New Materials for the School Year

I finally ordered our math for the new year, Teaching Textbooks grade 7. It was actually kind of funny when the UPS guy delievered it. Grace came running because she knows usually the UPS here means something fun is being delievered. We all know how much Grace dislikes math. Well she ran up to me and said, "What's int he box?", I replied simply "Math". She turned and walked away.

I wasn't sure if I had posted about this yet so decided to do it anyway. Simply Charlotte Mason has a new product available for picture study. Picture Study Portfolios contain pictures of paintings and a biography as well as instruction on how to do picture study in your home. No gathering materials. One click of the purchase button and you are on your way to a thorough study of an artist. I purchased two to get the year started off. I think SCM sold out the first go around but has more in now. I think they were pleasantly surprised to the response. More artists are also in the works. This just made my life a whole lot easier.

All About The Garden

Today's harvest consisted of cukes, red potatoes, bell peppers, tomatoes, banana peppers, and squash. The zinnias in the back were also harvested by hubby this morning from the garden. We planted them to help with pollination and pests.

My sister asked last night for cukes and squash. So tonight after dinner this box will go to her and friends. No one in our family likes squash, the plants actually belong to my mother but she and my dad can only eat so much squash.

I had neglected so far to show a picture of our new dehydrator. It has been getting a work out. Today I spent two hours preparing thinnly sliced potatoes to dry for 8 hours. Tonight I will cut up most of the bell pepper to dry.

True Confessions

I am a Glenn Beck groupie. There I said it. I started watching Glenn Beck on CNN 4-5 years ago and then followed him over to FOX News. A couple of years ago we decided to let go of our cable tv and watch Netflix through our Roku box or watch all the free programming these days you can find on the Internet. One thing that I would miss was FOX News and The Glenn Beck Program. We have never looked back after losing the cable. Too much trash commercials and TV available for children's ears and eyes. While meandering my way through the Internet today I find something very interesting. Glenn Beck has started his own network, but it is so much more that just a TV program. I urge everyone to jump over to www.gbtv.com and take a peek at what will be offered. Soon you can even watch this through your Roku box. His company has amazing things planned.

Today

• Woke up to hubby cooking breakfast and cutting potatoes to dry in the dehydrator. I immediately went to work placing the cut up potatoes on the trays. The bell peppers were dried all last night and turned out well.


• Created a playpen area in the back yard for the baby chicks to get some outdoor play time. They will be five weeks old on Monday.


• Brought home a sugar baby watermelon last night from the garden, turns out it wasn't ready yet to eat. This morning gave it to the chickens and they have picked clean down to the rind.


• Took Grace to the library to cash in her reading hours. She purchased three books with some of her money and saved the rest for the next visit. In the month of June she has also earned free ice creams or milk shakes from multiple area restaurants.


• Today Grace wrote another paragraph in her story, drew an illustration for the story, read for thirty minutes and listened to audio of the first Harry Potter book.


• Due to an abundance of eggs I made cookies yesterday and will make pound cake tomorrow. Also had potatoes and eggs this morning for breakfast as well as making deviled eggs this afternoon.


• Hubby working at the art gallery today and some tomorrow to help out the owner.


• Hoping to get some spray paint tomorrow to paint two filing cabinets black to bring in the house and do some much needed organizing. Need to consolidate three different areas of bills, school paper work, etc.


• Continuing to read about permaculture and how we might be able to use it here at home.

Harvesting, Baking and Planning

I must be slow on the uptake but until now I never checked out from the library The Pioneer Woman's cookbook. Saw it on the shelf this week at the library and snagged it. Lots of great recipes. Also picked Gaia's Garden For Home Scale Permaculture. Due tot he fact we live on a very wooded, shaded acre we are researching permaculture to see how it would work on our property and what exactly we could grow food wise.

Oldest child asked me yesterday to make some snickerdoodles and never quite got around to it. Probably because I did a marathon session of finishing Damages Season 2 on Netflix. But today after visiting with grandparents and going to a doctors appt. was finally able to accommodate his request.

Scott and Grace were headed out this afternoon for some swimming down at the river and he remembered that his sandals were down at the garden. So off he went to the garden to retrieve sandals and came back with two bucketfuls of vegetables. The garden has exploded with items to harvest. He grabbed what he could and will head back down there this evening. Tonight after dinner my job will be slicing all the harvest bell peppers and put them in the dehydrator for drying. Believe it or not bell peppers require 14-18 hours in drying time. Might as well happen all night. Our bell peppers have been more thin walled than the ones you get at the grocery store so we might be able to shave off some of that drying time.

Also our tomatoes are just about ready for harvest. We have been told by other gardeners that are using the same land as us that tomato rot is a real problem. So Scott went ahead and picked these to let them finish ripening in the window to hopefully escape the rot. Me and my sister hope to make lots of salsa next week.

Silence of the Bees

Call this the week of the documentaries. This morning I watched Nature: Silence of the Bees from Netflix. This one had to come on disc, not available through instant. But I think it was well worth getting sent to me. Anyone that grows their own food should be interested in this. Actually anyone that eats food should be interested in this. Colony Collapse Disorder has been in the news for a few years now. I never really investigated it any further until I started growing some of our own food and wanting to make sure we had flowers available to encourage pollination. The honey bee pollinates 1/3 of all the food you eat. Millions of honey bees have just disappeared over the last few years. Scientists are unsure if a bunch of factors are to blame (pesticides, fugus, virus, bacteria) or one virus in particular that was found in each hive that had CCD which is IAPV(hope I've got this right). Something I also learned from this documentary is that many farmers across the United States pay commercial bee keepers to bring their bees to the farm each year and do the pollinating. One farmer who is the biggest farmer of blueberries in the US pays 900,000 dollars a year to bring in the bees to pollinate. I had no idea! Another interesting piece of news to me was that every bee tested had multiple problems, meaning even if the IAPV was banished from the bee population you would still have all these other factors to fix. No honey bees would mean very little fruit, vegetables and nuts. Plus the fruits, vegetables and nuts that did actually come to fruition would be very expensive. I would highly recommend watching this documentary. The only thing I didn't agree with was their take on honey bees being around for millions of years. There is one section of the video that speaks about the amazing architecture and anatomy of the honey bee, it just amazes me that these guys can't acknowledge that a Creator created these insects and what they do. Evolution could not come up with all of this through just chances of circumstance.

Nourishing Your Body

This past week we watched a documentary on Netflix titled Food Matters. It was very enlightening on many levels. Some of the information we already knew or suspected and other information was new to us. The basis of this documentary is we are what we eat. There are so many minerals and nutrients that we are depriving our bodies. Our country grows tons and tons of corn to make thousands of processed food products that have very little or no nutritional value. These same farmers and big agri companies could be growing more of what are considered the super foods and we would be so much better off as a nation. Students in medical school are receiving very little if none at all education in nutrition. Many diseases, etc. can be treated and cured with eating right and mega doses of certain vitamins and minerals. One thing that really struck me was when one of the doctors said an individual could eat two handfuls of cashews each day and would receive the same benefits as taking Prozac. This information would have been very helpful to me when I was suffering from depression 11 years ago after the birth of my second child. Of course please check this information out for yourself. Research and prove it is true before trying yourself. I have also viewed episodes of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Again lots of great information. We are wrecking our families bodies with junk. My family has been just as bad as everyone else. Too much fast food, sugar laden foods, processed foods, etc. One step at a time is all I can promise to do. At some point we have to say enough is enough. Snack time has definitely changed around this house. Nuts, fruit and raw vegetables. I am working on meal planning. It is a slow process but with growing our own garden this year it has helped to implement lots of greens, potatoes, etc. As I have said before, it is a step by step process for our family. Sometimes it is one step forward and two steps back, but we won't stop.