Family Activities are an important aspect of building relationships. One of our favorite family activities is reading a book together in the evening. You might envision Little House on the Prairie as I describe the following scene. Our baby is normally already asleep. Everyone is sitting in the living room in their jammies. The younger children may be playing with toys while listening or all may be helping shell pecans (in season) or everyone just quietly listening. Their Dad begins reading. I know, the only thing missing is a roaring fire but we have no fireplace! Finishing one chapter, all eagerly beg for another. Whether it is out of sincere enjoyment or postponing bedtime…who knows? I would like to think that is purely sincere enjoyment of the book. But, after all, they are still children and what child normally likes to go to bed when the option to stay up is available!
Currently, we are reading Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen. The story takes place after World War II. It details the struggles of a family regaining their relationships after the father’s return from war. The family moves to the country to live in the grandmother’s house. They hope the hard work of country living and fresh country air will accomplish the needed healing. The book tries to promote traditional family values in snippets over a year of their new country life. Sibling rivalry (meanness) is a bit too prominant in the book. But these scenes lead us into meaningful discussions as to what Christian family relationships really should be. Respect for the parents is developed throughout the plot.
If you have never tried family activities, try reading together as a family, I would highly recommend it. Quality time spent interacting together helps produce lasting, valuable relationships. It is one of the things that we do together as a family which helps bond us together as well as teaching the children to be attentive.
I just checked my emails and was notified of a new promotion available from Restaurant.com!
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Hurry, this offer ends 11/12/09.
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You may have met Buttercup in an earlier post, but in order not to offend any of the other backyard animals – here are our chickens.
Another large expenditure I noticed in the “Food” category of my budget book was eggs. I was buying at least one of the big boxes of eggs (15 dozen) at Sam’s Club a month. That is 180 eggs per month, 6 eggs per day! The obvious question was, “would having our own chickens be more economical?”.
Like Buttercup’s milk and the freshly prepared dairy products it yields, yard eggs would be healthy but would they be cheaper than store bought? The answer, as you may have guessed since we have chickens, was “yes”. After comparing the initial cost of the chicks and their daily feed, they are less than half the cost of store bought eggs.
We have Buff Orphingtons and ISA Browns. Only the Buffs are laying at the moment, or better, should be laying! They have decreased from ~12 to only ~5 eggs per day. I think they know that their replacements are in the hen house and they have gotten lazy! As soon as the ISA’s begin laying, chicken (Buff chicken that is) will be on the menu!
They are funny creatures. Most of the day they are kept in a large fenced area. But at the evening milking time, we let them out to scratch in the yard. They help control the fly population by spreading Buttercup’s “fertilizer” around.
 We have a couple that stand out from the rest. Pequenna (which means “small” in Spanish) is slightly smaller that the other chickens. Because her crown flops to the side, she looks as if her hat is perched sideways on of her head. She also lays the only white egg of the bunch so she in actually not a pure Buff Orphington.
Ruffles would always walk around with her feathers ruffled, seemingly to dissuade our younger children from picking her up. Actually, she is very tame, easy to pick-up and seems to enjoy the attention.
Not only are we saving money having the farm animals, it has also provided wonderful new experiences. We have learned about the animals’ habits, the care they require and most importantly our working together in different circumstances. For most of you, we have probably stretched our lives far beyond what you think is normal, possible or desirable. But, by keeping our own farm animals to lower expenses, we have also increased the quantity and quality of our poultry and dairy products.
If you have any interest in chickens, check out the Backyard Chicken. It is a great forum to find answers to “all things chickens”.
Cooking Light  is a great magazine filled with wonderful recipes, cooking tips, coupons and even more.
The best part is: Amazon now has it on sale for 90% off. Originally priced at $49.50 – this is quite a deal!
To make this an even sweeter deal – there is no shipping charged on magazines! You pay no additional costs!
A Cooking Light (1-year) subscription would make a great Christmas gift but hurry, the offer is good for one week only.
Grab it while you can!
Thanks hip2save!
Gone are the days of milking by hand – hopefully forever. Although when we first got Buttercup, it was exciting and pioneering to milk by hand. Everybody did it – even down to our 3 yr old! Some were much faster, while others claimed their hands were too big – Yeah! Anyway, usually two people milked her (my daughters, daughter-in-law and I), for safety and to have a fresh set of hands to finish her off. But after she calved in June (her 3rd, but our 1st), she topped out at 8 gal. a day. That was 4 gal. per milking, each taking 40 min. which, needless to say, for us was tiring.
 So when we had the chance to switch to a milking machine, everyone wanted to take it. The “machine” actually consists of the “claw” (four pulsating suction cups), the 8 gal., vacuum rated, stainless steel milk can, connecting hoses and an electric vacuum pump (not shown). Sanitizing the milking machine does not take much more time than the 2 gal. pails we were using. And, cleaning Buttercup’s udder is no differnent either (water, a few drops of liquid soap and white vinegar). But now the actual milking process takes less than 10 min.! When we are done, the milk is poured into sterilized 1/2 gallon jars. Previously we filtered the milk as we transferred from the open pails to the jars. If there were any flies, straw or hair, they were removed by filtering. If we saw other undesirable matter, we ended up tossing out that pail’s contents = dog food. Even at that, we occasionally had some milk spoil = more dog food. But now, with the closed milking machine in use since July, we have not had any milk spoil – even when some got left in the frig for over 3 wks!
I love the age of technology!
Is that Buttercup (our family milk cow) eating what is left of my tomatoes? LET HER HAVE THEM!
Does she look a little sad? Only because she loves the ripe tomatoes and has nearly stripped the vines of them now. (We had 168 tomato plants in our garden.) As you can see from the picture, she has left the green ones and has not even touched the actual vines yet.
We had a freeze last week and the tomatoes that were left do not have much flavor. Believe me, my husband kept trying them since they looked ripe and tasty. But, even he admitted they are not good anymore. That settled it – Buttercup gets them!
We figure that after she cleans off every last red tomato, she’ll mooove on to the green ones. Mooing is what she does when my husband lets her in them each morning. As they cross the lawn she remembers what’s ahead and starts galloping! My husband has to run with her to keep up! He leads her with a halter but sometimes it is difficult to tell who is leading who!
When you think table scraps, do you normally think of a feeding them to a cow? I would think of a dog or a pig first! But, Buttercup loves leftover food from the table! While we do not normally have much food that is leftover from a family our size, when we do it gets divided between the dogs and Buttercup.
Do you know the one thing that we have found that she will not eat (and about the only thing)? Tumbleweed. Imagine, her not liking tumbleweed. After all, it is so dry, prickly and delectable! Actually, tumbleweed is also called Russian Thistle and was originally imported to the Dakota’s as an alternative cattle feed!
I just got another 4 Swagbucks! I haven’t even been on the computer much this morning – I was just checking emails and searched on Swagbucks for gmail! It definitely payed off!
Look what I just received:
I posted about Swagbucks recently. I hope you have taken advantage of their search engine and have already begun earning “bucks”. If not, go here to sign up and receive 3 Bonus Bucks!
Friday is called Mega Swagbucks Day because they give out higher denominations – 3, 5, 10, 20, 50, and even 100 Swagbucks – all day long!
I use Swagbucks as my everyday search engine. If you do not, at least give it a try on Friday!
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Grab My Dime! 
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About Me 
God has amazingly blessed me, Dina-Marie, with a wonderful husband and 10 beautiful children. Moving from our "secure" life in Alabama to the "exciting" life of starting a vineyard in west Texas has been challenging to say the least. I have had the opportunity to take a crash course in frugal living and become a real farm girl - complete with milk cow and chickens. I have learned the importance of health from the inside out, "traditional" cooking and cod liver oil!
I hope to encourage you to make the most of where you are and what you have. |
