PJ Jonas – Page 101 – Teaching Families to Work Hard Together

Knitting Time Saver

All of the children know how to knit (including the boys). They mostly knit washcloths that they sell with our soap. It’s great because they can take their knitting with them in the car or to a meeting we need to attend. It gives them something to do with their hands. Knitting also teaches eye-hand…

October 25, 2013

Saving Lives

Busy Mom’s Survival Guide Podcast Episode 045. Our family had a life changing event this weekend when we arrived on the scene of a fatal accident. In this episode, Jim joins me and we discuss what we witnessed, how we helped, and what we learned. We saw many “everyday heroes” this weekend – people who…

October 24, 2013

Rainbow

Many of you know that we have been through a difficult time dealing with the trauma from being on the scene of a fatal accident. I may write more about it later, but right now I just wanted to share with you these photos. There is something about a rainbow that just reminds me of…

October 23, 2013

How to Make Marinade

My wife orchestrates what we eat around here. Periodically, she goes food shopping, brings home what she bought, and drops it in front of me and asks, “Will you marinate this for me?” When I’m marinating meat, I don’t follow a recipe. I make it up with what leftover ingredients we have that need…

October 22, 2013

How to Recycle Paper

Because we have a business, we’re very careful with our paperwork. We don’t store customer credit card information or share it with anyone. If we don’t need to keep paperwork for our records, Jade is in charge of shredding it. So what do we do with all the paper shreds? We put them in the…

October 21, 2013

Take a Tour of the Farm

Now that the construction is complete, we are able to offer tours of the Goat Milk Stuff farm. Since many of you are too far away to come and visit us in person, we created a “Tour the Farm” video with Fletcher as your guide. If you’re able to visit us personally in Scottsburg, you…

October 20, 2013

Kids Cooking – Beef Stew

I usually decide what’s for dinner, but the children do much of the actual cooking. When I was food shopping the other day, there was a good price on cut up beef for stew. Since Greyden and Emery had recently harvested our sweet potatoes (a key ingredient for my beef stew), I bought some. Jim is our marinade…

October 18, 2013

Feeding Your Family II – Meal Planning

Busy Mom’s Survival Guide Podcast Episode 044. Meal planning can be a very time consuming job for busy moms. Not only are we trying to figure out what to feed our family, but we are also try to make healthy meals that everybody will actually eat. In this episode, I talk about how to set…

October 17, 2013

Benefits of Sunflower Seeds

We’re a little sad around here because frost is coming, and it doesn’t look like our sunflower seeds are going to completely ripen in time. We planted the sunflower seeds late in the season because it took longer than anticipated to complete the construction of the garden beds. So we knew it was a long…

October 16, 2013

How to Make an Ethernet Cable

Jim spends a lot of his time supplying Goat Milk Stuff with what it needs to keep growing. I love it when he is able to use the business as a way to teach the children new skills. We don’t use wi-fi in the soap room or in our house. As a result, we use…

October 15, 2013

Visiting the Nursing Home

Remember when we brought baby goats to our local nursing home in the spring? The same facility contacted me to see if I could come speak to them. Unfortunately, I had a conflict, but Jim and some of the children were able to go. The children were going to do some of the talking, but…

October 14, 2013

10 Reasons to Eat More Sweet Potatoes

I never had sweet potatoes growing up. I don’t think my mom liked them, so she never cooked them. I suppose I saw them at Thanksgiving time, but as a kid I thought they looked nasty even with marshmallows on them (I was never a big marshmallow fan either). It wasn’t until I got heavily…

October 13, 2013

Growing Oats

We love our new milking room. We have room for 5 milk stands and have set it up really well. The goats come in. The boys milk. When they are done, they sweep up the floor. And feed the spilled oats to the chickens. Then they hose down the milk stands and floor. Everything has…

October 11, 2013

Feeding Your Family Part I – Your Pantry & Shopping List

Busy Mom’s Survival Guide Podcast Episode 043. Food and meal time are a major part of motherhood. It often seems that the moment we make a meal and finish cleaning up, somebody is announcing that they’re hungry. Having enough food on hand to provide your family with healthy meals is always a challenge. In this…

October 10, 2013

We Have Baby Rabbits!

Well… we thought we had found homes for our male rabbits in time. But apparently we didn’t because Sandy just had 3 babies on Saturday! There are two black and white spotted babies and one black baby. They are just two days old in these photos. They’re fat and happy and Sandy is being…

October 9, 2013