suspended from the ceiling . . .

I now have a new fascination with hanging things.  And it all started in the kitchen!

 

I have always liked the look of pots and pans hanging from the ceiling.  And I have some friends that have a rack in their primitive country kitchen that holds theirs.  So, this past few weeks I have been working on putting up a rack for my pans to be suspended from.

 

I decided to use an old ladder that I had in the wood shop for the project.  Two summers ago I used a ladder to suspend my hand tools in the wood shop, so I thought it would work great to use the same structure in the house.  First I cut the ladder to the size of the counter.  I then burnt eye hooks and S hooks, painted them black, and then installed them on the ladder and on the ceiling.  Next, I stained the ladder to somewhat match the cabinets and left room for it to look "farmlike".  I purchased some S hooks, burnt the finish off, and left them charred.  And on the outside of the ladder I added some oil rubbed bronze coat hooks.  And now that it has been up for a few weeks, it seems like it has always been there.

In addition to the ladder in the kitchen, I also installed some laundry lines in the basement and in the family room.  Last summer, when I returned after my "visit away from the farm," I had to institute a new set of chores so that the children were not relying on others to do the work that needed to be done.  And one of the chores was laundry.  It wasn't too much of a mess, but many of the children were complaining that it wasn't getting done in time, and as they have gotten older, they wanted things washed when they wanted them washed.  So, I taught the youngers, minus Gresham, how to wash their own clothes, and showed them how to hang them on the line outside to dry.  In fact, we didn't use the dryer the whole summer!  Since I have done my laundry all my life, and most of that time hung the clothes to dry, I decided to see how long we could go without using the dryer.  The laundry lines are helping.  It has now been been 5 months and we have not used it yet! 

And this is a quick shot of our tree for this year.  (for Sherri:)  I added some galvanized steel buckets to put some of the newspaper wrapped packages in.  Sort of a vintage Christmas look. 



 

cut the pieces . . .

Tonight I had the crazy idea of turning some of our crusty bread into croutons. And since I had the bread, and all of us love croutons, it worked out really well!

 

I had several peices of bread that were REALLY dry and brittle, and some other pieces that were a little SOFT in the middle.  First I cut the peices that were brittle and stored them in a jar.  Meanwhile, Maine was looking up how to make croutons in one of the many cookbooks we have on our kitchen shelves.  Since I had already cut most of the soft bread up, I buttered a pan and filled it with bite-sized cubes.  Maine was helping me and she decided what herbs to use on them.  After preheating the oven, I baked them until they were crisp, and mixed them to the others.

 

Immediately they were used with the salad we had with our spaghetti dinner.  The salad included iceberg lettuce, baby spinach, and some cut apple pieces.  Topped with a little ranch dressing, it was a great addition to the dinner!

Gingerbread...

 

Gingerbread... Yeah! So Miss Leisa comes and bakes us some gingerbread, and ends up constructing an entire gingerbread house with us. I will just let you enjoy the pictures :) 

 

 

 

 

These are just some pictures of the farm that I am actually planning on entering in a contest.

 

I hope you enjoyed looking as much as I did taking :)

 

 

 

Posted by MacyAnne

new experiences...

NEW experiences! Asher goes hunting this morning, and kills two BEAUTIFUL pheasants.

 

 

I cooked them up with potatoes and onions, and also some squash we were given by our SUPER generous neighbors. And it turned out delicious. :)

 

learning a language . . .

Recently the children have been having fun with languages.  More fun than they had been having trying to "study" a foreign language than before.

 

I started them on the Berlitz Method to study French this year.  For years they have been studying French from a book, not enjoying it, and not really learning much at all year to year.  And with my study of language aquisition, and my Master's study of culture, I found that conversational, real life situational learning works best.  Especially when learning a language.  First comes the verbal, then the book-work grammar, structures, and perfection of the language.  And when people study language rearely do they want to understand the sentence structures first . . . they want to SPEAK it.

 

So with the addition of the tape series Berlitz Method, the children have been using the google translate to help them along with the aquisition of the French language.  And that has morphed at times, to just playing around with noises, phrases, and sentences of ALL SORTS of different languages.  It is hilarious to have them play them while we are all sitting around the family room.  And a great way to get exposure to other languages in a fun way.

 

getting used to school...

Okay, so it’s been a really long time since I posted anything, so I will give a splurge on school.

So the first two weeks I didn’t think I was going to make it through the day, let alone a whole YEAR, I was totally freaked out, about nothing and everything. (We also have to use computers a lot and I don’t like them, they keep doing things like their alive or something.) I also felt like everyone was inwardly laughing at my stupidity in all the things that were so normal to them. About the first time I was asked to put an MLA heading on a paper, or even getting an assigned a paper to write, I was completely at sea. After I got over myself and realized that the work was really easy, the teachers weren't going to eat me if I did something differently, and I was actually really cool because I lived in LA, and now lived on a farm, I started to enjoy school a little more. Now that I know some kids my own age, and it doesn't scare me when people talk to me, I'm ALL HAPPY now :)

 

( and it's BEAUTIFUL outside )

 

 

posted by Macy

 

 

 



tuck it under . . .

Last weekend Asher and I finally did some electrical work that I had wanted to get done since we moved here.  I wanted to put in a motion sensored spotlight by the garage so that when we drove up, it would turn on.  And another great feature of the light would be that we could play basketball at night!

 

About a year ago I dug a fairly deep hole and put this rusty post down in it.  I found the pole in the woods and planned to re-purpose it.  I had Asher take the pole out and dig the hole down 24 inches.

The next step was to run the wire down the pole and then put it back in the hole.  I opted not to drill a hole through a 1/2" thick metal, so the wire just came out of the top and bottom of the pole.  After putting a little clay/dirt in the hole at a time, Asher tapped it down so the post would sit solidly in the ground.

We finished the post part by adding the dirt around the post, and running the wire over to the edge of the concrete where we tucked it under the grass.  I used outdoor gray wire that will not compost even after a LONG time under ground.

I finished the wire up to the garage and used some old pvc piping to attach it to the outside wall.  I started to feel like a real elctrician.

 

Usually I work with electricity "hot" because I don't want to take the time to turn the main line on and off while I work, and most of the time I need the electricity to run a tool that I am using for the job.  But, since I was teaching Asher how to do it, the right way, I worked with the electricity off.  It is far safer and easier to work with wires when there is no chance of getting a jolt.  :)

And Macy came around a few times to let us know what she thought about our electrical work on the light pole.

And the photos . . . Maine is now our resident photographer.  She took all the photos for us on this activity.  I am extremely pleased at her photographer's eye.

the second batch . . .

For such a long time we have been getting tons of milk.  Since Janey has come fresh, it has been anywhere from 4 to 6 gallons of milk a day.  With so much milk, we have been able to have as much as we want, feed the new calf, feed all the dogs and cats, and give some away for other families to enjoy.  And even though the milk has stretched that far, we are still having to pour some out on a regular basis.

 

Two weeks ago I started making yogurt out of the extra milk.  And it has been a fun process to learn.  First I added about two gallons of milk to a large pot.  The cream had already been taken off to make butter.

 I then heated the milk up to 110 degrees.

 Next I added some of the previous batch of yogurt I had made.  It had live active cultures in it which makes the yogurt "yogurt."

 Then Gresham adds a lid, slightly tightening it, and puts it in the oven.  We leave in in there overnight with the pilot light on to culture.

The next day we tighten the lid and put it in the refridgerator.  Presto, we have yogurt!  Since we have been buying some yogurt from the store, we add the one from the store, with all the fruit in it, to ours to make the Fruit on the Bottom yogurt last a LONG TIME.  Yum!

surprise, surprise, surprise . . .

So I was walking in the barn pasture fixing some of the fence wires that came out of the posts, and Maine yells at me from the woods pasture "Hey dad, there's a baby lamb!"  She had been in the woods, and on her way out, she stopped by the pasture to get a look at what was following Clover around.  I walked over to where she was, and sure enough, Clover had a lamb RIGHT NEXT TO HER!  WOW, what a surprise.  We did not even know that she was bred!

 

Not know she was bred?  How could you not know?  Well, first off, she did not LOOK bred, and secondly, we kept the rams away from the ewes EXCEPT for a couple of times they all got mixed up together.  :)  Since we are not all that experienced with handling sheep, those types of things are bound to happen.

 

This is Clover with her new lamb Clementine.  As Maine has named her.

And last week we added a parakeet to the inside RAT that Asher has in his room.  I don't know what I am thinking letting the children keep pets in the house.  Have I gone mad?

 

In fact, it has shocked the children a bit that I have been letting them get and keep household pets.  And it is shocking me as well!  I guess in my older age things aren't as they were when I was younger.  I figure that a few little animals aren't going to hurt me.

 

I purchased this cage years ago (when Pottery Barn had no idea that bird cages were cool) and have only used it for decoration.  Now it was time to put it to use.  And since the bird has been here, only for a few days, it has gotten out of the cage twice.  What fun it is to try to catch a flying bird in the house.  :)

non-traditional . . .

Lately I have been working on a ton of chalkboard orders for menu boards.  It seems they are starting to pick up just as much as the little 3 x 4's have.  And I have also been changing the look of some of them, like the one pictured, to non-traditional black to some other colored boards that you can use ChalkInk markers on.  This one was for a farm down in North Carolina and I used a darker brown as the chalkboard writing surface.  The logo is displayed on both sides.