St. Emilia

Spring is upon us and in the midst of our baby chicks, building a new goat house, finishing school, beekeeping, neglect of the garden and office work; were able to celebrate the liturgy and feast day of one of my children today, Emmelia.

Saint Emmelia was an amazing woman that has inspired me in my life. She was the daughter of a martyr and a mother to five canonized saints in the Orthodox Church, two of the most famous are Basil the Great (her husband, Basil, was also a saint, as was his mother) and her oldest daughter, Macrina.

On her death bed she spoke these beautiful words with her oldest daughter and her youngest son with her, "To you, O Lord, I give the first fruits and the tithe of the fruit of my womb. The first fruit is my first-born daughter, and the tithe is this, my youngest son. Let these be for you a rightly acceptable sacrifice, and let your holiness descend upon them!”

Holy Saint Emmelia, pray to God for us!

President

I support Ron Paul for more reasons than I have time to list.

I ask you to think about one thing you find dear to your heart and go find out what Paul really believes (on Youtube or some other media) not what the mainstream media has led you to believe. Find out what he really believes and ask yourself what other things you might agree with him on. Let me know what you find. I'll be here.

Country Jane, new Ron Paul supporter

Growing pains

So in the last 2 days I've had some interesting small talks with some of my offspring.

My 13-yr-old (daughter) complained about her newly developing "buds" hurting. "Yes, dear, that's normal, just leave them alone as best as you can."

My just newly 10-yr-old (son) was writhing in pain today on the couch. He asked to speak to me privately and told me his "crotch" was hurting so bad it felt like it was going to explode. "Poor guy, talk to papa."

My 5-yr-old (daughter) asked me during dinner last night why I have hair "down there" because she doesn't and neither does that sister or that sister or that sister. "That's enough dear, let's have a girl meeting about that later."

My 3-yr-old (daughter) was watching me get dressed. She informed me that she likes my belly, and she likes my udders too. My. Udders.

Back to Basics

What are basics?

I'm getting annoyed at people analyzing the "DIY movement" and the "self sufficient movement" and the "preppers movement", etc. For Pete's sake!

I'll tell you why I'm doing what I'm doing...I see our country going down the crapper and not much hope to right the wrongs of our so-called leaders who are in the pockets of the banking system.

I'm doing it to feed my family better food not because I care about so called "health" but because of all the shit going into the large farmed foods. This includes "healthy" grains like soy, corn and now wheat, because should we leave them the way God made them, no we need to screw with their DNA and give them all sorts of un-natural "benefits". Not to mention the chicken and beef they inject with God knows what.

I'm doing it so that when the banks crunch down harder on the middle class and try to take our home we will have a meager supply of survival/farming skills they can't take away.

I'm doing it so my kids can have some idea of how to do these things and they can choose to take it or leave it when they grow up. So that they have many chores to keep them busy instead of video games and the TV and the mall. So that I don't have to say, "go get your exercise dear" but instead I say, "go shovel the manure" and we kill two birds with one stone.

I'm doing it so that I don't feel like I'm just one more sheeple being led to the slaughter house and in order to not feel helpless like I once did.

I'm doing it so that my husband will be proud of me so that I can stand with him and not against him in this nebulous "Zombie-apocalypse" that seems to be coming. That he will have a partner not an enemy in his own home.

I'm not doing it for show. I'm not doing it to save money. I'm not doing it to make money. I'm not doing it because I hope for the Zombie-apocalypse, I don't. I'm not doing it because I think it will be easy, it sure as hell isn't.

I like my "cushy" life and my running water and my heat that I can flick on, I like my washing machine and dryer, I like Fred Meyer and going there to buy what ever I want any time of the year day or night. I like my internet and you-tube and blogger. I like Netflix and frozen pizza and really good non-homemade beer.

We may or may not ever loose these amenities. We may not ever have to fight for our lives. We may not ever need to crack open our meager supply of long-term stored food. If we don't, great! But if we do need it? We will have it. We will NOT have all the skills necessary to survive an Alaskan winter with no shelter but we will have more skills than we once had when we were only white collar, yellow bellied yuppies straight out of college.

Country Jane, zombie killer

I hate Google

I don't really, but they have been messing with my accounts so that every time I wish to come on and post a quick blog note it says all of this confusing mumbo jumbo that I don't understand about updating my account and changing to a new email and combining accounts, etc. So I stare blankly at the screen and then click the X button because I'm too brain dead to try to figure it out.

SO! 4 months later it's an actual lazy Saturday and I have BRAIN POWER and a hot cup of coffee, go me! I got my accounts fixed and it didn't take that long!

One of the things I wanted to talk about this summer was the loss of blogger Granny Miller. She's not dead. But after about 3 days of her site being down I emailed her (I'm such a fan I have emailed her in the past so I had her email contact info). She said that something had happened to the stored information for her blog and it would have taken a computer specialist and money to retrieve it all. She already had a clock count down for the end of this year being her last year blogging, so she decided to call it quits early.

It was pretty heart breaking for me personally, I felt like I had lost a friend. I checked Granny's blog as much as I did my facebook page. I learned so much from her in that year that I had started reading her blog, researched many of her previous posts, printed recipes and been inspired.

I have "moved on" so-to-speak realizing that I am a highly capable person and can do so much and have done so much on my own and know how to search subjects online and read books to figure things out. I basically met a real-life Granny who lives over the river and through the woods from me who has become a friend; and as a bonus she knows how to garden and farm in my state too. My husband is so much more supportive in our lifestyle choices than he had been last year. In reality our ideas on preparedness, survival, and farming are simply melding into one cohesive mutual effort and it's provided us a common interest and goal with in our marriage and family to work towards. This is only straightening our marriage. With this year's tax return we're going to be buying a Bison hand water pump for our very deep well. It will be a fun gadget to have, like our Esse cook stove is that we bought last year, and if we ever need it when the electricity goes out we'll have it ready and willing to serve us.

Country Jane, sitting pretty by the wood stove while the snow comes down!

The Esse Ironheart

It's been a while...well all summer!

This summer has been a whirl wind of things and stuff and other things and stuff.

So I'll talk about today, which was a good day.

Hubby left this am with the older 3 kids to pick up a lamb from a local farm going out of business...yes $100 dollar pedigree lamb 2 years old. Not kidding. He went with two of my friends was the best sheep wrangler ever, helped them kill and gut and chunk then brought those home. He finished getting all the cuts packaged and into the fridge at 1am. Hooray!

He said this means he won't go hunting this year which I'm bummed about. I love caribou and moose and I love having a ton of it. But we still have a little meat goat to butcher in a few more weeks, so we'll be fine.

I made my biggest stock pot yesterday full of my "yummy lentil soup" as we call it. Full of fresh veggies and lentils. After organizing my freezer last night and finding WAY more salmon than I realized we had I thought, wow, we just don't have enough room for a lamb and 3 gallons of soup. So I started canning it today. It changes the flavor a bit and steals good nutrients out of it too, but we just don't have the room and how nice to open a jar of soup. I did two batches mostly those 3cup jars that spaghetti sauce comes in full. Then I just stuck the rest into 6 more quart size yogurt containers and made a tall stack in the chest freezer, those fit ok.

I got out all of last years salmon and put a bunch into jars and processed some of that and 7 pints of my husbands salmon that he just smoked. I'm using my new Tattler lids and so far they're doing ok. At least one out of every batch fails, sometimes 2 or 3. I know I just need to figure out the trick (or quit using oil in all my canning which you're not supposed to do, so can't blame the lids).

My sister and I picked blueberries on Thursday and I decided not to take the time to pull the stems off of each and every one, so I threw 4 cups of those into the freezer (to sweeten them up) and then into the pot to boil and mashed them up well. Strained the juice. Then took my 2008 blueberries which were still fairly pretty out of the freezer and 11 cups of rhubarb and threw those into the pot for a big batch of bluebarb jam. I'm using my new Pamona's Pectin which so far I ADORE! Works like a charm and you don't have to sell your child to afford the sugar you need for the jam.

Made some brine for the rest of the salmon and put about 8 fillets into the brine and I'll smoke that tomorrow then can about 1/2 of it. We like the top part canned 'cause it softens the bones then we freeze the tails which are boneless and pull them out for snacks. Salmon and farmers goat cheese on a cracker are my all time favorite midnight snacks now. Mostly because we made most of it and it tastes good too.

I have 7 more 1/2 pints of plain salmon in the fridge to process for tomorrow.

I was tickled at one point a local "goat lady" I know makes really great soaps and was asking around for fresh produce. So I made out like a bandit getting 6 bars of soap for emptying out my fridge of my produce and a box full of turnips out of the garden. Less work for me tomorrow, woo hoo! I was going to have to make zucchini bread and blanch the veggies that were already picked AND make more sauerkraut. And turnips are not my favorite veggie I'm finding...so it worked out great for me.

Well it's 1:30am and I'm hallucinating and probably slurring my speech...so I'm going to bed.

Country Jane, Glad to be back

Sold!

Last week my neighbor expressed interest in buying one of our boy goats. She came over with her children and they played with him. He's very sweet, he's been our bottle baby and cuddly.

My husband and I had made the decision that we would sell the boys as bucks but if they didn't sell we'd butcher them once winter hit and try goat meat. The thing was, was that I just couldn't bear letting this little guy get butchered, so I was willing to sell him as a wether (castrated) and ask much less for him because he wouldn't procreate.

Neighbor liked the goat, but they didn't want goats for dairy, just for fun, he husband didn't like goat's milk and her aunt breeds mini cows in another state, so they'd probably end up with a cow. I brought her in the house to have a glass of milk. I had just had some cereal that morning and this jar was especially un-goaty. She was impressed. I took her into the milking shed and brought in a doe, she milked her a little into a jar. We filtered the milk and she took it home, chilled it and gave it to her husband. He liked it!

So they decided to buy my cutie boy and a doeling from the breeder I got my does from. Happy day!

Yesterday someone called on the bucks I had for sale on Craigslist and wanted to come right over and see them. He really wanted two pets and to have them eat all the weeds on his 2.5 acers on the mountain in Farm Town. So I told him that I would wether them for him and he could have them for less than my asking price. He liked that better and wanted the 2 brothers that were left. Gave me the cash and left me to do the deed on the boys and he'd get them later in the week.

Today we took our new doeling and the two boys for their "procedures" to a neighbor farm where she and my breeder did the deeds. New doeling got her tattoo for tomorrows goat show she'll be in (and win). And the boys were elastrated. That's pretty rotten. Our cutie boy was cut last week and we prefer that method, but beggars can't be choosers, and that's the breeder's preferred method.

I know it's really not that exciting to sell a goat. But this is our first time around and it's nice to know they're all going to good families.

Country Jane, goat breeder