins over the “do”. As proven by my lack of presence here.
So, an update?
Well, we’re still here on our 5 acre hobby farm, still trying to sell our home, and still waiting upon that perfect time to go. Our realtor quit on us a while back, with basically no notice. That left such a wonderful taste in our mouths that we decided to forget about realtors and just go at it on our own. Since that time, we’ve had a lot more positive activity then we ever did with a realtor. Plus, we get to say when the showings happen and when they can not. I don’t know how many times I said “No showings in the morning! We’re too busy with school and animal chores!” yet over and over again, they would schedule showings for 10 am. Now, we’ve had all our showings around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, just the way I like it.
Over the past while our homestead has begun to dwindle, sadly. We’ve had one of our cats go missing, and it’s been about 5 or 6 weeks now. Our hope that she may come back is dwindling quickly.
Here’s Elsa with her kitty Serafina cheering her up, while she was sick on her birthday in 2007. Elsa misses her and I wish she’d come home but I don’t have a good feeling that she will. 
A couple of weeks ago, our rooster was killed. We had no idea what happened, we just found him dead one day. I suspected something had gotten after him though because all the hens were hiding out in the hen house but there was no proof of an attack anywhere.
Then the other day, all but one of our hens was found dead and we know it was a mink who killed them. They are such nasty creatures that they leave tell tale evidence of who it was that came and killed the hens. I won’t go into details but I’d sure love to get my hands on that critter. A mink stole or mink coat doesn’t sound cruel to me at all anymore. :p
By the next morning, our last hen had died. I was worried about her and figured she wouldn’t make it all alone.
Amazingly, we’d had most of these hens since spring of 2006! My girls look SO young in this pic!
We had collected our very first dozen eggs July 21st, and here it is!
Our homestead seems so ‘empty’ without chickens. I’ve been truly mourning the loss of them. Not the loss of the chickens individually as we’ve lost one, two or even three here and there over the past 3.5 years. It’s knowing that they are ALL gone, seeing the empty hen house and having NO clue when we’ll ever be able to have chickens again. We won’t buy anymore right now with our home still on the market. Even if we did, they don’t start laying right away so it just makes no sense at this time. Yet, two years in a row we’ve put off getting pigs for this same reason, and now I wish we hadn’t. So it’s a tug of war between my heart and head. My heart and head have tug a war’s quite often.
In other news, school is going really well. I believe this is probably one of our best school years yet, even with all the busyness and interuptions we’ve had. For once, even though our schooling is quite eclectic, I decided that this year I was simply going to revolve the schooling around MY schedule and just make it fit in however I had to, to make it work! And, it’s working! I don’t know why I’ve spent the last 14 years of schooling trying to fit our schooling into some sort of box that seems to work for others when I’ve known all along that our family just isn’t LIKE others. I’ve been trying to fit square pegs into round holes. In the process, I often found myself getting very frustrated.
I’ve actually been feeling that way a bit about Christianity lately. I find that in life, especially in our culture, people are constantly trying to label one another. As a homeschooling, Christian mother of five children, it’s as though others expect that I should be, or am, a certain way.
I am not. I am me. I am not who one assumes that I am, unless they TRULY know me. Even then, often those who think they know me best, still don’t truly know me. Only God TRULY knows me and He tells me He is pleased with me, and thankfully, that’s all I need to know.
We had a party here yesterday, for no real particular reason, just for fun, and just for us, no one else.
Balloon Toss Game
Our party table
The water fight was the biggest hit, and Daddy was the biggest target. :p
Shaylah got REALLY good at whipping that water out of her bowl. lol
Of course the tables turned and got a few people a tad wet too. :p
Josh was ‘double fisting’ it, notice how dry he is compared to his father? lol
Anywho, gotta run and take some photos of products and put them up in the shop for tomorrow’s stocking!
Hope everyone had a great weekend.
This is what our kids do with their spare time.
Catch snakes.
Want to see more? I know you do!
This one’s name is Tiger Lily. I didn’t make that up. The kids actually name them. :p
This next one has attitude! I think they should name it Sassy!
Look at it, sticking it’s tongue out at me!
These are the kind I prefer, the baby snakes.
Snakes all have personalities too. Did you know that?
This one is into music.
He REALLY gets “into” it. Get it? Into it? Ah, I kill myself sometimes. lol
Other times I laugh alone… well, maybe most of the times. Most people don’t ‘get’ my humour. :p In either case, I laugh, and that’s good, even if it’s laughing at myself. :p
Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.
Elsa Maxwell
(such wisdom, and such a great first name too! lol)
Of course, most people prefer THIS kind of snake.
The knit kind. lol This is one Julia made, she came up with the idea to make baby snakes that fit inside the mama’s ‘tummy’.
She likes knitting snakes.
I like her knitting snakes.
It’s much more fun for me then the alternative…
Oh, and I MUST share this last photo. This photo makes me LAUGH OUT LOUD! Seriously!
If you want to get a better look, click on the photo to make it bigger.
One child holding a snake, the others oblivious to the snake and better yet? What makes me REALLY laugh about this? Is that even if they were not oblivious to the snake, they wouldn’t care! LOL
I love my kids.
I know, I know, it’s not ‘technically’ summer but for us, tomorrow our ’staycation’ ends and I’ll no longer have a vehicle during the day. We’ll still enjoy our summer, but the days of rambling the roads are over except when dh is home!
I was going through some old posts of mine and found this one. Thought it was funny enough to share again. lol
Sunday, February 18, 2007
A night on the homestead
At 3:30 am, I was running out the door in red pj’s, hair all wild with a large broom handle in one hand and an ax in the other! lol What a photo that would have made! 
I just fell asleep at 3am. I had been working, and then watched an hour of tv to help me get to sleep. I woke at about 3:15 to Julia tapping on my shoulder to climb into bed with us. We fell back asleep, then at at 3:30am I woke up to Graydon jumping out of bed, and chickens squaking horribly!
Graydon grabed the big flashlight and was out on the master bedroom deck trying to see what was going on in the chicken coop/house. They were squaking in a way that you just KNEW something was in there. It was scary because we’ve found cougar prints around here lately, and one day the chickens fence was pushed down by a large animal and the cougar prints were around the chicken house. The cougar couldn’t get at the though, since we keep them closed in at night in their house.
I go running down the stairs, looking for the baseball bat. Couldn’t find it, so I grabed the next best thing. A heavy broom handle. lol I run out the door, and see the small ax on the back deck, so I grab that and head out to the chicken house. Graydon got out there shortly after me, and I gave him the ax. We head out there, and we can see the doors are still shut, so it can’t be a cougar but there’s definitely something in there, freaking the chickens right out. Graydon cracked the door open just a tiny bit, to try and see what was in there, without letting it out. The poor chickens were all freaking out, trying to shove their heads out of the door. I thought they would all die of strokes, they were so freaked!
Finally, Graydon could see a black animal in there. It was a MINK!
Graydon opened the door to let the hens out of the way. We step into the chicken house, and sure enough, he killed one of our girls. 
I was so mad! I took that handle and tried my best to whack that thing over the head, but he got away from me and I missed. 
He scurried out through a hole in the corner.
We spent the next 2 hours cutting and nailing pieces of 2×4’s to cover up all the gaps in the chicken coop. At one point, Joshua (he came out when he heard Graydon run back in the house) and I saw the mink again. The little buggar tried to steal an egg right in front of us!
I will say, I am not a violent person, I don’t wish any animal any harm, but to me, this is different. That nasty thing could have, and would have killed many more of our chickens if we hadn’t heard it in there. Minks are part of the weasel family and are notorious for killing much more then they will ever need to eat.
Hopefully he won’t be able to find his way back into the hen house again! Joshua’s trying to figure out how to catch the thing. I read online that their fur is worth 82.00 US a piece. lol (no, we won’t kill/skin the thing, as tempting as that is right now).
That was a blast from the past. I wonder if we had Rocky the rooster at that time, if the mink would have even dared to enter the hen house.
Some how, I think not.
On a homestead there is always going to be good days and bad days.
Last year we had one VERY good day, when our little Lacey was born.
What a joy it’s been watching her grow up!
And growing up is something she’s been doing extremely well! Which one is Lacey you ask? The one on the right! She’s getting close to being just as big as her mama, who’s standing next to her. She looks taller then her in the pic, but she is still a little shorter. We believe she’ll bypass her mama in height soon enough.
She’s still not too big to snuggle with her mama though.
However, not everything is so happy here, all the time.
About two weeks ago, the children found a baby bird. Just a tiny little thing with a BIG attitude.
We went to see if we could find the nest, and instead we found three more baby birds. One was dead, and the other had a broken leg. We searched for a nest and couldn’t find one. We couldn’t find parents either and the fact that one bird was already dead worried us. So we took the other three in and searched all over the internet to find info for their care. We contacted the local wild life center and were told that they don’t deal with the song birds because of the time and involvement it would require for their care. We were totally ok with caring for them ourselves, especially once I found out they would sleep all night and only require feeding from dawn until dusk. Phew. I would get to sleep too. lol
With the information we found on the net we felt cautiously optomistic that maybe we could do this. Maybe we could help these birds.
After about 6 days of doing quite well, the smallest one with the injured leg took a turn for the worse, stopped eating and within a few hours he died. It was sad but to be expected.
However, the other two seemed to be thriving and I became much more optomistic that possibly we’d see these two grow up to be well enough to fly off on their own one day. However, just 24 hours later, they too died. It was so very sad to find them. The one, the first one we found, the one with the attitude who talked up a storm to us every time we came near them, died with his eyes open, just sitting as he normally would. It was hardest to see him like that. He was so cute. I love attitude in animals, especially little ones.
Sometimes having so many animals around, when things go wrong which they occassionally do, it makes me wonder if I really want to continue down this homesteading path. Do I really want us to become even ‘bigger’ homesteaders? Do I really want to consider pigs again, and possibly sheep, maybe even a couple of cows? What happens when we experience our first horse death? I shudder to think of it. It’s almost enough to make me want to quit, right here and now, especially when such little ones have just died.
However, I know this is the path we have chosen for our family and whatever path we choose, none will ever be ‘easy’ yet I don’t think any other path could ever be quite so fulfilling for our family as this one is either. So I move forward, with confidence that we are indeed making the right choice, if not always the easiest one.
Rest in peace little ones. You were only with us for one short week, but you touched our hearts and helped us to remember never to take any day for granted.
