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Mozzarella
I’ve been making mozzarella for quite a while. I made some for my brother when he visited a couple of months ago. I proudly served it to him. His response? Let’s just say he was less than impressed. It...
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Sunflower Skyscrapers
We grew some mammoth sunflowers in the garden this year. The goats really love sunflowers and the fat and fiber are very good for them. I had no idea they would be so huge!!! Now granted, my children...
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Pawpaws
Somebody gave us some pawpaws the other day. Never heard of a pawpaw? Remember Disney’s Jungle Book movie? Where Baloo is trying to teach Mowgli how to be a bear? Here I copied some of the lyrics for...
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Do You Know What Today is?
Today is the first day of deer hunting season. If you’re against hunting – I’m sorry. But don’t worry I won’t post any pictures or get graphic on you. We don’t personally hunt. We just don’t have the...
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Sunflowers
Remember my sunflowers in the garden? Well, Hurricane Ike finished them off. But that’s ok, they were mostly ready to be harvested anyway. So the children cut them all down: The good news? The children...
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Sweet Potato Harvest
Here is a photo of this year’s sweet potato harvest. It’s about 150 pounds. Last year we grew 118 pounds. Normally we wait until two days before the first frost to dig up our sweet potatoes. But this...
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Green Smoothie
I made myself a green smoothie one day. Jade had to have some: Then she had to share it: I’m pretty sure my face didn’t look like that. At least, I hope it didn’t.
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Herb and Flower Gardens
With winter coming, it’s time to say goodbye to my herb garden til next year. One of the best parts of having a perennial herb garden is knowing it will return. Here are some photos of my herb garden...
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It’s Garden Time Again!
I am so excited that Spring is here. Our cherry trees have blossoms on them and so do lots of other trees. Emery’s daffodils and hyacinths are up and blooming. It’s wonderful! My asparagus isn’t up...
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My Herb Garden
I love my herb garden. Right now, it’s not in the best shape and needs a lot of dead stuff from last year removed. It also needs to be weeded really badly. Some fresh mulch would make it look really...
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What is a Vegetable?
At our home, we work very hard to live a healthy lifestyle. So I’m always telling my children to eat their vegetables. And the other day, one of them asked, “What is a Vegetable?” I gave them a very...
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When Exercise is Still Fun
I remember a time when exercise used to be fun, and not something to check off my to-do list. I don’t remember when it stopped being fun. Probably after I had children. Or when I was pregnant. Yes,...
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Asparagus
Asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables to grow, because it is the first thing to come up in the garden in spring. Asparagus is a perennial, which means that once you plant it, you don’t have to...
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Don’t Avoid Bacteria
When people hear the word ‘bacteria’, most people immediately jump to bacteria that make us sick. The news is often full of outbreaks of food that is sickening people because it is infected with...
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Don’t Fear Fermented Foods
When I was a new mom and the budget was incredibly tight, I really wanted to start preserving food by canning. My mother-in-law knew this and got me the book, Putting Food By. I read it and became so...
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Working (Out) in the Soap Room
I’m pretty vocal about how important I think exercise is. We do a lot to stay fit so we can stay healthy so we can feel good so we can work hard so we can enjoy life. See how simple it is? Simple, yes....
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Our First 5K
Our home church decided to run a “Race for Grace” 5K to help support a new local Christian school. It was the Jonas family’s first ever 5K. I’d like to say that we trained, but… We didn’t. But we...
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Making the Change
I spend a lot of time making sure that my family lives a pretty healthy lifestyle. We try to eat right, sleep well, and get lots of exercise and fresh air. Because of this I am frequently asked, “How...
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Do You Drink Goat Milk?
We are asked all the time if we drink our goat milk. The answer is… yes! That was why we got the goats in the first place. We actually do quite a lot with our goat milk besides making soap. We drink...
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Managing Stress
Let’s face it, most moms today are overwhelmed and stressed out. I say moms because I am one, but this applies to everyone – men, women, and unfortunately even children. Most people know how bad...
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Smoothie Boy
In a previous post, I mentioned that I do a lot to manage my stress level. But when things get crazy busy, I tend to stop taking care of myself when it is most important that I do so. To prevent this,...
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Processing Onions
Despite giving away onions to lots of people (which is so much fun), we still have over 100 pounds of onions to process. The children started the job today, and completely filled the dehydrator. Here...
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Little, Baby Egg
Emery and Indigo came in the other day from collecting eggs. Indigo was cradling something in her arms. When I asked her what it was, she carefully showed me her “little, baby egg.” It was very...
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Bread from Heaven
It’s getting hot. Since I’m always trying to keep things cool (and save money) I’ve been minimizing the use of the oven. So, when the family needs bread, what’s a Mom to do? Break out the sun oven, of...
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Fruit Trees
Our fruit trees looked amazing in the Spring. Beautiful, healthy, and lots of fruit. Pears: Apples: Peaches: Peaches: Apples: Peaches: Then the drought set in: And things didn’t look so good. We...
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Spaghetti Sauce?
Jim and I were working hard the other night and I was late for making dinner. My darling daughter came out and announced that dinner would be ready in 10 minutes. I was so proud of her that she knew I...
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Persimmons
We are fortunate to live in an area with lots of persimmon trees. In the past, we’ve never owned any, so we’ve always had to go on walks and harvest ones from other people’s trees with their...
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10 Reasons to Eat More Sweet Potatoes
I never had sweet potatoes growing up. I don’t think my mom liked them, so she never cooked them. I suppose I saw them at Thanksgiving time, but as a kid I thought they looked nasty even with...
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Benefits of Sunflower Seeds
We’re a little sad around here because frost is coming, and it doesn’t look like our sunflower seeds are going to completely ripen in time. We planted the sunflower seeds late in the season because it...
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Preparing the Garden for Winter
It’s that time of the year when frost is coming and it is time to put the garden to bed for the winter. We keep a close eye on the weather reports and about three days before the first frost is...
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6 Reasons to Avoid Petroleum Jelly on Your Skin
Early in 2006, I had all the children (6 at the time) in the bathtub. While they were playing around, I picked up the bottle of baby wash I had always used. For the first time ever, I looked at the...
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Backyard Chickens for Healthy Eggs
In my quest to feed my family healthier food, one of the hardest things to consistently source is healthy protein. Organic vegetables have been easy to grow in the garden and are fairly easy to...
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How To Use Goat Milk
We LOVE goat milk around here and have found many good uses for the 20-40 gallons (depending on the time of year) we get daily. This short video shows some of the ways we use the milk other than our...
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Why To Be Concerned About GMO Food
GMO is short for any “genetically modified organisms.” Currently genetically modified plants and genetically modified animals both exist. GMOs are created by using the DNA from different species of...
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Do You Eat Soy?
If you are at all like me, you want to serve your family (and yourself) healthy foods. The problem of course comes about when you try to answer the question, “What is healthy?” There is so much...
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Cold Weather Seeds
With this insanely cold winter we’re having, I’ve been even more excited than usual to get back to gardening. Gardening around here (zone 6) usually starts with my birthday. My birthday is St....
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Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
I love my sleep and admit that I get rather grumpy if I am routinely deprived of it! Fortunately, other than during kidding season, it doesn’t happen often because I make it a priority to get the sleep...
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10 Reasons Gardening is Worth Your Time
I’ve posted a lot of photos of my garden (which I consider my “dream garden”) on Facebook. It’s pretty impressive (if I do say so myself) and people always want to know more. So I’ve put together a...
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Choosing the Garden Location
I have lived and gardened in many different homes over the years. And what I have discovered, is that where you choose to locate your garden is essential to how well you take care of your garden. The...
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How to Make Your Garden Convenient
I have gardened for most of my life. It’s something I love and something I teach my children to love. Right now, the kids (especially Emery) do a lot of the work in the garden. But when I was...
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How To Water Your Garden the Easy Way
I grew up in New Jersey – the “Garden State”. We always watered our garden. But when I moved out to Indiana, I was shocked that few people watered their gardens. My neighbor (an avid gardener) let...
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Weed Control in the Garden
If there is one chore in the garden that causes me stress, it is weeding. Not the day-to-day weeding, but when the weeds get out of control! In every garden I’ve ever had, at some point throughout the...
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Rotating Your Vegetables in the Garden
Once we had all of our garden beds built, we had to decide how to lay out the plants within the beds. We try to spread out our vegetables so we have a little bit of everything everywhere. We also...
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Gardening Isn’t Just for Summer
In the past I’ve had a greenhouse. But to be perfectly honest, I always found it a lot of work and I never enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed gardening the rest of the year. Right now we just have our...
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How To Build a Cattle Panel Trellis
There are a lot of vegetable plants that benefit from being supported. For our tomatoes, we generally use tomato cages* that are strengthened with t-posts*. For other vining vegetables and berries,...
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The Home Orchard
Having access to our own fruit is absolutely wonderful. In our orchard we plant not only tree fruit, but berries as well. At the new house, we’re working on establishing our orchard. It’s still in...
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The Herb Garden
I love herbs. I love to cook with them. I love to eat them fresh. I love to smell them. I love to watch them bloom. I love to use them in herbal remedies. I even love to use them in soap. When it came...
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Perennials in the Vegetable Garden
I am a big fan of perennials because you can plant them once and they come back year after year. In our vegetable garden, the only perennial “vegetable” that we plant is asparagus. I love it because...
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Harvesting and Preserving Vegetables
In years past, we have spent many hours canning, dehydrating, fermenting, and freezing our fruits and vegetables. Lately, the children are eating more and more of the produce straight from the garden,...
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