...i need to stop looking for information on raising calves and lambs online because the pictures out there make me want to raise them in my own home. i mean...how can you want a plain old dog or cat when you can have...

a jersey calf. adorable and doe-like, yes? how can you possibly resist?

recently, we met with a local shepherd who raises romney and border leicester sheep. kenny also met with a local suffolk shepherd. both shepherds will sell us lambs when we're ready (and when their lambs are weaned). suffolk sheep are raised for their meat, while romney and leicester sheep are known for their wool, specifically for hand spinners.

kenny, dad, and i spent saturday cutting down all the low branches from the trees that will be inside the fence of the pasture. now we can see a bigger area of the pasture from the house. we have a small shed that's already in the area that will house the lambs until the barn is built. we hope to begin digging post holes this weekend, and then quickly get the fencing set up. as soon as the fence is up, we're ready for the lambs!

we hope to build the barn over the rest of the summer and fall as the sheep get bigger (and woolier!) for hay storage and more room for indoor feeding when it snows.

we also called a very local jersey cow farm (5 miles away) and they always have a calf that they're weaning and are also willing to sell us a calf. we hope to get a calf sometime in the spring. she will be housed in the barn with the sheep but won't be milking-ready until after she has her first calf (you aren't supposed to impregnate a jersey until about 18 months of age). so she'll be a pet for a while before she becomes a "working" pet. we haven't decided what we'll do with her calves - either raise them for meat, if they're male, or to sell as another milking cow.

a lot of work to go...but we're getting closer and closer! the shepherd who raises the romney and leicesters is also a hand spinner, and he promised me a few lessons once we get our sheep. i'm very eager to get started back on the wheel again...especially with our own wool!

we need to locate a shearer for the sheep, a vet for all the animals, and an "inseminator technician" which is exactly what it sounds like. apparently, it's not much money to have a technician come out with a syringe of bull semen, but there is an "arm fee" that comes with each insemination. we haven't asked yet what that means, but we're pretty sure we have figured it out. i would certainly not want THAT job.

we are enjoying a very busy week this week what with two birthdays and a wedding, parties, rehearsals and perhaps a new car!

but our patch of life...our living garden, our chickens and bees, our time to sit and enjoy the homestead we're building has been a bit neglected as we run from place to place, party to rehearsal, meeting to credit score check. and we've been running at this speed since summer started.

we have had a few moments to sit and reflect...this morning kenny and i drank our coffee on the deck while we watched a coyote "play" with a very sneaky and fast cat down by our row of pine trees. while we watched this, we remembered one of the big reasons we moved up here, to work the land and raise animals not usually "raised" within city limits, was to slow down. way down.  but we haven't figured out how to.

i have a feeling that by adding more "simplicity" to our family homestead, we'll be able to slow down more. sure, we'll have more work, but it won't be work that makes us sit in rush hour traffic. we won't have to pile in the car and eat even more gas (that just keeps going up in price). it will force us to be home more (something i will WELCOME!), force us to travel "into town" much less, and force us to be home to use up all that extra milk (making butter one morning, yogurt the next, cheese another time). it will allow us time to sit and watch our animals graze, teach our children that our milk comes from cows, not the refrigerator aisle at the grocery store. it will allow us to be more hospitable to friends and family (something close to my heart!)

maybe this makes me sound pretentious. if it does, then i'm willing to sound pretentious.  i am a full believer that God put animals on this earth as gifts for humans to take care of. they aren't to be protected from death, they are to be raised and used for food, for clothes, and for companionship. they are not to be abused; we are to be thankful (to God) for the gifts they are to us. they are not our equals, they are our gifts. and i don't know one person who would take advantage of or abuse a precious gift. i want to be able to teach our boys how to be stewards of the gifts God gives us. all the different types of gifts we're given, not just our talents or spiritual gifts...but the physical things we have been given.

i'm ready to work more ground, dig our heels in deeper, stay close to home for a while as we raise our family. i'm ready to slow down. way, way down.

adam is 3 at noon today. i never tire of looking through birth pictures, especially on their birthdays. as i look through the pictures, i can still feel the atmosphere and feelings we all went through during those first days of our "babymoons."

my three-year-old:

since all talk around our house lately is of fence posts, types of fence, dairy cows and the family sheep herd, i thought i'd begin a blog series on the steps forward (and backward!) we're taking toward an actual, functioning family (hobby?) farm here in our hills of western pennsylvania.

the two biggest reasons to get a family dairy cow and a few sheep in the same pasture is:
 - the amount of grass that we have and don't want to mow ourselves anymore
 - our own family dairy and free wool!

we've been looking almost everywhere for fencing. right now we're still looking for fence posts. kenny eyes trees that line our woods and wonders if they'll be sturdy enough. we've learend that locust trees make the best posts - as they last the longest without rotting in the ground. this is good to know as we'd kinda like the fence to outlast us!

our barn is old and rusty (not rustic - very rusty and is almost a hazard at this point!) so we want to use the wood from it to construct a smaller, more manageable barn where the pasture will be (on the other side of the property from the barn). it will be big enough to have a milking area, and house the animals at night. we'll reconstruct the chicken coop off this new barn. after the new barn is up, we'll burn down the remainder of the old barn. or the fire department will burn it down for us.

then, once we have the fence and the barn up, we need to buy animals! i've been researching what we need to know before we show up at a cow or sheep auction and i think i want to take a dairy cow farmer with me. we don't want to end up with a mean cow or sheep that run from us each time we come to feed and/or milk them.

the pros outnumber the cons at this point in caring for our own dairy cow AND sheep. but here are the "cons" that creep up every now and then:
 - cows do not take a day off, therefore you cannot have a day off. we have to be around to milk the cow twice a day (some jersey cows go down to once a day after their calf is weaned).
 - the vet bills for farm animals are much higher than house pets. i'm planning some bartering. :)
 - we're going to have a LOT of milk if we can't find enough families to share it with. we'd like to share the milk and have the families donate towards the winter feeding of the cow (when they can't graze) or help us milk when we need a vacation day or two.

we are at the very beginning stages of the process. it could be a year or a few years before we're set up and ready for our family farm to start working. all i know at this point in the game is that our cow will not be named betsy. or bessie or any derivation of the name "elizabeth."  she will have a very cow-appropriate name.

and don't say "betsy" is cow-appropriate name. :)

there is a great post up at Homemaking Through the Church Year that lists different home traditions for Pentecost and also thoughtful posts about celebrating Pentecost.
go there now!

we spent pentecost sunday with our good family friends in our old church this morning. there was a baptism and a lunch following the service, so it was the perfect way to spend the morning.

when we returned home we spent the rest of the day doing what we love to do on gorgeous sunday afternoons...spend time in our yard! if we're not cooking out and/or riding bikes at our local beach, you're sure to find us in our yard. and the boys are sure to be with us, when there is water involved.

here they all are helping daddy in the vegetable garden. this picture is deceiving and weirds me out slightly. because rowan isn't nearly that tall, but i know that someday he will be that tall. or taller. he is actually standing on either a hay bale or a mound (our garden rows are big long mounds and the "valleys" are where we walk between them). thos are lupins in the foreground. the lupins went crazy this year. they're gorgeous up close.
our row of peonies, in front of the barn. i think i'm going to transplant some of them to other parts of the yard as these are not seen from the road, and we need more color in other parts of the yard.

the parade took place in a small town a few miles north of us. our house is just behind those hills behind me.

i never knew how easy it was to make your own pita bread until yesterday.

at some point during our first year of marriage, kenny gifted me with a gorgeous book on bread-baking. it wasn't just any book, it was The Bread Baker's Apprentice. if you're a bit intimidated by bread-baking, i recommend you NOT get this book. i had been searching for a good bread-baking book because we were into our first year of marriage, and i wanted to learn how to make all kinds of breads. i had high hopes of my bread-baking skills. but i didn't want to have to measure my skills. i loved the smell of bread-baking, but i didn't want to work too hard at getting that to happen. so the books i was looking at when we'd browse through a bookstore were on the simple-side of bread-baking.  upon receiving this book, i leafed through it and hid it away because i was daunted by the two-day long recipes it included. throughout the first few years, i'd make a loaf of bread that was tasteless or too doughy, or not "salted" enough, and kenny always asked if i used "the book" to find my recipe. my answer was always "no."

but then he started using the book to make these lovely loaves of white bread, hawaiian bread, whole wheat breads, pizza dough, and dinner rolls. i was being totally outshined in the baking department by my husband. so i finally decided to give it a try. it's still daunting. because of the recipes that include starting poolish the night before, which means being a bit on the "organized" side, and i lost that side of me back when rowan was a few days old. but i have read a bit more than the recipes now and i'm beginning to understand how yeast and flours and water work together to form bread. and it's fascinating. so if you're a bit intimidate by bread-baking, i recommend you TOTALLY get this book. :) you'll learn a LOT. and the photos are lovely.

for memorial day, my mom brought over some steaks for kenny to grill. he was craving hummus, so he whipped up a batch and asked if i would be so kind as to start the dough for pita.

"do you mean run up to the friedman's and pick up a bag of pita?"  i asked.

no, that's not what he meant at all. he knows my relationship all too well with The Bread Baker's Apprentice and told me to look up page 178 for the starter recipe and then LEFT ME IN THE KITCHEN ON MY OWN to do his yard work. so i loaded my ipod with some inspirational music and plugged it in and got to work. i cleaned the counters, swept the floors, put away clean dishes, loaded the dishwasher with dirty dishes, and started a load of laundry. i had no other job to keep me away from thebook, so i had no other choice but to look at the recipe.

and it was SIMPLE. so simple that i'm including it here for you to try. i was done building the dough within 20 minutes. it rose for about 3 hours (when we were ready to make it) and it only took 15 minutes to bake the entire batch (the recipe made about 9 small pitas). i was shocked that they actually looked liked pitas, had a big ol' pocket in the middle, and went very well with the hummus. i'll be making these time and time again. and so should you!

Pita Bread

1 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. instant yeast

1 T. honey

1 T. vegetable oil

1/3 to 1/2 cup water, room temperature

In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt, yeast, honey, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.

Sprinkle some flour onto the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should pass the windowpane test and register 77 to 81 degrees F.

Ferment (let rise) at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size.

Roll out 6-oz pieces of the finished dough into 8" diameter circles (mine were more like 6") slightly less than 1/4" thick. Bake in a 500F degree oven on a baking stone until they just begin to inflate. Count to 10 and then remove the breads from the oven with a spatula before they brown and crisp. When they cool (and slightly deflate), they can be cut in half and used for pocket sandwiches.

~from the Bread Baker's Apprentice

we've been outdoors more often than in. the majority of the garden is in (with the exception of the tomato and pepper plants that were eaten by a vole last weekend). we've had a long stretch of hot weather and no rain, so we've been watering the newly planted garden and flower seedlings every night as the sun sets. it's one of my favorite times of day - warm and heavy light from the western sky sun.  color is returning to the yard and so is my desire to redo the front of the house. we've already torn out 6 yew bushes (or evergreens) at the front of the house, and we dream of a big country front porch someday...but that someday is long off, and for now, i will make the front as lovely and welcoming as i possibly can. this year, we'll be planting some flowers on a newly dug flower bed that lines the front bushes:


here's a closer look. at the front left corner is a patch of day lilies and towards the porch is a big bushy plant of lavender. there is a smaller lavender plant on the other side of the porch and then pure dirt in which to plant more prettiness. one reason i don't like these yew bushes is that they house hornets nests each summer. and we like to use the front door quite a bit. we don't like being greeted by several hornets, however.


before moving here, i knew only about hostas and impatiens. i had no clue that there were amazing plants with gorgeous flowers that grew back EVERY spring and summer! yes, i was oblivious to perennials. and i was unaware at how many gorgeous ones there were. it's not a good idea to have a novice flower gardener buy a house with large perennial gardens. because to me, this plant looks like a giant man-eating weed.





when we do yard work, they hang out with us. normally they play on their bikes, or with sidewalk chalk, or run down behind the house to the jungle gym, so they're pretty tired and hungry by lunch on the days we work outside. today, rowan really did stay outside with kenny the entire time and helped him a great deal with the digging and pulling out grass and carrying soil to the new bed. it was fun for me to watch. at the end of their work, kenny let rowan "drive" (steer) the tractor around the yard. i think he was inspired by the 12-year-old boy driving the vintage john deere at the memorial day parade this morning. ahhhh... country-living. soon enough, prom day will be here and rowan will be driving his date to prom in our newly painted vintage john deere tractor.

and at the end of the day, this is what we look like. please tell me that others' kids look just as "rode hard and put away wet" as ours do right before bedtime (or in the case of the warmer months, right before showers and then bed)? they're dirty, wet, sweaty, ripe, but most importantly, worn out and tired.

ahhh...spring and summer. longer days, more energy, beauty, room to run, and happy boys (and a very happy mama!)