Sofia at ten months.

I love you my sweet little sister.

Kelly xxx

The start of a new series…Happenings on the Homestead - July 2012

July: An interesting and exciting month for our family...we learnt so much, experienced so much and loved so much...I remember only the joyful moments found in it...dear, dear July...

However, I will miss many things in my life that changed in this month...I’ll miss sweet friends who left for another life in another country and I’ll miss the moments that can never be relived with my family...



First leaves on our apple tree...

But I do not want to look on the downside of July; I wish to look at the bright side - this month I truly tried to bask in God’s riches and grace.

Peach blossoms...first of the season...oh how delighted they made me feel!

This area is being developed for a big food garden.

But first of all, welcome to our little piece of earth, where we hope to grow abundantly in Christ and live sufficiently off the land...this is God’s farm and He has graciously allowed us the privilege of working it and at the same time have Him work in our hearts.

Garden...

Somehow we managed to achieve so much in the garden during July...I think it was due to the fact that the weather played along about 70% of the time...I cherished the warm days and cheerful skies and made the most of them. I planted lots and lots of seeds towards the middle of July and now I see them greeting the world in their trays!

Seedling trays resting on top of the rain tank...

Our kitchen garden in the process of being developed...we’re getting there!

Our second batch of potatoes...

We harvested our first lot of potatoes this month and managed to get five meals for our family out of that crop – not bad seeing as it was a) our first attempt b) the size of the patch measured only 2m x 2m and c) I got too impatient and pulled out the plants when the tubers were still fairly small. They were divine anyway and had a completely different taste to that of store bought tubers.

Hmmm...I used our first baby potatoes in a stew...

...And as a side dish with roast chicken.  I steamed the potatoes until tender while I fried together a few diced spring onions and five crushed garlic cloves.  I then placed the potatoes, garlic, spring onion and a huge dollop of farm butter in a dish and tossed gently.  They were delicious - if I do say so myself:)  lol.

Other harvesting done this month included a fair amount of lettuce, celery and parsley for salads. I actually picked a few heads of broccoli today for a warming sweet potato and broccoli soup. The recipe is at the bottom of this post.

Already Dad and I have begun sorting out our other veggie patch which is at the back of our house (see photo at beginning of post). Dad hoes the area to be used for planting and I help him by clearing out the grass and weeds. Dad then has to lay plastic along the sides of each bed in order to keep the pesky moles out. This takes him a long time...

I managed to plant another crop of potatoes in the new veggie area on Saturday and we are almost finished patch number two where I’ll plant broad beans and runner beans. There are so many other things we need to plant NOW but poor Dad only has so much time after work and on weekends...I struggle with my back so I cannot really do any hard work in the garden other than planting and weeding. We’ll get there in good time, though! My mom has taught us to live by the old adage: ‘Slow and Steady wins the race!’

Fortunately, we did plant lots of peas at the beginning of July so they are growing nicely now in the small kitchen garden as well as carrots and beetroot which I have sown successively. I’ll let you know what crops we’ve got in the new garden next month.

It is exciting to see more and more space being taken up by vegetable and fruit producing plants.

Animals and Meat...

In July the milk production went from good to great and from great to amazing! This morning I came inside with ten litres of milk. Dude, the foster calf, is almost fully weaned now, so I have to get every drop of milk out Molly’s udder. It is rather tiring and I do prefer it when there are calves to suck out those last few drops! Dude has a full feed in the evening though.

The most wonderful thing about fresh milk is the lovely layer of cream that rises to the top after 12-24 hours of refrigerating...I am so happy I acquired the job of scooping the cream off and making butter! I really love all the jobs that come with farm life and I’m happy I get to lend a hand in all of them, but milking and making milk products happens to be my favourite of all...

We don’t get quite enough cream to make quite enough butter for our family, so we do have to buy in each month. But as our milk production has increased this month, so has our butter making! We reckon we get over two bricks a week (over 1kg of butter) from Molly.

We are getting laying hens very soon – Nancy is delighted because she’ll be in charge of them!  Dad and our neighbour, Uncle Terence, began building the coop this month and should complete it in August sometime. 

Most of our meat is hunted by Uncle Terence when he can and the rest we do have to buy in.  However,  it won’t be too long till poor Dude grows up...eventually we’ll also have chickens which we’ll slaughter for meat:(

My favourite chore of the day is milking Molly and looking after the calf. That is, if it isn’t raining...

In the Kitchen...

July isn’t our month for much preserving...however, we always have things to do in the kitchen, whether it is bread baking, butter making or just general food preparation. I spend a lot of my time cooking which is time happily spent for me...

Mom plans the meals and I help her by telling her what we have in the fridge etc. I also have the privilege of cooking several times a week for my family. You could actually say I see to a lot of things within the running of the kitchen because most of my chores happen there – I am chief-in-charge-washer-upper (if you get such a word as that) and chief-stove-looker-afterer (I KNOW there is no word such as that!). As mentioned I do the butter making and generally see to the incoming and usage of milk and milk products. Mom sees to most of the bread baking. Nancy has to do the drying up and Beth dries the plastic dishes and sets and clears the meal tables. Gabrielle does her share by drying the cutlery. I like to see that the kitchen is tidy for my Mom so she can function properly there once every meal is complete.

We also use a wood stove which has a small oven. Although it does take longer to work with, it saves us a LOT of electricity every month and I have come to love it so much that I prefer working on it to the electric stove - plus it heats up the house!

Beth and Gabrielle helping Mommy bake.

Mom likes to encourage us in the kitchen and makes sure Nancy and Beth have time to make things too.  Here Beth made yummy corn fritters for lunch while Nancy made oven potato chips and guacomale (below) for lunch another day.

As promised, here is the recipe for our yummy sweet potato and broccoli soup which I made today:

15ml butter

250ml ready-made white sauce

500ml chicken stock

1 large head broccoli, broken into florets

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

Salt to taste

Heat the butter. Saute the sweet potato for a few minutes until it justs starts to brown. Add the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Cook until the sweet potato is tender. Add the broccoli and cook until just tender. Transfer the vegetables to a blender and process until smooth. Add the white sauce and pulse until well combined. Transfer soup back to pot and heat through.

The incredible thing about this meal was that it cost us virtually nothing to make. Here is a brief rundown for you on what it might have cost and what it actually cost us to make: Note that I quadrupled this soup recipe to feed our family for two meals.

125g butter - Approx. R5

2.5 litres milk - Approx. R15

Chicken stock – Approx. R5

3 large heads broccoli – Approx. R15  

About 12 small sweet potatoes - Approx. R20

Other and electricity – Approx. R5

= R65 (a conservative estimate)

It was amazing to think about the ingredients I used in this soup because they were either given to us or we made or produced them ourselves. Plus we didn’t use any electricity and our wood was free! All it cost was extra time and effort.

Butter made from our own cream from our own cow – zero

Milk from our own cow – zero

Chicken stock was homemade on the wood stove – zero

Broccoli was grown in our garden – zero

Sweet potatoes were given to us by our neighbour – zero

We didn’t use electricity. Instead I made the soup on the wood stove and used wood we got for nothing – zero

 

If only we could live like this always, but it is a start! One day we’ll get to eating everything that we either grew or produced on our homestead. I only see these blessings as gifts from God – I never thought He’d see fit to give us our hearts’ desires as it says in Psalm 37! The pleasures that come with the hard work and the satisfaction found in living a self-sufficient life is incomparable!

I love living differently to others and I am so grateful for the Lord’s goodness. I think I learned how important it is to be thankful this month – my greatest memory from July was watching Jesus work and provide in our lives and in our hearts:)

Greetings,

Kelly-Anne

P.S. We do find time for schooling and leisure, it just happens whenever we can get to it. We have a room in the house, meant to be the lounge, which is quite large and my mom has converted it into a stunning school room. We spend lots of time learning and creating in there!

just another day...

Hello lovely readers, I thought I would share a few photographs with you of a typical morning milking session for us. The photograph above is of the view from the grassy patch where we milk – all part of the beautiful farm we live on.

After 3 months of trial and error, our milking routine is pretty good – we milk after breakfast now:) Besides the fact that the early mornings are just way too cold to milk, Nancy and I just CANNOT work without something in our stomachs – neither can the rest of the family!

Now Nancy and I warm our backs while milking in the mild winter sunshine...it is bliss milking in such conditions...

I love being able to milk in the open.  Whenever a patch of grass gets too dirty, we move to another area of the field.  Molly is tied to a fence post to keep her from wandering and Nancy gives her some food while I do the hard work:)  Lol!  We are currently getting six litres of milk in the mornings and we leave one teat for Dude, the foster calf.

Izzie always comes with to milking – Nancy brings treats for her and does a mini training session with her while I’m busy.  Kisses...

Dude having his morning drink...Molly isn’t very kind to him since he doesn’t belong to her so we have to make sure she is secure and can’t get at him.

Dude is then picketed to a fence post to graze for the day.

He is really cute...too bad he’ll end up as meat one of these days:(

Molly is then taken to her field for the day to graze and to make lots more milk for us!

A job well done!

Dude currently has a friend. Snowdrop will be leaving the farm very soon, but until she does, Dude is very happy to have her as a companion.

Every three days I make butter – Molly isn’t a proper milk cow so she doesn’t give too much cream. However, we are more than grateful for the little she does give – it saves us money and is much healthier than store bought. Plus we are able to have whipped cream whenever we like.

Just over two years ago I knew nothing about milking and milk products. Now I know how to milk and how to make basic milk products like butter and kefir. Next step: learning how to make cheese...

Thank you Lord for the privilege of living here. I never thought we’d end up in such a gorgeous place and have our own cow, veggie patch and soon, chickens:)

Kelly-Anne

Pretty Purples Card with Tags

 

 

I had a delightful time putting together  this ‘pretty purples’ card for a lovely friend of ours who had a birthday last week

It really has been months since I last posted a card, although I have been making the odd one here and there.  The problem I have is just this...so many things I want/have to do, so little time to do them...I think I just have way too many hobbies!!

Here is the layout I used for my card – I designed the sketch myself on PowerPoint.

 

I had some simple but gorgeous purple paper left over from a card I made Rebekah for her birthday...I thought would work nicely for my design.

I added three tags to my card as well as plenty of ribbon.

I used four large pearls in each corner of the card and four tiny ones for around the stamped image.

The image I used is from Whiff of Joy – isn’t it too adorable?  I used brown distress ink to add some contrast to all the purple.

Finally I added a big white flower to the tags.

I would like to take part in the following challenges with my creation:

Stampin' for the Weekend - Tags

Crafty Creations Challenge - Tags

Divas by Design - Anything Goes

Papertake Weekly - All things Girlie

I hope you like my card – I shall to back soon with another one!

Kelly-Anne

Cold Snap

Brrrr...Friday morning our family woke up to an ice cold home! Looking out of the lounge window we could see snow sifted over the mountains nearby. What a beautiful sight...

It was incredible having snow so close to our farm, since we South Africans rarely experience such extreme cold.

My dad managed to snap a few photographs of the snow before the clouds covered the mountains.

The yellow-brown strip of land is part of our farm - as you can see, the snow wasn’t far off.

After these photographs were taken, the rain came again and the sky grew grey. We received bountiful showers of rain – thank you Jesus!

Although the rain is beautiful and the snow almost heavenly, I can’t say any of us enjoyed the cold – it was just about freezing outside and not much better inside. We kept the wood stove burning all day!

After lunch that day Mom, Nancy and I headed to town for some ‘retail therapy’. Nancy very sweetly treated me to a decadent waffle at our favourite ‘Fresh Bean Cafe’ and Mom had a coffee. After warming up in the heated cafe, we popped into the material shop and browsed through the gorgeous materials and fleeces. We also got a few things for Beth’s birthday from ‘Wool n’ Things’ – one of our favourite shops in Sedgefield!

Today we were so grateful for the sunshine:) What is the weather like where you live?

Kelly-Anne

Visiting {in Black and White}

This past Wednesday we finally got together with our sweet friends, Kaelah and Bethany. We live about 16km away from each other but each lead such busy lives that we rarely visit. Nevertheless, Kaelah and I managed, via email, to arrange a day that would suit us all .

Izzie came along to meet Kaelah’s Border Collie, Scamper. I can’t say the two of them ‘hit it off’ like we had had hoped:( Instead they stayed on their leads and we had a pretend dog show with Nancy and Bethany being the two very difficult-to-please judges.

Beth and Alanna, their younger sister, played beautifully together and at tea time we ate home baked scones made by me and drank yummy tea – thanks Kaelah!

I took a few snapshots of the day. I didn’t spend a long time planning, etc so they really are just ‘snapshots in black and white:)

Kaelah (left) and I at tea time.

On the trampoline...Bethany (left), Nancy (middle) and Anri (right) who popped in half way through the visit – it was good to see her again too.

Alanna cuddling Izzie.

Bethany.

Izzie found a chew toy to keep herself amused.

Please hop over to Kaelah’s (recently launched) blog for more photographs of our day together.

Have a wonderful weekend further!

Kelly-Anne

Emotion Photo Challenge @ Lucia Etc.

I am entering the above photograph of my three year old sister,Rebekah in Lucia's photo challenge for July - 'Emotion'.

Kelly

Sofia Eats Ice Cream, Laughs and Loves her Daddy

 

This morning our family headed down to the beach for a walk and to soak up some sunshine.  Afterwards the girls and I were treated to ice creams while Mom and Dad had coffee.  Sofia just had a few licks of her sisters' ice creams and smiled for more!

Sofia really loves to be out and about and is getting cuter by the day.  Already she has cut her first tooth and smiles at whoever takes the time to smile at her first.  This usually progresses to 'funny faces' and laughs.

Ahhh...babyhood is bliss...