Merry Christmas from all us Doeuns. After a busy day hosting Christmas (a bit early due to everyone’s schedule it was a bit hard to get everyone to stand still and smile, but we did our best. Hope all of you have a wonderful, blessed and meaningful holiday season!
I’m back and I am living in a winter wonderland. Predictions this year were for continued drought. But last weekend we had the most snow in a single storm for over 2 years. Flurries are expected today and another larger storm next weekend.
It’s easy to get in the Christmas mood when your backyard looks like this. Hard to believe at the end of the year we will have lived in this wonderful place for a year. Proeun was at the barn as it was snowing and said it looked like Narnia out there.
I sadly have not been able to enjoy the outdoors yet–still healing up from an early Christmas present, the birth of our 5th child and 2nd son–Pray Grant.
Daddy is very happy with the new addition.
As is big brother Two who asks first thing every morning to hold him. I snapped this picture last night, I hope they will remain close and this picture will be one they cherish when they get older.
I am on strict orders to rest for 40 days. Luckily it is the elving season and I can knit while reclining and nursing. It is so fun to see piles of yarn turn into projects and gifts. Also have some sewing projects lined up for in a week or so when I can move around the house more. More on finished projects after the holidays.
Proeun and the children set up the Christmas tree this weekend. We didn’t even set up a tree last year because we were busy packing and moving. There is a local nursery were you can “pick your own tree.” We wanted to do that this year, but it can always wait till next year. I especially love the star on top. We haven’t had a topper yet and always planned to get one after the holidays when those things are cheaper but never did. So Proeun planned and made a star for the top. I love that man!
Sorry I have been away for so long. We have just been finishing projects, enjoying the cooler weather and now with our first dusting of snow hunkering down and enjoying a reflective season. Proeun was off for the whole week of Thanksgiving and we finally had minimal projects to work on. It gave us time to enjoy our home, farm and family.
For Proeun and I this time of year is always amazing. It was 10 years ago this week that Proeun proposed to me. Or as he said yesterday, “10 years ago I was busy trying to convince you that I was the one.” He didn’t have to work too hard. There have been alot of great Thanksgivings since then and Proeun is always at the top of my list of gratefulness. Now as we start our 10th anniversary year we are living on our dream property and creating a dream life. Part of that is having a place to raise our soon to be 5 children.
We are all anxiously awaiting the arrival of our 5th baby, so I will probably be more or less absent from this space for awhile. But I did want to share a great picture with you captured yesterday at our prenatal by our amazing midwife Tracey of Twin Cities Midwives.
Mavis (and all the children) can hardly wait for the birth of her new little baby. She has been going through the pregnancy with lots of sympathy pains. Here she listens to the heartbeat of our family’s newest member.
Even though the days are getting shorter and our girls (hens) are taking a bit of an annual rest we still get plenty of eggs to keep our family going. I think I have said this before but I honestly probably wouldn’t be farming if it didn’t taste so good. Now that we are actually on our farm and can begin our own meat production (yes we do eat meat) and ramp up our egg production I am having to learn a whole new way to eat though using fresh, in season ingredients. At this time of the year that often means stored foods.
Since discovering a few years ago that I have a dairy allergy I have also been learning a whole new way to cook. Unfortunately many western egg dishes pair eggs with cheese so many of these are off limits to me. So with eggs piling up I began looking for other options. So I turned to one of my all time favorite cookbooks–Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. Some of the ingredients in the book have been hard to find in my neck of the woods but I am learning good substitutes. So this weekend I made the Eggs in Coconut Milk Sauce. Here is my variation.
Amy’s Eggy Comfort
5-6 hard boiled eggs
1 can coconut milk (I love Thai Kitchen brand)
1/2 can of water (I use the coconut milk can to get as much as I can in the sauce)
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 large onion finely diced
2 hot peppers diced
3 tomatoes peeled and diced
15 Thai Basil leaves
1 TBSP tamarind soup base (use 2 TBSP fresh lime or lemon juice)
dash of salt
Hard boil and peal the eggs. Then either quarter them lengthwise or score them being careful not to cut all the way through (I started out trying to score them but ended up quartering most of them).
Put the remaining ingredients in a medium pot, bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the eggs, stir gently and simmer for 3-4 minutes.
Serve with rice, I love Jasmine rice. Enjoy.
So the onions, tomatoes (we still have some green tomatoes slowly turning in our garage), peppers and of course eggs all came from our farm. I love it when we are able to use our own produce to make yummy dishes like this.
So last weekend Daylight Savings Time ended in our neck of the woods. With close to a month and half left to go before the winter solstice and a pregnancy ticking down as well this momma is tired, really tired. It was a long, great, learning type season and things are slowly being crossed off the list of late fall and winter tasks. So when it gets to be about 7:00, a couple hours after the sun set, I am ready for bed.
So sorry I haven’t been very interesting lately, and today will prove no different. My days are filled in the close quarters of home (which looks a lot better thanks to a new paint job my parents provided last weekend). We hydrate, consume calories, rest, learn a bit, try not to drive each other crazy and most importantly rest. Cabin fever may be an issue this year, but as Proeun said, enjoy the rest because soon the busy season will be here again. I guess that is seasonal living, not always glamorous, but exactly what we need. Enjoy your own little hibernation and break.
Our connection to place is growing. I and the children have now spent just about 2 weeks straight on the property and been quite content in the process. This was also our 2nd weekend straight on the property and it has been truly heavenly. There is something really great about nice full days spent outside working side by side with your family and loving every minute. This weekend’s agenda included, cleaning out the garage, cleaning out the packing shed, getting the log splitter up and running, getting the tiller attached to the tractor (still not quite done), fixing goat fencing (it’s breeding season and those boys are persistant!)and a few other small chores, like getting the living room ready for painting, wow. Along the way we had a couple good movies, some good food and stories.
Yes we are settling in and it feels wonderful. Soon the snow will be flying and outdoor time will be limited so it is good to get the outdoor projects finished now and the indoors straightened out and beautified. This is probably one of the first years I am really looking forward to winter, minus the snow removal.
It was one of those amazing weekends with great weather, lovely comfort food and lots of time spent with those we love. As the semi-warm weather continues we are limiting time off the farm to a minimum and spending as much time as possible outdoors to finish up projects for the winter.
One huge project on the list was getting the hay put away the goats would need to get them through the winter. We are so blessed to have a barn already set up for hay storage so that wasn’t too difficult. But with the late season drought finding hay was a bit more difficult then I would have thought. Finally we found a neighbor with some hay available for purchase. He drove his hay wagon over Saturday night and we agreed to unload it, count it and pay him later.
You would be amazed how much entertainment that wagon gave the children. For the 2 older ones, literally hours. Proeun would say, “are they still over at the hay wagon?” already knowing the answer and giving a little shake of his head and a chuckle.
But it was not to last. We did have to unload.
Special thanks to my big strong husband who unloaded the wagon by himself. Each of those bales weighed 50 pounds and there were 69 of them! I supervised and watched the children, who loved getting in the way.
Works all done. We finished with a hayride, minus the hay bales. it was a great day.
Admittedly not the best quality picture photographically speaking but when you are trying to capture a moment before it passes you use what you got.
I love working on projects with my children. Honestly I wish I were more patient and took more time for it to happen but when it does it is so precious. The first of the quilts is almost complete–just the hand sewing of the binding left before it will be keeping us warm at night. Here in the 2nd to last stage Avril helps me tie the quilt top, batting and backing together. She did a beautiful job and unexpectedly the comraderie of working on such a large project together filled my heart with joy. So that is the moment and feelings that this picture entails for me. Looking forward to many more moments like this.
Our first CSA season is done on our very own farm! Wow what a crazy feeling. Bittersweet to say the least. Setting up on a new farm was more difficult then I expected and the weather didn’t help with flooding at the beginning of the summer followed by drought, butwe did it. In the end everything worked out and we have learned so much for next year and are super excited for the next season already.
But first things first. There is a bit of clean up and a few winter projects left that hopefully will get done in the next couple of weeks while it’s still possible to work comfortably outside.
I also am winding down my physical involvment as our due date approaches. But I had one “big” project I had to finish–the birthday crowns from Soule Mama’s The Creative Family. I have been wanting to make some for the kids for awhile. I bought felt like almost a year ago for it. So when Avril was trying to make a crown out of paper last weekend and it wasn’t working out too well I said absentmindly that I could make her one. Not realizing I would actually be making four. Then with the last week of delivery and scrambling to clean up I have been exhausted and this pregnant mama has not felt like sewing. Finally I got them done.
Another thing accomplished and they all seemed pleased with them. Avril and Mavis even added their own touches. The purpose of them is to be used only for birthdays to enhance the celebration. I don’t know if that will work out for us or not.
When we first got our goats last spring we admittedly didn’t think things through that much. We knew we wanted goats and had an idea how to build housing for them but in the middle of a crazy set up year we didn’t plan on what would happen come winter. We also knew we wanted to use the goats to clear the woods so they would be kept in the woods but didn’t figure out how we would set up fencing in said woods. So the first location for Caleb–our male Nigerian goat was in a relatively open spot that was quite scenic but also a trek from the house.
As winter approaches and I become more pregnant I couldn’t imagine trying to trek all the way out to check on him let alone clear a path. But how would we move his house?
Luckily my husband is a master at making do with what you have–Caleb’s house was built entirely of found material. So he came up with the idea of using round tent posts, lifting the house on to the posts and “rolling” it to the new location ala “caveman” as he put it. Later we actually saw this technique used with a log cabin on TV, but Proeun came up with it first I promise you!
So this weekend Caleb got a move into a new location.
Here they are coming down the trail and making the turn to head off into the woods. Proeun and his dad pushing and Avril supervising making sure to tell them loudly when they were at the end of logs. The other girls safely in the house being supervised by Two and me documenting.
After the house everything else was easy.
Blackie and Jimmy, the little bucks born to Raven this year on the farm, joined Caleb in the new digs. It will be way easier to keep an eye on them here. I actually took this picture from our deck! Good work honey!