Giddings Graduation Day 2015

I remember that wonderful day in 1997 it like it was yesterday.  Joy and I watched probably the best movie ever produced in the theater…Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion.  We returned to Dennis's duplex to receive the news, Bailey Jordan Garza was born!  We were all expecting her to be a boy, but a beautiful baby girl she was.  And now it is time for her high school graduation.  Along with her twin cousins Zachary and Chase.  John and I were honored to attend the ceremony.  We got there kind of early.  Thank goodness cause we were able to secure seats with backs.  A comfort this 40 year old can't seem to live without.

I found their names!

I'm bored.  Can I take a picture of a picture of a picture?

Zach!

Chase!

BJ!

Spring Break

It's our first official day of Spring Break.  The weather today was beeeee-you-tee-ful!  Kid #1 wanted to make his own garden so he could plant the wild onions that he harvested from near the duck pond.

We tried to find a suitable location but had a hard time. We remembered that phone lines ran under the first site that we picked.  So we decided to expand the porch garden.  The digging, hoeing, and dirt screening got tiring real fast so we enlisted the help of the ladies (and gentleman).

While the birds did the hard work, Kids and I got down to business making the front of the house look respectable.  Neighbors are selling their house and want to help them along (even though it kills us that they are leaving) any way we can by making our yard look maintained. 

I am still surprised to see how green everything looks.  Notice the pink mums?  They were the flowers I got to take home from Popo's funeral.  There are some other mums there, too, that aren't blooming.  They are from one of Grosspapa's birthdays.  I'm happy to have plants that have special significant meaning.  

I am so used to everything looking very brown after this summer.  Here's a picture of Halloween when the yard was very, very sad.  

We went back to Austin Homebrew Supply and got the ingredients for a Summer Pale Ale.  I can't wait to start the brewing process tomorrow.  Good tasting beer, here we come!  We also got a chain for Husband's chain saw.  We're going to go out to the country for a few days and cut down some trees at M&D's.  The whole family is looking forward to a break from the schedule.  The kidlets were hungry so we treated ourselves to an early dinner at Home Field Grill in Round Rock.  The service was uncharacteristically slow and they wouldn't take our gift cards.  Gonna have to write the corporate office about that one.  Enjoyed my weekly facial at

http://avenuefive.com/

One of these days I'll have to take/post some pictures of the amazing results I've gotten.  My friend, Kelly, is going through school there and has graciously allowed me to be her "model" during the last few months of her training.  I most likely won't continue getting weekly facials after she graduates (since I'm the cheapest person I know) but it has been such a wonderful experience getting pampered each week.

I'm still trying to sell my family on the idea of homeschooling.  I told Kid #1 he could have a home cooked hot lunch every day.  Kid #2 doesn't need a lot of convincing.  Husband isn't sold on the idea at all.  I'm glad that he balances my radical ideas out but this is an idea I'd really really like to implement.

Cheese!

The rain that has been falling relentlessly let up today after church!  My friend Pam called me yesterday in a desperate state.  Her girls were suffering from some serious cabin fever.  She suggested a social after Sunday School so the kids could run off some of their energy in the gym at church.  Well the minute we got done playing in the  gym, the sun came out!  I was able to play out in my garden today.  I planted a package and a half of green beans, some leeks, and some cumin.  I ran out of room in the raised beds and planted some green beans right next to the house just outside of the back door.  I've done it again this year.  Planted way too many things.  I hope we continue to get just the right amount of rain so I don't have to use supplemental water too often.

So virtual friend, I must tell you of the coolest self-sufficient thing I've done in a really long time.  I made CHEESE!  Any of you who know me know that I could live on cheese alone.  It is pretty much my favorite food of all time.  Husband and I went to Austin Homebrew Supply

www.austinhomebrew.com

Friday morning to find out what else we needed to be able to brew our own beer.  Brother-in-law jumped on the wagon and gave us all of his homebrew stuff several months ago.  It has been hibernating in the attic ever since.  Since we went there without knowing what we already had, the guy there suggested taking an inventory of what we had before returning to purchase the rest of the needed supplies.  While we were in the store I noticed that they had cheese making kits for not a whole lot of money.  I purchased a 4 batch mozzarella kit for $4.99.  The guy said that raw milk would work best so we drove all the way to my favorite Dairy in the whole world

www.dyerdairy.com

to get our precious raw milk.  When we got home, I watched the youtube video produced by AHS and noticed that they used HEB milk.  So instead of using an $8 gallon of milk for my first cheese making attempt, I used HEB milk.  The process was incredibly easy.  Kid #2 helped.

First you heat the milk to 55 degrees.  Add calcium chloride and citric acid.  Heat to 88 degrees.  Add the rennet.  Then it looked like this.  Curds and whey!  

 Heat it to 104 then take it off the heat and let it sit for 20 minutes.  Squeeze as much whey out of the curds then microwave for a minute.  Drain the whey then fold and press the cheese until it reaches the desired consistency.  The whole process took about 45 minutes.

Delicious!  Now if I can only figure out what to do with the 3 quarts of whey I have left over...

Tonight for dinner we had a cornucopia from the garden and freezer.  Kid #1 made his famous sausage/carrot/herb/greens stir fry.  I finally pulled up some of the fennel from the herb garden and made caramelized fennel bulb and onions.  And I tried to make cilantro lime rice but next time I need to make a few changes.  1.  Use limes, not lemon juice.  2.  Measure the lemon (lime) juice instead of accidentally pouring way too much in there.  3.  Use white rice not brown.  We also had some of the sauerkraut I just got done fermenting.

I need to ferment it longer next time and make sure it has enough liquid.  But it wasn't bad for my first try.  It tasted so much better than the stuff you get at the store.  But doesn't everything homemade?

And today's highlights:  We saw a monarch!  Spring is here.  And Kid #1 brought a whole bag of wild onions back from the duck pond.  He loves to forage.  

Baby Steps

I've thought about starting a blog for just about forever now.  Mostly as a way to let others know what I'm up to. And to a lesser extent to try to keep track of everything I've done.  Like take the chickens for instance.  I've been raising chickens for a while but I can't remember exactly when I started.  And I've gone through several sets of chickens.  I would love to look back and have a record of that.  And lastly, I've been searching for like minded people on the web that want to produce a lot of their own food in their back yard and become more aware of where our food comes from.  But I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for.  So I'll just do it myself.  Hopefully it'll inspire someone else.

So here's my first post...

I'll start with what I did TODAY.   It has been raining for several days now.  The kind that doesn't let up. It might drop down to a drizzle but it never really goes away.  That's OK since we're (hopefully) getting out of the worst drought on record here in Texas.  It is the first day of Spring Break for the kids.  They're already climbing the walls.  They are the kinds of boys that need to be outside.  So in a moment of insanity I decided that we needed to go for a run.  I mapped out an 8 mile route around the neighborhood and set out.  Kid #1 and I ran, Kid #2 carried the SAG (supply and gear) basket on his bike.  Around mile 1 it started to rain harder.  At mile 2 it was pouring.  We took shelter under a neighborhood USPS pavilion.  The rain didn't seem to want to let up so we made the decision to cut our adventure short and take the short way home.  Murphy's law went into effect when we hit the highest and most exposed point of the run and lighting began to strike.  Turns out the Murphlings and I can run pretty fast.  We got home in one piece, though.  Soaked, happy, and safe.

We found out yesterday that the Hill Country Coop Tour coordinators will visit our coop tomorrow instead of Tuesday so we did our best to make things look presentable.  Everything in the back is flooded and covered in mud.  I cleaned out the inside of the coop and put down tons of pine shavings.  The chickens rewarded my efforts to make things comfortable for them by laying 8 eggs today.  The girls are in full swing!  The rooster is totally annoying the neighbors but he'll be gone within a couple of weeks.  We got him two weeks ago so that he could fertilize eggs.  We're gonna give the fertilized eggs to Kid #2's teacher so she can incubate them in the class.  I couldn't help myself and started to incubate 6 eggs on March 7.  I'm using a heating pad and an ice chest as an incubator.  I'll keep you posted on that one.  I'm having a hard time keeping a constant temperature in there.

Kids and I went to Aunt Joy's for the "March birthdays" birthday party.  Of course all of the youngest generation ended up in the back yard covered in mud.  Kid #2 found two geckos and one roach.  They're now living happily in a jar next to the frog and the fish in his room.  We're going to have a zoo in there soon.  He takes really good care of his pets, though.

I haven't done anything garden-wise today.  Way too wet.  The tomatoes and peppers are covered in plastic.  It dipped down into the low 40's the last couple of nights.  You're supposed to keep them protected when it gets below 45.  Just FYI.

So that's just about it for today.  I promise this will get more informative and interesting as time goes by.  But I had to start somewhere.