February was a short month but we had a lot of stuff packed into it. We’ve been working really hard this past month and we have the sore muscles to prove it. We made a lot of progress in a lot of areas and we are pretty proud of all that we have accomplished… our family is a great team!

I’ve put together a few pictures to show some of what we’ve done over the past month.

Homeschool

We are close to finishing up our 2023-2024 school year but we have had to go back over a few concepts that haven’t quite ‘clicked’ yet. Trying to keep things fun and interesting can be challenging but we do try… we had to pull from the candy stash to help with fractions.

Shyanne absolutely loves school and she can’t wait to get started every day. We don’t keep her to a strict schedule … haha, what am I saying? – no one is kept to a strict schedule! She has loved using this workbook from Living with Eve, another YouTube channel that I have been loving!

We really have loved using the WorldWatch News with our homeschool routine. I love that you get a little bit of history, geography, science, health, and so much more in every episode!

I’ve also been reading some articles from Plain Values magazine… it has a lot of very useful information.

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Home

We’ve celebrated a couple of special days this month and we did have a special dinner on Valentine’s Day but we didn’t go all out and spend a lot of money on candies and such. Mr. Awesome did get me some flowers that I can plant along with a couple of lemon trees as my birthday is the day after Valentine’s Day. I didn’t get a picture of them but I’ll try to find one to add.

The kids have been enjoying the nice weather and spending more time outside. The boys really love fishing… one of the nice things about living on a pond – snakes and alligators are not so nice though.

Our journey to observing the Sabbath has been going well and I do see some benefits from taking the day off to rest... it does help you in so many ways when you aren’t worrying about the things you feel like you must get done. It’s almost like a mini-vacation every week… we continue to try to find ways to make it as calm and peaceful as possible.

Our vacuum cleaner bit the dust… really. I was thankful that Shark was running a special when it happened. Their products are a little more expensive than what you can get at the big box stores but we have found them to be more dependable so the initial investment usually pays off. I normally get the Navigator but this time I went with the Stratos and we have been very pleased with it so far!

We got the vacuum cleaner and then the kids tore up the dishwasher… it’s gonna be a little while before I replace that though.

When the weather wasn’t nice I have been working on some decluttering projects. I forgot to get a ‘before’ picture but it was bad… my desk had become a dumping ground for anything and everything. It wasn’t a fun place to sit and there definitely wasn’t any kind of work going on there. I love sitting at my desk for my quiet time in the morning when I do my Bible study but it was hard to do that with so much mess… it looks and functions so much better now and I have been staying on top of it. I did end up swapping the wire basket for some colored folders to sort out my different ‘projects’. I love color-coding things!

Things have been getting moved around so much and things get misplaced or thrown into boxes to be sorted later but it just doesn’t always happen. After cleaning up the desk area I was motivated to go through some of the boxes that had been brought into my area. These were full of homeschool papers that I had planned to use but didn’t because I couldn’t find them. Most of them ended up in the ‘scrap paper’ bin.

I thought it a little ironic that I found this book shoved into the box… hmmm, that title kind of fits me a little too perfectly.

I also found an old notebook that I had used when we had a landline telephone. This was the note I had scribbled when the hospital called with our NIPT results … I still remember that day so well. I wasn’t upset that she had Down Syndrome because they had previously told us to expect another condition that would have been ‘incompatible with life’. The doctor couldn’t understand why I was so happy when he gave me the results and I kept asking for the gender… I told him that he had just given me hope that our daughter would have a chance to live! I’m tearing up right now just feeling all of those feelings again. It was a beautiful day!

Sourdough

Our Sourdough has become a staple in our home. We have made so many goodies with it but they don’t always last long enough to get pictures. Keeping the sliced bread in this cake stand has been a game-changer!

Our pretzels and Challah need a little more work to get them ‘pretty’ but what they lack in looks they make up for with taste… Challah French Toast is AMAZING too!

We will have more sourdough recipes coming up soon. It doesn’t have to be hard to be good. Once you get your routine down it is all super easy.

Also, it doesn’t have to be Sourdough to be healthier for you than store-bought bread!

Garden

We’ve started the seeds and apparently, the goats have been starting some too. We also made a mini greenhouse top for one of our existing beds. There are lots of squash, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, as well as a TON of flowers because we had so many flower seed packets. We have a variety of other seeds started as well but we will just have to wait and see what comes up.

We’ve also been working on the new garden space. We have built several beds and have a few more to make from some reclaimed wood… we will be lining them with some heavy-duty plastic. (This is some of the wood we also used to build our chicken coop last year.)

These beds are 4×8, some of them are 18 inches high and some are 12 inches high. I used some scrap 4x4s for the corners and middle braces, cut some old deck boards for the sides and ends, and a piece for a middle brace to keep the beds from bowing out when the dirt is put in them. I did leave the tops on some of the 4x4s as I may want to cover these beds with plastic or netting. I will probably go back and cut them off level after they are in their permanent positions.

It’s been hard but fun trying to get the beds arranged the way we want them. I had a brilliant idea to put some of the beds around the base of the windmill but I forgot that we had planned to put the windmill closer to the end of the drive so we could use it as a landmark for people to find us.

I think we finally figured it out though and there will be a combination of raised beds and in-ground beds. The garden will be divided in two halves as we need a driveway to get around to the back of the house. We’ve planned a trip to Rural King to purchase some supplies that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else. Our dirt and mulch should be delivered later this week as we found a local supplier who delivers!

Blog

We’ve had lots of posts this month on varying topics that I hope someone was able to find useful. We have been trying to post more of our favorite recipes as well as our meal plans. I’ve also been trying to find recipes for some of the Holy Days that we are looking to start celebrating this year.

Animals

Well, our chickens have really been stepping up to help with the grocery bill… egg prices have almost tripled here since the beginning of the year! We have been getting over a dozen eggs a day and that’s not all of our chickens laying yet. We do get a variety of colors and they look so pretty on the counter… even if they are a little dirty because some of the newer hens haven’t quite figured out what the nest boxes are for yet. They are so much prettier than anything we could get on our Walmart Grocery Delivery!

We saved the most exciting thing for last… a new baby!

Last week we set up a temporary kidding pen in the pasture area… you can see a couple of glimpses of it in the garden pictures. We used some metal drums placed along the fence as sides, an old truck topper for the roof, and a large gate run between a couple more drums for the door. We put some bedding on the ground and there is a water bucket (clipped to the fence to prevent tipping) and a feed bucket attached to the fence.)

Since the baby has been born we cover the fence side during the night to help keep them from cool drafts. It’s not the prettiest pen but it works and we can take it down when we no longer need it or when we make something better.

In case you are wondering… the PVC pipe attached to her horns is to keep her from getting her head stuck in the fence. We are hoping to replace all the preexisting fences with goat fences at a later date.

We are looking forward to having fresh milk soon and that means another project to get started on ASAP… a milking stand and shelter so I’m not milking in the rain!

That’s definitely not all that we’ve been up to but those are the most interesting things that I have documented with my phone… it didn’t happen unless there is a picture, right?

We know that a lot of our projects are not ‘Pinterest-worthy’ but progress is progress and I want my kids to learn to do the best they can with what they have. Maybe these pictures can help encourage someone else to try something a little out of the box.

We thank you all for joining us in our adventures and for your continued prayers for our family.

God Bless!