More Old Pictures

Can’t sleep tonight, so I’ll upload a few older pictures from the time-frame when we weren’t updating the blog.   These are from when Isaac and Sydney tested for Green-Belt in Tae Kwan Do.  The instructor frequently had them spar each other until Sydney learned to fight back instead of just try to run away from her little brother.

Enjoy!

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Making Mozzarella & Butter

Nippa, the milk machine, generally produces almost exactly the amount of milk we tend to drink every day as a family.  However, when one or more of us aren’t here, the milk can begin to pile up in the fridge.  Recently I spent several days out of town for work, and Sydney had spent a week at summer church camp.  That translated into a couple gallons that were threatening to go bad if we didn’t do something useful with them. To add to the problem, Liz had bought a half-gallon of cream from the dairy down the street, but had … Read the rest

A Doghouse for Mr Thornton

Liz has never really liked the idea of an “inside dog,” coyotes were wreaking havoc on our chickens, and we were planning on going on a family vacation for two weeks and leaving the Dog outside to “protect” the other animals and to make it much easier on the family who was going to be feeding and watering the animals.  The dog would need somewhere to get out of the weather.  Because the barn is behind the back pasture fence and I don’t like the idea of the dog hanging out in the chicken coop I decided the best option … Read the rest

Whole-Wheat Sourdough Kefir Bread

I love bread.  However, with the nutrition approach Liz has adopted you’re supposed to soak all grains overnight in an acidic liquid before consuming/cooking them to break down phytic acid.  The conventional (if you can call it that) method is to add a few tablespoons of cultured whey to act as a starter and get lacto-fermentation going to generate the acid.  However, I don’t like the flavor the whey adds.  To make it worse, most of my recipes for homemade bread don’t include an overnight soak/rise.

Sourdough, on the other hand, essentially is an overnight soak because it can take … Read the rest