Pfffftttttt

The Dad saw a coworkers vacation pictures and all the people in the pictures looked like this.How do you do it? Blow raspberries. We laughed so hard taking and looking at these pictures. They look like your teeth are flying out of your mouth. The best pictures come from a camera that takes continuous pictures. If you can only take one at a time it could work, it would just take a lot longer to get a few crazy ones. We took about 50 pictures and had about 6 or 7 that looked like these.

The Dad was the best at it, he could really let those lip loose.
Spark wasn't able to be loose lip enough so most of his pictures just turned out cute.

Making goat cheese and instructions/recipe

In the spring and early summer we normally have surplus goat milk. Fudge, soap and yogurt are some ways to use the extra milk. Making cheese is fun to make and it uses a lot of milk. A gallon of milk weighs about 8 pounds and will make about 8 oz. of cheese.

Here we are making mozzarella cheese. The milk is first warmed up to around 85 degrees. In order to make curds, and then cheese, the milk needs to become acidic. This can be achieved by bacteria such as yogurt bacteria (ACIDopholus) or using buttermilk bacteria. Mozzarella is not strong flavored cheese and can be made another way, by adding citric acid powder.
The cheese we are making uses citric acid. The citric acid is not an unusual ingredient to find in foods, the diet coke I'm drinking now contains citric acid.

After the milk is warmed up the citric acid and rennet are added. The rennet can be from a vegetable source or from immature bovine stomach (the traditional way). Rennet causes the milk to separate into the curds and the whey.

One half hour after adding the rennet and citric acid powder there is a large piece of white curd in a pot of mostly clear greenish fluid whey. The curd is cut into cubes with a long knife and heated to between 110 and 120 degrees which further separates the curds and whey.
The curds are strained from the whey.

The curd is salted and heated to 180 degrees (in the microwave or in the heated whey), while hot it is stretched to make it elastic like mozzarella should be. The whey can be heated for more time and a thin curd is produced that become ricotta cheese.

This cheese heated longer than we intended as we were working outside and its consistency is similar to mozzarella and ricotta cheese. The finished product was pressed into an old yogurt container and placed in the fridge.

Fun with the dog

Our dog just loves pasta. If we swirl around a piece of spaghetti over her head she goes crazy jumping up and down. It takes her about two jumps to catch it she has such good aim.

Enough is enough!!!

April snow showers bring.....what?

Was this a sick April fools joke?

This makes the seventh month in a row we have had snow.

The last two days have brought over 16 inches of snow and a few inches of rain.

It is pretty, but good grief enough already, it is spring after all

Sometimes he thinks outside of the box

Spark is putting the Reynolds Wrap away tonight and reads the label that says "Trusted since 1947". "Hmm," he says "I wonder why they weren't trusted before 1947"?


After his bath, we all smelled like charcoal after our Roman lunch, he is getting dressed and yells out, "Where is slash"? I don't know I tell him. Not giving up he asks again, and so now I ask who Slash is. He has a ton of stuffed animals and they all have names, I assume he lost one and I don't have a clue which one is Slash. "No.......where...... is........ slash," he says slowly like that will help me understand. He comes out of his room with his underwear and shows me the label. "See, it says made in /." What was really printed on the tag was 'made in / hecho en Bangladesh'. We got that one straightened out and got in a little lesson in Spanish. Now, that is a teachable moment!

A Roman meal

A Roman soldiers lunch was on the menu today. The soldiers had to cook their meals over an open fire when they were on the battle field. A temp of 28 degrees and a brisk wind did not keep us from making our lunch. To make the meal, first we spread a piece of aluminum foil with butter, placed a hamburger in the middle of the foil, put on some carrots, onion, potatoes (soaked in water before hand so they wouldn't turn brown and to have a bit more moisture in the packets so the other veggies could steam), salt and pepper. Think hobo dinner if you ever went to scout camp. Roll up the foil so there are no leaks for the juices to get out. Put them on a Roman fire, we just knew that must have carried a grate with them for the fire. Cook them for about 30 minutes turning the packs over now and then. These turned out perfectly. I have had them before where one side of your potato is burned and the other side is still crunchy. After the packs have cooled for a few minutes eat with Roman silverware, aka your fingers.

With the cold weather it was decided that we must be in the northern part of the Western Roman Empire fighting the Celts. We were also very happy to be wearing pants and that we were not wearing togas for the cold wind to whip up, although perhaps then we would have been wearing a big bear skin coat over our togas. This turned out to be a chilly (I am thinking optimistic here that it was only chilly) but extremely fun project.

Amaryllis

This is the third time this bulb has bloomed for us. It doesn't get blooms everytime it comes back so when it does honor us with flowers we appreciate them all the more.

Feeding frenzy frenzy

Alligator Feeding Frenzy

Shark Feeding Frenzy

Lion Feeding Frenzy

Bear Feeding Frenzy

These are shows we have been watching on Animal Plant (everything I found on the shows said they are on Discovery but I am sure we watched on Animal Plant) and they are fabulous. Spark is really loving them and tells everyone he see that they should watch them. Our favorite parts of the show are when they put out the dummy, Billy, for the animal to attack. We yell for Billy to be careful, how he should have stayed at the hotel and real friends wouldn't have made him stay outside the predator box. Oh, and they are educational as well. Really hoping more of these shows are made.

Flooding

This afternoon we got together with some homeschool friends to go swimming at a local hotel that opens it's pool up to swimmers. We could have just gone to the park. In this picture the swings are floating so the water must be about 2 1/2 feet. Right before I got the camera out a canoe paddle between the swing set and the play set.

Way in the back of this picture is where the actual river is. The river is usually way down an embankment and about 65 feet wide. Now it is at least 800 feet up on just this side that we could see. The water should peak in about a week or two so more is coming.

Just Thursday - homeschool day

Spark watched a lesson of his Latin study. He uses Prima Latina and it has been really easy to learn the vocabulary, derivatives and grammar using the Cd's, DVDs, workbooks and a bit of us asking him the words now and then.

Dancer did a chapter in this Book of Roots that goes along with her Latin study Latina Christiana. She does most of this study as a self study with me drilling her a bit on vocabulary. I had hoped to learn this along with her but time has not been cooperative in doing that.

We started a chapter in Story of the World, the program we use for history. The kids made these Roman Legion's Signums. These signums were carried into battle by the signifer. These were so very heavy that the signfer was unable to carry a weapon. If anything happened to the signum the whole legion would be punished. The shiny circles are discs covered with aluminum foil and pictures of wild animals, weapons and emperor's picture. The signums were fun to make and they are really quite cool.

We made yummy bread pudding for supper and enjoyed it with ice cream.

Dancer worked in a workbook about sequencing. This is more of a fun puzzle book for her so it doesn't feel so much like learning. Spark worked on math, he uses Singapore. No math for Dancer because she finished her book yesterday. Hurray! she is done before the end of the year! I will get her a new book right away because if I wait until next fall we will be doing a lot of review. Math we keep up year around, well at least we try.

We also got in a chapter in our unit study of Series of Unfortunate Events using a book called Fortunately for You. This included reading a chapter, writing, a bible study of biblical people who have suffered from regret, a lesson in manner and answering review questions.

We do not always get this much done but today the both of the kids were very focused and skipped through the work without me having to say "Get er done". They hate that saying by the way.

I don't think I heard you right

We were working with misnomers, something with a name that doesn't fit it, and here are some the ones the kids came up with. Spark really got into this activity and a lot of them are his ideas.

• Football - not played with feet, we thought tackleball would be a better fit
• Egg plant - doesn't come from an egg, doesn't look like an egg


• Star fish - not a fish


• Clown fish - got the fish part right but where's the clown


• wagon - nothing wags on it


• flea market - that would be called a dog


• shooting stars


• peanut butter - not butter


• firefly - they are really beetles


• kitchen counter - doesn't count anything


• computer mouse - a no, our mouse doesn't even have a tail


• killdeer - a bird and they are are too little to kill a deer


• hog wash - what a grandparent says and they aren't washing a hog when they say it


• funny bone - yeah right, there is not laughing when that baby gets banged


• Beanie Babies - they have plastic beads in them not beans


• pigtails - whoever looked at a hair style on a cute little girl and thought it looked like a pig tail?

So as Glenn Beck puts it, "say what you mean and mean what you say"

How to fix a rain gutter

Our rain gutter has broken to where all the water from the roof is running through where the break is. It has been raining for two days and we have had all the snow melt. Yesterday was 3 inches of rain fall and I haven't heard today yet but it was at least the same as yesterday. The forecast is for rain or rain/snow mix at least through next Monday so we needed to do something to keep all these gallons of water from being deposited next to the foundation of the house until we can get something done permanently. Here is our high tech system. Hey, at least it works!

The chickens are coming, the chickens are coming

Spark and I set up the incubator and put some chicken eggs in there with high hopes that they will hatch. Our track record with chicken eggs is not very stellar. We have had lots of success with duck eggs, but not chickens. Ideally the hens would sit on the eggs and hatch them, however, our hens tend grow weary with the sitting part and do great for the first couple of weeks and then abandon the eggs. In 21 days we will see if we have chicks or not.

We thought we were frugal - turns out we're green

Many of the things we do to save pennies have shown up on lists of ways to live a greener lifestyle. Some of the things were do are:

• use cloth napkins in stead of store bought paper ones - when we use paper napkins they seem flimsy
• use rags instead of paper towels - mostly we use old socks, t-shirts and receiving blankets
• in the winter we keep the heat set at 64 degrees - we heat with fuel oil and wearing slippers, sweaters and snuggling under an afghan is much cheaper than extra gallons of oil
• shut the outside doors as quickly as possible - I can still hear my dad yelling "I'm not heating the outside"
• in the summer we do have central air, which we set at 80 degrees, and in the bedrooms we have little window air conditioners so we are only cooling the bedrooms at night
• if it is hot in the house in the summer but cool outside in the shade, we eat and relax outside and turn the air off
• grow most of our vegetables and freeze and can
• recycle - the more we put in the recycle bin, which is free from our garbage provider, means we get by with the smallest garbage can they offer
• buy in bulk and products with the least amount of packaging - this cuts down on garbage which cuts down on the size can we need
• cook from scratch, not only is this much cheaper but there isn't as much packaging
• use bar soap - this one surprised me because I never thought of all the packaging with liquid soap, only how expensive it is
• don't let the water run, the pump has to run to get the water out of the ground and if it goes into the septic tank we have to pump it back out - the less we put down there the longer we can go between pumpings
• hang out our clothes on the clothes line - we have a propane tank for the dryer and water heater - we can make the tank last almost a year
• wash laundry in cold water - again, saves on the propane tank usage
• catch rain water for watering lawn and filling the duck pool - again that running pump, I can just hear the money fly out of that thing
• reuse plastic bags, aluminum foil, gift bags and other packaging that is still good/clean
• combine errands in town - this is big for us because to the nearest big town is at least a 30 mile round trip and to the closest little town, which has a few stores, is 10 miles round trip. When gas was at it's highest the cost was about $12 to go to town, what do we really need that warrants a trip more than once a week? Not much
• compost - well not compost exactly, we feed most of our veggie peels etc. to the animals which in turn cuts down on our feed bill a little bit
• turn off the lights when not using them, again I hear my dad "who do you think we are the Rockefellers? TURN OFF THOSE LIGHTS! I practically grew up in the dark lol
• buy used or swap with friends - we buy almost no clothes because we swap with friends (I have a friend my size who buys new clothes because she is tired of her old ones - how lucky is that!) - most of our furniture is also either used or from others who were getting rid of it - our only new furniture is a coffee table, kitchen chairs, one living room chair, a couch, a computer table, one bed frame (the mattress we buy new) and a couple cupboards

People use to laugh at our frugal way of life and now we are politically correct green! Who knew!

Is this comfortable?

Our cat, Vidalia, is sleeping in a long, narrow planter. She doesn't fit and has her head all bent around. How can this be comfortable?

Tortilla Banana Roll

We visited friends this afternoon and the host served these tasty treats. They were so good we came home and made them for our night time snack.

Take an eight inch tortilla, spread with peanut butter, sprinkle granola over peanut butter and put in half a banana. Fold the bottom up and the sides in like a baby in a receiving blanket.

EAT!!

Just Thursday - around the barn

Milking Elizabeth. We call this the Udder Buddy, others would call it a milking machine. The Udder Buddy has made milking so much more enjoyable. Both the Dad and I had terrible hand and arm pain from milking by hand so we invested a couple of years ago in a milker. Also, we drink our milk raw and the milker cuts way down on the amount of contaminants that could get in the milk.

This little guy, Sebastian, couldn't wait until we could get him out of the stall before needing a bit of breakfast. He eats about twice what the other goat does. He had a lot of trouble sucking or swallowing the first three days so our thought is that he is making up for lost time.

This is Eeyore thoroughly enjoying his breakfast. Dancer usually feeds him and he follows her around like she is his mom. If she gets out of his sight he cries and runs around looking until he sees her and then runs right over looking relieved that she is near.

This is one of the little bunnies that was born last week. We hadn't looked at them before so that the mom wouldn't stop feeding them if they had a foreign smell. Some rabbits are very sensitive to that and others could care less if you handle thier babes. This is her second litter, but the first ones that she has kept alive, so we decided to leave them alone. They are born bald and don't move very well. These are already fully furred and they are moving all over in the nesting box so we checked them out. The eyes aren't quite open yet but they should be in a day or two and then they will start coming out of the box on their own. When they are little like this you can really see that they are part of the rodent family. I don't think they are very cute until their ears start standing up.
And this was huge shock to me today. I came in from the barn and Spark was doing some school work on his own! He also asked if he could unload the dishwasher for me tonight. What is going on here?! Maybe I should just enjoy it and not ask any questions.

Impressed me, he did

Often when I read to the kids they pull out either paper and colored pencils or play doh so they can keep their hands busy and listen better. We were reading "Journeys with Elijah Eight Tales of the Prophet" by Barbara Diamond Goldin, a good book by the way, and I looked over at Spark and saw what he had created. This is what he had. The middle section is a dug up treasure with a piece of the treasure on top of it. This part went with the story, normally his creations are just random pieces of whatever. On each side he made a water vessel, one complete with a stopper. I was impressed with his undirected efforts and thought they were quite good for an eight year old.

Frolicing Fun

These are the two little goats we have been nursing along inside, Eeyore and Sebastian. They were outside jumping and playing with each other.

Eeyore is chasing Dancer, who he thinks is his mom, around the yard. They both had a wonderful time and enjoyed the warm sunshine. Afterward, Eeyore needed a little snuggle and a rest. Both the little goats were worn out and slept for a long time after they were brought back in. They were both moved out to the barn today as they are getting to big to live in boxes in the dining room.

Goat milk galore

We milked all four of the moms this afternoon and got almost six quarts of milk! That is a lot considering that one is nursing a two month old and two of the other goats each have one baby with them. The goats only give a lot when they have just freshened, as the spring/summer goes on they will give less. If the moms and babes were separated we would really have a fridge full. We only use about a quart a day so the Dad will have to start making cheese. Any leftovers we feed to the chickens, cats, dog and the two little goats we are bottle feeding.
After the goats are milked, the milk is brought into the house, strained, put in quart jars and place in cold water to cool it as fast as possible. We put ice packs in the water to get the temp of the milk down faster. It sits in the cold water for about half an hour and then we cap the jars and put it in the fridge. It stays good for about a week.