Repurposing

repurposing :  to give a new purpose or use to 

There's a lot of repurposing that goes on around our farm.  We repurpose materials, structures, livestock areas . . .

There is also a lot of repurposing that goes on in the house. I also repurpose materials and storage spaces, as well as our motivations and time spent doing things.

I have decided that it is time to repurpose my blog.

My blog has slowed down, halted, and became virtually silent as we transitioned from our start up of the farm into our actual farming.  Some of this has been due to the addition of more little blessings running around the house.  Some of it has been due to the swelling of demands to keep a beginning farm up and running.  Some of it has just been due to a lack of purpose in my posts.

Sure, I have always wanted to keep a journal of our journey.  But the lack of purpose of keeping that journal started to creep in.  

Even so, I have continued to want to find some way to continue my blog. Not just for the readers who may be out there, but for our generations to follow . . . to see how we persevered with where we felt called, to see how the Lord provided for where He had us, and to know the history behind our farm. (All assuming the farm continues on - as well as Blogger!)

Yesterday we gave an in depth tour of our farm to 14 individuals.  They arrived at 9:00 am.  We combed the farm viewing the different enterprises, discussing how and why we do things the way we do, shared how we attempt to balance family, farm, and town jobs, discussed finances, and ate a lunch and supper of Crooked Gap Farm produce and meats that I had spent the week preparing.  Our guests left around 8:00 pm and left me with a desire to repurpose my blog.

Over the last year I have had numerous individuals asking me how I manage the home, the garden, the family, and even the farm in my role as a stay at home, homeschooling, farming wife and mom.  Many have asked (and re-asked) for classes on some of the thing I do. I would LOVE to hold these classes and share the things that I have discovered from my journey of cooking with a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in town to preparing 2 meals for 14 guests and our family of 6 with foods almost completely raised and grown on our farm.

The wall I run into is lack of time. And lack of facilities. And lack of supervision for our children. (Ethan has been working ~60 hours/ week of off the farm work, along the daily chores and 6 months of Saturday farmer's markets . . . and all else that goes along with keeping a farm business running.) 

Which brings me to my next thought.  Children. I have had a number of conversations lately about how to make family work with starting a farm. A wise friend shared with me a couple years back that our culture spends so much time following our children around (not that it's wrong to join in their interests) and so little time having our children follow us around.  Following us to learn from us, to see the beauty in what we have learned to hold beauty, to encourage them, to share with them, to shower love upon them.

In Titus 2:3-5 we are encouraged to "Similarly, teach the older women to live in a way that honors God. They must not slander others or be heavy drinkers, Instead, they should teach others what is good. These older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children, to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God." 

These conversations with my farm friends looking for help on how to provide for their home, my personal friend who encouraged me that it was okay that we couldn't join in the American chase with our children, and my Heavenly Friend who continually shows me the way to fullness of life, have all brought me to repurposing my blog. 

I still hope it to be a journal throughout our farm journey, but as I do this I hope it to be an opportunity to share with others how to love their husbands and children, to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes . . . all the while challenging myself and encouraging my readers to bring the next generation along with them so that they can do the same. 

It's Canning Season . . .

It's canning season.   I've been canning throughout the summer, but now is the time where things really pick up.  This time comes with mixed feelings.

In one sense, it is wonderful to see my efforts in the garden come to fruition . . . or vegetablition, whichever you prefer.  After all of the planting in the spring, the mulching, the weeding, etc - it's nice to get some rewards out of the garden.

On the other hand, some days I just don't want to deal with the garden.  I've been in there hours on end for the last 4-5 months. I have other things I'd rather do, or just other things I need to do, or I just want to go to bed.  But when the produce is ready, the produce is ready.  If you don't take care of it, it spoils.  And then what was the point of putting in all of that labor beforehand.

On those days, I have chosen to tackle my garden tiredness two ways.  First, I have realized that my hobby has turned into my job.  It's a way that I can save money for our family.  A penny saved is a penny earned, right?  And then I remember that I am blessed to be able to have a job, a way to contribute to our family, that is at home.  On the farm.  With the kids. (Who are not always in the garden with me, mostly because of their age, but are playing nearby as I watch their joy in being on our farm with each other.)

The second thing I do is to try and build memories.  When I take my 5 gallons of beans needing to be snapped on our weekend away visiting family or to Bible study or to a visit with family friends, I have often had our friends and family offer to help. (Which isn't why I take them - it just needs to be done.) Or when I sit on the porch with the kids after supper, I call them over and we have a little contest.  Can they keep up with me snapping the ends off of the beans faster than I can snap the bug bites off?

And with each memory I put a mark on the lid.  GK for when I sat with my grandma snapping beans as she shared with me about the orchard that was on her farm when she was growing up.  How their large farming family was poorer than poor but let friends and family come and not purchase but freely pick from the 50 or so apple trees that were on their farm when they purchased it. WBS for my friends in my Women's Bible Study who snapped beans as we visited and shared about the Lord.  I and J for my two littlest boys who joyfully plucked tomatoes out of the cold water bath in order to hand them to me to prepare them for filling up the quart jars.

After those marks of memories go on the lids, the jars go into my pantry.  As the pantry turns from empty jars to a colorful array of jars packed with the harvest, I am reminded of how the Lord has provided for our family and has blessed my efforts.

After I have cleared out and tilled up the garden, and as the days grow shorter and nights turn colder, we start pulling out those jars one by one to fill the plates on our table.  And as I pop off the lids, with the sweet little marks from our children and the marks I put on as well, I am reminded of the memories made throughout the summer and of those who have blessed our family as they have joined me while I do my part for our family.

Follow The Beginning Farmer's Wife on Facebook for additional personal peeks at building a family farm.

Tools of My Trade

Beans must be pressure canned due to their low acidity in order to kill all bacteria that would cause dangerous food born illnesses. They can be safely canned by using the recommended times and pressures given for your altitude. I have a couple older Mirro pressure canners given to me that work wonderfully, and my mom has a newer one that she loves as well. If you do some asking around, you might find someone who has given up canning and has one available, or you can look for one like the one pictured below. It should hold around 9 pint jars or 7 quart jars.

I also have some canning tools that are invaluable. The wide funnel helps keep messes to a minimum when filling jars. When I heat my lids, I just drop them into the hot water of my canner and then lift them out with the magnetic wand. The jar lifters are great for getting those hot jars out of the canner as well. You can buy these tools separately at many stores, or you can purchase them in a kit which contains other useful canning tools, such as the one pictured below.

Name that Grass - Round 1

Okay all of you homesteaders and farmers out there.  Here's a little challenge for you.  I went on a walk with my kiddos last night and brought back seed heads from some of the grasses along the way.  We are going to try to identify them, learn their names, and hopefully learn some facts about them. 

I realize it helps to know their height and see their leaves, but how can you do on naming them, going from left to right?  As of tonight, I'm certain of 2, fairly confident of 3, and have some ideas for 2 others.  

You can click on the photo to see it larger. Feel free to leave a comment here on on my original post on Facebook with your guesses or expert answers! 

And for being a blog reader, I'll give you some insider information.  These grasses were collected on the part of the pasture that has not been heavily over seeded by us. It had been in the CRP program for 10 years and had been planted with native prairie grasses.  The area includes high and dry land as well as land that stays fairly moist from a small spring and runoff from rains. Round 2, which will be coming soon, will have more grasses from the area that we have over seeded.

Have fun! :)

p.s.  Sorry, there is no prize but the satisfaction of knowing that you know your grasses.

I've Become a Soapmaker!

Way back in October of 2011 I wrote a post about rendering lard.  I mentioned that I had a project up my sleeve, and a year later I finally learned how to make soap from a soap maker.

Since the beginning of the year I have been enjoying making what I call "Crooked Gap Farmcrafted Soap".  On our website, it is described as:    

Our Crooked Gap Farmcrafted Soap is unique in that we strive to use as many ingredients as possible produced on our farm, gathered from local sources, or commonly found on a farm. Our soap is not only crafted on our farm, but from the farm. We are confident that you will find our farmcrafted soap to be like none other!

I've taken some pictures along the way, although not a tutorial on how to it, they do show some of the process.

This first picture is the fats melting on our wood stove.  The majority of the oil that I use is lard that I render from our hogs.  I also add in a bit of coconut oil for some extra bubbles and cleansing qualities.  I wasn't really sure what lard soap would be like, but we get quite a bit of it with all of the hogs we take in.  I've you have followed my blog, you might have noticed that I am quite frugal and like to put as much as I can to use.  It only made since to use our lard to make our soap, and I have been so impressed with the qualities of it!  (Our customers have been as well!)  This is the first winter I haven't had cracked and bleeding fingers in the winter for 10 years, even while I have been doing cloth diapering, which dries out your hands quite a bit (all of the moisture being drawn out of your hands when folding.)

One of the things that fascinated me the most with the soap making is watching the glycerine form.  This photo shows the glycerine forming in my soap, which turns back to white after the saponification process.  The glycerine is what conditions (helps your skin retain moisture) in the soap.  And lard soap produces a lot of glycerine!


I also enjoy creating new "recipes" for my soap. It's a fun little challenge to think of what farm available ingredients I can use and how to use them.  I was excited this week to use spinach from our garden in one of my soaps. (The bottom brick in the photo.)

Once the bars have hardened (mine take a good 24 hours or more), they are ready to be cut.  This is also one of my favorite parts of the process. It's almost like opening a Christmas or birthday present. I have an idea of what I've put into the soap, the methods I've used to combine the ingredients, and I can see the top, but it is still hard for me to guess just how that bar will look when I cut into it.  Maybe I'll be able to predict more as I have more soap making under my belt, but right it is usually a surprise.

After the bars have cured for a month, they are ready to sell.  We sell them off of our farm, at the Downtown Des Moines Farmer's Market, and I also ship them. This is a photo of some of the bars I have made, although the patterns are hard to see when they are displayed with the tags on.  You can head over to my webpage to see what they look like without the tags.

In my pre-farming life I enjoyed scrap booking, card making, and doing other creative things.  That has kind of disappeared since we started the farm.  One reason was that with starting the farm from a blank piece of land, having more children - who were also growing to ages where homeschooling was more demanding, and then taking care of the farm, there just isn't that much time to be creative.  The other reason is that I did not feel comfortable buying things for hobbies, and there were just too many farm/family things needed to put on gift lists too ask for supplies for projects too. So this soap making has recently filled a little creative void for me lately, without me having to feel guilty about spending time or money on being creative.

It has also been a lot of fun to learn another skill, and I am enjoying educating a little on it as well. (A little since I am still educating myself!)  If you are interested in learning a bit more, you can check out the info I have included on my webpage, listed a couple times above, and maybe someday I'll find/take the time to do a post in photos of the whole process . . .

Landscaping Advice Wanted :)

Things around here have been a bit crazy, to say the least, the last 4/5 years.  We are now into the start of our 5th year on the farm, and I am (hopefully) able to landscape the entrance to the house, and the rest of the homestead this year.  

Apart from our mudroom entrance and lawn, the entrance to our house has been a mixture of mud and weeds.  This week I tilled up the random weeds and had the kids help me bring some stones up from our ravine.  I have a general idea of what I want to do for the walkway to the house and walkway between the porch and mudroom door, but I can't figure out what materials to use. (I can think of many things to use out of our budget, just not within.)  So I am asking for a blogging brainstorm from any followers that are still out there!

You should be able to click on the photos to enlarge.

This first picture shows the walkway to the porch from the drive.  The stones I put there temporarily are to keep feet from being muddy.  They are too soft of stone to be permanent stones (one is already broken). The triangle area with the bell will be ornamental grasses with the bell on a post.  There is also another walkway behind the bell leading to the mudroom entrance.  The flower bed against the house will be for roses. (It is on the east of the house).

This picture shows the walkway to the mudroom.

This picture shows the full area.  The flower bed separating the drive from the lawn will be for some shorter bushes and spring bulbs. 

So for my question?  What would you do on with a low budget for these walkways and the borders for them.  I would love to do large flat stones but our farm's stones are too soft, and I'm pretty sure buying them would be majorly out of the budget.  I have thought of pea gravel.  Not my favorite choice because of winter shoveling, but it would work.  I have also thought of scattered flat stones with pea gravel in between. I think that wouldn't hit the budget either.  As for the borders, I was thinking stones again, but more rounded ones.  I could probably scrounge enough of those up here and there.  I do know I want it to look natural - cement is not high on the list at all.  What do you think??

Thanks so much!

Happy Easter 2013!

We are patiently awaiting spring here. It is almost the end of March, and we still have snow on the ground - the last batch coming just this past Sunday.  Today Ethan had to take another trip to the woods for more wood (an important thing when you don't have a furnace!)

Even though it doesn't feel like spring, the animals know it's coming though.  Our chickens have kicked into Easter Egg mode, hiding their eggs all across the farm in an effort to steal a nest and hatch some chicks.  It is fun for awhile.  The key word, awhile.  I will admit that it is also kind of fun too when I don't find a nest, and momma hen proudly appears later with a batch full of trailing chicks. 

Since Easter is this Sunday, I thought I would share spring's Easter Egg hunt at Crooked Gap Farm. :)

Behind the roll of wire

On top of the feed wagon

Between some tin

Over the sow, on a straw bale

In the hay stack

In the feed trough

Outside, between a board and our brooding building

And all washed up!

The Beginning Farmer Show - New from the Beginning Farmer!

I can't tell you the number of days I think of things I would like to blog about, photos I would like to take and post, stories I would love to share.  Awhile back, however, when I told my kids "Just a minute, Mommy is busy," one too many times while writing a blog post, I decided that blogging would need to wait until the kids were in bed and the house/farm work is done for the day (to avoid the same phrase the next day while catching up on dishes or laundry due to blogging in the evening.)

As you can see from my lack of posts . . . my days are full.

I wanted to take a quick break tonight, though, as a birthday present to Ethan (his birthday is today!), to share about a new farm project he has going on - his podcast called The Beginning Farmer Show. You can see his first post, copied and pasted below, or head over to his blog and view and listen to them both.

Enjoy!

The Very First Episode of The Beginning Farmer Show!

This is something that I have wanted to do for over a year now, but never had the guts to go out and accomplish it. I thought about it ... planned for it ... gathered the equipment to do it ... and finally just as I did with farming ... I had to just get out there and do it! With all of that being said, I'm not completely pleased with this very first episode and realize that I need to work on my audio quality, iTunes integration, feeds, and so much more. I am glad to have at least one episode out there though ...

On this very first episode of The Beginning Farmer Show I share a quick update on how the farm (and myself) has handled the winter so far. It has been a winter that hasn't gone exactly as planned and I'm sure I'll be playing catch up because of that this spring. After the quick Crooked Gap Farm update I dive right into a discussion of Heritage Breed Livestock and why I believe they work for my farm, but how they may not be exactly right for your farm ... that is a decision that you will have to make.

Finally, there are many lessons that I have learned since we began the farm almost five years ago and I want to share some of those lessons with everyone in hopes that they don't make the same mistakes. This weeks "Hard Lesson Learned" actually goes hand in hand with my main topic of Heritage Breed Livestock as I talk about some of the mistakes I made in purchasing some of the initial stock for the farm.

If you are interested in learning more about Rare or Heritage Breed Livestock please check out The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. As always you can follow along with The Beginning Farmer and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links ...

• Crooked Gap Farm
• Crooked Gap Farm on Facebook
• Crooked Gap Farm on Twitter

I would love to have you interact with the The Beginning Farmer Show. Feel free to comment on this post with your suggestions, questions, ideas, or even podcasting tips! You can also always reach The Beginning Farmer through e-mail.

P.S. If you know about podcasting, Feedburner feeds, and all of that good stuff I would love to hear from someone about why two posts that contain links to .pdf's are showing up in my subscription to the show. It is very frustrating to me!