"Cooking With Rohan"

Post has been fixed - NOW you can comment and make a 9 year old boy VERY happy!!    Thanks!!!



Hello, My name is Rohan and I LOVE to cook, I can cook lots of food by myself!  Today I thought I would show you how to cook sausage on our wood cookstove!

First wash your hands, this is very important!

After opening you sausage, you want to smash pieces into round patties.
At our house we need 20 patties so everyone can have two!

Getting the sausage ready can take some time, but it is an important step.

Now slowly brown your patties on the hot part of the wood stove,  it takes a while to cook sausage on a wood cookstove so start early, or your brother might get impatient!!

When you think they are done, be sure to check and make sure there is no pink!!

YUM, breakfast is ready!!

"Everybody needs a Trudy in Their Lives."

Octavian - almost 2!!

It's time to announce the winner of the "Guess the Cows Name" contest!!    

As you can tell from the title our new milk cows name is TRUDY!
Jen and Becki guessed correctly!  I couldn't choose just one of them so if you BOTH will email me I will send you the home baked treat of your choice!!

Why did I pick Trudy?  I'm sure your all dying to know!  Last winter when we still had electricity and a big screen tv the older children and Dane and I watched the TV series MONK on netflix.  We watched all 8 seasons in about 3 months!!  We enjoyed Monk and and I loved the name Trudy!  Not enough to name a daughter that but enough to give it to a cow!!  It was hard though not to name her Ruby...I LOVE that name, I think I might save it for a baby, maybe!  If she would have been more refined, more beautiful, less       Trudy-like I would have named her Ada, I love that name too!  So Trudy it is and we are finally getting along a bit better, although I think she loves me just for the grain I bring her!
Now we are waiting on pins and needles for a calf!  Soon, I'm told, no signs of imminent labor yet.

Thanks to everybody for participating and if you guessed Trudy,  please remember to email me!

Today Is Quins-Day!

 Hi,

I'm Quinlan, I am 14 years old and the 3rd oldest in our family.  I thought I would take a minute and do a guest post on our blog.  

Here on the farm there  are a lot of  "creatures"!!  Spiders, moles, snakes, birds, bugs, frogs, and many, many more!!  Here's some shots of just a few of the creepy crawly critters we've seen!

Here is a giant moth, at least as big as my hand!

Fuzzy Caterpillar!

The yuckiest,  ugliest, nastiest spider I have ever seen, huh Poppy?

The cutest, tiniest, snake I have ever seen!!  Ferran rescued this one from a spiders web!

Here is the first frog I found, he's so tiny, but dangerous, I didn't know it at the time but he secretes an irritating oil  behind his legs!  

Rohan caught this one, he was HUGE!!  He is what they call a bull-frog.  They make the loudest noises!

Hope everyone enjoyed this post on Quins-day, have a great day and enjoy all Gods creatures!(well except maybe the spiders!!):)
Quinlan

How Now Brown Cow

 UPDATE: The "What is the Cows Name Contest" will end midnight on Friday the 12th.  We will announce a winner soon after! (depending on cell phone signal:)
Have Fun!


She's here...........My very own, just what I always wanted, JERSEY MILK COW!!!!!!!!  She is about 5 years old and this is her 3rd pregnancy.  She is due to calve in about 2 weeks more or less!  I am having a ball with her!!  She is a bit people shy, anyone from the cow boards reading this, do you have any suggestions?
We got her home fairly easy.  Our Amish neighbors sons mounted their horses and our boys walked beside and we kinda "herded" her home.  She went right in her new stall and after a few days seems quite content.

I have had a few dairy cow names kicking around in my brain for about 7 years!  Names are very important to me, so getting her's just right was a challenge, but now she has one!!  There were a few names in the running:

RUBY

ADA

LUCY

TRUDY

LILY

IVY

JOSEY

DAISEY

Wanna have some fun?  Let's play  "Guess the NEW Cows Name!"  Those of you who correctly guess her name will have their names put in a hat we will pull out one, that lucky person will win their choice of Fresh Farm Baked Goodies!!! You can choose a loaf of wheat bread, cinnimon raisin bread or a batch of cookies!!  Sound good?

Ok, to enter you need to leave a comment with your guess, then you need to "follow" us, if you already follow then just let me know in your comment!  If you have a blog, please make a post about our name contest, linking back to our blog!  When you have completed all of that, comment and let me know!! For each comment you make it will increase your chances to win!!!!

Summer Daze

Octavian listening to the weather radio....Will there be rain?

Kegan and Rohan reading on a hot afternoon!

Ugly spider we found.....yuck!

Ellie the runaway is glad she's back!

Free museums are fun on hot summer days!!

Baking Day!

Yes, you read that title right. Yesterday, one of the hottest days yet, was baking day!  I asked my Amish neighbor how and when she does her baking in this heat.  She told me she picks the hottest day and fires up the stove.  Her reasoning was that it was going to be unbearable anyway so the heat of the stove wouldn't make much of a difference.  I had been missing baking, I really enjoy it and I need snacks for the kiddos who are going through food like there's 16 of them not eight!!
Tuesday was forecast to be hot, hot, hot, I decided to jump in and bake.  I woke up at 5am, yes, I really did, if you know me "Morning Person", is the last thing to describe me!  Anyway I got up early, and started a fire, it was so hard to wrap my mind around the fact that it was going to be 115 with heat index and I was starting a FIRE!!  But I did!
I made 3 loaves of wheat bread, 1 loaf of cinnamon bread for french toast this morning, 4 loaves of pumpkin bread, one of the kids favorite snacks, a batch of cookies, and a double batch of corn bread for dinner tonight!!  YUMM!!!
And my neighbor was right, it didn't seem any hotter than it already was, I meant when it's 110 in the house what's a few more degrees radiating from the cookstove!!  I didn't realize how much I had missed working with the cookstove, despite the heat, I had a nice morning, plus it's always nice to bake yummy things for appreciative children!!

In other news, our bratty  sweet little pony escaped in the middle of the night Sunday night.  The big boys went to check on her, she was making quite a racket in barn and we had heard coyotes pretty close that evening.  Well when they got out there she had gotten herself out and was making a break for it, she nearly ran Kegan over and headed up the driveway and down the road at ninety miles an hour.  It was one of those situations where there was nothing to do but pray, so that's what we did.
Next morning we drove around and asked the neighbors if they had seen our pony.  But nobody had.  In the afternoon we went to the neighbors for milk and they said they thought they saw a pony in a vacant field up the road, Donagan and I drove over there, and sure enough it was Ellie.  Now, we have chased Ellie ALL over our own property, she NEVER comes or stands still long enough for you to put a lead on her.  As I got out of the the van, in my newly sewn town dress, I asked the Lord if maybeHe could please make her stand still so we could catch her and it wouldn't be a huge drama.  Donagan  walked up to her and she took off...uuuggghhh!!  I took a deep breath and called her like Ileigh does, "Ellington, my pretty pony...".  She looked up, pricked her little pony ears and started to walk toward me!!!!!  I was speechless!  Except to say "thank you Lord for small miracles"!!  We put a lead on her and got in the van, Donagan held the rope out the window while we drove ever so slowly home!!  It was great fun to see the looks on every ones faces when we pulled in the driveway with our little pony!  It was also nice to know the Father listens and answers even the "little" prayers!!

It is supposed to cool off this week and we are very grateful, enjoy your day and keep smiling!!
Misty