Thanksgiving Feast with Friends

We are part of a great church and today was their annual Thanksgiving Feast for the homeschoolers.  What fun!

 My pilgrims & indians

 having fun with friends

 On the way we spotted this Vietnam Memorial with a tank and helicopter that were actually used in that war!

 The boys couldn't get enough of it!  

 I can't help but fast forward 10 years in my mind when I look at a picture like this.  What an honor it would be to have a son (or two, or three) that would be willing to serve his God and country in such a sacrificial way.  It starts now, when they're only 6, 8 & 10...teaching them to defend women and children, to live a life of service to others, to boldly accept one's duty as a man, and to have a heart of gratefulness for this country we live in.  Wow, what a responsibility I have as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom to cultivate such a spirit in them...thank you God for such a wonderful opportunity!

Cait's Cozy Corner

If I may take a moment to be brag as a mom...

Caitlin's talents at the sewing machine are sparkling these days!!  She has taken old wool sweaters and t-shrits to make these cute, fun cup cozies!  Aren't they adorable?!  Great Christmas gift idea and super affordable :)  

Check out her website HERE

 I use mine everyday ;)

South Greenville Fair

Thanks to my friend Susan we found out about a local fair that was going on today!  I have been long wanting to have the kids enter their farm animals in a fair setting, you know, like a Charlotte's Web movie type thing?...just cute and fun with a bit of competition.  Come to find out, after some research on this local fair, they were holding livestock entries for competition!  So late last night and early this morning the kids and I got everything ready to head to the fair!  Nathan and Caitlin decided to enter their 2 bunnies from the last litter. Ben took along his barred rock rooster that he has been diligently taking care of these last 5 months, Christian picked out a barred rock hen, and Graycie entered her rumpless rooster!  Well what a surprise we got today.....

Caitlin and Nathan's bunnies being judged.

They both won first place!  First place for their particular breed and first place for color!

Ben and Christian patiently waiting to see if their chickens won...

And yes, they did!  Not only did they win first place but Ben's rooster won champion overall!!  Woot-woot!!  That's one proud boy :)

Believe it or not, Graycie's little rumpless also placed first!  Here she is collecting her ribbon and prize money!

It was SO MUCH FUN and such a great experience for the kids.  Their daily hard work has paid off with a fun-filled day, ribbons, and a few bucks to spend on kettle corn and lemonade at the fair!  Here are some pictures of the other events we enjoyed at the fair today.

Ben and Christian decided to participate in the sidewalk chalk art contest.

Some vintage tractors...can't wait to have one of these one day!

A vintage corn shucker run by water!

Watching the dairy goat competition.  We will be a part of this next year!  We couldn't do it this year since participating was all so last minute.  Our goats are at our friend's farm until we get some property.

Dairy cattle competion...would love to be a part of this.

Ellie LOVES her Graycie

Boys and I stayed to watch the tractor parade.

 And this is my favorite shot of the day...watching Caitlin freely and happily share her bunny and put a smile on someone else's face.

Homemade Liquid Handsoap

Hi, this is Caitlin here.  My brothers and sisters and I go through so much hand soap.  You know, the kind in the pump?  Well it's expensive to buy it and we buy it so often.  Anyway, my mom wanted to find a way to make it herself.  So she did some research on the computer.  She found a recipe and wanted to try it out!  So she invited a friend from church over with her two cute little girls for Graycie and Ellie to play with, and we all made the soap together!  

The list of ingredients is:
8oz bar of soap
2 tbspns liquid glycerine (you can find this in the bandaid section at any store)
1 gallon of water

The first thing I did was grate the bar of soap.

Then we put the grated soap, glycerin and water in a pot on medium-high heat and stirred it until the soap melted.  Once it melted we added some tea tree essential oil that mom already had.  You don't have to do this, but it added a wonderful smell, and tea tree has antibacterial qualities so we thought it would be good to have in the soap.  Then we took the pot off the stove and let it sit overnight.  This morning, it was a big pot of liquid soap!  It was exciting!  

This is a half gallon glass jar that we stored it in.  Remember, we did this with mom's friend so half of the soap went with her.  And we already filled the pumps in the house so that is why the jar is not full.

Here is the difference in cost.  Mom helped me with this, but I'm glad I know how to do division and multipication :)

Just to compare...The 16 oz pump of hand soap we have in our bathroom costed mom $8.00 at the store. Yes, you can get it for cheaper, but mom likes to get the good, natural stuff and for whatever reason, that costs more.  We just made 128oz (1 gallon) of hand soap for $2.43!!!!! That's 7 times as much soap for a fraction of the price!

Here is our cost breakdown:
8oz bar soap = $1.46
1 oz (2tbspns) liquid glycerin = $.97
water = free

It comes out to 2 cents per ounce! Wow...I'm pretty sure we will no longer be buying soap from the store :)  This was such a fun, easy project.  I would encourage all of you to do it!  We also made powdered laundry detergent yesterday.  My brother Nate will be writing about that since he is the one that helped mom the most with that project.  Now if we could just learn to grow and roast our own coffee beans, that would save dad a ton of money since mom drinks so many lattes!!

This is Graycie's friend, Rilynn who came to play with the bunnies while her mom, Mrs. Sene, and mom made the soap.  Aren't they cute??

Baby Chick

What an exciting event...to watch new life be born!  No one can deny it is a miracle!  We have been incubating 6 eggs and we happen to peek in on them when one was pecking its way out of the shell!!  So of course we took the wee one out of the incubator to watch!

It took him over 24 hours to fully come out of the shell.  We put him back in the incubator overnight and when we checked in the morning, he was fully out of his shell.  The kids made a little home for him with a heat lamp, water and chick feed, but sadly...he only lived for 2 hours (sniff, sniff).  It was probably our fault...we handled him way too much.  We didn't help break the shell, but we were moving him in and out of the incubator.  We have learned, not to even touch a baby chick that is hatching until it has been out of the shell for atleast 48 hours.  Hopefully, another egg that is incubating will hatch.

*UPDATE*  No other baby chicks hatched :(  2 were completely rotten (yuck!) and the other 2 had stopped growing for some reason.  Maybe they were left in the cold for too long when we were still allowing the broody hen to sit on them. Oh well...we shall try again next spring/summer!

Pickles!

What fun making our first batch of canned goods from our own garden!  Nate's cucumbers are growing like crazy!  We eat them every night on our salad, but we wanted to preserve some of them since there are so many!!  Pickles it is!  They've been prepared with salt, vinegar, dill and garlic, canned and given a water bath for 15 minutes....now we just have to let them sit for a month then they are ready to eat!!

Fish & Chicken Fry!

Our neighbor, Mr. Mike, gave us a cooler full of fish today!  It was time for Ben and Christian to learn how to fillet some fish!  Thanks to Grampa, momma knows how to do it so she took the afternoon to teach the boys...they did great!  Thanks to their hard work, we all enjoyed a nice fish fry for dinner!

We decided to throw in a chicken for dinner as well...our butchering turned into quite the science experiment...CAUTION...this next picture might disturb some of you, but we thought it was really cool!! The chicken was actually one of our egg layers, and when we opened her up to clean her out we found the egg factory!!  It was an entire tube system, just like the intestines, but with egg yolks growing!  The one on the left was complete except the shell was soft.  We learned a lot today!

Upstate Farm Tour

The CFSA (Carolina Farm Stewardship Association) had its 6th annual upstate farm tour this past weekend.  As we were researching different aspects about farming in south carolina we found cfsa online.  It was exciting to see other people doing the same thing we desire to do...raising food in a natural way.  We visited several different farms, and they all had their chickens free ranging alongside thier turkeys and goats.  We made some great contacts as well for our own up and coming farm business.  On Saturday we forgot the camera so there aren't any pictures to show...Our first stop was a compost farm where we learned about vermiculture (using worms in your compost).  Our next stop was to Bethel Trails farm...a farm 10 minutes away from home!  They are a  great homeschooling family following the same farming methods that we are using!! And they sit on the board of cfsa.  Our last stop for the first day was to a vegetable and herb farm., Red Fern Farm.  We gained valuable information on how to garden with no pesticides, how to transplant without sending your plants into shock and how to properly dry herbs.  Very exciting for me since I have a love for herbs!

Sunday after church we hit 3 more farms in the area.  The first, Patient Wait Farm, specialized in heritage breed turkeys.  All heritage breeds are endangered.  One breed they had was the Jersey Buff.  The husband and wife team raise them from birth and sell many for Thanksgiving dinners but preserve most to further the breed.  We spoke with the owner about getting us some of those to raise to help preserve the heritage breed (and a few for some yummy Thanksgiving turkey!)

Next stop was to Split Creek Farm, a dairy goat farm.  There were over 700 goats!!  It was a beautiful sight...they were all scattered in different groups, mostly divided by age, spread out all over the pastures.  They specialize in raw goat milk and goat milk products....cheese, soap, and delicious fudge!  They also sell their purebred goats....we loved the nubians and will be adding some of them to our own farm soon!

Our last stop was special!  One of the first things we were sure to find when we moved here was a source of raw milk until we get our family cow.  We found Milky Way Farm, and his farm was part of the tour!  So we went to meet L.D. Peeler and his Jersey cows that we get our milk from!  He has over 90 hiefers!  We toured the barn where all the milking is done, got to meet some of the ladies who give us milk and then even got a few gallons to take home.  It was a great field trip and so fun to meet L.D.

Our goal is to have Kornerstone Farms be part of the Upstate Farm Tour in a few years.