At our house, we go through a LOT of food. I mean, a LOT of food. I’ve got a new system that is working out really well. Right now, all I have to cook is dinner. Emery (7) makes breakfast. Brett (10) makes lunch. And I make dinner. So far, Emery has mastered pancakes, sweet…

 One of our annual traditions is apple picking. We usually pick 200-300 pounds of Fuji apples. We can apple sauce, apple juice, apple syrup, and sliced apples. We store the rest in our root cellar for eating throughout the winter. They stay fresh and usually last until early March. But this year has been a…

I stopped using my clothes dryer completely over a year ago. In fact, it isn’t even plugged in right now. In general, I enjoy hanging the clothes up to dry. But it isn’t my job to hang the clothes (although I do help). It is the children’s job. Unfortunately, it is not something the children…

Last night, Jade woke up in the middle of the night, so I got up and sat on the couch to feed her (it was the quickest way to get back to sleep 😉 All the lights were off, so I couldn’t see anything. However, I could hear. And what I heard made me tuck…

I think I mentioned before that we do a lot with dirt. Me? I like to garden in it. But my kids, they just like to play in it. We still have two large dirt piles sitting in front of the barn. The children have placed boards across the tops (from peak to peak). It…

 Farmer Frazier has about 100 acres that he uses for hay. It is beautiful land. You walk through some woods and then you enter the hay fields. You can’t see a single house out there. Brett and I always have the same impulse whenever we walk out there. You fling your arms wide, spin around…

You know, it just doesn’t seem like Autumn until you’ve raked some leaves. When we bought our 3 acres, there were no trees on it – except for a few pines in the back corner. We’ve planted many fruit trees and several nut trees, but they are still very small and don’t produce enough leaves…

Yesterday, Daddy and Fletcher had some special time. The brakes went out on the truck, so the two of them drove the truck to the mechanics. They left it there and went exploring. Guess what they found? A bridge. Being intrepid explorers, they crossed the bridge and followed the path beyond to… The elementary school…

We love Farmer Frazier. He lives half a mile from our house. We buy our hay from him. He and his wife are absolutely wonderful. But I admit it – the first time I met Farmer Frazier, I was terrified of him. Not because I thought he would hurt me. It was because he didn’t…

We do a lot with dirt. We dig in it. We play in it. We garden in it. We eat it (well, not all of us, just the little ones). The dirt in Indiana is lousy. It is solid clay with lots of shale. Not very good for gardening. So we do raised beds. But…

I tried, really I tried not to allow these two into the house (the chairs, not the children 🙂 ‘ Jim brought them home with a guilty look on his face. I banished them to the front porch for a while. Then I stuck them on the back porch. Then I tried to fit them…