The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Today our 80+ pound Berkshire piglets arrived. Thomas is having a hard time accepting that we will eat the pigs. He wants them to be Wilbur! :-) Tonight when Thomas was talking on the phone with Grandma Conover he told her that he didn't want Mom and Dad to Bake the pigs. His next comment was, "They'll be under arrest!" I think Thomas wants to have us arrested for butchering the pigs. :-)

I'm very happy to get some of my freezer space back! I've been saving food scraps for the pigs since we found out we'd be able to buy some. I had the entire freezer in one of the refrigerators FULL with slop for the pigs.



Today while I was working in the garden Philip was telling me that he wanted a pet. I told him we had a pet, Sunny our dog. He said that he wanted a different pet. I asked him what kind of a pet he wanted, his reply, “ A Elephant!” As we held hands walking up to the house I told him that I didn't think we had enough food to feed an elephant. I then said, “ Philip, what would you feed the Elephant?” His reply, “Chick starter”. Then he told me that he wanted to use his “dollar” (which is actually a $5 bill he earned for helping with chores) to buy his elephant. I love the way four almost five year olds think!

Tonight I sent out an email to family and friends whose email address I have. This email contained our new address and phone number. If you didn't receive it and would like to please email me and I would love to pass our contact info on to you! I do apologize if I missed anyone. It is very likely that I don't have everyone's current email address.

It has been a few days since posting. Nothing major has been happening here. I organized my canning jars and unpacked most of my stoneware yesterday. We've been trying to keep up with the garden, laundry (hang drying everything since we don't have a dryer yet) and keeping the house in order. It is amazing how much easier it is when there are no distractions... like Internet or TV. Mind you the house isn't immaculate, but it is usually company ready and pretty clean (my mom would be proud of me).

So, is anyone wondering about how the garden is going?


This is what I see when I walk through the gate into our garden. Can you see all the beautiful green plants? For those of you who have seen or heard of our failed attempts the past two years, you'll be SHOCKED to hear me say that our garden is beautiful and about 85% weed free. In a garden as large as ours it is almost impossible to keep it completely weed free. The interesting thing is that this years garden is about 3 times larger than last years. The big difference is that we have a desire to really work at it and we have researched out how to do it. Over the past couple days I rescued the strawberry plants from the weeds. About 40 of the 50 we planted have survived. The few berries we have gotten have been so sweet, more like candy than fruit! We've already started to cut broccoli. For some reason our broccoli is flowering instead of making large heads, I'm not sure why. If any of you know please leave a comment and share what I should be doing or not doing to get nice big heads of broccoli. Some of the broccoli plants are about mid thigh on me, so the plants are definitely large enough. All have some broccoli forming. We now have enough broccoli to have a meal with cheesy broccoli once a week plus have broccoli on salads a couple times a week. YUM!

Elizabeth took this picture of me standing in the middle of the garden so you could get a bit of an idea as to how large it is! This is the view I see of the garden from my kitchen window.
This is the view of the garden from the road. You'll notice there appears to be several straw piles in my garden. These are my potatoes. I was told by a friend that instead of using soil to cover my potatoes I should use straw. I guess the straw makes it easier to harvest and gives a good yield. It will also be great to till into the garden this fall to add to the health of the garden soil. That same friend told me to put straw around all my plants. She said that the straw would help to keep back the weeds as well as to keep the soil moist around the plants. Since it has been a VERY warm lately I have put straw around everything except the corn, onions, garlic, and the new squash & cucumbers that are emerging. Our squash veggies (butternut, spaghetti, cucumber, pickling cucumbers, yellow & green zucchini) went in a little over a week ago along with more bush beans and they are coming up nicely.

I have two beds of red onions. One is almost ready to harvest, these are the ones I started from seed and I think there are only about 16 onions, though I haven't counted. We will start using them once I use up the organic ones I have in the pantry. The onions that I started from seed are doing better than the ones from sets. Next year I will do a LOT more from seed and will succession start them indoors. The green bush beans & peas are both flowering. I'm not sure which pea I have that is doing well, a rabbit mowed down about ½ the pea plants. I plan to plant a lot more peas in August for fall harvesting since I only have about 5 plants that are doing well. Many of the tomato plants have flowers and a few have fruit forming finally!! We are still planting carrots. I planted some a few days ago and will do more today or tomorrow. From now through August I plan to plant about 6 rows of carrots every 5-7 days. My rows are three feet long and spaced about 3 inches apart. I also have more beans to plant. Since the ones I planted a week ago are all up I plan to do about 30 more plants today. We never seem to have enough green beans to last the year. This year I'm doing succession planting and hope to have my freezer full of beautiful green beans. August will start a time of even more planting as we prepare the fall crops and winter boxes.

My dear hubby knows that I really want to keep up with the garden. He also knows that I HATE getting up early. Today he woke me with a sweet kiss and breakfast in bed. He served me a yummy omelet with some green grapes and coffee with fresh cream. He knows that I don't like mornings yet he also knows that I love getting up to kisses and food! :-) I got up, had some Bible and prayer time, made the kids donuts (the recipes is below), and headed out to work in the garden for the next 2 ½ hours. Nathan came out at some point half naked, so I had to head up to the house in my mud moon boots to get his clothes. The soil was very wet because of last nights rain so it clumped badly on my shoes adding about 2 inches of mud and a couple pounds of weight to each shoe. Last week when Caleb had his surgery and I worked in the garden early in the day, Nathan came out with two shirts on, one where it was supposed to be and the other around his waist. :-)

It has been a while since I posted a recipe. Todays recipe is Whole Wheat Soaked Donuts! My children LOVED them!

Whole Wheat Cake Donuts

3 ¼ cups whole wheat pastry flour or freshly ground flour of your choice

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ nutmeg (I left this out because I don't have any right now)

2/3 cup kefir or milk (I used kefir)

¼ cup butter melted

2 eggs

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

oil for frying (I used safflower, I'd like to try them in coconut oil but cannot afford to this month)

Powdered sugar, granulated sugar, or an icing or glaze of your choice.

1. Combine flour, baking powder, spices and ¼ tsp sea salt in a bowl.

2. In a different bowl beat eggs, sugar and vanilla until thick.

3. Combine melted butter and milk in a separate bowl.

4. Add flour and milk mixtures to egg mixture alternately beating well after each addition.

5. Cover and let set at room temperature over night.

6. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours in the morning.

7. Roll out on a lightly floured surface ½ inch thick. Use a cup to cut 2 – 2 ½ inch circles or a donut cutter. Use a corer to get a middle circle and donut hole if you don't have a donut cutter.

8. Fry for 1 minute or until golden brown, then flip with tongs or slotted spoon and cook for another minute.

9. Cool slightly on a rack then sprinkle with powdered sugar (if you have a sugar shaker) or put sugar in a baggie and shake donuts to get them covered.

COOKS NOTE: If you have a large family you will need to double this recipe. This made 12 donuts and donut holes. If I was making these again I'd double it because Phil and I didn't even get to try them!

Tonight at dinner Caleb was giving us a digestive tract lesson. He didn't care for the veggies served (garlic Parmesan grilled zucchini & baked potatoes) with dinner so he only ate his grilled pork chop then he said he was full. We were questioning him as to whether or not he was REALLY full. Phil said something about Vanilla Ice Cream to see if he'd all of a sudden have room in his tummy. He said he'd have room for Ice Cream because only the food side of his tummy was full. He had room on the desert side of his tummy! We enjoyed the mini lesson that followed talking about how his tube divides so food goes down one side and dessert down the other then they come together at the bottom until they go all the way through and eventually come out the front or back! :-) My comment: “I sense the need to do a unit on the digestive system this year in school!” :-)

If the Internet is cooperating tonight I'll try to post a couple pictures of the garden. If not I'll at least load up the one that Elizabeth took so you can see how large it is. I wish I could post more pictures of the garden showing off each individual veggie. I am so thankful and in awe each time I walk through. God is so good to provide all this wonderful food for our nourishment and enjoyment. Today as I was sweating while working on weeding the leaks, beans, yellow beans, red onions, and planting more beans & carrots I was struck with how it must have been difficult for Adam to have to work hard after having things “spoon fed” to him in the Garden of Eden. Phil and I have talked much about how “lazy” we've been over the past 13 years of our marriage. This little homestead farm is forcing us to get a small picture of what hard work really is when it comes to providing good food for our family. I say only a small picture since we aren't farming the land while trying to raise animals and work a garden. Our dream is to some day be able to grow our own crops for our livestock both the four legged and the two legged kind! :-) God has seen fit to only give us what we can handle as we learn how to do more for our family and I'm thankful that He is taking us through this journey one step at a time!

Well, for not having much to post about I've sure managed to kick out a VERY long post once again. I hope it was enjoyable!

OK.... it is 1:12 a.m. and I've been trying to download pictures for over an hour. I can hardly wait until we get our high speed internet!!! I'll try to ad more pictures to this post tomorrow, so check back to see the picture of the kids with the pot of berries.....

Today was a busy but fun day! We are so blessed to have many Amish farms in our area that sell GREAT produce! I purchased $75 of Strawberries and a large bundle of Rhubarb. While I was chopping up the 36 cups of Rhubarb Caleb & Elizabeth de-hulled all the Strawberries. You'll see my largest blue speckled pan filled with de-hulled berries on the chair. After shaping our bread loaves and setting them in a warm spot to rise we started the process of making Jam. I have never made real jam before and it has been about 10 years since the last time I made freezer jam. We made a total of 35 pints of Jam and still have about 12 Cups of fresh strawberries left. It was such an enjoyable process with all the help from Caleb & Elizabeth! Tomorrow I'm making a fresh strawberry rhubarb pie and a rhubarb cream meringue pie, both at the request of my dear hubby.

Phil and Samuel drove up to Pembine to get another load of stuff from our house. Somehow we forgot the vacuum on the first two trips. We also needed to check our mail and pick up canning jars. Soon after they got home our new Pastor came over for our first new member meeting. We had a great time sharing our testimonies and going over a portion of the churches constitution.

This evening was spent finishing up Jam while making Tapioca (Phil's Favorite) pudding. Yes, the picture with Elizabeth stirring berries & Tapioca at the same time was posed. She did help quite a bit with the entire jam making process and I think she enjoyed it! She is starting to show more interest in learning how to cook and bake. I'm enjoying teaching her little things here and there as we prepare our meals. When the kitchen was cleaned up we headed outside for a garbage bonfire and some firecrackers that Phil picked up for the kids. :-)

While at the bonfire Thomas said, “Mom I'm hungry for something.” I asked him what he was hungry for and he said, “Some Marshmallows!” He didn't know that I actually had some in the cupboard and I didn't tell him since we are saving them for our 4th of July bonfire.

I'm sad to report that we lost poor little Elizabeth the goat a couple days ago. We are still going to try to get some goats but will get adult goats NOT little kids. Before getting more goats we need to get our pig pen finished so we can get our pigs. I've been saving scraps and freezing them to pull out for the pigs when we get them. I just hate to throw away food and love the idea of giving the things that are leftover to the pigs rather than just throwing it away. My freezer is getting quite full! Phil went to get some ice cubes tonight and made the comment “We really need to get those pigs!!”

Praise the Lord, Caleb's surgery went well. The doctor said everything went as planned during the 2 hour surgery. We were told that in a couple of months Caleb will be able to get his contact.

Caleb is resting comfortably on the front couch. We praise God that the trip home from the hospital was much shorter this time and that Caleb was able to tolerate being in the car. He is on bed rest until he sees the doctor tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.

Tuesday July 1st at 8 a.m. Caleb will undergo eye surgery again. This time they will be removing the oil that has served as a splint for the detached side wall of his retina. They will put natural fluids back into his eye which will allow the eye pressure to function as normal. When he heals from this surgery he will be fitted for a contact that will allow him to see close up again. He can see things far away but they are a bit blurry. I think it is totally amazing that he can see at all without a lens in his eye.

Phil, Caleb, & Sam (who wanted to be with his brother at the surgery), are leaving at 4:30 a.m. to get to the hospital. Please pray with us that the surgery will go well and that Caleb will have a smooth recovery. I'm excited for him that he has his own bedroom to rest in this time.

I'll try to update my blog tomorrow night to let everyone know how the surgery went.

Each morning I wake up and thank the Lord that we are together as a family again. It is so wonderful to see Phil each day! Philip asked me this past Thursday, “Mommy, is daddy coming home this week?” I smiled and said “Yes Philip Daddy will be home tonight!” Philip's eye's got wide and he exclaimed, “Oh boy!!” The little ones still haven't caught on to the fact that because we moved we get to see Daddy every day now. It is so nice to greet Phil at the door each night and sit down together as a family for Bible time and dinner.

Today we worked hard on the farm again. Phil helped me till up the flower bed along the South side of the house. After tilling and raking out the weeds and crab grass we spread a layer of compost then tilled it in. I planted almost all of the herbs in the flower bed. I still have about 2 dozen parsley plants which I am going to plant with flowers along the front edge of the bed next week. I've always wanted a flower bed and an herb garden and now I have both! YEAH! If all my herb plants grow well we will probably have enough fresh herbs to feed the county. :-)

Samuel enjoyed tinkering with an old riding lawn mower that we found in the barn. The landlord said we could have it if we could get it started. Phil and Sam worked on it today but couldn't get it working. It was so fun to see Sam so excitedly working with Phil on the mower. Sam is still hoping that he and daddy will succeed at getting it to work.

Phil and the boys also worked on the fencing for our pig pen. We hope to finish it up early in the week so our little Berkshire piglets can join our farm. God is so good to give us the desires of our heart when we least expect it! Pigs have been hard to find this year up north so I was expecting to have a hard time once we moved down here. Our new neighbors, that we buy our milk from, have a sow that gave birth to 12 piglets this spring, 10 survived. They are a bit bigger than the normal feeder piglet, almost twice the size actually so we are paying twice the price. BUT the really neat thing is that they are Berkshire pigs. Berkshire pigs are the bread that I had decided through my research that I would some day want to have a sow and bore of. They are wonderful pigs for pasture feeding AND they are the gourmet choice of pork. I'm so thankful that we found these pigs and for such a reasonable price. We will raise these two for butchering this year. Eventually we will try to get a sow for breeding.

Our laying hens graduated from their one room heated establishment to the chicken coop today! The only difficulty we are having is that the roosters are trying to eat their feed and are chasing the chicks away, those naughty boys!! Phil rigged up a heat lamp for the chicks since they are only 4 weeks old and it is supposed to be in the high 50's tonight. He put the food very close to the heat lamps in hopes that the roosters won't like the heat and will stay away. We'll see if the plan works.

Elizabeth the Goat has been enjoying some freedom these past couple days. While we are out in the yard during the day we let her out of the chicken pen and into the yard with us. Thomas is trying to make her a house goat, YUCK! She enjoys laying on the cool concrete in the entry way of the house and has left a couple deposits that mom hasn't been too thrilled with. I'm hoping we will get more goats this week or I'm afraid Elizabeth the Goat is going to start to think she really is a Reese kid!

It has been so long since I've been able to blog that I don't know where to begin. So I'll go back a couple weeks and try to get you caught up on our family happenings. I hope you will sit back, pour yourself a cup of something cold to drink and enjoy catching up on us!

When we got back from camp we were sad to find one of our little rabbits dead. The next morning the other female was found dead too. Now we have one white male. We hope to find more rabbits to bread with it once we get proper cages built.

Fathers Day was a nice day at church celebrating the dad's and saying farewell to our dear friends. Sunday afternoon U Hall called about our truck telling us that we had to travel about 45 miles one way to pick up the truck, and it wasn't available until 10:30 Monday morning. We were bummed to have to wait until after noon to start loading. My wonderful organized planning all went down the drain as the loading process began. I stepped back and let the men do the work while I continued to pack up things throughout the house. Loading the moving truck and trailer took about 8 hours. Finally at about 8 pm we headed for New Holstein.

We arrived very tired to find that the kitchen floor had been lacquered late in the evening and was still wet. We did our best to lay down boxes and rugs so we wouldn't step on the wet floors while we brought in enough blankets for the kids. They were exhausted so we bunked them all down together in Samuel's new room. By midnight we realized that we were never going to find blankets for Phil and I. That is when he remembered the blankets he had been using were located in the van at the auto shop only a few miles down the road. He drove there got our blankets and we were able to head to bed.

I received one VERY BIG surprise when we arrived at the New Holstein house. Phil had purchased a new bed & dresser set with a nice new mattress. YEAH!!! Our nights sleep only lasted until 6 am when the landlord showed up to do more work on the house, but it was the first nights sleep I've had in years where I didn't wake up with a back ache.

In the morning we found out that some folks from our new church would be coming at 9 to help us unload. The unloading process went very quickly (thanks to all my labeling) and by the early evening almost the entire kitchen was organized, plus a couple of the older kids had “settled” into their rooms.

On Wednesday we continued to settle in. One of the ladies from church who has 5 children around the same ages as ours came over after lunch with her kids for the kids to play while we worked on getting Thomas, Philip, & Nathan's room unpacked and organized. It only took us a couple hours to get the room ready for the boys. That evening Phil & I set up the beds while the kids were at their first night of VBS at our new church.

By Friday we were pretty much settled in with the exception of the school room. I have to get bookshelves for the school room before I start to unpack. Phil has to put my desk together too. Elizabeth is not quite settled yet in her room and my need some “help” from mom to get it finished.

I absolutely love this house!! If it came with a few more acres and wasn't quite so old I'd be chomping a the bit to buy it. I'm so thankful that we will be able to live here while we get our finances more stable without the pressure of another mortgage. I'll have to take some pictures to post once we get our Internet. Right now we are trying to use the Internet off of Phil's blackberry, which means it is quite slow. Phil is working on getting us phone and Internet.

The children are really enjoying our little country life. We aren't in a good routine yet but Elizabeth is faithfully caring for the laying hen chicks and the boys are getting a bit better about caring for the rabbit. There is a rope swing here on one of the large maple trees which the kids spend HOURS swinging on . This yard is so wonderful for kids!! There are trees to climb, a sand box, and the rope swing. Once the animals chew down the pasture they will be able to access the creek easier and hunt for crayfish.

This past Saturday we added another animal to the Reese Farm. Goats! Phil drove out to a nearby farm and purchased two does that were about 2 months old. The kids named them Mary & Elizabeth because they are cousins. We lost one yesterday, Mary. The move upset their system a bit causing them to have diarrhea. Elizabeth, the goat, is still with us. If she survives until next week we will work on finding 2 other goats to put with her. From what we've read, goats are best in small herds. We have a very nice Amish family down the road who keeps goats that is willing to allow us to use their Billy in January so the girls can have spring kids.

Our garden is growing well.... and so are the weeds. After 3 weeks of very little care the weeds have become quite happy amongst the vegetables. We are slowly beating them back!! Our vegetables are doing really well considering their lack of care throughout this move. The broccoli is huge and forming their first broccoli heads. The cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage all look great too! Both the red onion sets and the ones I started from seed are doing GREAT, plus we even have some garlic growing thanks to the cool spring! We have a few short rows of carrots, two types of green beans, yellow wax beans, some pumpkin & watermelon plants, only 5 red potato plants (out of 30 sets, GRRR), 10 Yukon gold potato plants (out of 30 sets), and I think close to 20 Georgia sweet potato plants (out of 50) and a nice start on the corn. The corn won't be knee high by the 4^th because we didn't get it into the ground until last week, but it has sprouted and is growing every day! I'm really disappointed with the potato plants, but am not surprised since we had flooding rains just after planting them. Over the next couple of days we will continue to battle the weeds while getting our squash, cuc's and zucchini in.

UPDATE: I wrote this entry of events a couple days ago. Today I worked in the garden for 6 hours, Phil and the kids helped put in some time too. Our garden looks WONDERFUL now!!! I planted Summer Squash (yellow zucchini), green zucchini, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, slicing cucumbers, and picking cucumbers. Caleb helped me with all the planting which was fun! We also planted more beans. The beans Phil and the kids planted a couple weeks ago are doing well and should start flowering soon. Phil took the tiller to all the rows and all the empty beds so we could plant and get the weeds under control. We also put some nice composted manure we found in the barn on the potato plants. Every bed was weeded today. There are only a few veggies that need some fine tooth weeding. It is so nice to look out my kitchen window at the thriving garden and know that we'll be feeding our family great food this year!

Tonight we also spent some time with some of our new neighbors. They are the family that we purchase our raw milk from. It was so fun getting to chat with them for a couple hours. They are Nourishing traditions/raw milk/organic/whole foods people too. It was fun comparing “notes” on what I am learning since they have been living a Nourishing lifestyle much longer than we have. They are also on the same page as us with their research into economics and investing. It was such a fun evening which I believe will lead to a nice friendship. The kids had a great time too. They have 3 children still at home ages 18 (girl), 14 & 10 (boys) and are a home schooling family.

Oh and for those of you who are wondering Elizabeth the Goat is still with us. She is still very skinny and sickly. We hope that when we get a couple more goats this week it will help her to bounce back. This time we are getting adults instead of kids in hopes that they will adjust better to their new home.

By the end of the week we should have 2 feeder pigs too! YEAH!! I've been saving scraps and throwing them in the freezer in anticipation of our little piggy's! Phil and the boys will fence in the area for them early next week so we can have them delivered.

I'm off to bed.... if I can sleep without bothering my sunburned shoulders much!