Homestead Revival

Just a quick post today...we're in the middle of another snow storm, calling for 6-8 inches of additional snow and naturally, my husband ran off and left his Get Home kit sitting by the door. Schools are canceled so we'll be spending the day finishing up Valentines for Isaac's party on Thursday. Assuming there IS a party on Thursday.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell all my friends out there in bloggerland about a fresh, new site that I think you may find interesting. I know you've noticed the link on the right to River Rock Cottage. Amy covered a full range of topics from chickens to homeschooling to the Advent Conspiracy. She's sort of found her niche lately, and that's been to call women home; back to the basics of home, living closer to the land and creating community. In order to fully explore those topics, she has created a new blog: Homestead Revival. I'm really excited to read what Amy has to offer on her new blog, so why don't you stop by and see what for yourself?

Daily Bread

Things are beginning to get back to normal here after Friday's snowstorm. For all intents and purposes, we're dug out, but as the roads are still really bad, there's nowhere to go and nothing to do. And I'm fine with that. We spent the day yesterday hunkered down in comfy clothes playing snowy day games. The kids played tent most of the afternoon, using some old bed pillows and a big blanket...gotta love those imaginative games!

I spent the day cooking. For lunch, I made up a stir-fry with a bit of chicken, veggies and some leftover rice and it went over in a big way. Mara ate all the mushrooms and carrots, but Isaac's tummy was still a little tender so he didn't eat much. Jeff ate it all. I also made a loaf of bread to go with dinner; Italian sausages, home-canned green beans seasoned with a little bacon and onion, and Not-Your-Momma's Sweet Taters. The bread is a very simple, sweet wheat loaf, made with just enough white flour to give it a smooth texture. It's fairly low in fat, but has a sweet, dense flavor and texture that makes it delicious, both fresh and days old as toast. I promised this to a friend a couple days ago, but life happened and I never got around to it....so here ya go, Friend. (You know who you are!)

Before I post the recipe, just a quick note regarding dough enhancers. They are so worth it, but if you don't have any on hand, you can make do without it. The dough enhancer makes the bread lighter and more like what you buy from the grocery store. It also helps the wheat dough to rise more quickly and retain moisture. If you don't use dough enhancer, you can substitute 2 tablespoons of corn starch and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice which are 2 of the main ingredients in most commercial dough enhancers. It's not quite as good, but close.

Wheat Bread

1 c. warm water
2-4 T honey (I like sweeter bread!)
2 1/4 t. yeast
2T melted butter
1/4 c powdered milk
1 t salt
1 T dough enhancer (or 2T corn starch + 1 t lemon juice)
3 c flour (I use 2.5 c wheat + .5 c white flour)

In a large bowl, combine the first 3 ingredients and allow the yeast to proof til foamy, about 5-10 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix til thoroughly combined. Knead for 6-10 minutes til no longer sticky, then place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a towel and place in a warm spot to rise- about 1-2 hours.

Deflate the dough, knead 2 or 3 times and form into a loaf. Place in a greased loaf pan, cover with a towel and place in a warm spot.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, placing a metal bowl of water in the bottom of the oven to create steam. When the dough has crested 1 inch over the top of the loaf pan, place the bread in the oven and bake 15 minutes. Remove the pan and carefully cover with foil. Place the pan back in the oven and bake for another 15-20 minutes, til the bread is brown and sounds hollow or til a digital thermometer inserted into the bread reads 190 degrees. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Turn the bread out onto a cooling rack and brush with additional melted butter.

Digging Out

Boy did we get walloped yesterday! What started out as a prediction of 4-6 inches of snow has morphed into 8-12 inches with 30 mph wind and 5 foot tall drifts. Gotta love Ohio in wintertime! Jeff is hooking up the snow blade as there's a knee-high drift the length of the driveway and no foreseeable warm-up coming. My mom, who lives 3 miles away as the crow flies, said she heard on the news to be prepared to stay indoors for 4-5 days. We're prepared.


On a similar topic, I had a guest post titled "Day-to-Day Preparedness" posted on the Emergency Essentials blog. While not my best work, it covers the tedious day-to-day emergencies that preparedness is all about. And I won a gift card for it, so it's all good!

Well, I know this an uncharacteristically short post, but I've got 2 sick kids to take care of. Mara has a run of the mill cold and Isaac contracted strep. Fun fun. I've got a pot of chicken and rice soup simmering on the back burner, and I think a big hot pot of tea will round things out and make everyone feel better. Take care and stay warm, friends!

Busy, Busy Bees

Wow has it been a busy couple of days! I intended to post my wheat bread recipe yesterday, but that sure didn't come to pass now did it? So what did Miss Mara and I get into yesterday, you may be asking?

-Yogurt-culturing
-Bread-baking
-Laundry-folding
-Preschooling (Letter B)
-Bed-making
-Egg-washing
-School-levy-voting

And on today's agenda?

-Yogurt-draining
-Blue jean shorts-hemming (for Haitian relief drive)
-Preschooling (Cutting and Gluing B pictures)
-Utility-room-purging
-Soup-making

Have I mentioned lately what a wonderful life it is? All this beautifully busy, delicious tedium...I wouldn't change a thing. Each day that I get to spend in my home with my small children working at some facet of self-reliance is a blessing. It may be a burden to some, but it's a blessing to me. Off I go to help Mara cut and paste................

The Big 0-4

Little Miss Mara celebrated her 4th birthday today. We borrowed Mamaw and Papaw's basement for the afternoon and invited all her favorite people: grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The kids (ages 4, 4, 5 and 6) spent the better part of an hour playing 'Balloon Knock' with Uncle Chris, followed by some pretend after Mara unwrapped a medical kit and vanity set.

She's absolutely batty over Tinkerbell, so I made a 3-layer cake with lime-green icing and decorated it with fairies. Her reaction was priceless. She carefully explored it, pointing to all the fairies and then squealed "I LOVE IT!"

Of course, Mara had the cupcake with Tinkerbell from the top. After the cake and ice cream, and refills of Cincinnati chili, spaghetti, slaw dogs, salad and punch, the kids were back to playing Balloon Knock.

It was such a great afternoon, I hated to see it end. We don't spoil our kids with expensive toys or elaborate vacations, but when we have a get-together, we REALLY have a get-together. And there's nothing that will bring people together like good food, happy children and lime-green confections!

Happy Birthday, Baby!

Garden Planning

It's hard to consider your garden when it feels like 7 degrees outside, but spring is only 48 days away so it's time to get busy! There will be some major overhauls this year as I surrendered 2 deep raised beds in order to raise strawberries. I keep telling myself it will be worth it when those sweet little berries start to ripen! We'll also be doing some crop rotation due to last year's tomato blight. And unless it's a soy year, we won't be planting corn. (Darn you, cross pollination!)

This year, we'll be raising the usual stuff; half-runner beans, bell peppers, tomatoes, snap peas, onions, but we'll be using our corn patch for squash and maybe a few pumpkins. Even if we DO plant corn, we'll go the 3 Sisters route and plant the squash intermittently with the corn.

Did you know that if you have problems with raccoons in the corn patch, planting squash and pumpkins will help? It's true! Apparently, raccoons don't like the bristly, prickly feeling of the squash and pumpkin vines. I don't know if that's true as I've never asked a raccoon what it does or doesn't like...but the years we've had vines growing throughout our corn patch, we didn't have any problems with those doggone little scavengers. So there's your useless piece of information for the day.

The funnest (?) part of it all is starting the tomato plants! Last year I had dozens upon dozens of tomato varieties, but this year, it will be narrowed down to under a dozen varieties. My favorites from last year:

Russian Big Romas. Imagine those little Romas you find at the grocery...now imagine them larger than your fist. Oh yeah.

Trophy. This variety has officially dethroned my usual choices for the all-purpose big red slicer/juicer. The Trophy tomatoes we grew last year had no splits, mars, blemishes or cracks despite the blight and terrible growing weather. They also had no problem with rot and grew to enormous proportions!

Amish Paste. This is a thick, juice-less, nearly seedless variety perfect for paste, sauces and such.

Debarao Black. Small, dark tomatoes that are sickeningly sweet, lacking the acid bite of most tomatoes. We used them for salads and drying.

Black Cherry. Small, dark, sweet and incredibly delicious. They'd probably be great for salads, but the ones we picked rarely made it in to the house.

I was blessed with seeds from all over the country, through exchanges with friends and family, but many of my seeds come from a site in New York called WinterSown. Heard of it? Go through the Gateway to Seeds, play the little word game, print off a form and send in an SASE for free seeds. Yep. That's it. OR, send in a small donation and get tons of free seeds! If you're wanting to try out different varieties, but find the price of seeds cost-prohibitive, try WinterSown!

Well, it's time to get back to reality. All 19 degrees of it.

Change of Pace

It's been a quiet week or so here on the Knobs as we all worked (still working) through our grief over losing Granny Magdalene. Her family, 3 sons, 1 daughter and husband Bob are all doing well. As sad an occasion as it was, it was wonderful to get to know my cousins better and meet a few I didn't know I had! It's a great comfort to know there are so many family members living close-by, seeing familiar faces and finding out that we're kin. Bob (Grandbob) made a date with Mara for this summer; cookies and frog-feeding in the little fish pond. We're slowly settling into a new type of normalcy.

On a happier note, we're having a big 4th birthday party this weekend! My little Tink is turning 4 with a Tinkerbell-themed birthday party at Mamaw and Papaw's house. It's nothing fancy really, some food, cake and ice cream, but it's a great way to break the pervasive sadness that we've been experiencing the past couple weeks. After all, you don't turn 4 everyday, right? Mara's cousin Roni is coming in from Akron, and cousin Olivia (Weba) will also be there, so it should be a fun time for all.

Jeff has started college again. He finished his 2 year degree and is now working on a Bachelor's at Wittenberg U. It's keeping him pretty busy as it's fairly writing-intensive, but he seems to really enjoy it. I'm thinking he needs to do a guest post for me about his class 'The Problems With Democracy'. 3 weeks in and it's already quite interesting. But we'll save that for another day.

On the preparedness front, we're still busy stocking up on food, especially grains and different varieties of canned food. I hate to buy canned food, with all their can-lining issues, but one simply cannot live on home-canned green beans, applesauce and tomatoes alone. With any luck, our little trees will begin producing this summer and we'll have a larger variety of fruits to put up. And speaking of summer....summer can't get here quickly enough for me! We just opened up our last jar of strawberry jam...and it will be gone long before strawberry season begins! Note to self: can twice as much strawberry jam and preserves in 2010.

We've been busy purging the basement here at the Run. Our church is doing a relief drive for the Haitian mission it supports, so we've been digging through outgrown children's clothes and shoes to donate. We'll also be donating a bit of canned meat, peanut butter and some baby formula the Gerber people keep sending me. (Hey Gerber people...my baby is 4 and never used formula! But you can keep sending it and I'll keep donating it!)

The children are the most hurtful part of the whole Haiti cataclysm. Adults are responsible for their own lots in life, but those poor children are the real victims. Like that newborn they found laying in a ditch, thankfully found alive and well. Who the heck leaves a newborn laying in a ditch? I can't begin to say what I'd do in a similar disaster, but I can't imagine what would bring me to abandon my children. I've been busily knitting lightweight newborn caps to send along with the clothing and formula. It may be an exercise in futility, but at least I feel like I'm doing something, futile or not.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the Ameraucanas are laying blue eggs like there's no tomorrow! Our egg production has really picked up in the last week or so, so in the next couple weeks, I'm anticipating canning Lemon Curd with all the extra eggs. Nothing like some homegrown sunshine in a jar, eh?

So, I think you're all caught up now. That's what's going on in our corner of the world. What's the new year been like for you?