Loving...

the look on Abby's face when she came home yesterday evening with her ballet recital dress

a fresh supply of paper picked up for free from a local printing shop







the children's creative play

this picture Sarah made for me last night


Warm wishes,
Tonya



Thankful Today For....

March 's arrival.  I know that sometime this month, the earth will warm and the snows will melt and the mud will emerge. 

My baby belly and that I am just days away from beginning my second trimester.

Our "old ladies" ( 3 - 5 years old) are still laying well, with 15 chickens we are getting about 8 eggs each day.

Our business continuing to provide.  These are birch wood burned table numbers for a wedding order.

Mail from thoughtful blog friends - a book on making wooden toys found at a thrift shop and needles and a devotional. 

Sarah asking if we could please read the next chapter in Old Mr. Toad, by Thornton Burgess

The older children enjoying the younger ones.

Warm wishes,

Tonya

(I almost forgot, the new Spring Issue of Rhythm of the Home is due out today! - another thing to be thankful for.)

Cooking on Top of the Woodstove

One thing I do a lot of when the woodstove is running, is to cook our meals as  much as possible on top. 

We don't have a cookstove (yet...in the wishing for phase).  However, it is amazing how much can be done if you have a flat top woodstove.

Over time you will learn if you need to put a pan up on a grate or not, depending on how hot your stove is running at the time.   We use both a cookie rack as well as a metal clothes hanger that has been coiled up in a circle.

I cooked all of our Saturday night meal as shown in the picture above.  We had a pan for pasta, one to heat up sauce, a cast iron pan for the beans, and a cast iron pan with a cover for the meatballs.

We are looking to replace our woodstove as it is quite old, not efficient,  and not sufficient to heat our home well.  

Does anyone have a combination woodstove/cookstove?  If so, I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts.

Warm wishes on this beautiful day we have been given,
Tonya

A Market Garden and Selling Your Homebaked Goods

Another question I have been asked recently is how to begin with selling produce and home baked goods, even on a small scale.

We are not experienced farmers and still have so very much to learn.  Please know I  welcome suggestions and ideas.

I am just going to share our experiences.

We moved up to Vermont in the fall of 2005, into a rental home right in a village.  The blessing was that there was about 1/2 acre of amazing soil.  It had been old farm land.  All we had to do was till and plant.  At this time we didn't own a tiller and with no money to invest in one, we dug by hand - yes, shovels.  The older boys would be asked to turn over one row each day and dear husband, Mike, did most of it.  I helped as often as I could.  When we had a about 1/4 left, we were given a tiller and that made the finishing much faster.  We didn't have to add any compost to the soil.  And everything just grew and grew and grew.

There was an unattached garage and I set up a little farmstand to sell our produce, baked goods and handmade goods.  I put a sign at the end of our driveway to attract customers.  We had a few sales this way, but not too many.  But, what a wonderful way to meet the neighbors, many of them elderly people.   It was a joy to have them knock on our door, looking for cucumbers for pickling or to share some raspberries with us that they had just picked from their back yard.

We signed up for a farmers market as well and made the weekly drive on Fridays.  Our sales were decent, about $100 - $150 or so with all of the produce selling well.  We could have used more for sure.  It was a nice time for our family to meet farmers and artists, especially being new to the area.

After the rental house sold and we moved to our mobile home on leased land we immediately began the process of tilling and preparing the soil for planting.  This time, however, the soil was poor, real poor.  We were blessed to have a neighbor that had 5 year old composted cow manure dumped on his property when a nearby farm was sold.  He offered this to us for no cost.  This helped and our crops improved the second year, but not enough to consider selling beyond our own little farmstand we put out right in front of our property.  Even living on a rural gravel road, it was amazing how many people stopped to buy.   We just left an  honor system mason jar out for people to leave money.

The little homestead we bought just one mile further down the gravel road did not have gardens in place and we have had to, once again, begin the process of improving the clay soil by adding lots of compost.

We did not have enough excess produce to sell any last year, but will be planting twice as much this year.  Perhaps the farmstand will return this summer.  I also, in the past, would bake cookies and other goodies for both the farmstand and the market and they always sold very well along with our eggs.

It was interesting to find that the most common vegetables were the best sellers - tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and squash.

Warm wishes,
Tonya

Answering Your Questions - Breakfast

We buy one to two boxes of Cheerios each week.  This is something we bought our oldest when he was very young and it is still one of the older children's favorites.   I wish we had brought them up on oatmeal, but fortunately, the younger ones do like it and join Mike and I for a bowl of organic oatmeal.  I have organic raisins and molasses in mine.  Mike has brown sugar in his.  So cold or hot cereal is served two or three mornings each week.

The other mornings, except Sundays, I make pancake batter, usually the night before.  Here is what I do ~

I don't measure anything.  I simply take one of our stainless steel pans and fill it with milk, probably about 3 cups.  Then add 5 of our chickens' eggs.  Next I pour in white and wheat flours along with a small amount of cornmeal.  I add about 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 T. of oil, and 3 T. of sweetener.
I then use a whisk and mix it all together.  Put the cover on the pan and then in the refrigerator it goes until the morning. 

We rarely have maple syrup as it is not in our budget.  When company comes or a birthday we do buy some.  Other than that we look forward to our own syrup.  However, the maples here on our homestead were very crowded by others trees and did not get adequate light to grow a solid base, and instead grew tall and skinny.  We have thinned out around them and hope that our sap production will increase each year.  Last year we got about 2 quarts.

When we don't have syrup, we use jelly, yogurt, flax, butter, cinnamon, or a sprinkling of sugar.

On Sundays Mike cooks scrambled eggs and bacon.

I look forward to learning about your breakfasts.

Warm wishes,
Tonya

Yarn Along

Joining in with Ginny again this week.  I have been knitting for our shop in preparation of spring and Easter.
I made this pattern for the little bunny and it can be found in the spring 2010 issue of Rhythm of the Home, which is a free.

If you are interested in reading more about living a more simple life and what industry has done to our food systems and to the small farmer, as well as keeping things simple at home, Wendell Berry is wonderful.  Last I read, he still types on a manual typewriter.

I look forward to seeing what others are knitting and reading this week.

Warm wishes,
Tonya

Simple Day

As winter settled back upon us in the form of very cold weather, our day was filled with typical winter activities -

making soup for lunch

handwork, Abby needlefelted this on a piece of wool felt


Nolan (our fifteen year old) has started a two hour per week apprenticeship with our neighbor who makes primarily string instruments.  Nolan has both a love of music and fine craftsmanship and really enjoyed his first session which he spent mostly sanding. 

Thomas had a friend over to "jam" (play music.)

This is where Nolan went.  Our homesteading neighbors (and close friends)  built their home themselves ten years ago, including the workshop where he makes instruments.  They are off grid.  We are blessed to have  mentors just one mile away.  Pati sometimes contributes to the Plain and Joyful Living newsletter.
 

Spring, however, is not far from our thoughts.





the seed order was finalized to be mailed today

the sap buckets and taps were washed to be hung this week

Warm wishes, Tonya