separate the cream . . .

The final result of our butchering weekend.  A WHOLE freezer (and half of another) filled with beef.

 And still a WHOLE freezer (and half of another) filled with chicken.

 As a father, providing for my family is UTMOST important.  And especially my family's food needs.  I certainly do not trust in the freezer, but it sure does make me feel good to have 6 months to a year's worth of food available for the family to eat.  And now that butchering season is over for this year, it is time to get caught up on some of the other work that I do here on the farm.  One job in particular is making butter.  First I use the food processor to separate the cream into butter and buttermilk.

 Next the butter gets rinsed to get all the buttermilk out of it.  Here is starts to clump up and feel like butter.

 Then I form it into small paties to store in the freezer.

And this is what the finished product looks like.

And from the freezer, we thaw and put our butter in our new Butter Crock for use on the counter.  It is a crock that stores exactly 1/4 pound of butter and can be left on the counter up to 30 days without the butter spoiling.  The secret is the cold water!  You fill the bottom of the crock with a little cold water, then turn the lid over into the crock.  Since the butter is submerged in water, oxygen does not reach it keeping it fresh for a long period of time.  Not that it stays in there very long in our home!

beef in the freezer . . .

Tonight when I got home from school it was "butcher the heifer" time at the farm.  A friend of mine came over to teach me how it was done, NW Ohio style.  :)

After it was shot and bled out a bit, he loaded it on the trailer with the tractor.

 Inside his shop, which is only a few miles from the farm, it was hoisted up so the skin could be removed.

 Asher has skinned many small animals this year so it was easy for him to work with this large animal.

And this was the beast without all the fur.

After the internal organs were removed, the carcass was cut down the center to hang and cool for the night.  Tomorrow we do all the cutting up and packaging the near 300 pounds of meat that will be going in our freezer that night.

 And tonight I brought home the tallow and started rendering it on the wood cook stove.  It smells a little beefy in the family room just now!

metallic paint . . .

Another great Christmas break project we all got into.  Painting tile.

When I bought the place, I was forced to live with this hideous green tile that looked like it has been drug out from the back shelves of a third rate tile store.  In an old, desolate town.  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  I had plans of doing something with it, either replace it, or re-surface it, and this break time was the perfect time to get part of it done.

I purchased some hammered metallic paint (which is a new fascination for me now) and thought that it might work nicely in covering up the green tile, relatively cheaply.  I first masked off the green tiles, then had the younger children put an X on any other tile they wanted to paint.  I wanted to break up the pattern that had been "going on" in the mud hall.

 

Each of the children got a different metallic color and painted whichever squares they wanted to.  I did not care if they painted the same color next to each other, knowing that it would look great when it was finished anyway.

 After two coats of the paint, we peeled off the tape and gingerly walked on the tile for a day or two until it was permanently hardened.

 We used Dark Bronze, Brown, Copper, and Silver metallic paint for the project.

This summer we will paint the rest of the tiles, and then I will go back over them with each of the other colors to give them a slate/stone patina for under $50.00!  I'll post the final pictures of the tiel when we finish them.

other Christmas time activities . . .

In addition to Macy's choir concert this past Christmas, the other children had a piano solo to perform at a Senior Living center located in town.  This was Gresham's FIRST public piece that he played.  His arrangement for the day was Jingle Bells.  He asked me several times how he was supposed to bow when he finished his performance.  ")  It was AWESOME!

 And Christmas day was a great day here for us.  We all slept in, and leisurely opened the gifts that we either made, or purchased for each other.  This year I bought gifts for the children instead of making things for them.  (The older they get, the harder it is for me to make them things they want)

All of the children got electric mattress pads for their beds, and several of them got new night clothes to wear as well.   And this year, I decided to get them one BIG item that they REALLY wanted.  And I couldn't skip on the handmade items, so I made them each the first letter of their name, with the intention of each year making them one more letter to spell out their name.

It was a really casual day filled with lots of laughter, and I whole lot of eating sweets!

concert . . .

This past December, just a few short weeks ago, Ayersville High School Choir had their annual night Christmas concert.  All of us attended, as well as some friends of ours (the Miehls), to watch Macy sing.  We all thought (maybe it was just our minds tricking us) that we could hear HER voice distinctly even with so many students singing.  It was hard for me not to cry since this is the FIRST school function that any of my children have been involved in.

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.