Busy Hands Homestead

I passed from one decade of life into the next. Cups clanked, water boiled, voices volleyed and I stared up at the dome of the tent above me. I pulled Sylvan closer. My little snuggle bug. My last baby - who hardly is confined within the parameters of a baby anymore. Ivory slept all night in her own tent. Her zippered flap just a few feet from mine. I smelled coffee - breathed deeply:  Life is good. I shimmied out from under the covers and crawled out of the tent. Loons raced across the lake. We were camping with friends and it just happened to be my birthday. After rounds of breakfast, adult canoe rides, observing never ending dizzying games of tag all the families piled into cars and set out on their respective adventures. We picked up a handful of national forest flyers, a forest service map and we huddled over the lines in the front of our car and picked a spot on the map - Morrell Falls - That is where we will go.  We picked huckleberries on the w...

At our house, this has been the summer of marinated salads.   The ingredients sourced from our garden: Sweet and Sour Cabbage Salad, Cucumber Salad, Green Bean Salad. Vegetables chopped and dressed and tucked into the empty spaces in the fridge to be eaten hours or sometimes a day or two later.   Now it is the beet's turn.   Bright and cheery, this salad is going to be tomorrow's lunch.   3 or 4 large beets, roasted, peeled and chilled 1 small onion, very thinly sliced 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil 1 Tablespoon White Vinegar basil, parsley (fresh, roughly chopped) and tarragon (I used dried) salt and pepper (to taste) Cut the beets in half and then the halves into wedges put into bowl and add the thinly sliced onion.   In a small bowl combine the olive oil, white vinegar, basil, parsley and tarragon.  Whisk to combine the olive oil and vinegar.  Pour over the beets.  Stir, or if your container seals, give it a good shake. Chill for...

The rain is pattering on the windows. It is dark outside. I set the alarm early and reluctantly crawled out of bed. If I want a few moments to myself I need to take them before the kids wake up and we embark on our get ready for school routine. Routine. My life suddenly has routine: a set bed time, a set up time, a set dinner time, a set we have to be somewhere time. There are weekdays and weekends and Thursdays are early out days. Ivory walks out of the big red brick building at two instead of three. There is an extra hour of sunlight. A precious extra hour of warmth and light in our day, and our days have already been getting so much shorter.  The sun late to rise and early to set and it is only September.  It will get so much darker yet. Last Thursday we walked among tall grasses, spied the bright red berries of wild asparagus, and admired the yellow of the first fallen leaves. It was warm, and sunny, and almost summer. The river was cold and lazy....

We have been waiting to harvest our carrots.   This is the first one we harvested.  The kids pulled it out of the ground. This carrot is not the sort of carrot you will find at the grocery store.  It is fat.   It is huge.   It has five fingers.   It is the kind of carrot that makes it into Ivory's lunchbox.  The carrot is chopped up with peanut butter ready for the dipping.  From-our-garden-cucumber, peach, and a home baked whole wheat bread sandwich  - peach jam (freshly made) and almond chocolate spread - and one tiny chocolate oatmeal cookie round out the rest of the lunch. I like this school lunch thing. More on the lunch box: This is Ivory's  Planet Box .  I ordered it for her this summer.  It has woodland fairy magnets and a purple lunch bag in which it rides to and from school.   I know they are pricey, but I view it as an investment.  It is stainless steel, has few pieces...

A dark ring is left behind in the tub. The bathroom sink is spattered with mud. The kitchen counter is lined with 10 quart jars of peaches, 6 pint jars of cucumber chips, 4 half pint jars of peach jam of fresh out of the oven bread.  Seven jars of dilly beans and 5 pint jars of honeyed bread and butter pickles have already been stashed away on the shelf.  Trays of dehydrated kale and basil are still in the dehydrator needing to be packed away. This isn't exactly how I imagined our Labor Day Weekend. I was hoping for lazing by a river or walking in the woods, but instead I spent most of three days in the kitchen while Adam crawled around in the space below my feet. "You want some coffee?" I shout down at him. "No.  I will just have to come up and pee." A little while later I hear from below me: "Sure, I will take some coffee. I shift a few pots around and put the kettle on. The water is back on after Adam had rerouted all the plumbing to...

A small piece of paper torn form a Red Lion Hotels notepad has been floating around my kitchen for the better part of two weeks. It has been clothes pinned to my cooling rack above my kitchen counter.  It has been shuffled under papers on the catch all corner.  It has been used almost daily for the last week and a half. I am afraid I am going to lose it in the shuffle. Scribbled on it is a recipe for Egg-less Apple Cider Pancakes. A recent experiment that turned out to be fantastic.  Ivory, Sylvan, a few more kiddos (10 total), two mamas and I gathered the early fruits of a transparent apple tree, passed them through the hopper and pressed fresh apple cider.  This left me with a giant bowl of sweet, fresh and delicious cider. We sipped cups of the thick juice, but eventually the kids stopped asking for it and I still had a bowl full left.   What to do with all that juice taking up valuable space in my fridge?  The solution: make panc...