Big bumps in a small world

I thought recently, as I split and stacked firewood that I had bucked up for two days prior, that the homesteading idea is actually rarely anything like glamorous, or maybe more on point, less glamorous than I've seen it depicted now and again.  Dealing with the coming season's firewood can be tedious, monotonous, especially going it alone.  Drive and motivation are provided by precognizing the warmth and security of a hearty fire in the wood stove, our sole source of heat.  The gleaning and processing of food is not too far off the same calculus, acutely when considering the long arc involving the preparation and maintenance of fruit and vegetable acreage: it's a seasons-long process, and it takes an approach that requires labor along the lines of months, not hours.  There's so much uncertainty, so much Grace, so much understanding.  And no small factor of humility: if you think you know some absolutes, you don't.

I like tomatoes, and I pick 'em and eat 'em.  I really do like kale generally, too.  Our ladies in the chicken yard are laying so steadily and in such profusion that they almost make me feel something akin to proud, and I thoroughly enjoy eating the eggs. I thank them every day and try to give them the best that I can.  I also gently handle and spend time with the roosters that are next in line to be processed.  ('Process' being that agrarian euphemism that so gently and subtly covers so much ground.)  I tell them that they're doing great, eating well and growing into beautiful birds. I also tell them that we are soon going to kill them and eat them.  Sometimes this makes me feel like I'm mildly psychotic, but it's the only way I know right now to have an authentic relationship with them.  I don't want it to be a secret; it's important that we are very clear in the presence of whatever God we claim to know.  (Still...it may be a bit weird.)  It's more fair warning than I've ever given any tomato, at any rate.
We have these sheep, too.  I can hardly express the joy I get from spending time with them, and I thrive on being in rhythm with them throughout the seasons.  They help ground me, they share so readily their open hearts, and can even bolster my esteem (typically when my grain bag is full), to say nothing of all they do to nourish and tend the land here.  They're remarkable creatures in my eyes.  Some I have come to know over four years now, which is to say some of the sheep and I have really gotten to know each other.  And so it doesn't necessarily shock me so much as it sends odd tectonic tremors through me when we lose one. Jens (the shepherd) and I spent a couple hours with the flock today, and I surprised myself at being somewhat taken aback when he asked if I felt like one of the elders' time was coming before the next breeding season.  I'd noticed her bag has remained distended beyond the weaning, and that she'd slowed appreciably, she'd suffered mastitis at last lambing; I'd also been enjoying how she's become so much more 'friendly', slower to leave our impromptu morning meetings.  I cognitively know what all these things point to, for the health of the flock, her lambs, her self.  I also affix emotional value to her as well.  As an individual involved in animal husbandry (again), this is to my detriment.
We have a pig that will be ready to harvest in a month or so.  The last harvest experience I had was with our dearest friends, folks whom I love and trust and admire very much, and to my chagrin (literally, I'm sorry to say), the act raised so many questions for me.  Questions that I'd not asked myself in decades.  Questions of dominion, of place in the world.  I ate pork as I ate tomatoes or eggs...chicken, too.  How had I allowed my spirit to slumber, sleeping unfeeling, unfazed, through the high holy act of consumption?  How had I forgotten that for that being, I was witness and complicit in the earthly ultimate sacrifice?  I can blame media or marketing or just about any anesthetic I can conjure, but none of it is the Truth, and the Truth has little to do with 'how' or 'why': Truth, in my opinion, is about the present and exists without questions.  Contemporary truth is that I've held in solemn regard the sheep that I've consumed in the past years, and it's because they have had names to me.  But so did that pig.  So do those roosters.

I expressed to Marcy, coming out of that post-harvest funk, that I needed to speak with some holy people, to contact some shamans, to ask worldly natives about what their relationship is with husbandry, with dominion, with consumption.  I needed some answers.  And Marcy, as only she can, called me out...lovingly.  No one on this planet was going to 'give me answers', and I knew it.  She's right, of course.

In the time since, I've noticed the wisest people don't offer any words.  They listen, authentically, kindly, with real empathy.  Some offer how they feel, asking if I think it'll help.  And without fail, they ask what I'm feeling.

I say I need more time walking the land, in prayer.  In reverie.  In gratitude.  I'll leave glamour to the media.

So many apples

My nice red rosy apple has a secret midst unseen;

You'd see if you could slip inside,

Five rooms so neat and clean.

In each room there are hiding

two seeds so shining bright;

Asleep they are and dreaming

of a lovely warm sunlight, 

And sometimes they are dreaming

of many things to be,

How someday they'll be hanging

Upon a Christmas tree.

This surely has been a wonderful year for our apple crop. Our trees are heavy with fruit just waiting to be picked. We've spent many an hour picking and eating, picking and baking, picking and saucing. There seems to be no end in sight for our apple trees this year, and for us, that is just fine!

Even our sweet little Red Chicken comes for jaunts with us on our picking excursions. She loves to pick up the little pieces the girls throw on the ground for her, not to mention all the bugs and other yummy stuff she finds in the tall grasses. 

We took our haul of over 50 lbs. of apples over to my folks house to process them all into applesauce. This is something we all very much look forward to sharing together. There is a deep-running connection within the collective effort of multiple generations working together, getting our hands dirty, and turning many apples into gallons of golden, sweet, delicious applesauce. 

We had some really wonderful helpers. Both Charlotte and Seraphina had their hands busy washing almost the whole lot of apples while I worked next to them chopping the apples and getting them into the pot for their first cooking.

This is just the first of 5 pots of apples the were cooked down awaiting their turn in the food mill.

My Dad, I love him dearly. He's always so eager and willing to work with me on whatever crazy scheme I concoct for myself. I can always turn to him for assistance, advice, or just venting. He's a man of few words but a man of dedicated service and devotion. 

Here we have over 5 gallons of applesauce! My Dad and I plus Charlotte and Seraphina all worked diligently on processing these big batch of apples within 5 hours time. It made for a long afternoon but an afternoon well spent.

With all the apples we still have on our trees we're able to continue baking through the Autumn season. Pies, cakes, more sauce.....you name it. This past weekend we made the Apple Cake from the story Apple Cake by Nienke van Hichtum.  I adjusted simply by changing the flour from regular all purpose to gluten free and added some oats to the cinnamon sugar topping. I was concerned at first whether or not the cake would come out edible and not just a hard lump of dough. We were all pleasantly surprised at how delicious it was, however a bit dense, adding a bit of cream or better yet, a caramel ice cream, would have made the cake simply divine.

This might just be one of my new favorite cakes. 

If you don't have the book you can find the recipe here.

I hope you are all finding many uses for the apples in your life :)

Mixing it up

Things have been a little mixed up here the last few weeks. Lee has been between jobs so he's been home a LOT more. This, of course, is a wonderful thing. However, he also poses as a distraction to the very new rhythms and routines the girls and I had been working on to get homeschooling underway along with our usual daily rhythms. How ever wonderful it is, it's been feeling a little, well....mixed up! 

Having Daddy home means there are lots more opportunities to drop any type of plans and go on an adventure, which of course, the littles love. Seraphina would be happy to solely exist in her backpack. There are so many wonderful places to visit on the land we live on; tent platforms, streams, fairy ponds, sheep, deep woods, neighbors, and secret passages that lead from one end of the land to the other, each one rich with treasures to be discovered. 

Since any type of  "formal"schooling has been put on the back-burner (for now) we've been taking every opportunity we have to use as a learning experience. Such is our life, really. This is one of the reasons why I so love homeschooling....even if book work isn't accomplished I can guarantee we have all learned something wonderful, crossed paths with some beautiful people, played and laughed. Like this little moment above. We've been researching and connecting with area beekeepers because we wish to have a beehive in our midst. We dream of having one right in the center of our garden, the heartbeat of the space that produces and nourishes our bodies and souls. We hope to move a hive to our home next spring.  I've found plans to make a homemade skep.....they are beautiful. Anyway, this was one of the stolen moments where accidentally we all had a lesson on bees.

Having Daddy home also means that I'm able to spend a bit more energy than usual baking and learning new techniques for our gluten free pantry. My usual crutch has been using an already mixed gluten free all purpose flour. It hasn't been my favorite to work with and the results are usually not very exciting. The taste isn't all that great and well, it's made those of us who aren't gluten free really dislike the idea of gluten free anything. As a result, I took the plunge this week and experimented with a gluten free cookie recipe that blends two different flours as it's base as well as a gluten free all purpose flour blend that I mix myself using several different gluten free flours. The *new* gluten free all purpose flour I tested with homemade cheese crackers. Each new recipe has (so far) turned out to be far superior than what we've used in the past. I now have 5 - 1/2 gallon mason jars filled with my new gluten free flours that will be the foundation of all my baking moving forward. It wasn't easy to stray from the norm. I've always been a bit nervous and unconfident when taking risks in gluten free baking, it's science after all, and I find a bit less forgiving than baking with wheat flours. Either way, it's been a very successful couple of weeks.

Who can resist a golden, buttery, cheesy cracker?

I'm sure when Daddy goes back to work we'll see more of this kind of work but for now......we'll be seeing much more of this...

and this.....

If you're interested in what recipes inspired me, I've listed the links below :) xoxo

 Gluten free all purpose flour

Gluten free Cheese Cracker recipe

* I did augment this a bit by adding more salt, cheese, and dry mustard. My next batch I will use a spicier cheese and a bit more salt, still! Overall, it's a really yummy cracker and I found that the crackers are done at around the 8-10 minute mark rather than 12-16 minutes that was listed in the original recipe. 

Welcome Autumn!

The world is full of color,

'Tis Autumn once again;

And leaves of gold and crimson

Are lying in the lane.

There are brown and yellow acorns,

Berries and scarlet haws.

Amber gorse and heather,

Purple across the moors.

Green apples in the orchard

Flushed by a glowing sun.

Mellow pears and brambles

Where colored pheasants run.

Autumn has peeked her pretty head from under the warmth of Summer. It was a cool and blustery Autumn day here yesterday. Very cool, in fact! The cool day inspired me to break out the slow cooker and have dinner steam away all day, creating warm and delicious aromas of root vegetables and rich broth that made me wish we had the wood stove on! Outside chores were done, the chicken coop was tended to and our yard is now a bit more bare as large plants have been cut back and our outside seating is being collected before it migrates to it's winter storage. The garden still has plenty to harvest; kales, pumpkins, and squashes, and the orchard still has much to give over the next few weeks (even though it was dutifully picked through the day before, you'll see why in a moment!).

With the chill of yesterday I was also inspired to mull my first bit of  homemade cider. Every year as a way to celebrate the Equinox and the Autumn Harvest, the community we live in gathers together to pick apples and press cider. It's a very full day beginning just after breakfast and lasting until supper time. 

Apples were picked all day Friday and first thing Saturday morning. The apple washing began after breakfast and lasted until the final pressing (over 7 hours of apple washing!!!) The first cider pressing began around noon, this is what you're seeing above. 

As you can see (and some you can't even see) there were a TON of apples collected. We had 5-7 folks washing, 2-3 folks working the chopper, 2-3 folks working the press, and 1-2 bottling the fresh apple cider. For weeks, everyone (11 households worth) collected bottles to use for storage.

This was taken after the first 8 gallons of juice were pressed. We bottled just about 75 gallons of juice and ran out of containers for the last 25 gallons. We ended up using 5 gallon coolers for immediate consumption within our main house. Each family went home with about 7 gallons of juice which will ripen and sweeten over the winter time in our freezers! 

It's not easy to turn the crank of a full cider press, it takes a LOT of strength. Everyone present each had their turn at pressing cider from the apples. I was impressed by how few turns I could actually complete (I think, maybe seven) while Casen gave the crank over 100 turns and the gentleman he is standing next to worked the press all day!

We never cease to be amazed of all the glorious gifts we are given. To spend a day so rich and lively with some really wonderful people, creating memories, making cider, working hard, sweating lots, and laughing together. Living in an intentional community certainly is work, learning, loving and growing from each other. It's days like this that remind me completely of why we're here at all. 

We wish you all beautifully colored days and nights that are warmed and delighted by the smells of wood stoves and mulled cider. Happy Autumn!

Homesteading Adventures

This isn't the first time our chickens set us off on a "wild goose chase" to find their eggs. We have many chickens just coming into laying age and our coop, for whatever reason, isn't satisfactory enough for them to lay their eggs there. I think they get a kick out of seeing us rummage through each corner of their run, poking under brush, and peeking behind out buildings just to catch a glimpse of a golden brown orb just waiting to be found, at least by one of us! Lately, no such luck, that is until the other day when Lee found the "mother load"!

Within the chicken run we have their coop (stocked with nesting boxes of varying sizes loaded with straw for their laying comfort) and a smaller coop that one of our broody hens used while she was laying earlier in the springtime. That coop was ostensibly out of commission, so we thought. This is where, after walking past it day after day, all the eggs lay. There were 3 1/2 dozen eggs just laying around, not being sat on, just.....there. Gwen, our broody Mama, was laying beneath the coop sitting on another cache of eggs. The cold eggs were gathered and Gwen's were left as she was protecting them fiercely. More chicks!!! 

Charlotte brought in all the eggs that she and her sister had collected. The initial thought was to just compost them all, believing that they had been in the coop far too long and were all rotten. After seeing how many eggs there were, I decided to just check and see how many were actually no good by sitting each egg in some water to see if it would float (if an egg floats it's too old for eating, if it stands on it's point it's old but still edible, if it sinks then it's fresh enough to eat). 3 1/2 dozen eggs was far too many in my eyes to simply just throw away.

After going through about 1/4 of the eggs I finally had a floater. I picked it up out of the water and as I set it aside I noticed a crack on the underside. Upon further investigation I realized it wasn't just a crack but a pip! There was a baby in there. A baby that was either dead from not having been sat on or was dying now that I just dunked him in a bowl full of water! So, I began to gently open the pip to see what exactly I was dealing with. As I broke open the pipped area, I saw the chick. My heart sank as I could see there was no movement or sound and the egg was stone cold. I opened the egg a bit further and then, shockingly, I saw the baby's beak open. I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks with me so I opened some more and again, the beak opened and closed. Then the chick moved. At that point, I called for Lee to go grab the incubator from the basement, I completely hatched the egg and out popped a little ice cube of a baby chick. I gently unfolded her, wrapped her in a soft cloth, handed her over to my two oldest girls so they could hold her under a heat lamp until the incubator was up to temperature. At this point, I called our neighbor over so she could assist me with candling the rest of the eggs for fear that there were more babies waiting inside those 3 1/2 dozen eggs. After checking, just one seems to have a chick in waiting. I'm not convinced it will hatch as it, too, was stone cold, but it's sitting in the incubator and we're hoping she'll pull through.

This is Milly, short for Mildred which means "gentle strength". She is a little warrior and is as determined to be alive as anything I've ever seen. Minutes after warming up she began to cheep and stretch. Her feathers began to fluff up and she opened her eyes. We kept her in the incubator overnight to keep her at a steady temperature and for her to get her barrings after such a jarring entrance into this world.

I have to admit, I was rather surprised when Lee woke me up this morning and announced that the little chick had been peeping and bouncing about the inside of the incubator. She isn't the strongest on her feet and she kept getting herself in precarious positions inside the incubator. I ran to the basement to get another container to use a brooder. Almost immediately after putting her in her new home she was able to find her balance and get her footing enough to start to walk around. Aside from being quite small and weak (er than I'm accustomed to seeing baby chicks who have a normal hatching experience) she is working hard to figure this whole thing out. She is very vocal, loves when little faces come to visit (in fact, she sits right by the glass and quiets down when she has visitors). Her eyes are bright and she's discovered her waterer. 

I think she's going to be OK!

A side note, here is a picture of some of our sheep that we currently tend to on the land. They are Oxford crosses and are used for meat, mostly. A project over the winter is to make felt sheets with all of their wool that has accumulated over the past few shearings. This weekend we will be introducing a small flock of Shetland sheep to the group. We are so excited! I am so eager and excited to further my crafting skills using wool and we look forward to having a few new ladies to care for and get to know. Shetlands have a warm place in our hearts as they are a direct line to our Scottish/Irish heritage.

To me, it's these moments that make this dream of homesteading so meaningful. Loving for and caring for our animals, seeing the successes and honoring the not so successful. We have a deep love and respect for farming and can't wait to get our hands......dirtier!