The Farm Has Grown

Meet our two newest additions to the farm: Betty and Bess!

Betty

Bess

We just got them last Sunday!  Actually, they are Isaac's goats so perhaps I should not say "we".  Mom and Dad paid for one of them for his birthday and the other he bought with his own money.  We are so excited to have them!  Isaac spends a lot of time out there with them, and when he's inside doing school he wishes he were outside instead.  :)  They are Alpine goats, which give the largest quantity of milk out of any milk goat.  We are expecting to have about two gallons of milk each day when they are both milking!  Bess is a really sweet, curious doe.  She is only a year old.  Betty is a little less friendly, because she was not bottle-fed. (Bottle-feeding kid goats makes them bond with the feeder and therefore much more friendly to humans.)  She is getting better though, and is learning to like Isaac since he brings her a carrot every day.  They are both pregnant, so we are eagerly awaiting baby goats in the spring!  We are also greatly looking forward to the fresh supply of milk that will follow, and can't wait to make our own cheeses, soaps, etc.

Bess was very curious about the camera as you can see from both the picture above and the one below.

Oh!  That's Orangie!  He is one of the three barn cats that came with our place.  He decided to join us while we were with the goats.  I guess since I'm on the subject I'll go ahead and introduce you to the other cats as well.

That's Brother.

And this is Sister! (By the way, I know that the names are very original.  :)  They were actually named by our landlord's daughter, who was only 2 at the time.)

Oh, look at how big our chickens are getting!

Dad and Isaac fenced in a small section outside of the actual coop, as you can see above.  They worked on it for a very long time and built it like a fortress!  Daddy says that if anything manages to get in there, it deserves to eat every last chicken!  :)

~Kiah

An Evening Of Christmas Cookies

All the snow we've been getting I think has put us all in the Christmas mood a little more than usual, and to my delight, Daddy has been wanting to bake Christmas yummy things with us!  Baking is one of the things our family does best, and at Christmas we seem to do more of it than at any other time.  One of my very favorite things that we bake together is sugar cookies!  We've made sugar cookies every year for as long as I can remember, and I so enjoy doing it together as a family.  Plus, they're the most special of all the Christmas cookies because they are each unique and not one looks the same.  One day last week (or maybe it was the week before?) Daddy said something to me along the lines of, "Well, Kiah, I think it's sugar cookies tonight!"  So we made them.  And we had a blast doing it.

Trying to stir up the creative juices.  :)

My Daddy is always very creative and makes the funniest cookies, like this one.

No Daddy, No!  :)

Uh oh!  :)

That cross in the middle (decorated by Isaac) was my very favorite of all the cookies we made that night.

~Kiah

What's one my favorite things about winter? Snow, of course!

Let me just start by saying that I've had several things I wanted to post about for awhile, but I simply haven't been able to find the time!  With as busy as we've been lately, I decided to go ahead and post everything I had on my mind in one shot when I had the time.  If I don't post it now, who knows if I'll get around to it later?  So, here goes.  I hope I don't overwhelm you with so many posts in a row!

I grew up in a place where we never got snow.  In fact, in the twelve years I lived there, I can only remember snow sticking to the ground once!  So you can imagine how snow-deprived I am, and how much I love it when it does snow!  All that to say, we got a huge snowstorm last week, and it was absolutely beautiful! This particular storm the snow was coming down hard and in HUGE flakes!  They were the biggest snowflakes I had ever seen.  I can always see God's power and beauty best in nature, and this was no exception.  Watching something so beautiful as snow falling out of a gray sky makes me marvel at the amazingness of our God who made it!

A couple of days later, I was surprised but happy to see Isaac building a snowman!  He was almost done by the time I caught him, so I didn't join in, but took pictures instead.  That snowman made my day I think.  :)

~Kiah

Isaac's Birthday

My little brother turned 15 years old on Sunday.  I have to continuously marvel at how God has changed him, just over these past couple of years, from that cute little boy that I loved to this Godly, amazing young man that I love and respect.

Before we headed off to church, we gave Isaac his gifts and cards.  I bought him a chef knife-- something he has wanted for a long time.  You can see how excited he was by the look on his face.

His gifts from Mom and Dad were of a different nature.  Can you guess?  If you guessed that they had something to do with his little farm you were absolutely right.  They gave him a milking pail, a book on raising meat goats, and money for a goat.  Speaking of goats, I have news... but that's for another post.  More on that later...

After church Mom and I made Isaac enchiladas, one of his favorite dinners.  Isaac doesn't eat sugar, so instead of a cake, we made him a nice big fruit salad.  (He just loves fruit!)  I know, he's not your average 15-year-old boy, but I'm okay with that.  :)

 Cutting the cake  Stirring the fruit salad  :)

This is Isaac's face for, "Stop taking pictures!"

 

Happy Birthday my brother!

~Kiah

A Tale of Snowflakes and Flapjacks

I am definitely a morning person.  I love facing a new day, feeling the crisp, cool weather of the early morning, and sipping a hot cup of coffee as I watch the sunrise.  It is in those moments that I feel the most joyous, the most blessed to have been given life on this earth.  One day last week I awoke to a very special morning, one that, every time it comes around, fills me with a special excitement and joy.  When I went to the window a landscape of white greeted me.  Our first snow!  It was truly beautiful.
 

My lovely morning did not end there.  As much as I hate telling it, I must share a rather embarrassing story before I can explain to you just why this morning got better as it went on.

You see, a few weeks ago, Isaac challenged me to a very fatal gluten-free pancake bake-off.  Gluten-free because my Mamma is trying not to eat gluten, and pancake because she was wanting something other than oatmeal or quinoa porridge for breakfast.  I accepted the challenge.  After all, how bad could it really be?  *Ahem*  After half an hour of frenzied mixing and flipping, all we were left with was a mass of so many inedible blobs.  To say that our flapjacks were a flop is quite an understatement.

However, I am happy to say that all that is forever behind us!  On the morning of our first snow, Isaac and Mamma surprised me by ingeniously creating a recipe for gluten-free pancakes, which are really quite delicious.  I cannot explain to you how delighted I was at how much they tasted like pancakes!  Thus my morning was completed.  I do not think it gets much better than eating scrumptious gluten-free pancakes with a cup of steaming coffee in front of a warm, crackling fire while just outside the window lies a blanket of snow sparkling as the sun's rays fall on it.  It was quite a lovely morning indeed.

Below is the recipe that helped make that snowy morning so wonderful for me.  Perhaps if you try it you will find that it can brighten up your morning as well.

Gluten-Free Oat Banana Pancakes
3 cups oat flour (we make our oat flour simply by blending oats in the blender)
6 eggs
3 bananas
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 - 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 c. almond milk

Mix together eggs, bananas, vanilla, and almond milk with an electric mixer or hand blender.  Add dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Drop batter onto greased frying pan on medium heat.  Flip when bubbles form in the batter.  Makes about 4 servings.

~Kiah

Promoting 180

After watching Living Waters' new documentary, 180, we wanted to do everything we could to get the word out about it.  So just before we moved, we bought a huge 180 decal and one hundred copies of the DVD to give away.  We've been giving away the videos anywhere we can-- at church, at the store, on the street, even in the dentist office.  We're trying to spread the message as far as we can! And I have to say, I think our 180 decal on our van looks pretty cool too!  Or at least it used to.  The below picture was taken before we moved, and now we live on a dirt road.  You can guess what that means... our poor decal is very, very dirty.  :)

If you haven't seen the new documentary go here to watch it for free.  It's only 33 minutes and is truly life-changing.  Please take the time to check this out, and when you have watched it pass it on!

In Christ,
~Kiah

Chickens!

To start off our mini farm we bought 50 chicks this week! We got three different breeds: Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, and Welsummers.  We had chickens many years ago, but it's been awhile and I am so excited to have chickens and fresh eggs again!

These little guys are just as cute now as they were when I was six years old.  I'm ten years older now and I should be more mature, but I still have so much fun playing with them and holding them.  That may sound silly of me, but I really can't help myself!  :)

Sleeping!  :)

Off the topic of chicks, this is a picture of Isaac reading his new favorite book. It's called The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals.  Mom and Dad bought it for him at the last homeschool convention. This book contains a wealth of information on all sorts of farm animals from chickens to goats to cows to bees to rabbits to pigs (and more). Isaac has really enjoyed reading it, and he's learned so much about raising farm animals. I like to call him our expert on all things farm.  :)

~Kiah