what's up weekly. (Where Have I Been All Your Three Weeks?)

Well, boy howdy, it's been a hot minute since I've showed my face around here.  The truth is, we went on vacation and it ended up being a three week process - a week of prep, a week of travel, a week of settling back in at home.  Not to mention the fact that Thursdays are the days that I typically write the blog, and we traveled both there and back on consecutive Thursdays, so it just didn't end up happening.

That said, I'm here now!  We're home and settled in and excited to tell you about the last three weeks.

First, there was a men's movie night with our church family, so Atticus and Todd went to that, and Penelope and I stayed up late to watch the seventh Harry Potter movie.  (I never know how to say that - the first last movie? The first half of Deathly Hallows?  It's confusing since they made one book into two movies.  It was the right call, but it makes it difficult to reference.  For me.  On a personal level.  And I think they should have taken that into account.)  

Later in the weekend, my friend Stephanie and I taught a canning class after church, and we made jam from some blackberries our other friend Rebekah found at the Amish near her.  The jam was amazing, and it was so fun to gather with the gals at church to learn a skill!  That same afternoon, Stephanie sent me home with our new chickens, Rosie and ChickenMine.

Introducing them as neighbors before dropping the bomb on them that they'll eventually be roommates and sisterwives.

They could not be more different from one another.  We have quickly learned that Rosie is chatty and skittish and fast: the second she sees you in the vicinity, she starts gabbing it to the whole neighborhood and running around like... well, a chicken with her very noisy head still on.  ChickenMine is exactly the opposite: she is so docile and sweet and willing to be held.  She coos at you like she's asking a question: "brrrrrr? brrrrr?"  It kills me.  Francis Schaeffer talks often about how evolution cannot explain the existence of personality in the universe.  There is no explanation for personality unless there is a Creative Person behind and above and outside it all.  I think it is so funny and miraculous and incredible that God has made kajillions of chickens over the course of time, and even they have unique personalities.  What an endlessly interesting God we serve.

Anyway, back to Rosie and ChickenMine.  We only had a couple of days to introduce them to the old hens before we left on vacation, and it didn't go spectacularly well.  They had been picked on in their old flock, and it seems that's their lot here too.  Now that we're home, we're trying to be as intentional as we can about putting all of them in the yard together, so there is space to spread out while still being "together," but they still just keep to their separate groups, except when Howitzer is kamikazeing the new ones.  Poor girls.  I'm pretty sure Rosie is going to die of a heart attack.  Pray for her.

The night we got home from vacation, the kids immediately headed to the backyard to put the chickens to bed, and they discovered an opossum in the chicken run.  Luckily, it didn't seem interested in the chickens themselves, only their food bowl, so we didn't lose any.  So that was good.  But unfortunately for Todd, the first thing he got to do after driving for fourteen hours was bludgeon the varmint to death with a baseball bat.  I'll spare you the photos.

Since we've been home, life has been full of catch-up laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning, and last-minute projects and errands before we start school next week.  Todd took Atticus out to shoot clay pigeons with some guys from church.

I ripped out my south garden bed because it was literally doing nothing except growing the worst okra you've ever eaten.  That week we were away was hot and dry, and everything was in rough shape to begin with, so we returned home to pretty dismal gardens.  I just faced reality head-on and figured it was time to pull things out.

This batch of compost from the city brush site is really leafy and light - it's perfect for top dressing the soil that's already in there.  In a month or so, I'll cover everything with chicken straw to protect the soil through the winter, and to feed it in the spring when I turn it all in.

"We" shoveled more rock.  "We" are a team.

I am the site supervisor.  The girls are bystanders.  The boys are the heavy lifters.

The kids caught lots of bugs, including a cicada they named Barry.  (This year has been The Year of the Cicada, let me tell you.)

It finally cooled off enough to spend some enjoyable time outside, so the kids had breakfast on the deck this week.

Babies with apples are my favorite.  They look so adorable.

Finneas celebrated his half-birthday.  (Fun fact: on half-birthdays, we sing half of the birthday song.  "Happy birth-" is as much as they get.  It's a little foretaste of the feast to come in six months.)

We did spelling placement tests yesterday, and made sure we have everything organized for Monday.  I think we all feel equal parts excited and unready to enter back into the rhythm of the school year.  But, "what's comin' will come, an' we'll meet it when it does."

And that has been the extent of our life lived at home over the course of the last few weeks.  Some of you eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that I left a few minor details out, like anything about our vacation, or the fact that Laurelai turned ten years old!  Let me address the latter point now:

Lolo is sweet to her very center.  If people are like a box of chocolates, she is pure goodness all the way through - no weird surprises.  She is servant-hearted and loves to help, and she's a hard worker.  (The other day we were discussing how work existed before the Fall, so that's how we can know it is a gift, not a curse.  And she said, "It was really nice of God to let us keep it even after we sinned. I like work.")  She is a perfectionist, and takes her time to do things well.  She hates messing up or feeling like she has disappointed people.

A self-portrait with her new roller skates.

She is funny and artistic and excellent at math.  She dresses well and spends extra time doing her hair each day.  She likes walking on the treadmill, crocheting, sewing, reading, baking, and caring for the chickens.  She is amazing with babies, and she has asked for a garden bed of her own next spring.  She is extremely extroverted and has limitless energy when she's around new people or groups.  She is a neon lightbulb - a lot of very bright, pulsing light condensed into a compact little tube.  She brightens our home and we couldn't live without her.

Now, as for our trip, I will need to fill you in in another post because there is just so much to share!  But here are a couple teaser photos.

Okay, I'm signing off.  We have guests coming this weekend, and a Psalm Sing tonight, and school on Monday - I feel like the weekend has already flown by and yet I have so much left to do!  So I will be back soon to continue the story of our vacation, but you'll have to be patient with me.

Happy weekend!

what's up weekly. (new chickens, hauling poop water, and a very happy Vanniversary.)

Hey party people!  And as I'm actually writing this Thursday night, Happy Anniversary to Todd!  Sixteen years of marital bliss.  (More on this in a second.)

This week was perhaps our most low-key week this summer.  On Friday night, we had a Psalm Sing, which is always one of our favorite nights of the month.

Business up front.

Party in the back.

On Saturday, Todd and I finally got the dishwasher moved out of the kitchen.  It was leaking, it was stinking, it was time.  So now we have this glamorous hole here.  I think I might turn it into a small sculpture garden, maybe a terrarium.  Maybe put a fish tank in there.  The world is my oyster.  And by "world", I mean "dishwasher hole", and by "oyster", I mean "dishwasher hole."

I crossed off the last remaining items on my school prep list, like familiarizing myself with our new grammar and spelling curricula.  I am finally ready for the school year!  We don't start for another 3.5 weeks, so I'm not going to be jumping in immediately,, but it's nice to know all the things I was hoping to get squared away before we start got done.

HOW GOOD IS HER PAINTING?!

I ran a few errands, like picking up high protein feed for the new Buff Orpington chickens we're going to be introducing to our flock soon.  A friend found them at a chicken auction, but they'd picked on pretty badly by their previous flock and have some bald patches that need to fill back in.  I'm really excited - I have missed having Orpingtons since our two met their demise (one was lost to the pit bulls, one was lost to a racoon that got in the run when we were out too late one evening).  I wasn't really planning on replacing them, but then my friend asked me if I wanted her to keep her eyes peeled for anything at the auction, and I told her I could make room only if she found cheap Orpingtons, and no more than two.  So our new ladies were only $6.50 each, and were conveniently sold in a lot of two, and are already laying.  Score!  Callista and Juni, the owners of aforementioned deceased chickens, got the honors of naming the new gals, so they shall henceforth be called Rosie and ChickenMine.

Also on my errands, I stopped at Goodwill to get rid of a bunch of stuff (praise the Lord! I finished cleaning out our storage room last week, so it felt so good to physically get rid of the things that got purged).  I also picked up a bunch of holds at the library, including a few "make ahead" cookbooks.  As I anticipate the upcoming school year, I really think I'm going to need to get creative with the schedule.  One of my goals is to have dinner started by 10:00 most days.  Take the meat out, get the pot roast in, assemble the soup and leave it simmering, that kind of thing.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate crock pot meals, but I think there is definitely a way to start thinking about meals that are prepped at the beginning of the day, and nearly ready by the time everyone's hungry for dinner.  So I'm going to start getting my wheels turning on that.

Let's see, what else?  

Oey is the center of attention, like always.  The kids are getting her to walk around holding their hands, but she still shows no interest in walking independently.

Where Oey is, they gather.

We had a few days of, dare I say it, cool weather.  Cooler, anyway.  Now it's supposed to shoot back up starting today, but that's okay.  It'll keep the garden growing.  I took advantage of the cooler days to haul chicken poop water all over our yard.  Here's the sitch. I had cleaned out the coop a week or two ago, put all the nasty stuff in an old kiddie pool, and was planning to haul it right away.  But then it rained.  And rained. And rained.  So I was left with a kiddie pool full of poop slurry.  So this week, I used a bucket to use all the dirty water to water my hostas and hydrangeas and boxwoods, and then I moved the soggy rest of it to the empty end of my outer veggie garden to wait until I can work it into the soil after the plants are pulled out.  It's a glamorous life I do live.

And that's about it, other than the noteworthy fact that Todd and I celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary.  In Todd's words, our marriage "is officially old enough to drive."  I just told him the other night, "I don't think I can communicate just how content I am with my life."  It's a really, really good life we have built.  I still like him so much.

We didn't do anything fancy to celebrate (nothing that would warrant busting out the Microsoft Paint over), but I did cook steaks, which in this economy is basically like saying we took a quick trip to Disney.

And that was our week!  It was restful and fun, and I'm excited for another one just like it (minus the anniversary) next week!

what's up weekly. (we're covering chicken butchering today, so gird up your loins.)

Hey y'all.  Happy Friday!

Sorry I wasn't around last week - I hosted a book study event Thursday night and didn't have the time or the hooah to blog.  It has been a full couple of weeks, and I'm excited to tell you about it.  For instance, I butchered some chickens.  And cooked and ate them.  I'm basically Ma Ingalls now.  But we'll get there in a second; let me back up to the beginning.  Settle in and get cozy.

First, Penelope and I embarked on a small sewing project.  She wanted to make a drawstring backpack to take on vacation in a few weeks, so we got out the sewing machine, looked up a tutorial on Pinterest, and got to work.  I think this might be the first sewing machine work she has attempted on her own, at least in part.  Other than a mistake I made when cutting out the fabric, it went well.

Lolo has been spending her crafty time working on the world's longest chain of crochet stitches, also a project for vacation: she wants to make it long enough to bungee drop her action figures off of Grandma and Papa's big staircase.  I think she's overestimating the height of their stairs, but better safe than sorry, so it looks like she's going to have about 100 feet of bungee.  I think that should do it.

Oey is getting closer and closer to walking.  Why, yes, she is almost 20 months old and not walking.  She's just stubborn enough, and concerned just enough with her own safety, to think she wants to wait it out until she's steadier on her feet or something.  But she will hold your hands and walk, as well as stand up on demand, which are both new developments that we're excited about!

The girls spent an evening crafting with friends from church this week. While they were gone, a friend of ours came over to teach Atticus how to assemble the pieces of a gun he purchased with his mowing money.  It was a milestone event.  I have photos, but this is 2023 so I'm going to keep those to myself.

The kids also went over to a friend's house on Saturday to spend the afternoon shooting their airsoft guns, doing an obstacle course and having target shooting contests.  All the kids were going to go, and Todd and I were going to get the afternoon free for a date, but then Finneas woke up with the fever and nausea that Penelope had dealt with the day before.  So we kept him home, along with Ophelia and Juni, and just spent the afternoon laying low while the other kids went over to play.  Poor buddy.

There has been ample sibling affection around here.

Just Lolo and Juni, working on their suntans.

The boys invited me to play GI Joes with them.  I think it may have been the first time I've ever played GI Joes in my life (the boys were very reassuring and told me I was doing a good job).  We raided the pantry and the Joes found the dark chocolate.  That's a game both kids and moms can enjoy.

Our "Christ is Lord" billboard went up in town last week!  Canon Press released a Mere Christendom set, and said that any zip code that ended up with ten orders would get a billboard up for a month on them.  Well, our church family got to work and had ten snapped up in no time.  So here we are!  Todd surprised the kids with a drive past it for the first time, and they were so excited to see it! 

Okay, to fill you in on my Ma Ingalls endeavors: first, I canned another double batch of salsa, bringing the total so far this year to 34 pints.  I probably need three times this amount to cover the amount we go through in a year, but it's a start, and because I got most of the ingredients free from friends' gardens (MINE IS NOT DOING ANYTHING AND IT'S DRIVING ME BANANACAKES), I think I've sunk less than $20 into those 34 pints, so it's definitely saving money regardless of whether I can put up an entire year's worth.

I also started pressure canning all the dry beans I have had floating around my cupboards.  This is a double blessing because, a) I have very limited cabinet space and all the random bags of things were getting to be a real wet blanket every time I opened the cupboard doors, and b) dry beans are only useful if you remember 24 hours in advance to soak them, and then have an hour to simmer them before you put them in your actual recipe.  Which I never do.  So then I rely on storebought canned beans, which are way more expensive than they should be, considering what they are.  So this should make cooking with them way more convenient and cheaper in the long run.  (I'm not sure how much money I'm saving; I bought these beans so long ago that I don't remember the price I got them at.)  I'll be so glad during chili season to already have done this.

I got nineteen quarts of beans total, but the rest of the jars were still in the canner at the time of posting.

And second in my Little House Life: I went to a chicken butchering.  And it was a blast.

A couple at our church offered to raise meat birds for anyone that was willing to come help process them.  So a group of us got together a couple Saturdays ago to learn the art of chicken slaughter.  This is the part where you may want to scroll down a bit if you aren't interested in seeing the process.

First, the live chicken goes into the kill cone.  We used a scalpel to do the dirty work.  Then it has to hang out there for a while to drain.

Then it goes into a pot of boiling water (not pictured) to loosen the feathers, then into the plucker, seen here.

Then into an ice bath to cool as quickly as possible.

I did actually butcher and pluck one (well, run it through the plucker, which is an entirely different thing than plucking it by hand, but I'm counting it because I started with a feathered bird and ended with a bald one, so I would say mission accomplished).  It was one of the most surreal things I've done besides childbirth.  I suppose it was kind of like the antithesis of childbirth, but the amazement is similar.  It reminds me of the discussion of the concept of animus in Latin.  What happens the second something dies?  It is more than just a heart failing to beat or lungs failing to expand.  Something essential, something that was there a second ago, just... isn't there anymore.  It's crazy to hold something in your hand at that moment, just like it's crazy to be holding someone when they take their first breath.  Life is nuts.

Anyway, I only slaughtered one chicken myself.  The men kind of took that over, and we women were more in charge of dressing the chickens once they were plucked.  I got really proficient at it by the end.  It turns out that it's really not that different from cooking, which makes sense, but I didn't know that because I'd never done it before.  I guess what I'm saying is that it was way less gross than I thought it would be.  There is almost no blood, and because we were doing it outside there wasn't a super strong smell (not no smell, just not as strong as I thought it would be).  It was fun to stand around, drinking cheap wine with friends, learning a new skill and basically just doing rustic meal prep.

After plucking.  The first step is to remove the head, then neck.  The head goes to the dogs (or, morbidly, to the egg-laying chickens, who were very interested spectators; whoever gets there first gets the spoils), the neck goes into the cooler to save for making broth.

Then you open the cavity and carefully remove the guts.  (I mean, the innards.)  You separate the stuff you want to keep from the stuff you want to toss.  The gizzard she's holding in the photo is a keeper, as is the heart and the liver; everything else gets thrown away. 

Then you put them on ice right away.  After all the birds were done, we rinsed and bagged and weighed them, then we were done! (The dish soap was for surfaces, not the chickens!)

Looking as classy as I felt.  Someone brought cheap blackberry wine for all the farmhands and we all drank from the bottle.  The whole day was a real health department crime scene.

We tackled a total of 47 chickens in a couple of hours.  It stormed a little so the air was cool and breezy, and it was just a really enjoyable morning!  Not to mention we ended up getting free range, locally raised, super fresh chickens for $6 per bird!  The same couple that raised these is currently raising Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys for everyone who wants some, so we'll be heading out for another butcher day soon.  There's talk of doing pork eventually, and maybe even beef someday if we get really adventurous.  They're also talking about getting a couple of dairy cows, and I currently buy eggs from them.  I am just thrilled.

One thing I felt like I had to give up when we moved here was all the good local food I had access to in Columbia - all my Amish sources of produce and milk and bulk items; my grassfed beef guy; the local miller who raised his own heritage grains.  It has been hard to find anything remotely close to the quality here (and the prices!! Oh my.  Our raw milk in Columbia was $2.50 a gallon.  Here it's $7!!).  But slowly yet surely, those gaps are being filled - and in the best way: by our own church family, so we can be supporting each other with reciprocal skills training and income.

I will be joining my friend Stephanie (the gal who raises the meat birds) to teach a class on water bath canning after church in a couple of weeks.  Maybe we could do something similar for pressure canning soon as well.  There's a guy who grinds his own wheat and maintains a sourdough starter who has seemed interested in teaching that.  I am so excited!

ANNNNNYWAY.  I could literally talk about local food all day, all night, all week, all year, until my last dying breath.  So I will just move on to tell you that I roasted a couple of the chickens I had brought home from Chicken Day and they were really good!  A bit lean - I think they could have grown a little longer, and Stephanie says they'll be trying a different breed next time - but really good.  I made broth with the carcasses, so I will pressure can that later today.

Precooked.  I don't know if you can see how much more... pink? dark? the meat is than store bought.

Cooked.  Look how dark the meat was!  The skin didn't darken as much as I'm used to, I think because of the lack of fat, and there was a lot fewer drippings in the pans than usual.  I think I overcooked them because I had a hard time telling the color of the pan juices, which is usually how I am able to tell if they're fully cooked. It's a learning curve!  But the dark meat was still juicy, and the breast meat got slathered in melted butter at serving time to make up the difference.

I bought eight chickens total, and will probably be doing this somewhat regularly as they're offered.  In all, it was a successful experience!

Okay, okay, I'll shut up about it now.  To cleanse your palate from chicken talk, here is a series of photos of Oey, enjoying her favorite snack: the stick from an ice cream bar.  It doesn't matter to her if there is ice cream on it or not, the stick is where the real magic lies.

And here's one of Callista, being adorable:

Yesterday, some friends came to spend the day with us, and between their five and our eight, it was a full house!  Check out the driveway full of duelling Krakens.

We served lunch on the deck - it was perfect, since our table doesn't have room for that many people!

And that was our week! Today is shaping up to be another full day.  I have some meal prep to tackle before the weekend (I forgot to mention I'm doing another Whole 30, so it takes a little planning), I'll be processing a canner load of chicken broth, and there is a Psalm Sing in the evening.  It should be a good day!