Moved

I have moved my blogging over to www.makaleafamily.com/blog.  The move has allowed us to expand the information we post about our farm as well as provide products for sale.  Come check us out.

Homestead Schedules and Routines - Part 1

This is the first in a two part series of how we organize our days here in our home and on the farm.

Any of you who know me personally know that I like things to be organized.  I prefer my home clean, my laundry done, and my meals at a certain time. I believe that early to bed and early to rise is more than just a catchy phrase. I like having things organized and all of these characteristics help me manage our family of 10, homeschooling, homesteading, and all the rest of life.

There are two ways to organize your day – schedules and routines.  If you get up every morning at 5:00 AM, then that is a schedule. If when you get up, you always take a shower, brush your teeth and then make your bed, then that is a routine. I like to use both approaches to managing our days.

Our first scheduled activity of the morning is at 6:00 AM with Bible reading.  At 8:00 we eat breakfast. Lunch is at 12:15 and dinner is at 6:30 PM. We begin our school at 1:00 PM or 2:00 PM, depending on age. Chores begin at 4:30 PM. These are our scheduled pieces of our day. They set milestones for shifting to new activities and accomplishing significant tasks.

In between these times we depend on routines. After Bible reading, children disperse to chores or taking showers.  Two older girls work in the kitchen prepping food for the day, baking bread, and making cheese. One older daughter milks the cows and feeds the animals. Boys 9 and 10 have areas to tidy and sweep around the house. Younger children work on getting ready for the day and cleaning their rooms. I check on people and keep things moving along. During this time I also get the laundry started for the day. I will do about 4 loads of laundry throughout the day.

After breakfast we clean up and then have a morning devotion time. This is followed by our daily work time. I will share more about our daily work time in part 2. At noon we clean-up whatever task we were working on and transition to lunch with one child assigned to prepare lunch.

The kitchen is cleaned up again after lunch and then quiet time begins. Adults and elementary and younger children have quiet time in their rooms with books to read or they can nap. Junior and high school student begin their school.  This is a quiet school time for them uninterrupted by the younger children.

Two o’clock begins school time for everyone until 4:15.  At 4:15 we transition again cleaning up the school room, putting away laundry, and taking clothes from the clothes closet to bedrooms for the following day. Throughout the day I wash, dry, fold, and iron laundry. I usually focus on laundry around meal times when the children are occupied eating. The children then put away laundry. At 4:30 we begin chores with each buddy group assigned to clean one part of the house. They tidy and sweep and mop their area.

I use household chore time to review school book and what was completed for the day. I grade and make comments and return their books to their boxes. After household chores several children head out to do animals chores, younger children have play time, and I make dinner with my one of my daughters. Dinner is at 6:30 followed by clean-up and evening devotions.

These are routines. Our days follow a typical and dependable pattern. I schedule running to town and kid’s appointments around our scheduled times and routines. Saturdays are our “days off” when we just do the bare minimum chores, sleep-in, and eat when we are ready. We also skip laundry on Saturdays.

Next time I will be posting about our daily work time and how that really made such a difference in being able to accomplish all of our tasks around the house and farm.

 

Keeping Up on Processing Milk

We milk 2 Jersey cows with a third freshening in July. This provides a fair amount of milk for our family and animals year around. Even with bottle raising calves we process about 5 gallons of milk per day for our family. The needs of each family are different, but we make our own butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese, aged cheeses, mozzarella, sour cream, and buttermilk. Processing milk can be overwhelming to a homesteader. Here is how we keep up on all the milk around here.

We have an established kitchen time each morning. Everyone has assigned chores to be done before breakfast. Some tidy the house and their rooms, another takes care of the animals, and a couple of us work in the kitchen. We have a variety of things to do in the kitchen each morning but one important task is to process milk.

On Monday mornings we pull all the milk out of the refrigerator outside in the garage. Over the weekend, when we are not dealing with milk each morning, the milk has built up. We take it all out, except about a gallon. We skim off all the cream and churn it in to butter in a food processor. We use a hand churn sometimes, but on Mondays when there is usually a gallon and a half of cream we use the electric equipment. We then pour the milk in to 2 five gallon buckets to sit aside for the week. This is the animal’s milk. It will curdle in the buckets and the next Monday be taken outside to the barn to be fed to the pigs and chickens.

After churning the butter, we press out the buttermilk and add it to jars in the frig. We keep about a gallon and half of buttermilk at all times for cooking and baking with. From cornbread and biscuits to waffles and pancakes, buttermilk makes many yummy baked goods. We wash the butter, salt it, and freeze it in 1 cup balls until we need it or can it.

The milk keeps coming in and on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we make either cheese, yogurt, or cream cheese depending on our needs. At least twice a week we make one of our two favorite recipes – havarti and Monterey Jack. We have our processes timed out to our morning schedule so it is not overwhelming.

We begin kitchen time at 6:45 AM. We skim the milk of half of the cream and warm 3 gallons in a double boiler set-up. We culture the milk while it is still cold and slowly heat to the required temperature. Breakfast is at 8:00 AM so right after we eat we add the rennet the cheese. At the end of cleaning up from breakfast we cut the curds and let the settle. We then warm the curds according the process dictated by the recipe. After Bible we are usually ready to press the cheese.

Later that day we turn the cheese in the press and the next morning it is removed from the press.  We place the cheese on a small plate in the pantry and turn it frequently allowing it to air dry. After a week of air drying we vacuum seal the cheese in a plastic bag and place it in a plastic storage tub in the cellar.  We age most of our cheese about 3 months before enjoying in a variety of dishes.

Cheesemaking can be a daunting task taking about 3.5 hours, but if you complete it along with other work it is much more manageable.

Update on Rethinking Our Food Systems

When I thought of homesteading I always imagined a pioneer life and I had a certain vision in my head. My picture included fresh baked bread at every meal and lovely home-baked desserts.  We began a journey of trying to figure out how to replace all store bought groceries with homegrown food. Could we grow wheat and sugar beets? What about vanilla, baking soda, and baking powder?

In addition, we enjoyed cooking from scratch in a healthier and more traditional manner. As I explored recipes and implemented ideas from others, we began using things like sucanat and coconut oil. This further complicated the matter.

After years of growing and processing we came to realize that we approached growing our own food all wrong.  We had to re-think our food system.  Instead of trying to grow our “image” of homestead food or grow the diet we were use to, we had to eat what we could grow.

The first change we made was to realize that we needed to stop purchasing vegetable oils, including coconut oil. Traditionally people on farms used butter, lard, and tallow for all their “fats.” We began growing the pigs a little larger and rendering every bit of fat we harvested in butchering. We also started saving poultry fat. We have quickly realized that all of our fat needs are met here on the farm. We haven’t yet found a good substitute for mayonnaise. Butter makes more of a hollandaise and lard mayonnaise is gross. We eat less mayonnaise these days.

This past summer we changed our approach to starches and grew large amounts of items that produce well in our climate and environment. We also chose to grow food that we had tested storage methods for. We focused our efforts on dry corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets and winter squash.  We also tried to extend our season by planting more food in the hoop house.

Our food stores continue to be full and are providing for us at every meal. Successes include enough carrots to allow us to juice, enjoy in soups, and eat raw. We stored many carrots in sand in boxes in the cellar.  Each week we clean out the boxes of any bad carrots and feed them to the animals. We also left multiple rows of good sized carrots in the garden and a few rows of smaller carrots. On dry days when the ground is not frozen we dig carrots from the garden and on the other days we grab some from the cellar.

Squashes were cured and placed in the cellar and have been a good side dish for winter meals. We struggle with preparing squash in new and interesting ways. We did find a new recipe for a delicata squash and arugula salad, which has been refreshing. We have narrowed down our favorite squashes and in the coming season we will plant just four varieties – delicata, acorn, spaghetti, and hubbard. 

The beets were abundant and have stored well.  To be honest, they are not our favorite food item. We also are trying to find new and interesting ways to eat beets.  Juicing has been helping to reduce the numbers.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes were items we were already familiar with as was corn to some degree. We increased the dry corn and have it hung in the barn to keep dry. We shell and grind as needed and have learned new ways to cook it including polenta.

The hoop house is still producing and has lettuce, celery, green onions, cilantro, kale, and Swiss Chard growing. A separate cold frame box has spinach. These items are providing fresh food to supplement our frozen, canned, dried, and cellared items.

We continue to need to focus our menu more and more on what we have stored and to supplement less with purchased items like wheat and sugar. Snacks for the kids is the hardest to figure out on an on-going basis. Everything is an opportunity to learn and explore alternatives and we love what we are learning.

Re-thinking Our Food Patterns

When you homestead for a few years you fall in to a natural rhythm of when and what you do. The seasons come and go and you repeat the patterns of each season. Each season we add a few projects and they become part of our rhythm and pattern. We are busy identifying the new projects we should add, but we are also re-thinking our patterns and rhythms of raising our own food. 

Our food patterns for our geographic area involve planting in the Spring and harvesting in the Summer and either canning or freezing fruits and veggies. Our diet has been heavily focused on protein and starches with the fruit and veggies adding variety and flavor. How much we grow and preserve is based on this level of consumption. For our family of 10, we preserve about 1200 jars/packages.

We have been shifting our diet to be more focused on protein and veggies. This change is for a variety of reasons, but we have realized how much closer this diet will bring us to producing all of our own food. With our increased consumption we would need 3 times our current level of preservation or we need to re-think the pattern. In re-thinking the pattern we are focusing on three things: 

1) extending our fresh harvest season by packing the hoop house full of cold hardy vegetables to be harvested as needed;

2) growing more throughout our normal season by taking out rows of finished items and re-planting; and

3) growing more squash and corn as starchy veggies to fill our diet. 

Focusing on these three goals has significantly increased my gardening time. I spend about 25 to 30 hours per week weeding, removing rows, and planting. This does not count the time I spend harvesting, planning, researching, and ordering seeds. My husband maintains a separate garden and spend about 10 to 12 hours per week weeding and managing water. The kids and I do almost all the planting for that garden. The children also contribute a few hours each week to weeding. 

During the last few weeks I have been starting my Fall garden seeds in my little greenhouse and transplanting seedlings to the garden. I put in brussel sprouts and two more rows of cabbage.  I ripped out the peas and started 3 new rows. I plan on at least one more planting of peas in the garden and one in the hoop house. I have also put together a detailed planting plan for the hoop house for winter.

I have had to completely re-think how we do things and it takes a lot of time upfront to make these changes. In seasons to come it will be part of my rhythm and pattern and I won't have to think as hard about it. 

The garden is doing fabulous and my motto this year has been - plant carrots anywhere there is room! We are also working on some new projects l hope to write about soon. 

Pizza

Pizza is one of those quick meals that you pick up or have delivered when you don't feel like cooking - for most people. Dedicated to making our food from scratch and as nutritious as possible, we usually avoid take out pizza. My kids asked for me to put it on the menu, so I did for the next 6 months. I did, but I was not excited. Here is why. 

The ingredients for pizza, when sourced from the farm, take a long time to put together. If I start at the beginning I have to grow the tomatoes, milk the cow, and grow the hog and butcher it. If I start from the mid-point it is still alot of work. The cheese has to made, tomatoes canned as sauce, and canadian bacon cured and smoked. Pizza day the wheat has to be ground into flour and the dough mixed and kneaded. 

Any way you look at it, there are a lot of steps in pizza. This morning I grated some cheese and chopped some canadian bacon for the freezer, which will make the next pizzas a little less time consuming. But food is time consuming.

In reality I spend the majority of my days, as do some of my helpers, consumed with food preparation. From planting and weeding the garden to feeding animals, we work on food in come capacity. Mornings we make cheese, sprout wheat, dehydrate chicken stock, or preserve food. We spend hours every day preparing meals from scratch. 

Just this morning, I worked on the following food projects and I made breakfast. 

- Processed ham, bacon, pancetta, and canadian bacon that was smoked yesterday. Some were cut up and froze, some soaked in water, and some hung to age. 

- Made butter and canned it for the summer when the cows are dry. 

- Grated cheese and froze. 

- Took minced green onions from the dehydrator and stored away. 

- Dehydrated sprouted wheat. 

- Stocked the snack trays with dehydrated kale chips. Stored the rest for winter. 

- Pulverized the dried celery to celery powder. The celery is growing in the hoop house and we are harvesting the tops for drying and then making celery powder. The celery powder will be used to cure meat in place of pink salt in the future. 

So why do we do it - well I have written about that before. 

Great Hope and Possibilities

The grass is green and growing fast, the fruit trees are blossoming, and it is a lovely time of year on the farm. Our new farm plan is working great and helping things to run very smoothly. We have been finishing butchering and filling the freezers for summer. We are gardening like crazy and will start our daily weeding next week. I am preparing the fields for planting - field corn, clover, oats/peas, dry beans, squash, and sunflowers. Some of these crops are for our food storage and some for the animals. We are planning our summer projects and identifying priorities around the farm. Spring is such a wonderful time of hope and possibilities. 

In the Spring everything is possible. The weather is not too warm and you are not yet escaping the heat. The grass is green and the soil damp while you work. There is great anticipation that everything will grow and provide great abundance. The weeds have not yet filled every crevice and you have hopes of a weed free existence. Every project has hope of being completed and you are yet to realize there may not be enough time or money this year. Yes, great hope and possibilities.