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.