Finding Joy

Tasha Tudor is one of my favorite authors, gardening gurus, self reliant persons, etc. etc.  So when Cocoa "assigned" (just like homework, huh?) the topic of Joy, I immediately thought of Tasha Tudor and her Take Joy video.

Tasha says that her life's work and focus is based on one quote by Henry David Thoreau:

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

She built an old fashioned house in the hills of Vermont and lived the way she wanted to live.

I can drool over pictures of her gardens for hours.  In fact, she has a whole section in her gardening book on her crabapple orchard, which inspired our farm's name.  (well, that and reading Trixie Belden when I was little...)

So here are a few of my favorite Tasha Tudor quotes on three things that bring me joy; canoeing, being outdoors with my family, and being a "housewife."

"There's something wonderfully primitive about a canoe, like the sounds of loons calling."

"Oh it was wonderful!  We used to take picnics and have a bonfire and make tea.  It was so much better than sitting in a classroom!"

"I enjoy doing housework... whenever I get one of those questionnaires and they ask what is your profession, I always put down housewife.  It's an admirable profession - why apologize for it?  You aren't stupid because you're a housewife.  When you're stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare. 

Next time you're at the library check out the Tasha Tudor section and let me know what you think.

Conversations on School

Do your children like public school?  If they do, pat yourself on the back and hope that your life always continues in this blissful state.  For some reason (not, I'm sure, that neither Mr. Bechtel or myself care for it) none of my children like school. 

 I think part of the problem stems from introducing our oldest son, Braeburn, to C. S. Lewis at an early age.  Not only did we get The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with this introduction, but we also got Lewis' views on his schooling experience as a child, which did not help Braeburn's outlook on formal schooling.

So this is the conversation I heard (and interrupted)  while running errands last week with Braeburn and Granny Smith:  

Braeburn:  "So, do you like 1st Grade, Granny Smith?"

Granny Smith:  "NO"

B:  "Well, you know that in 1st grade, school is not important, and you don't need to do all that dumb stuff"

MOM:  "Braeburn!  (hissing through smiling lips) that is just an opinion.  Some people like school.  Let Granny Smith make up his own mind."

B:  "So we should lie to little kids about what school is really like?"

long pause, then..

B:  " So, Granny Smith, did you know that the moon is really made of blue cheese?"

So, what do you do when your kids don't like school, and when you homeschool you feel like you're losing your mind?  I don't know.  I'm open for suggestions.

Haying

From Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

"Now it was haying time...Swish!  swish!  swish!  went the scythes, while Almanzo and Pierre and Louis followed behind them, spreading out the heavy swathes with pitchforks so that they would dry evenly in the sunshine...

"Father and Royal pitched the windrows into it (the hay-rack), while Almanzo trampled them down.  Back and forth he ran, on the sweet-smelling hay, packing it down as fast as Father and Royal pitched it into the rack."

"The sun grew hotter.  The smell of the hay grew stronger and sweeter.  Then waves of heat began to come up from the ground.  Almanzo's brown arms burned browner, and sweat trickled on his forehead."

"Father and Royal pitched the hay into the hay-mow, while Almanzo took the water-jug to the well.  He pumped, then jumped and caught the gushing cold water in his hand and drank.  He carried water to Father and Royal, and he filled the jug again.  Then he rode back in the empty hay-rack and trampled down another load.

We did five loads of hay from our little 1 acre field.  We did not cut it ourselves.  Mercifully, a nice neighbor cut it, but he was too busy to bale it, so here we are being pioneers again.  Maybe I should start having my children call me "Ma".

The best part of the day was the end.

"Mother met him on the back porch with the milk-pail, brimming full of cold egg-nog.  

The egg-nog was made of milk and cream, with plenty of eggs and sugar.  Its foamy top was freckled with spices, and the pieces of ice floated in it.  The sides of the pail were misty with cold...he dipped the dipper full, and he drank.  The cold egg-nog slid smoothly down his throat, and it made him cool inside...Father always maintained that a man could do more work in his twelve hours, if he had a rest and all the egg-nog he could drink, morning and afternoon."

I did make egg-nog just because after cheerfully telling the kids how fun this was and telling them they were just like Almanzo, they quickly reminded me that Almanzo got EGG-NOG at haying time!  I couldn't argue with that and the egg-nog was so fabulous that we'll never have that gross syrupy stuff at Christmas again.  Here's the recipe - and don't mention that it has raw eggs in it.  We're pioneers, remember?

Most Fabulous Egg-Nog

4 eggs, beaten hard

1 cup sugar

1 quart milk

1/4 gallon vanilla ice cream, softened

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp vanilla

Beat the eggs and sugar together and cool in fridge for at least 30 minutes.  Add milk and ice cream.  Stir until ice cream melts.  Add nutmeg and vanilla.  Then put an EXTRA scoop of ice cream in each glass, pour in the egg-nog and sprinkle extra nutmeg on top.  Enjoy.

Cabin Update

Everyone has been hard at work on the cabin.  My mom has been up polishing and scrubbing and making it homey.  My dad and Mr. Bechtel have been landscaping with the help of Braeburn and Mr. Bechtel's youngest brother who came to visit.  Warning:  if you come to visit our house and look capable we will immediately put you to work!

I think the outside looks fantastic.

The deck is large enough for a table and patio chairs and the fire pit is my favorite.  

We even planted sod around parts of the house with the overall scheme being that close to the house will be cultivated and proper but swooping around the edges will be nice tall native grasses and wildflowers.

There's still some nice weather left.  Wanna come visit?

True Confessions

Don't you just love romance?  Not the Harlequin kind, although since this is true confessions I will admit to reading the entire Marlboro Man saga at Pioneerwoman.com and loving every second of it.  On about chapter 11 I made myself start "earning" the reward of the next chapter or two.  (See how I have to motivate myself to do house work? - Load the dishwasher and then you can read another bit.  Ok, vacuum the loft and tidy up, then you can check out the next chapter.  Sad I know.)  Unfortunately I'm now done with all the chapters and so my house is messy again!

But the romance I really love is all about Mr. Bechtel.  He's away on business and I HATE IT WHEN HE IS GONE.  I feel like half of me is missing.  One of my favorite things is that he is so marvelous about asking me out on dates.   Our favorite is going on a drive in the truck and stopping for an ice cream cone on the way home.   Last week I had a chance to visit all of our old favorite places that we used to go to when we were mere children and just getting to know each other.  Things haven't changed much in our dating style except that we used to go for a walk and get an ice cream since neither of us had cars.  It was perfect.  Isn't love great?

I even found a radio station that was playing old 90's country and realized I was driving down the road with a huge smile on my face.  It was so much fun to reminisce.  

Hurry home Mr. Bechtel.  I miss you. 

Inner Beauty

Thanks, Cocoa, for making me take a minute to think about what INNER BEAUTY means to me.

This time of year is all about education.  The school year starts and I start wanting to learn more too.  I just got back from 2 great days at Education Week at BYU.

I was floored by so many incredible ideas.  The mind is so full of beauty but you don't walk down the sidewalk and think, "wow, that lady is really wearing a great idea..."  It's all inside.  

I gained such insight from listening to ordinary people share the inner beauty of their thoughts.

  

 And many of the thoughts shared dealt with our inner beauty.  And why are we all  beautiful?  Because we are children of God.

"... All things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them".  Moses 1:35 

Killing Chickens - Rated PG-13

I know this post has been anxiously awaited by all.... Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, I thought I'd better explain why we even tried this pioneer adventure...

The short answer is that I just wanted to see if we could do it. 

 If push came to shove, could we produce our own meat?  What would it taste like?  How long would it take to raise the chickens?  What do you have to feed them?  What is the price comparison between factory raised frozen chicken breasts in big bags at Winco (which I will never take for granted again, by the way) versus, our whole chickens.  I had read several "back to the land books" but I wanted to see what it was really like.  

This is what I learned.  Buying them is the easy part!  They are adorable and they only cost a dollar and all little animals are so fun for children and adults.  

When they were about 3 weeks old was when I noticed how much they ate.  Nothing at all like little hens foraging around and laying eggs.  These guys are made to produce MEAT.  We fed them twice a day and if we were the least bit late they would literally run at us when we opened the door. GIVE ME FOOD!

It was not hard for me to think of them as food.  It was hard for me to kill them though.  I had to stop and think through the whole thing and whether it was ok, and visualize how all that nice frozen meat got on the shelves of the store.

This was the response of Golden Delicious to the entire event.  It was also what all of us wanted to do, but to quote from one of the books I read, "you can't run away on harvest day".

We butchered 11 birds, and after the first 4 things got better.  We started laughing and joking a little bit - admittedly macabre humor - things like, "These guys really need a scarlet pimpernel to save them".  And even laughing at Mr. Bechtel's old Levi's which were spattered with blood.  (I told you this was  PG-13).

I did not pose this picture.  Don't you wish you were here...  Braeburn brought them out of the coop.  He and Nova Spy tied their legs together, Mr. Bechtel chopped their head off on the chopping block and then Prairie Spy and I hung them up on the lynch line.

We tried both skinning and plucking and eventually settled on plucking because Mr. Bechtel was the only good skinner and we needed him to gut them (I have no idea what the offical chicken term is for that).

We dipped them in boiling water for 20 seconds and then just started pulling feathers.  My facial expression tells you what I thought about it.  Then Mr. Bechtel would take out the insides (hard part) and we would hose off the meat, ice it down, wrap it up and freeze it.

None of us have been brave enough to eat it yet!

I'll let you know when we do.