The bread maker

Highlight of the week: BAKING!!! I remember my mom baking in the kitchen of my childhood home, and smelling fresh bread come out of the oven. That yeasty, comforting smell that only comes from baking :) Even today, I will be walking past a bakery and think it smells so home-y.
Something I always wanted to do was to start baking our own bread so that my boys can have those memories too. And my hope was to get to the point where we slowly transitioned from buying it, to making most of it ourselves. But, with our week as it usually goes, I was only able to bake bread once during the week. On Tuesday mornings to be exact. And let's be honest...those 2 little loaves were devoured within a day or so. (We do like our pb & j sandwiches around here) So, I decided to go on a quest to find a helper. Look at this fancy new gadget I found while I was out thrifting. Behold, the bread maker!

I do believe that this (not so little) machine will be a game changer for our family. In fact, I know so! Day 2 of ownership, and I've already made 2 loaves of bread. And while I do love to make my own peasant bread by hand, it is pretty nice to be able to leave the house while this thing works for me.

Fare thee well,
jaylyn

Practicing Gratitude: Week 1

Things I am grateful for:

1) Being able to stay home and raise my children

2) Lemon ginger tea- How have I gone this long without it?!

3) Friendships outside the home

4) Supportive online communities (Resources!)

5) Access to clean water, and fresh food

Monarchs, Windows, and Chicken dreams

This week has been all about transformations.

Let me start by sharing with you our caterpillar project.Thanks to the abundant patches of milkweed at the croft, we adopted 6 young caterpillars and 2 little eggs (that we know of). I decided to keep them on their leaves in a vase on the kitchen island so that we could see them every day. I felt it really helped to learn about the whole process this way. Yes, sometimes they managed to escape and we found them crawling around on the floor, but generally they did not feel the need to get too far away from their leaf source! Soon enough, they were plump and ready to change. We got lucky, and witnesses almost all of them shedding their skin and becoming chrysalises. So far, we've had 4 "hatch" and have enjoyed letting them flutter off our hands and watching them they take their first flight into the air. I had never done this as a child, and I was just fascinated by the whole process.

Start watching closely. Just about to break outta there!

 So after we could start seeing their black wings inside, we moved them to a screened-in container, although we let one just emerge right out in the open. She stayed hanging around until we noticed her flapping her wings. Ted said, "I think she wants to fly away!" And we let her crawl on our fingers and  right away she flew to the window. I opened it for her, and off she went :) It was very cool!

  I returned 2 caterpillars back to the milkweed because I didn't want to pick any more food for them and then end up with even more eggs hatching and more caterpillars to deal with. Currently, we are still observing the last 2 which have been in chrysalis for about a week now.


In other news, the house is coming along nicely. We have our windows and doors installed. Yesterday, we learned that the siding on the front is now done! Sorry I didn't have my camera with me, but you can imagine.

This nook with new windows really brightens up the family room inside.

 And we have another project in the works, which is having half of the car port taken off. This included the sauna area, (which was a little sad) but we saved the cedar and stained glass for when we build our own dry sauna. The point of taking this out is that we will have a way to get a vehicle, a trailer (for hauling goats), and other larger equipment to the back yard.

We also are considering doing something like this in the far back lot where it is prone to flooding. We thought the goats would have fun climbing around it if we put some type of spiral staircase on it. Plus, it would irrigate our gardens and store water for the chickens, etc. But that is still a long way off.

 I have started thinking about what heritage breeds I want to raise though. Did you know there's a chicken breed called Mrs. Pepperpot? I would totally keep that as her name too. Maybe 'Pepper' for short. Here's a few more that I'm interested in: Blue-laced red wyandotte, Black copper marans, Americauna, and of course it wouldn't be a Morehouse flock if we didn't get a Barred Rock hen too!

Fare thee weeeeell,
jaylyn

p.s. I'm cutting back on coffee. It's just making me feel awful, and I'm starting to worry that I'm relying on it too much to get through the day. I've decided to alternative between half caffs and smoothies.