Dairy Berries - Droppings From Fertile Minds

Valuing the Very Small But Most Important Things

2011-12-05T10:50:00.005-06:00

I started this pregnancy planning to blog about it, out of deference to my sweet husband. I protested "how self indulgent to just talk about yourself! There are people who are offended by the thought of anyone having thirteen children, why go out of my way to offend? How cares about a regular ordinary pregnancy? People have them all the time!" His contention was that no, people do not have thirteen babies all the time, that people will be offended if it is talked about--or not--and what people find offensive is beyond our control. His conclusion was that we might as well be open and forthright. He also encouraged me to enjoy what may well be our last pregnancy by journaling about it, if you will, on the blog.

So I decided to blog this pregnancy. Although this will be baby number thirteen, this is actually pregnancy number nineteen, We have had six losses along the way, ranging from very early, five weeks (pregnancy is considered to be 40 weeks, total) to a loss in the second trimester. My first pregnancy was a loss, at age 19, when Tim and I were newlyweds. The most recent was earlier this year.

What happened to cause there to be over a month between the first time I mentioned being pregnant until now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. This has been, up 'til now, one of the easiest pregnancies that I have ever experienced. Very mild morning sickness, easily dealt with. Fatigue is usually severe for me. I remember one time when I was expecting Grace, our third. I had a three year old and a two year old already. I remember one particular instance of coming home from a Bible study about one in the afternoon. We were active in apartment ministry at that time and lived in a second floor apartment. I remember to this day, twenty years later, standing at the base of those steps, fifteen in all and thinking "I can't. I just cant. Cant I just lay down here, on the bottom step and go to sleep right now?" There was also a particularly embarrassing episode when I was pregnant with our oldest and I fell asleep at Christmas dinner while we were guests at the table of one of my pastor father-in-law's parishioners. This time? I am usually in bed (or wanting to be) by seven, but other than that I have managed quite well.

To what have I given credit for this easier pregnancy? Well, this has been the first pregnancy that I have actually been consistently taking my prenatal vitamins. I have also been quite conscientious about watching my diet, making sure that I am getting good probiotics, essential fatty acids, ample protein, red raspberry leaf tea, you name it. And hey, guess what, it has been working!

Until my first prenatal visit last week when all of my confidence shipwrecked against the sharp rocks of reality.

I was greeted with enthusiasm at the doctor's office. This pregnancy marks the tenth with this obstetrician, and the month I am due will be the twentieth anniversary of having met this very patient man who puts up with a great deal to have me as a patient. (Can you imagine being a highrisk OB having to deal with the demands of a homebirth midwife? One who routinely brings in a half dozen children to her visits?) They have missed us, we are like family, they say. I confide that I have been somewhat uneasy about how smooth the pregnancy has gone and we move straight to an ultrasound where my fears are confirmed--the pregnancy--no, the baby--is in trouble.

The baby is measuring several weeks behind what it should be, but most ominous is the fact that the heart is not giving us the strong measurable beat that we should be seeing even for the smaller size but is barely discernible as a flutter. What to do? Nothing. I am already taking progesterone as we determined almost a decade ago that this made a big difference for me. Continue taking progesterone. Continue taking those prenatal vitamins, probiotics, EFA as before and wait. Two weeks to be exact. By the time two weeks fly (or drag) by, the baby either will have grown two more weeks worth and developed that galloping and loud heartbeat we long to see--or not.

In the meanwhile we share the news with the baby's siblings. They worry and pray. We share the news with our church--they worry and pray. I cannot bring myself to discuss it with customers and friends who are still full of congratulations although each kind word twists worry deeper. This is actually something I have grown to fear each time we share news of a pregnancy. What if we have to unshare the news just a few weeks down the road? how much easier it would be to just keep quiet about our joy until we are further along in pregnancy. I know of many who do just this and I understand and respect them for this decision but for me--I cannot.

You see, we feel that we are taking a stand by having this large family. Our society tends to relegate children into the category of a nuisance or a trap to be avoided. Even once we have children we are surrounded by the message that those eighteen years are simply to be endured. We do the right thing, we toil away until we can send them away--to college or other adventures. At the very least, the number of children is to be limited.

We feel that our children are the best, the brightest, the most glorious gifts that we have or could ever be given. We spend our lives on so many things--yet how many of those things are eternal? Our children will live forever. They will, God willing, spend eternity in the presence of God. Our influence will be felt long after we are gone through them--like arrows shot from a strong bow. Our children are our vote that there is still much in our world worth the investment for we hope to raise our children to go forth and bring change by touching the world around them. Our children are also a sign to us of the trust that we have in God. We trust Him to send us children and we joyfully receive them. We believe that He created the entire universe--He set the stars and moon and sun in place, He orders the seasons and tides and life. If He is in control of all of life that we see around us, how can we think that our own best decisions would be better, wiser than his? We believe that there is not a child in our home that was not a purposeful gift, handcrafted by God. And we believe that this gift is in effect from the moment that we first realize that we have been so blessed.

There is no denying that it would be much easier, emotionally, to keep private the news of a coming baby until we have more assurance that the baby has a reasonable chance of reaching a point of viability--but is that the joyful acceptance of God's gift in our life? This baby, as an eternal being, is a priceless treasure to us from the moment it was created. What does it say to the giver of a gift if the gift is received--and closeted away? We also desire to share the joys and sorrows of life with our children--part of why we have done hospice care not once, but twice in our home for our own parents as their lives came to an end. This is harder to do if the baby lives--and dies--without the older sisters and brothers even being aware of it's existence. We also believe that allowing them to experience this teaches them of the fragility of life and how much it should be treasured.

Mainly, though, sharing the news of the baby even though we may not be able to share the news of the birth of the baby is our way of loving the baby. We recognize the life that is present by the sharing of the life. We give value to this tiny--possibly too short--life by acknowledging it's presence. This is our child and we will love it everyday--whether those days number only a few short weeks or many decades. We invite others to share in the life of this baby as well even though it is hard to face sharing the bad news so quickly after sharing the good.

In a few weeks we will rejoice again, either that the baby is ours for while longer or that the baby is in the presence of God. Until then, I will revel in being pregnant with baby number thirteen, or as he/she has been dubbed, our little "Cotton Ball".

Gloriously Dull Day

2011-11-09T13:31:00.003-06:00

Today has been somewhat unusual in that it is a gloriously dull day.

Sara is under the weather so she has been in bed all day.

Katarina and Grace spent the night last night in Houston. Katarina had a Sheep and Goat Committee meeting for the Houston Livestock Show and knowing that we had market today in Houston, they opted to just stay over.

So I am down by three of my four young adult children and we still have had a gloriously dull yet productive day!

We got up on time (5AM). We got a somewhat late start milking because, well just because we all enjoyed not feeling rushed! Christin, Linnea, Emma and Timothy handled milking while I got the little boys up and some semblance of dressed. I also was able to get the pictures up on the walls in my bedroom now that the walls are (finally) painted.

The rest of the morning was spent with Tim entering milk weights in his goat production charts, kids doing school (largely self directed) while Linnea did some work in the garden. Christin worked on the dress that she has been frustrated with, all of sudden it clicked and she mastered the gussets that had been causing her so much grief. (It is a costume, Lord of the Rings or Narnia in style. Her skills amaze me!) Emma started pulling together the supplies for the chicken tractors that she wants to build. (Only six eggs so far today.) My order for prenatal vitamins arrived. Yay! I swear, THIS time I will actually remember to take them consistently! So far I am still feeling well enough to make me nervous although I know from looking at the calendar that the rocky days are still ahead of me. The little boys having finished school for the day, they commence to making a series of towers out of building blocks for Dixie to send tumbling down which proves to be great fun for all--until Dixie hurls a block across the room knocking Noah upside the head!

Lunch--multigrain pasta with grilled ginger tilapia bought from Lily Pad Farm at the SFC market downtown. Absolutely wonderful fish from a vendor who blesses us weekly with bountiful and beautiful living lettuce and basil. Salad from the Lily Pad Lettuce, Sunflower micro-greens also from the market along with a generous serving of hemp seeds from Happy Hemp.

Now...writing while a sweet baby climbs all over me. Laundry fresh off the line to fold, little boys and goats playing outside--together. We have recently expanded the goat browse area to include--well, pretty much everything. Rather than give them areas to browse we decided to just fence off that which we did not desire to be browsed (mainly Linnea's garden and the road in front of the house) and allow the goats free reign. It helps that I have never prided myself on being much of a gardener and as much as I would love the feel of an expansive and lush garden full of flowers and ferns, I have spent the past 23 years growing a garden of children instead so I have no prized (and toxic to goats) azaleas to protect. There are areas of the house that I should be de-cluttering and I will likely give them fifteen minutes in a little while (thank you, Flylady for giving me permission to tackle my house in small bites rather than huge burdensome banquets) and spend the rest of the day enjoying the weather and my flowers--the dirty faced ones running around the farm.

Goings-On

2011-11-06T21:47:00.002-06:00

Life is, as always, busy and never, ever dull.

The goats, they keep milking.

The children, they keep growing.

Markets are always enjoyable, every Saturday evening is spent regaling each other with customer comments or people observed, which is never dull.

We are working on some significant changes to our herd management that we are very excited about. In large measure these changes are driven by the need to cut costs due to drought-related feed and hay price increases. Beyond these external factors forcing us to assess costs and the effects on our bottom line, we are always tweaking what we do in an attempt to ensure that we are being the best stewards possible of our herd. The one thing that never changes around here is that things always are subject to change! We hope to be able to share more about these changes on the farm in the next week.

Changes are in the air for the household as well as for the dairy--we just found out that baby number thirteen is on the way! This is somewhat of a surprise as, frankly, I am not getting any younger. I will be 46 when this new baby is born. Tim has suggested that I blog about the pregnancy. I am somewhat reticent about this, seems a tad bit like grandstanding and one thing that I have always tried to do is downplay my pregnancies. It figures that this gets to be old news pretty quickly--after all, I have now been pregnant (get this) NINETEEN TIMES. This number obviously includes a handful of miscarriages along with the dozen children now in the home--five of which are laying on my bed right now chatting about the day. (This seems to be a particularly teenaged trait.) The truth is, though, that given my age, odds are good that this will be my last pregnancy. Might as well go out with a bang, right?

Seth-isms

2011-10-31T17:20:00.003-05:00

I just told one of his older sisters to run and grab Grace for me. He was very concerned. "no, you don't grab Grace" (making a grasping motion with his hand) "you go and get her!'

He is currently in the typical three year old stage of eschewing clothing. (Typical, at least, for our place!) Noah (7) called him a nudist. "I am NOT a nudist, you are just a meanie!" I called him over to tell him that a nudist was simply someone who did not wear clothes. "A nudist is not naked, a nudist is a monster!" I reiterated that no, a nudist simply referred to clothing preferences and he insisted that no, "Nude is a big cage...for monsters! Micky Mouse was in a nude cage before..." (I think I have heard of movies like that...)

When laying down for a nap this afternoon he told Grace that he got to say "Goodnight and I love you" first because his "legs are shorter!"

And earlier today, Noah proclaimed "I want a baby brother!" Judah (5) chimed in "I want a brother and a sister!" Seth declared "I want a lollipop!" (as long as mom is taking requests, right?)

Farmer's market report from 10/15

2011-10-21T15:07:00.002-05:00

So most of the readers of this blog know that we make our living by selling product at farmers market. Yes, we do sell on the farm and to restaurants as well, but at-market sales comprise the bulk of our income. It also comprises a large part of our weekly entertainment. Saturday evenings and much of Sunday is often filled with accounts of customers and their comments.

This week at the SFC downtown market a customer who was a professional educator for over 50 years (teaching science to 14 year olds) shared his views on education. "If the teacher is having fun and the students are having fun then educating is taking place" and "the most important and neglected subjects are art and music and..." (he leaned in conspiratorially) "southern literature!" (William Faulkner being his favorite, followed by Mark Twain.)

Someone else at the same market told me that our yogurt tasted just like the yogurt that they experienced in Bulgaria.

At the SFC market in Sunset Valley someone told Sara that our kefir tastes just like the kefir that they discovered in the "Soviet Union" except that that kefir was cultured and fermented (ours is just fermented) and that it was made from mare's milk.

Also at the SFC market someone was certain that they had seen our family on a reality television show recently and when Sara professed that really, we had never been on any such show they insisted that we should. (Nope, not happening!)

From the Urban Harvest market a Russian woman proclaimed that Americans do not like kefir because kefir is bitter and Americans do not like bitter. (This is why we sell out of kefir, with customers asking for our most mature, strongly flavored kefir?)

Emma sold eggs at the downtown market in Austin for the first time, sold out in under an hour complete with being given a tip. (her Dad's comment "her price is obviously too low")

Then there was the potential customer who thought that we had to butcher the goats in order to get their milk...

...and the customer who wondered why we don't milk the boy goats.

7:00 Thursday Morning

2011-10-06T09:47:00.007-05:00

Milking got off to a somewhat late start this morning but the girls seemed to have things well in hand so I decided to take a few moments to enjoy the quiet morning and, while I was at it, chronicle the morning in pictures. On the path to the dairy I was sad to see the dead trees. Thank you drought. Cyclical reality of nature though it may be, still I hate to lose trees.

Shelly. The old girl on the farm at nine years old, quite old for a Great Pyrenees.

Gunner, the Golden Retriever of Sara's dreams. He was her 18th birthday gift and we were thrilled to find him at a shelter. I find it ironic that he had been released by his previous owners because they were pregnant. He has been wonderful with the children here and I have no qualms what-so-ever should we become pregnant again about keeping him around.

Dixie clean and dressed and ready for the day. I predict that she won't look so sweet and clean for long...

The milkers lining up to come into the holding pen for the morning milking. as usual, the LaManchas in the lead...nothing stands between them and their feed--well, except the holding pen gate at this point.

That first batch of milkers on the stand...front and rear view. Yes, we are milking by hand.

Ran into a Roman gladiator on the path back. I thought I was the only one around here who feels like they have to get up in the morning and gird themself for battle.

Remember that sweet and kissable toddler? Head down in the sand. Also predictable is the fact that if one of my children sees a sibling being photographed they have to get in on the act...

and now on to the rest of the day...

Whew! Has it really been so long? Does the fact that we nearly burned to a crisp count as an excuse?

2011-10-03T06:00:00.008-05:00

I am chagrined that it has been so long since I have even visited this blog. It is like the closet door that you keep closed because you know that you simply must get it straightened out but you just really don't have the time, not today...

Except that unlike that closet that keeps being put off due to being such an unwelcome job, this blog is a task that is enjoyed, it has been more a matter of not feeling that I could justify the time to sit and visit, there were simply too many other important things to work on, you know?

Until I had readers of the blog that I have never even met hunt me down and leave messages on the phone wondering if we were still among the land of the living! I have always been a big believer in the concept that relationship and community is built online just as surely as any other place that people may meet, even if the meeting is not shaped by a physical meeting place. This makes it even more shameful that I have neglected relationship in such a manner and at the risk of sounding grandiose regarding this blog and the place that it occupies for those that visit here, I have to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

That being said...I do have a few excu...make that reasons that I have not been consistent. They include the reality that summer is a crazy season for us with baby goats, increased milk volume meaning more cheese making and the fact that with a husband who drives a school bus our regular schedule goes out the window when he is home for the summer break. Throw in oldest daughter going to New York for a month to help at the dairy that she interned at last year and the wildfires all while still trying to raise those kids and sell at those markets and you get the picture.

The last post I wrote gave updates after the Dyer Mill Fire just a few miles north of us at Swede Farm. It is ironic that the first post back will be yet another fire update, shared from our newsletter.

It has been a rollercoaster, here at Swede Farm! By now I am sure that most of our customers have heard of the adventures of the past few weeks, but for those who have not--

On Labor Day, Swede Farm was evacuated due to the Riley Road fire rapidly approaching from the East. If you have visited the farm and driven from Magnolia, Conroe or the Woodlands, you likely followed the directions on the webpage and drove up 1774 and down Riley Rd. If you make that trip again, Riley Rd and 1774 will look very different. The fire moved quickly that first day. We were able to get probably 2/3 of the goats in milk off of the property to a farm approximately five miles southwest of our farm. Tim and two of the older girls remained behind and LeeAnne and the other ten of the children spent the night in a shelter. On Tuesday things seemed to be more in control, so we milked morning and evening at the other farm--having to pour out many gallons of milk onto the ground and returned home in the evening via a back road that wasn't blocked off. Just in case things blew up again, we took shifts in case we needed to leave again in a hurry but Wednesday morning dawned clear. Tim went to drive the morning school bus route and we started making plans to go milk at the other farm, expecting to return the goats home by midday. Two girls were left behind to try to get product started for the week's sales. As we turned the corner in the big white van, I saw that the back road that we had taken back into the neighborhood the night before was blocked--every road was blocked. Rather than looking like things were letting up, these guys looked serious! I felt that they were probably being overly cautious--until I happened to glance ahead and saw just over the trees 1/4 of a mile away thick, dark plumes of smoke filling the sky. I turned back towards home--I knew that if we left the "neighborhood" that there would be no returning and I couldn't leave without a bit more planning. We still had animals at the farm, not to mention two of the older girls were at home with only the cantankerous-sometimes works, sometimes doesn't station wagon! By the time we made it the half a mile home again I could tell that things were anything but calm and in control as I had thought just a few minutes prior. The animals were clearly restless, milling about. The air was filled with the sound of many sirens coming from all directions and we could hear the smoke alarms going off inside our home from the smoke outside. I called Tim to see if he was on his way home only to learn he was sitting at a roadblock half a mile away and was not being allowed to return even though the law enforcement knew that he had not only animals but children still at home. We managed to get the remaining milk goats and what baby goats we could catch into the livestock trailer, hitched it to the ailing station wagon and prayed that it was up to the task. We scooped up the house dogs and a kitten plus ten children into the big white van, tossed all of our market supplies onto the ground in order to load a few precious household items and the pasteurizer into the cargo trailer and flew past the roadblocks as the air filled with smoke.

We spent the next five days with our goats five miles south of our home. We could see the smoke filling the sky over our home, in fact the picture above was taken by our host from his bedroom window of the sky over our farm. We had left behind Emma's chickens, our livestock guardian dogs, heritage hogs, alpaca and many bucks (boy goats) and baby goats. We received word occasionally from circuitous routes (a neighbor's cousin's brother-in-law who is a firefighter/sheriff/animal control/etc) that the house was good but the fire was a mile, half a mile, right behind, directly East, etc of the house but although that provides some hope and encouragement, it isn't quite the same as seeing it with your own eyes.

Finally, we were allowed home. The house and dairy was intact, and we had suffered no animal loss other than a meat rabbit. We lost the food in the fridge, had some smoke damage (lots of laundry!) and thanks to the fact that we had left sprinklers running on the roof of the house when we left to try to protect our home, we had a flooded living room. No complaining--a flooded living room is better than no living room!

We were not able to have goats and equipment returned, hooked up and running as expected until four days after we came home and the goats (clearly having taken a hit, stress-wise) have not yet returned to the milk production levels that they were at before the fire, in fact they are down by a full third. But we are up and running again and thankful beyond measure for that blessing.

So you see, we have been rather distracted. We are still under extreme drought conditions that lend themselves to a very high fire risk. Daily we hear fire sirens and the Tri-County Fire Department is kept busy tending to grass fires and flare-ups despite a very strict burn ban. Every siren, every sighting of flashing lights or whiff of smoke causes us to be on edge but things are slowly returning to normal although it is, as a friend said, a new normal. We see things differently, having come so close (four tenths of a mile to be exact) to being a statistic. The goats are seeing things differently as well--the stress has caused a drop in milk production that unfortunately seems like it will last until the goats freshen (deliver their babies and come into milk) again. We are even more than ever eying a streamlined, pared back life--if for no other reason than it makes it easier to pack in a hurry! I have listened in as some of the kids share their own fire dreams with each other--some of them scary, some comforting and some weirdly odd as only dreams can be. Yet for all the stresses, it is not unlike having that proverbial new lease on life and that is good.

And it is good to be back here.

Updates on Swede Farm

2011-06-24T21:07:00.002-05:00

The fire that was threatening us is now 100% contained, thanks to the herculean efforts of the firefighters from many neighboring communities combined with a tad bit of divine intervention in the form of over three inches of rain in a county that has only seen 5.23 inches in 2011! We are thrilled that the fire is no longer a threat but ecstatic over our rain! Unfortunately we are not forecast to have any significant precipitation for the next ten days or so.

We are having our mid-Summer baby boom! We have had six babies born to four moms over the past week. We do not often leave the babies with the mommas for several reasons but we decided to do just that this year and we are really enjoying watching the little ones torment the milkers in the pen.

The new cheese room is inching ever-so-slowing towards completion. What once seemed like a weeks worth of work has now taken at least eight weeks. Is the work really so difficult or time consuming? No, the rest of life simply has no wiggle-room and finding the time and energy once goats are milked, cheese and yogurt is made and the needs of a family of fourteen is tended to is proving difficult. We are seriously contemplating picking a day and inviting people out to a 21st century barn-raising, if you will, except that the barn is raised, it just needs to be finished on the inside!

Speaking of the ever elusive time and energy, as the school year drew to a close it was time for some reckoning and we realized that with time and energy in high demand and short supply things were getting shortchanged around the house. Things like peace and joy and contentment. To regain those precious missing emotions we realized that we needed to pare back to essentials and focus on remembering why we moved to the country and began farming in the first place. This led to some challenging decisions. It was evident that some things had to be jettisoned if we were to see that peace and joy and contentment for which we were longing. The things that we are letting go are leadership of the 4H Vet Science program and the reviews that I did as a part of This Old School House's review crew. The main impact that might be seen to outsiders due to the release of these responsibilities will be (hopefully) more frequent blog entries and no more reviews of homeschool curriculum.

Hopefully we will see more visitors to the farm, with Summer here. We enjoy sharing with people what we do and hope that they find it as exciting as we did to learn that in a world of big box stores and food factories, that you can still produce food the way that our forefathers did, that there are still places where children grow up feeding the chickens and riding horses (even though they also surf the web) and that you can still get dirt under your fingernails in the picking of your food. Drive out to the farm and see for yourself--and if you wear suitable shoes we might just give you a job to do while you are here!

Fire, still

2011-06-21T08:14:00.002-05:00

The fire due north of us is now being called the Dyer Mill fire. It is believed that it was started by a grill over dry pine needles. The fire has now consumed 5000 acres and right at 30 homes. Thankfully there has been no reported loss of human life. The original evacuation center has had to be evacuated due to the fire shifting. Our farm is three miles, give or take, from the evacuation zone. As long as the winds remain from the South we should be safe from this fire; my main concern is that the land south of us does not see a fire break out because we are sitting in a tinderbox and resources are already stretched so thin.

Living for so many years on the gulf coast we are accustomed to watching reports for hurricane development and being prepared in the event of a tropical storm. This is a whole 'nother creature. With hurricanes you rarely evacuate this far inland but you need to be prepared to batten down the hatches for wind and rain and have supplies on hand for the likelihood of power and water outages. How does one prepare to leave their hone knowing they may never return? How does one decide what is worthy of taking with them? How does one weight monetary value VS sentimental value? With the dairy and the animals it becomes even more difficult. Do we give space in the trailer to bins of family pictures and mementos...or the pasteurizer and milk machine? We could probably manage to load 1/3-1/2 of our goats in our livestock trailer and the back of the old fifteen passenger van but that obviously leaves a good number of goats behind. Goats that we have raised from birth. Goats that are our livelihood. And bringing goats means that we would be leaving behind our heritage breed hogs, Christin's alpacas, turkeys, chickens, and ducks. Other than perhaps grabbing a few rabbits, the breeding stock that Sara has built up for her meat rabbit business would be left behind as well. The horses we would have to rely on help from neighbors because our trailer simply wouldn't hold them even if it was not full of goats! And if we leave Cowboy behind I suspect Grace would refuse to leave with us.

Yet these things sound trite to even contemplate when there already are people who have lost everything and there are firefighters laying their lives on the line as I type to keep these decisions from being necessary.

And...hmmm...maybe we need to get back on track with getting those quotes for home/farm insurance? You think?

Fire!

2011-06-20T00:05:00.003-05:00

We are currently watching a wildfire that is burning largely out of control since this afternoon. It is now about ten miles away, having started closer to five miles away. This picture was taken of the smoke as seen rising above the trees at the end of the street that runs due North of the farm. They are saying that 3600 acres and 30 homes have been destroyed and the fire is at this point only 5% contained. Please pray for the safety of those whose homes and livestock are in the path of the fire. Pray for the firefighters and other emergency personnel . Pray that the wind continues to blow the fire away from us--it really is sobering to look around the farm and realize that there is likely no way that we would be able to safely evacuate all of our animals in the event that we needed to leave. (They have mandating evacuation of homes less than ten miles from our home.) Most of all, please pray for rain because this unnerving event will continue to be commonplace until we get enough rain to make up for the drought that we are in.

Mad Dog Math

2011-05-18T21:16:00.003-05:00

I have alluded before in this blog to my finger counting habit. I have seen signs that some of my children are developing the same "hide your hands behind your back while adding or subtracting and pray no one knows you are counting on your fingers" routine and have spent much of this year working on drills and the like with the goal that none of the youngers grow up to feel math-handicapped like their mother and one or two of their older sisters. We have done flashcards, counting games and speed drills utilizing M&Ms as well as extra "seat work" in their math books with varying degrees of success. When we had the chance to try Mad Dog Math for free in exchange for an unbiased review most of my children groaned. They are done with math. No more, no way, no how. They were reminded that they agreed to be guinea pigs when we started this year with The Old School House Review Crew. They had liked the idea then, were even excited about it...at that point the year's educational horizon was vast and seemed rich with promise. Now they looked at me suspiciously, like sailors facing endless water with no land in sight weeks past the end of their enlistment term and desperately in need of a bath!

We downloaded the software, got the cute dog icon on the desktop. I started at the very bottom level. 100% correct in 36 seconds--hey! Maybe I am not so inept in math, after all! Well..OK. So this was just addition, 0-3, but it's a start, right?

I continued on. Each level I passed a dog barking could be heard. The dogs lying under the table perked up their ears (why are those dogs inside? The goats they are supposed to be protecting are outside!) After the third level Noah (age 6) and Timothy (11) were at my elbow watching. After the fourth level Liberty (age 8) had joined them. By level five Noah and Timothy were begging to take a turn but I played it cool. "No, I do not think so...I am busy today and I do not want to have to take the time to get y'all logged in..." In actuality it is super simple--simply click on the green bone labeled "log in", enter your name and you are all set to go. The software accepts a seemingly endless number of players (or students). Tracking how students are doing is almost mindless--log them in, and then click on the bone labeled "progress". You will be taken to a page that shows the levels completed and the level of mastery (ie speed) with which the student completes the answers correctly.

When a student is able to complete each level in less than two minutes they earn a "sticker". When they can complete them in one minute, another sticker and when they have mastered the level by demonstrating the ability to finish the level in thirty seconds or less they get yet another sticker. The parent can set the amount of time that they want the student to ave available to them for answering the set of problems. The option is also provided to do the drills un-timed for those students who need more time or who tend to freeze when under pressure. One particularly appreciated aspect of the software is how simple it is to progress through the drills. No hitting enter, or two or three step process--type the answer (say, "5" under "3+2") and the program automatically moves to the next problem. This may sound like a detail not worth mentioning but when you have children who may not be coordinated or who get easily frustrated by having to remember steps involved in answering rather than simply working on math fact mastery it can make a difference. This program gets to the heart of the matter--what math facts do you know and how fast can you relay those facts. This is nice when you have a student struggling or one who is younger, with a shorter attention span. It is also very beneficial that the drills are s short--five or ten minutes a day will work wonders towards mastery--but I never could get my children to stick to five or ten minutes daily--they drank in Mad Dog Math as if it were crystal clear water to parched sailors on a blistering ocean...until mom demanded her laptop be returned.

Mad Dog Math is available as a software download for $19.99 for one year, $29.99 for two years or $39.99 for a perpetual license. Parents can also purchase the program in binder or CD-Rom form. Flash cards, timers, certificates are also available from the company, though by no means essential to using the program successfully. All in all, Mad Dog Math was a very enjoyable discovery, one that interjected a breath of fresh air to a school year that was struggling in the doldrums and needing a fresh breeze to move the ship along.

WonderMaps

2011-05-16T22:11:00.002-05:00

The study of geography has been an important art of our homeschool for well over a decade. Part of our propensity to enjoy the subject may arise from the fact that mom grew up overseas, traveling the world. Another part of our interest in geography is rooted in our intense interest as a family, in history. I am of the firm conviction that you cannot thoroughly study history without at least some small grasp of the geography relating to that period of history. After all, looking at a globe as relates to a flat map shines a whole new light on Christopher Columbus' great adventure! As one of our last reviews for the year as a part of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew we received free of charge (in exchange for an unbiased review) Bright Ideas Press latest product, geography software called WonderMaps.

Wondermaps is a customizable collection of over 350 maps. The maps are arranged by subject--either by region, such as continents or regions; by period of history or by themes such as Chinese Dynasties, Twentieth Century Treaties or World Wars. These maps can be printed out in full color and detail for the student to have as a reference as they study a particular point in history. If you want your students to retrace the steps of Magellan on paper, complete with having them label the key geographic features, you can simply chose what basic features you want included on the map, from borderlines, rivers, mountain ranges, etc, click print and voila! a blank map ready for your eager young students to display their grasp of circumnavigation as they discuss sixteenth century politics. When studying the effects of war on boundaries you can have them overlay the older, pre-WW2 maps with current maps showing the new and improved borderlines of the nations in question, prompting a rousing good discussion of the repercussions of unchecked power, or at least the pursuit thereof.

The best thing of all is that rather than realizing that you cannot find the atlas that you like to reference and having to hunt online for the perfect map of the Qin Dynasty, all you have to do is to turn to the software already downloaded on your computer, chose the features that you desire to be included and you are done--the perfect tool for bringing life to your history studies.

Considering this is towards the end of the school year and we received this during the busiest time of year for our dairy, we have been frustrated that we have not been able to really dig into all of the permutations of this software. We are extremely excited about the difference that this will make for our family in the future. It is somewhat telling that some of my children could hardly keep their hands off of the program. It is typical for our children to fight over history books and this proved to be a big hit, with them immediately checking out the maps for their favorite parts of history. I can tell you that the program received unanimous praise--we shall see if they maintain the same level of interest in it when maps from the software being studied are actually assigned, rather than being something that they can print from to have their own personal visual of their favorite parts of the Civil War.

The software includes a teacher's guide, complete with a tutorial, a user manual, two bonus MP3 including "Loving Geography", "Packing a Punch with Timelines and Maps" and resources such as how to make a salt-dough map and easy mapping projects.

WonderMaps retails for $49.95 and I feel that it is a reasonable price for an excellent product. It will save me much time and money to not be having to stalk the library or spend hours online trying to find just the right map for the purpose! The license allows for download on two specific computers within the home as well as an additional copy made for safekeeping, such as a thumb-drive.

Overall, this software will likely be one of a very select group--something that we reviewed and that we decided to hang on to and actually utilize over and over after this year is complete.

GoTrybe

2011-05-11T06:54:00.002-05:00

Nearly one in three children and teens in the United States are obese and the reality is that with more and more of them spending their time online exercise is likely to be even more of a challenge to gain their participation. It is with this in mind that GoTrybe (Go Try Be) was designed. GoTrybe seeks to utilize the propensity for teens to gravitate towards computer oriented games and social networking in order to encourage physical fitness. Students create their own avatar, or identity online. Although they can customize this avatar to represent certain physical characteristics such as eye or hair color, the avatar is fairly generic when they begin. Students create a customized workout by choosing from a series of video options. My student who is doing GoTrybe chose largely hip hop themes for her first workout. The student chooses from multiple options within each category a warm-up, three cardio videos, a strength workout and a flex-yoga option to end the workout. The student can then save that particular combination to return to in the future. The workout downloads and can be followed from their computer. The student follows along as one might an exercise video. Time elapsed for that particular segment as well as for the entire workout (in Linnea's case, a few seconds under twenty minutes) can be viewed as a sidebar.

Additionally, there are daily nutrition and general fitness quizzes. As the student logs in exercise time and answers the quizzes they earn points. These points are then used to further customize their avatar by choosing clothing or accessories and creating outfits that they can then keep in their "online closet".

GoTrybe taps into the social media culture by allowing access to a forum where students can do anything from discuss GoTrybe issues such as "how do I gain points" to "has anyone used this workout option" as well as simply chatting.

The pluses--GoTrybe seems to have a sense of what might motivate teens to combine their interests in a mix to facilitate fitness. The concept seems good. The music and the workouts look enjoyable and it is a nice tough that although the instructor is professional, the teens in the workout are clearly not professional with some moving easily through the workouts and others clearly struggling--even if only in the area of rhythm!

The downsides--although the clothing worn by the instructor and the students on the video are not immodest (there is still plenty left to the imagination and they are definitely more clothed than what you might well see walking down the street) there are those who homeschool who might find it inappropriate. If you prefer for your teens to avoid hip hop type music again, you might not be too comfortable with the routines. As a mom of many I would greatly prefer that the membership fee covered more than one of my children. My children generally see the computer as a means to an end (research, online purchases, emailing friends in other states) and have not really been interested in online communities or social networking. They also tend to be more interested in searching for and acquiring outfits for their passion--history reenactment than in dressing an animated character online in current styles. These factors combine to mean that much of what GoTrybe uses to motivate teens are lost on my children. Additionally, my children lead fairly physical lives--it is not unusual for them to carry bales of hay weighing in excess of 100 lbs on a daily basis or work together to move a ton (literally) of feed when it is brought home weekly.

That being said, although we initially received access to GoTrybe free in exchange for an unbiased review as a part of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew, GoTrybe cost $19.95 for a year's membership and this is pretty inexpensive compared to a gym membership and we opted to purchase the year's membership in order to use the workouts as they proved fun and balanced and it worked a lot of energy out of the toddlers as they followed along as their older sister worked out. (You do not reach this stage of mothering without at least a wee bit of sneakiness!)

MonkiSee

2011-05-09T15:17:00.003-05:00

When we have received products to review for The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew it has primarily been for the older children. This has been fine for us as we tend to adopt a very casual approach to education for our younger children. Living on a dairy farm means that this time of year is consumed with delivering baby goats, bottle feeding baby goats, pasteurizing and bottling milk and making cheese. Consequently almost all schooling--in fact almost all housecleaning, cooking, laundry folding, sleeping, eating and drinking is done casually, if at all! These activities are picked back as kidding season dwindles down and we adjust to the increased workload of processing additional product for market and we do school through the Summer months to compensate for the crazy days of Spring yet I still always struggle with feeling guilty for not maintaining a more "normal" school schedule. When we had the chance to review a program designed to teach reading to very young children I thought it would be a fairly straightforward and easy review to do of a product that would possibly fill in the gaps created by having a livingroom full of baby goats.

The concept of the program is fairly simple. Young children are like sponges, ready to absorb knowledge. This is evident to anyone who has an infant in the house. Everyday brings new discoveries when you have a baby like our Dixie. It might be learning a new gross motor skill like how to safely climb off the deck (or the couch on which your absent minded sister left you!) or how to stack blocks or feed yourself with a spoon. The MonkiSee program combines a DVD for children to watch, a book for parents to read to their children and flashcards. It is recommended that the child be immersed in the progran, watching the movie daily as well as being read to and shown the flashcards. The claim is made that even fundamentals of phonics can be acquired by learning the sightwords and applying the similar sounds to new words when new words are encountered.

Does the program work to teach reading?

I will be honest...I do not know. My children are almost always late to begin reading (quite possibly due to the previously mentioned relaxed early years) although they catch up to grade level within months. I never would have considered teaching my baby to read. We have not used the program long enough to actually identify reading type skills in the children who watched the DVD. Dixie, age 12 months, Seth, age 3, Judah, age 4 were the ones that we targeted with this program although I think every one of our other children, from Noah, age 6 clear up through the young adults watched it at some point. Sara (almost 18) received quite a bit of ribbing for being caught singing the "MonkiSee Song"!)

What I can tell you is this...the DVD has an almost mesmerizing quality for my younger children. I would have never thought that you could keep a toddler still for that long--not once but on a daily basis. Dixie did pick up things from the movie--she clearly anticipated the actions of the children on the screen and responded by clapping and laughing predictably at the same places each time. My older children observed that this was the first thing we have ever put on the television that actually captured Dixie's attention and one of the few things that held the attention of even the older preschoolers. Considering the capacity of children to repeat entire movie dialogs or parrot television advertisements I would expect it to be not unlikely that they will pick up numerous sight words through the use of the DVD.

The olders also observed that they felt that the period of time that the actual word being taught was on the screen was too short, that when the screen displayed the word "nose" followed by myriad pictures of noses, that it would have been advantageous for the word to have been displayed for a longer period of time or even the entire time that noses big and small were being shown. I tend to agree--but despite having raised a goodly number of toddlers, I never feel like I understand how the toddler mind works well enough to say that I can necessarily do a better job at teaching a toddler to read than the next person. That being said, we will continue to use the DVD to fill in gaps with our toddlers for the duration of this crazy season at least one more month in duration) and will consider continuing with additional products offered by the company at that time.

The DVD that we received retails for $24.95, on sale right now for $19.95. The entire "Baby Reading Kit", consisting of six DVD encompassing "Baby's First Words", "All About COlors", "All About Shapes", the MemoFlix DVD Volume 1 with 800 words and pictures with audio, volume 2 with whole word phonics and the parent guide. This comprehensive kit retails for $265.35, on sale now for $139.95.

I received the materials for free in exchange for this unbiased review.

Guess who?!

2011-05-03T16:04:00.003-05:00

Guess who is one year old today?

As unbelievable as it may be, Dixie is one today. In that year she has...

*been to approximately 75 farmer's markets

*consumed at least 25 gallons of goat milk

*eaten at least two pounds of goat cheese

*sat in her carseat for at least sixteen thousand miles traveling to market

*been "tasted" by at least fifty goats

*and just within the last two days taken at least a hundred steps

*has more people in Austin and Houston that know her name that I can even fathom (strangers have walked by in Central Market and said "oh, Dixie looks sleepy/cranky/hungry/in a good mood" leaving me to wonder "do I know them? They obviously know my baby...")

*Visited her state representative and senator, courtesy of the raw milk bill

*been on television

*presided over a table at a wine and cheese tasting

Makes one wonder...what is left?

So thus far this morning...

2011-04-19T10:23:00.002-05:00

We had to tell Tim that one of the laptops used for school was dropped--into a bucket of whey.

We had two new chicks escape their "chick nursery" and have to be retrieved.

We had a five foot long chicken snake decide that one of the four month old half-grown chickens made a great breakfast.

All before nine this morning.

Are there typical days?

2011-04-18T12:54:00.011-05:00

I decided to do my best to chronicle a typical day here at Swede Farm aka the Carlson household...

Up at 6, the scheduled time for everyone to get up. I actually had Tim get everyone up on his way out the door to drive a school bus because I was snuggling with baby Dixie. The idea is that the kids get up and have thirty minutes to get dressed, make beds and get to their rooms. It did not work so well for Seth and Judah today so they came to the table half dressed.

6:30 breakfast; cereal. While at breakfast we discuss the new seating assignments at the table because I am aggravated by the constant squabbling over who sits where. We also discuss tasks that I need done today (vaccinations for baby goats, fencing panels put up for the new hog pen and pictures taken of the baby goats that we still have to post for sale) and what school we will accomplish this day. Today is also the first day of a new schedule so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

7--morning chore time. I do my morning routines ala Flylady (make bed, get dressed for the day, take supplements, etc) and check emails.

8--Tim gets home and we discuss what needs to be done today and what milk customers are coming today. I also discuss with Katarina the errands that I would like her to tend to when she and Christin go into Houston today for Bible Study. Dixie is dressed as well.

9-under the new schedule, this is "street time". I am always frustrated when I try to find time for exercising so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and simply mandate everyone goes and plays in the street. Our road is two miles long and a dead end and I hope that I will be able to walk those two miles while the kids race/rollerskate/ride bikes. It works fairly well and we really enjoy the horses that come to the fence to greet us. Unfortunately Grace and Linnea haven't finished milking yet so they cannot join us. Katarina and Christin are likewise unable to come due to finishing up some last minute tasks in the cheese-room (bottling yogurt and unhanging chevre). So it is Sara, Tim and myself with the seven youngest.

10--We get back to the house after street time just in time for our friends who are working on the new milk parlor to pull up. The kids call them "Nana" and Grandpa" so there is great excitement. Tim and I chat with them about the work they hope to get done that day and we admire the new milkstand that was delivered last night while we were out for some adult time. I walk into the house to be told "Caller ID says that US Govt" called while you were in the dairy. Who is US Govt?" It is the post office calling to tell us that Emma's chicks are in so she and I hop in the car, pick up chicks and supplies in the bustling metropolis of Waller and return home in time to get kids back on track in their school work.

11--Grace, Sara and Christin are drawing blood on twenty-some-odd goats for pregnancy tests while Kate finishes up in the cheese-room. I try to print up the lab submission form for the blood and the printer will not work. At all. It is even flashing error codes at me that I have never before seen. I reboot everything to no avail and think some very uncharitable thoughts towards the printer. I hand write the form as best as I am able.

12--I try to redirect kids to school (hard when Nana and Grandpa are here) and try to keep Tim on an even keel when he discovers that the two plus hours of work he did on the budget yesterday are gone, poof, vanished, eaten by the computer or in cyber-space or...something. I never do get a clear answer on where things might have gone wrong because Tim is not happy and I decide it is better to not even try to understand lest I make the situation worse. I give Emma directions regarding lunch VS dinner and we get out an email to the Vet Science 4H group notifying them of a meeting change. I try diplomacy with the adult children who have decided after two decades that each is anathema. I fail. I am somewhat comforted by Linnea's offering of dewberry pie--the berries picked herself, the crust handmade by herself. The Bluebell ice cream on top was not made by herself but I suspect that was because she felt ice cream churning beneath her.

1--lunch. Leftovers, well done. Emma has an affinity for cooking things on "high" and wandering off.

1:30--I give history reading assignments to Sara and Linnea on early American colonies. I am exasperated by Tim who is napping where he took himself in a bad mood when he realized he would have to redo his budget work of yesterday. He is spared by word arriving that our milk customer is here. I go to greet the customer and she informs me that she will need change. I decide this is a valid excuse to drag Tim out of bed (being a bit spiteful here) and tell him that he must get up and get change for someone. He grumbles but gets up to do so. I walk back out to our customer to be told that she has inadvertently locked her keys in the car. I am also told that Nana and Grandpa are ready to leave for the day--and the driveway is blocked by the car with keys locked in it. Oops. I feel horrid for our customer. Tim looks and we end up calling AAA. We decide to also have Katarina's car that has been languishing in need of repair towed to the mechanic while they are here. Tim gives me last minute directions for little league tonight and leaves.

2--we wait for AAA. The deck is pleasant to sit and swing and chat on. Laundry is piling up in the house--my big project for the day. Grandpa has requested some fence rerouting to better facilitate his work on the new cheese-room so the girls are working on that instead of the hog pen--their big project for the day.

3--we wait for AAA.

4--AAA comes and goes. Customer leaves. Nana and Grandpa leaves. I am left with just enough time to direct that goat waterers be filled and fill some mineral feeders. Dixie discovers that she really likes the taste of goat minerals and is shoveling it in by the fistful when apprehended. Timothy and Noah get ready for little league. I come inside to tend to Dixie and write more of this post.

4:30--trying to give Sara and Emma directions for dinner and get out the door. In the midst of doing this I get several calls in succession that the caller ID identifies as "payphone". I didn't know that those existed anymore but apparently those that are around do not work very well because I answer both times to only hear clicks. I suspect Tim is trying to confirm details regarding this evenings activities as he had mentioned having failed to charge his cell phone.

5--I arrive at Timothy's little league practice. I call home and get Tim who says he will be meeting me here at Timothy's practice so that I can take Noah to his game in the next town.

5:30--Tim arrives at Timothy's practice. We touch base on some things and he offers to let me just go home to try to redeem some of the day since he can tell I am pretty discouraged regarding my inability to get anything accomplished today but I decline, figuring there is likely to continue to be interruptions at home and at least if I stay I can watch Noah's game. I head for Hempstead with Noah, Judah and Dixie. Tim and Timothy are to join us when practice ends in Prairie View.

6--waiting at Sonic for a snack for Judah, a slush for me and ice for the ice chest. They are taking forever and if they don't hurry up Noah will be late.

6:15 arrive at ballpark. Noah refuses to leave the car to walk to the field by himself so I scramble to grab Dixie and purse, knocking over my slush. The cup breaks, spilling red cherry slush on the light gray carpet in the new van. Yay.

7--Tim and Timothy arrive. Tim reminds me that we have a conference call in half an hour regarding the upcoming hearing at the Capitol on Wednesday.

7:30 conference call. At this point we are planning to be at the Capitol on Wednesday with all twelve children in tow. What better way to teach them how their government works than to use something near and dear to their hearts (or at least their livelihoods) such as raw milk?

8:10 on our way home. I call to ask how dinner turned out and to see if there was any that they could save for us and was told that no one had eaten yet--dinner was not ready. I have been gone for over three hours and this was a 30 minute meal to prepare. I am somewhat less than thrilled and distinctly feel a headache coming on. I send word that I expect to walk in the door and be served dinner with every dish in the kitchen washed. Cranky mommy of the year award nomination coming I can just feel it.

8:25 I am met at the car with a bucket baby--Seth in a large feed bucket. He is in a splendid and super sweet mood and Sara is likewise--not as common and very nice to see.

8:30 I hit the door to see Emma bustling in the kitchen and no food on the table. Humph.

8:38 I am told that dinner is being served. I am also told that the hog pen did get worked on and that Sara did manage to get most of the babies vaccinated. We also got an incredible yield from the milk that we turned into chevre the last two days--well over one and a half pounds from each gallon of milk. It is a bit soft, but that is the way that it goes, this time of year with the extra high butterfat of Spring. Sara brings Dixie in and shows me that she has learned how to give a "high five". She is growing up too fast and is too sweet. God is good to have granted us this sweet baby girl after all the whirlwind of the boys. Tim checks the mail and we discuss a discount offer for a membership at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Grace is excited.

8:45 Dinner bell is rung (really, we have an old-fashioned triangle that is clanged to let everyone know to come to the table). Katarina and Christin are on their way home but not yet arrived. This leaves only twelve around the table instead of fourteen. As we finish dinner I state that I need four things. Tylenol. Water with which to wash down said Tylenol. A nice hot cup of tea and...chocolate. Instantly I have people committing to providing each thing I need--save for the chocolate. No one knows of any in the house. Momentarily Katarina and Christin arrive home--and Katarina comes bearing chocolate.

It has been a tiring and frustrating day but in the end I have only been home for minutes and although I see much to frustrate me, I see more that blesses me. Seventeen year olds who adore their toddler siblings. Teenagers who work hard for the family business. Ten year olds who enjoy playing with their brothers so mom and dad can tend to business calls. A table full of good things to eat, made by a dedicated thirteen year old and pie made by a creative fifteen year old. Family members who offer to help relieve each other's load.

God has been very good to us, indeed.

Spring has Sprung and Life is Crazy!

2011-04-08T06:47:00.005-05:00

Baby goats are here--we brought 14 to new owners yesterday and that wasn't even half of them! This was after a week of selling a good handful of doelings! This means milk is here as well! In about a two week period of time we have gone from getting about eight gallons of milk daily to pushing twenty. This means that all of those people who have been waiting not-so-patiently on the waiting list are starting to see some of the white stuff for which they have been waiting!

The new dairy building is nearing completion and not a moment too soon. Our old milk machine bit the dust. The new milk machine cannot be used in the old building due to electrical requirements. This means that we are milking by hand. We are running teams of four people each milking to get the job done but hopefully by this time next week we will be all moved in to the new building and will be back to only needing two milkers per milking session.

At that time we start work revamping the old milk parlor into the new cheese-room. Yay! At that time we hope to also move the antique but new-to-us cream separator into place and fire it up to try our hand at some butter and triple cream cheeses.

Seth turned three yesterday. He is an amazing child. Not a single one of my boys ever made it through that year between the second and third birthday without multiple injury-related trips to the emergency room but he has done it. He is a super sweet cuddly boy who loves his goats. A few months ago he was given a set of small plastic farm animals. They are quite realistic, with the female cows and goats having udders and the males having their pertinent parts. A few weeks ago he and I were at market one Saturday and he sat beside me playing with his animals. He looked at the cow with it's full udder and said "she needs to be milked!" He set the cow down on the table and set his hands on either side of the cow, squeezing as if he were milking. After a few minutes he looked at his hands with puzzlement--that wasn't working, he couldn't get them under the cow to where the udder was. So, he turned the cow upside down, set it on it's back and held his hand over the cow's udder and commenced to making milking motions again before stopping and considering--this didn't work, either. The udder still was not being actually milked. Finally he stopped, set the cow back upright, put his hands in his pockets and started whistling between his teeth "shhhhh shhhhhh shhhhhh shhhhh" then looked up at me knowingly and said in a conspiratorial fashion and a nod "I'm using the machine..."

Those who have followed the shenanigans at Swede Farm for several years know that back in 2009 a movie was filmed here on the farm, with a sizable segment including those of us who make up the farm family. We got word recently that the film will be screened at the Montreal and Brussels film festivals this summer with more festivals considering it. I am waiting until the entire list is in before deciding which screening locale I want to visit. (Anyone here think we will be taking a vacation to Europe this Summer? HA!)

Kinderbach

2011-04-07T08:01:00.005-05:00

For those who may be unaware, we live in the country. (We thought of starting a goat dairy in the city but figured it wouldn't go over well with the homeowners association!) This has given our children many unforeseen educational opportunities. One opportunity that our lifestyle is not conducive to are music lessons. Our children have participated in a homeschool band but this takes a fair amount of time out of our schedule and during the Spring Semester we find it almost impossible to get even the barest of a school schedule tended to, which is why we school through the summer! This is the time of year when we could ourselves to have been successful if everyone is clothed and fed, with sometimes four of five goats having babies and the living room full of newborn goats to tend to at exactly the same time as milk production is skyrocketing and production of market items doubles or triples, sometimes over the space of a few days! During this time of year any schooling that we do needs to be largely self taught and very flexible--so no allowance of time for jaunts to music lessons away from the farm. Lessons here at home wouldn't work well, either, as the room that houses the piano is the same room that is filled with the noises of newborn baby goats wanting to know where their bottles are!

Toss in the fact that with twelve children the cost to provide lessons for each of them would become astronomical and obviously an alternative must be found.

Enter...Kinderbach.

Kinderbach is a music curriculum designed to tap into the imaginations of the 3-7 year old set in order to teach basic keyboard skills. Children are taught by online videos as different animated characters represent different music concepts such as rhythm and quarter notes. The lessons also teach keyboard skills. There are downloadable activity sheets which reinforce the concepts as well as audio CD to enable children to practice what they are learning. There is even a "radio show" featuring Bach himself! There are six levels designed to be taught in 60 weeks comprised of over 240 individual lessons. Each level includes an Activity DVD, a Music Audio CD, an Activity Book and a Parent Guide in PDF format on CD.

One of the biggest benefits (in my opinion) to any quality music lesson is the foundation that it provides for future study. We had noticed when we were able to work band lessons into our schedule that there was always a greater interest in music in general. Quality music was more likely to be played by the children as they were introduced to composers both classical and contemporary. Our children sought out sheet music for the piano as their confidence in music reading skills increased. A big benefit to Kinderbach is that you could see your children's confidence level being established much earlier, at an age when theoretically they can acquire the skills more naturally.

As stated on the Kinderbach website...

At the end of the KinderBach program your child will have a strong musical foundation that he/she will be able to use as a springboard to any music instrument. Your child will:

Know all the notes on the piano by location and letter name
Be familiar with the grand staff,
Read some individual notes on staff and all notes by pattern on staff,
Understand and read rhythms from eighth to whole notes,
Have improved listening skills so that he/she can interpret rhythms, intervals and patterns heard.
Play familiar melodies,
Play hands together or separately,
Have a working music vocabulary,
Understand basic composition methods

What a valuable foundation!

I will be honest and admit that we did not get to invest nearly the amount of time in Kinderbach as I had hoped. I am very impressed with what I see, though, and have committed to purchasing the curriculum for our family once we are out of the chaotic whirlwind that this season always is on the farm.

Kinderbach can be purchased in several different formats. All of the lessons can be accessed online for a monthly membership price of $19.99 or you may purchase twelve months at one time for $95.88 which works out to a monthly price of $7.99; obviously a significant savings. The program can also be purchased in DVD and CD format beginning at the current price of $55.95 for the first level or in packages combining three levels for $112.75 or bonus packages which include extra songs and features for $142.45. The entire basic package, levels one through six can be purchased together for $202.88.

We received our membership subscription to Kinderbach free in exchange for this review as a part of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew.

GoGo What?!

2011-04-04T21:36:00.002-05:00

The reviews that I have been doing this school year for the TOS Review Crew have by and large been for the older kids, so when I had a chance to review online learning games for the youngers free in exchange for a review I was excited.

The games that we reviewed are GoGo Kabongo, designed "to help promote and support early reading skills in children ages 4 to 7". These are skills such as verbal rehearsal, verbal memory, comprehension, simultaneous processing, alphabet knowledge and attention and focus. Kabongo has children building habitats as they move through games such as "Twister Top", "Galaxy Gardens" and "Laughter Lake".

My observations...

We had difficulties getting logged in and getting the games to work for us at first. This was frustrating to say the least. The support we received from the staff of Kabonga was exemplary, however, and they walked us through the process and we had no other such difficulties in the almost two months since that time. We had occasional "freezing" of the games which proved frustrating, although this problem has occurred less and less as time goes on and every contact we have had with the support staff has really exceeded our expectations. I suspect that pretty much every issue that we had will be addressed given the attentive nature of the support that we received; the program is in "beta", being fine-tuned. I personally do not care for the use of slang and similar pop culture aspects used to engage children. I do not speak to my children that way ("I am so into that look!" is just not something that I say very often!) and it...well, to be honest, it irritates me. I find it cloying. My older children (who I found myself calling upon to help the youngers get logged in, etc if I was busy elsewhere) were likewise annoyed.

What I absolutely cannot be irritated by, however, is the enjoyment that my children ages 4-12 got from the game. My ten and twelve year-olds are likely beyond the target audience of the game, yet they still found it enjoyable, in fact my twelve year old hounded me one day as I wrote a newsletter for our dairy customers "hurry up mom, please, and unlock the next section so I can keep playing!" Noah (6) repeatedly asked if he could "do Kabongo" for school, telling me that he likes "getting to make things". The games were, in all reality, beyond my almost three year old, although he enjoyed going through the motions and shared with everyone he could that he was doing school as well, "his kamoongo!"

I appreciated the fact that they could play and be building foundational skills. Every week I received an email from Kabongo for each child, letting me know what skills were worked on and the level at which they had progressed. Additional learning activities for parents to continue working on skills were suggested to "Extend the fun and learning with this activity you can do at home." One such example...

"Attention Can Be Controlled and We Can Use Speech to Do It.

Model this exercise for your child by talking through a task out loud. First, summarize the task by saying, “If I want to make your breakfast, I’ll need to get the raisins, oatmeal, milk, etc.” As you engage in the task, summarize where you are in the process: “I have a bowl, now I need to get the milk from the refrigerator”. Talking through the task demonstrates the self-regulation aspect of planning and attention, and shows your child how you resist becoming distracted from the task by talking to yourself. This self-talk eventually becomes a habit of thought and internalized by your child. Then let them try it out with an easy, multi-step task like brushing their teeth or picking up toys."

Overall this product is an asset for our home. It gives us something that can 'entertain' the youngers while we do school with the 'olders'; something of constructive value that the youngers look forward to and claim as their own. It helps me in the midst of a busy week to keep track of their activities in a condensed manner and reminds me to look for educational opportunities during everyday life, things I know but that are so easy to forget in a busy crazy life on a dairy farm in the spring when days may be filled more with baby goats than math facts and phonics!

Kabongo works similar to what they call an "app-style fee format", with a one-time fee of $4.95 per habitat opened. The good news is that if you think that Kabongo may work for your children, you may try some of the levels for free.

All in all I am glad that we had this chance to deviate from the high school level reviews and enjoy something for the little guys.

Zeezok Movie Guides

2011-04-04T07:02:00.004-05:00

When I recently had the opportunity to review a movie guide by Zeezok Publishing I was intrigued but skeptical. The movie guides strive to incorporate media as a teaching tool by providing ten activities to be used over the course of five days. The movies profiled are movies that are historically based such as "A Man For All Seasons" or those show aspects of pivotal periods of time through the experiences of the characters such as civil rights history in America through "Driving Miss Daisy". The guides provide a structured means to make the most of those movies that we, as homeschooling parents, like to use to flesh out teaching on a specific event or period of history. The guides are published on CD and retail for $12.99 each, making them affordable for almost any homeschooler's budget. (Visit their website for a complete listing of movies and guides available.) These guides would also help assuage your conscience when turning to movies when we really do not have a grasp on the subject matter ourselves or are feeling overwhelmed by life itself and need to feel that we are not totally abdicating our obligation to teach.

The movie guide that we received was "Cromwell", set during the English Civil War. We requested this guide because we had seen this movie a few years ago and found it to be mesmerizing and we just so happened to have recently finished our study of this time period.

The guides are appropriate for high school use. Much of the material in the guide could also be used for upper middle school or Jr high. The guide began with a one page topic overview of the history behind the movie, a synopsis of the movie and movie review questions. These sections are to be read prior to watching the movie so that the student is not passively watching, but actively engaged. This is important because most of us are accustomed to being entertained, not thinking critically during movies. Activity 2 had the student utilize print and internet resources to chronologically examine the span of history covered. It also had students consider ways that the concept of limited government had it's roots in the time of Cromwell.

Activity 3 further explores facets of history; in the guide that we used the New Model army is studied. Activity 4 had the students read a script of, then re-watch a scene of the movie that contains the crux of the movie. The student is drawn into the scene and dissects it, ensuring a solid grasp of the matters at hand and the positions of the proponents. It then has the student extrapolate the issues to their own frame of reference, by asking which of the protagonists the student would vote for if running for president, and why.

In Activity 5 the student summarizes biographical details for the main players in the events of the English Civil War. Activity 6 provides the opportunity for the student to memorize a portion of the movie, in the case of our movie, the students memorized and delivered Cromwell's speech dissolving Parliament.

Activities 7 and 8 were more relaxed, though not un-educational, with a crossword puzzle based on historical facts of the period and the assignment to design a recruitment poster for the New Model army.

Activity 9 is world-view focused, having the students consider the motivations behind specific actions of specific people and the forces and beliefs that spurred the actions.

Activity 10, "The Filmmaker's Art" explores techniques used to craft a movie that will engross the viewer. The use of music is discussed with the question 'The film begins and ends with a choir singing "Rejoice in the Lord". What message does this song communicate?" Concepts such as foreshadowing and irony are also discussed.

The guide was very thorough in helps for teachers. Suggestions were made for grading the activities, complete with a point system and answer key. Family discussion questions were included as well as lists of other resources.

Overall...great concept. I tend to look askew at things that I perceive as "shortcuts". My children do not generally watch movies based on books unless they have read the books. I avoid study guides because as much as possible I want to avoid having their view on matters of history shaped by the opinions of others. That being said--rather than finding the guide shaping how they should view the movie (and hence the time period) I found it to be excellent at tweaking out critical thought and internalizing the importance of this period of time in how our government functions today--in other words the guide did exactly what I believe I do by avoiding guides! I appreciated the fact that there are physical and creative activities to draw out students who are possibly not as history oriented as mine. (It has taken a while but I have slowly come to realize that not every family cheers over the thought of exploring old cemeteries!) I really liked the way the guide is laid out to maximize the impact of the movie in one viewing plus revisiting of a specific scene rather than repeated viewings.

To be honest...much of the facts covered in the movie were facts and facets that my children had already explored, but this is in no way a denigration of the movie guide--we are simply a family that loves history and immerses ourselves in the time periods that we study. As I mentioned earlier, our children do not get to watch movies until I am confident that they already have internalized the subject matter that will be viewed. It is a significant compliment for me to say that this guide more than met my expectations and that I can see us using these guides in the future to ensure that we gain as much as possible from the movies that we use to supplement our history studies. Basically these movie guides are what I, as a history buff and purist would write--if I had the time.

I received our copy of the movie Guide to "Cromwell" free in exchange for this unbiased review. This I do as a part of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Quick Updates on All Fronts!

2011-03-29T08:03:00.002-05:00

Babies are here, babies are here! We have had fourteen goats kid in the last fourteen days. Three of them last night! One of our first-timers, Frio was looking very close. Grace wanted to keep a particularly close eye on her as Frio is one of our precious "Texas River" line descended from our wonderful buck Brazos. Brazos was flown down here from Lynnhaven in New York. We were so excited to see the changes that he would bring to our herd! Sadly Brazos never lived to see even his first daughters or River, the son that we kept to replace him. (See this blog post.) Frio is from River and Yo-Yo, a doe that we bought from Lucky*Sta r. We absolutely love Yo-Yo and have been anxiously awaiting her daughter's first kidding so we could get an idea of what she would look like all grown up and in milk.

But I digress.

Frio was looking close so Grace and a few of her sisters were making regular trips to the pasture. On one such trip they noticed that Sophie, an Alpine who hadn't even looked close was pushing! They helped her deliver the first kid and were turning around to hand the baby to one of their younger siblings to bring to the house when what to their wondering eyes did appear...but another newborn baby, this time with no ears! Clearly a LaMancha had kidded, but whom? They quickly scanned the pasture and saw Llano (another River girl) twenty feet away pushing out baby number two. Apparently Llano believes in kidding on the move, she had dropped one baby, walked a distance away, was having the second. Good thing there were not four babies in there as Llano's mother and grandmother have been known to give us of there would have been babies scattered all over that field! Frio decided she preferred the spotlight and waited until she could have all the attention to herself. She gave us a sweet, all white baby girl.

The new dairy building is coming along very well. Gene, the contractor (and dear friend, "Grandpa" to our children) says we will be in it by the end of this week. Then the fun of building out the old milk parlor into the new cheese room begins!

Some of the children have changed jobs. Most notably Sara (17) has been moved from the kitchen to caring for animals and herd health. Emma (two weeks shy of 13) has been moved to the kitchen. She has been having a good time rearranging and decorating the kitchen and will be doing her first major grocery shopping trip with me this morning.

Today is Cowboy, Grace's horse's fourth birthday. She was there the day he was born and has brought him through the terrible twos to the point of being ridden. She tells me it is always a work in progress but I think she is pretty proud of him. I am pretty proud of her.

Flylady-wise. Update...Morning routines are in place. When done (which is most of the time) there is a noticeable difference. Evening routines have taken longer to become solid. We are working on it. Getting dressed down to shoes is going well. The sink being shined? Still working on that. It seems we can never get on top of dishes here. I guess that is to be expected with fourteen people and no dishwasher? Regardless we must gain control in this area. Decluttering continues to go well--even the books are being considered and that is huge for our home where there are multiple bookshelves in every single room of the house save the bathrooms.

And that is the news for the day...

Artistic Pursuits

2011-03-23T21:52:00.005-05:00

When we had the opportunity recently to try ARTistic Pursuits in our home we were elated. We love art. When we lived in Houston we had memberships to the Museum of Fine Arts and it was not unusual to dangle the bribe "if we get all of our school assignments completed by lunch-time we can go to the museum!" and contrary to what one might imagine it was usually quite effective as a bribe!

ARTistic Pursuits is an art curriculum that teaches students of all ages (K through high school) the elements of art and principles of design (composition). Each grade 4-12 book is divided into sixteen units with four lessons per unit; this gives great flexibility in the time span to be covered by each book. A lesson weekly will take two typical school years to complete, two lessons weekly will allow the book to be completed within a year's time. We reviewed "Senior High Book One--The Elements of Art and Composition". The four lessons for each unit are (in order) "Building a Visual Vocabulary", "Art Appreciation and Art History", Techniques" and "Application".

The book uses examples of classical European art to discuss such concepts as texture, form and color while seeking to demystify art in general. From the student introduction..."Do artists really see differently?...artists do see the same as everyone else, but have learned to focus on a particular aspect of what they see while at the same time blocking out other types of information. The language of art uses code words called the elements of art...which include space, line, shape, texture, form, value, and color. The next secret of artists tells us how to see the world using these elements."

Chapter 14, for example, is titled "Proportion, the Face" with the stated objective "to stretch ideas on what a portrait is and came become through exploring new possibilities and to evaluate the results. The first lesson introduces the concept of proportion ("the correct relationships of the parts of an object") and the role that it will play in drawing objects, particularly faces. Lesson two challenges students to explore the concept in several different ways, inviting students to explore facial proportions in art, specifically Albrecht Durer 's "Self Portrait; 1498". A biography of Durer is given along with a synopsis of the time sin which he lived. The assignment for the lesson is for students to draw their faces while looking in a mirror, using clothing that tells who the student it, a reflection of the importance of clothing as social status indicators during the time of Durer as discussed in the lesson. Lesson three discusses drawing expression, and recommends an additional reference text. Examples of many different facial expressions are given from fine art and tips are given for the student to better identify the aspects of the work of art that give life to the expression. Lesson four assigns a formal self-portrait as well as explores the student's responses to drawing from a live model.

At the back of each book is an evaluation page for the parent to use in assigning a grade to their student based on levels of achievement. There is also a guide for assigning high school credit. There is no nudity in the books because, as the author explains, "I believe, even though the public accepts nudity in artworks, and you will certainly not be able to go to an art gallery and not see it, that it is up to the parent to decide when, at what age, and how much, they want to expose their child to." A concern that students will find nudity distracting is also mentioned.

Each book retails for $42.95. The books are non consumable and thus can be used for years to come. Art materials are not included but can be purchased separately either in packs listed on the web page or individually by parents at stores local to them.

When we got this curriculum to review I knew immediately that although I would eventually be using it with multiple children I had one specific student that I was going to be handing it to for purposes of evaluation. This daughter of mine has long enjoyed drawing and I thought that she would appreciate tools to help her take her sketching to a new level. I was correct. Her sketch pad went with her everywhere--when she went to do her chores, when she sold for us at a farmers market. She carried it with her constantly. She enjoyed exploring the elements that make art and as a history fiend having the references to artists and how they were influenced by the periods in which they lived was a big bonus. She chose to progress through the lessons at a faster pace than is suggested, completing three units weekly. I would normally rein in a student in favor of a slower, more in-depth exploration of the subject but as this student is in her last year of high-school with all other year requirements met that I would leave it to her discretion how quickly to progress. In all honesty I see her returning to the curriculum at a more leisurely pace, probably over the summer when things slow down--she is enjoying it that much--she will just have to be prepared to make it available to her younger siblings as I intend for them to use this book next year as well.

I received this art curriculum free in exchange for this unbiased review as a part of the The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Flylady Update

2011-03-08T12:58:00.002-06:00

It is hard to get dressed "to your shoes" when you cannot find clothes. The closet rod collapsed yesterday under the weight of clothing in the master bedroom. In my defense I had just tallied up Tim's clothes and the weight on the rod is his fault. To be fair--I was able to remove 7-8 items (I didn't count, I am weighing decluttered items, not counting them) of "mine" although I have never worn that pair of maternity pants in my life and I have to claim ownership of the skirt even though I have never worn it because I don't think Tim has a skirt wearing habit.

I guess I can also claim that it is the fault of my busy life that I didn't even get around to getting dressed until noon? There was the call from the other goat dairy, the plans to be made for who goes where, does what errand, the call from the contractor, the unexpected kidding and the chick disaster. The coop that Emma built was weather proof but not cat proof, leading to the loss of 20 chicks. This necessitates moving the rabbit relocation from the "important list" to urgent. We posted Noah (6) and Judah (4) to guard duty while we worked but they had fun guarding not until it started raining but until it started raining AND they were thoroughly soaked and muddy. None of their clothes can be found, either.

Three of the four oldest daughters are in Houston at the Livestock show along with the oldest son.

So...1:00pm. Halfway dressed, dished to wash, laundry to start, a trailer to be taken for repair. These tasks are mine. Assigning cheese-making (to 19 yr old Grace), rabbit moving (12 yr old Emma and 15 yr old Linnea) and dinner prep? Or maybe dinner will be bought while on trailer errands and brought home. That will have to do--Noah has little league practice tonight anyway.

I know it will work. I know it. Each step--even late and less than perfect is a step towards the goal.

I am still drowning but I think I see a ship in the distance.

Flylady, Flybabies and Brutal Honesty

2011-03-07T07:20:00.016-06:00

There have been brief glimpses of organization and functionality over the course of my lifetime. When I had four children, five and under and ran a home daycare, caring for two other small infants (so I had at one point a three, four and five month old in my home!) the house was pretty orderly and ran according to a schedule. People were coming to my home twice daily to pick up and drop off their babies so it had to be presentable. Additionally at that point a copy of Emilie Barnes "15 Minute Organizer" fell into my hands. It was just what the doctor ordered--chapters were at most 2 pages long and to the point. It helped me start the decluttering bug and establish a housework schedule. The habits were solidified (I thought) when I went to a series of workshops taught by another homeschool mom based on the "Sidetracked Home Executives" method. About the worst it got was a laundry room floor covered in laundry, a pile of clean, waiting to be folded laundry on the couch and a messy closet and at the time I thought those things were to my shame--I was distressed about them but never found the time to work on them. Of course I laugh now at the thought of those things bothering me so!

Fast forward a few years. Now we had six, going on seven children. I was still a Emilie Barnes devotee and the house was fairly on schedule. Laundry still piled up and that pile was larger but I pretty much felt on top of my game. My "secret areas" of clutter are larger and some, not so hidden. Friends from church came over one day to help me whip the 2300SF into shape because my father was coming to visit for a week. My dad had never been in my home with me as an adult woman in charge of my own household since he left shortly after I married to move across the country. I remember finding it hilarious (and a bit embarrassing) when I heard peals of laughter coming from our "homeschool" room. It seems that as they worked their way down through a tall pile of "junk" on the table that served as a "catch-all" for clutter only to find at the very bottom my "15 Minute Organizer" book. Touche.

Then...I was pregnant with our seventh child. My main source of support, our church, closed. My father was in prison over an hour away and weekly visits were a fixture. My mother-in-law received a terminal diagnosis and moved into our home to die. My mentally unbalanced father-in-law came as well, coming, unsettling the entire household with erratic and threatening behavior before leaving for several weeks, only to return to repeat the entire process all over again. When number seven was born he had several health issues that absorbed the limited energy that I had after caring for the other six plus my mother-in-law. When my mother-in-law passed away it was expected that it would be back to business as usual but that was not to be. I was drowning. I found Flylady online and added a few new words to our household vocabulary such as "hot spot" and maintained a habit of trying to keep hot spots under control. I internalized the benefit of morning and evening routines, shiny sinks, and dressing for the day but though they were inside my head they didn't make it to my fingers to get done. I was still committed to decluttering and occasionally the household went through purges but still--I was drowning. My efforts were akin to the little boy sticking his finger in the dike; a tiny, usually futile attempt to keep from being overwhelmed by a deluge. Things continued on a downward spiral until the biggest blow--we moved.

Moving was good, it was a desired move and we embraced the lifestyle change of moving to the country but adding in the care of ten acres and livestock created cataclysmic changes. Babies kept coming--four more in the less than seven years since we moved. We had moved from 2300-plus SF with four large walk-in closets and a respectable pantry to 2000 SF with no such walk-in closets. I will spare you the details but suffice it to say--the picture was not pretty. Once we built the dairy and it became licensed there was a higher level that needed to be maintained at least in the dairy building because the quality of our product depended on it. It proved more difficult than it needed to be due to the fact that we had been flying by the seat of our pants so long, only finding the time and ability to put out the biggest fires. We found that we were unused to doing things on a proactive rather than reactive basis and establishing routines and order in the dairy was like having to relearn how to walk, talk, etc after a major event such as a stroke or accident! We did it--but it did not need to be that hard.

Now we are at a place where we are committed to working on these issues as a family. Several changes have occurred that bring us to this place. In the past few years I have been diagnosed as having ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Appropriate treatment, both pharmaceutical and counseling have given us a handle to deal with this. (I will save the debate and discussion of this for another post, so please spare me the comments regarding your opinion on the validity of the diagnosis or appropriate treatments. We can do that later, OK?) After several years spent caring for both my father as he battled and succumbed to cancer and Tim's father as he battled and succumbed to dementia and sundry other mental illnesses we have reached a place where the demands that might be placed by extended family are much less. The business has gone through it's growing pains and seems to be on somewhat smooth waters. So...time to turn the focus to the family and the family home and in that spirit we have become "Flybabies", turning back to Flylady.

I have my doubts. I have been on a organization bug whereby I am determined that any and everything in my home will be contained in a tote of some kind with a lid. I wish we owned stock in Rubbermaid and Sterilite! Flylady says that clutter is from too much stuff in too small a space and I understand this. She also says that clutter can not be contained or organized but must be conquered and eradicated. Honestly? We have fourteen people living in this house. Fourteen people amass not just personal items, there is also no small amount of supplies that must be stored because we no longer live within walking distance of even a so-called convenience store. I will take the admonitions at face value and on faith work towards eradicating any and all clutter that I can but let me go on record as saying that while I 100% understand and agree I simply do not see us being able to pare back to a point that the house is still not filled with stuff. I am determined, however, that the stuff will be organized!

I am also resigned to the fact that although I may follow Flylady to a "T", I have a house full of people who may not ascribe to the plan with the same fervor. I also have the trio of destruction--six year old Noah, four year old Judah and two year old Seth to contend with. It is entirely possible that I dedicate my life to Flylady and no one sees any discernible change. In this case my challenge will be to continue doing what I know I need to do despite the outcome and not become angry or frustrated, remembering that I am working on the house for my family, not that I am expecting my family to work on the house for me.

In a desire for accountability besides my wonderful long-suffering husband whose desire to be my cheerleader sometimes overrides his ability to be a sometimes needed drill-sergeant I am posting this here, for anyone to read. I am endeavoring to be brutally honest both to avoid any temptation to justify relapses and because maybe--just maybe--there are others out there who, like me, are sure that things are hopeless. Our struggles to reclaim our home should serve to either justify your demands for a larger home and myriad housecleaning staff lest you fall prey to the same fate or encourage you to roll up your sleeves and join in on your end.

From this point forward this post may not make any sense to the uninitiated in all things Flylady so you are permitted to simply wish me well and move on with your day or mosey on over to Flylady to better understand the terms and concepts.

At this point I am still working on the shiny sink. At our house we actually have someone besides myself assigned to kitchen duty and it is supposed to be their job. The daughter assigned kitchen duty for the month is due to spend most of the next few weeks working at the Livestock show in Houston so it is time for me to reclaim the kitchen duties after years of it being assigned. We have had struggles in the past few weeks because we have had a plumbing issue with drainage in the kitchen sink but that is repaired now so we should be able to move forward. I will update on the shiny sink project later.

I gave myself permission to allow boots as well as lace-up shoes because they should prove equally difficult to kick off in order to 'lounge' and I have been consistent to wear one or the other.

I have been using a timer for 15 minute decluttering sessions.

I swished and swiped for the first time this morning.

I have been reading the emails and testimonials regularly and I splurged by ordering a few of the Flylady books and tools.

That is about it. Morning or evening routines are not established. I have not yet begun anything akin to a control journal. I am working on not feeling guilt or condemnation regarding what seems to me to be a slow pace but truth be told...I have twelve children including a baby who still needs lots of mom time. I have a business growing beyond anything we anticipated. It is the craziest time of year for us, with goats kidding and older children, usually the backbone of our household working sixty miles away. I will keep interested readers informed of progress and relapses but remember--this is a work in progress, as is true of every area of life and that is part of the journey. Specifically I see this as part and parcel of my own sanctification, the challenges that as a whole are used to refine and shape me as a person, not to be ever completed while I draw breath but a journey worth traveling none-the-less.

MathRider--The Quest for Math Fact Mastery

2011-02-25T08:38:00.002-06:00

When we recently had the opportunity to review MathRider I was intrigued and really looked forward to seeing how the software would work for our family. As an inveterate finger counter myself I have noticed that my children fall into one of two camps--those who like their mother acquire a deer-in-the-headlights look of panic and whip out those fingers when pressed to add and those who recite math facts practically in their sleep. I believe to the core of my being that the challenges that cause those of us who stumble is simply a matter of confidence, specifically the confidence that comes from practice. When I was in school I spent countless hours with math tutors and flashcards but they never worked well enough to keep the finger counting habit at bay even while the answers were correct because flashcards reward mastery but not speed and I believe that speed enhances mastery. Give those of us who tend towards math anxiety enough time and we will be second-guessing ourselves and reverting to counting.

The creators of MathRider desired to solve this challenge for their own children and I feel that they have done a very good job. The game draws students in via a story line based on simple quests; either to find the flower that contains medicinal qualities for a sick family member or to rescue a princess. In order to complete the quests the student must ride their horse through countryside and find the flower, return the gem, etc. The speed with which the student moved towards their goal is based not only on correctly answering the math problem but also on how quickly they answer. This compensates for the drawbacks to other drills based on on correct answers alone.

The student moves through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in four levels--easy, medium, advanced and mastery. As the student rides their horse across the countryside they encounter "jumps". These jumps are higher or lower based on the challenge that the problem is expected to pose to the rider based on their previous answers. The horse runs faster or slower based on the speed with which the student is answering questions correctly. As each jump is successfully completed (by the student answering correctly in a timely fashion) points are accrued with a bonus after 10 or 20 correct answers. At the end of each quest ride the student can accumulate additional points based on speed which move them faster towards the end of the quest.

The student tracks their progress through their quests on a map at the end of each ride. IN this way they can directly see how their level of mastery of the facts is moving them closer to their goal.

The best part of this game, from a parent's perspective is the ability that the parent has to see how they are working through their quest to see their children competent and confident in these skills. The statistics page allows the parent (or student) to see the progress that they are making on specific math facts. A table shows the problems that the student has been tested on. The problems are shown in green if the student has mastered them, with gradual shading to yellow if they struggled with the problems and red if they had serious challenges. A left click on the mouse will display the problem both in sentence form (2+3=5) as well as visually in the form of two red balls added to three yellow balls. A right click shows the specific stats for that player for that problem; the number of times they attempted to answer the problem, the number of times they cleared the jump, the number of times they failed and the average time it took for the student to complete the jump. A side bar shows the specific math facts that the student is finding challenging as well as a bar that shows the progress the student is making towards mastery of that specific skill (addition, multiplication, etc).

I enjoyed the graphics of this game. When the quest is being described the graphics are reminiscent of a child's drawings, quaint and charming but as they move through their quest the background is distinctly different, very ethereal and fantastical like a Tolkein book come to life.

In the end we only have a few negatives to say about MathRider. My horse minded children who have multiple horses to chose from in their own pasture wanted to know why they couldn't chose which horse to ride and name it themselves (Picky, picky!). I noticed it did not stop any of them from asking to play. They did ask to play this game--repeatedly. Some families may take exception to the fact that magic is referenced, complete with a wizard, as a component of some of the quests. My biggest complaint would have to be simply that I quickly grew tired of the horse whiny that accompanies every successfully completed jump. I should look on it as the sound of success but am afraid that I simply found it grating after hours on end of hearing it. The sound can be muted bu I chose to not require that because they found the sound rewarding so I simply chose to ignore it.

The game is available as a download. The website states that retail price for the game is $49.95 but is available now for $37. The game is for an apparently unlimited number of players because we were able to enter each member of our family as a player with no problems what-so-ever and that is a fair number!

When I reviewed this product it was provided free in exchange for this review as a member of the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew. To be honest--the download was only provided for the period of time necessary to complete the review. It was not difficult at all to decide to purchase the software so that my children (and their finger counting mother) could continue their quest for math mastery.

More news from the (frozen) farm

2011-02-10T08:19:00.003-06:00

The weather has been incredibly odd for us in Texas, in fact it has been averaging thirty degrees colder than normal this time of year! Thankfully this has been during the week. The last two weekends the weather has warmed up enough to give us sunny and clear (if a bit on the cool side) markets.

Normally this time of year our life is consumed with caring for baby goats as in the picture above. Not this year. This year we decided that we really did not need to keep many of the babies born here as replacement milkers as our herd is relatively young. Thankfully we usually have a waiting list for most of our baby goats. The people who buy from us usually prefer that they be hand raised by people rather than their mothers, partially because dairy goats will be handled and worked with at least twice daily for milking for at least a decade and hand raising them means that they will be people oriented and easier to train to being milked. It's a theory, anyway.

We are continuing to struggle with the amount of product that we can bring to market due to the fact that many of the goats did not get bred when I wanted them to. We should be drowning in milk by mid-April but right now we are still suffering from scarcity. I have learned that farming is an extended lesson in realizing that I am not the one in control, biology is. Or God is. Of the biology that God fashioned is. At any rate, I am not.

We are deep in chocolate right now, as we have decided to bring back our holiday chevre truffles for Valentines day. As I write this it is not even nine in the morning and we have already rolled fifteen dozen little balls of chocolate wonder with more to come.

The seeds started for the garden are growing wonderfully--it simply has been too cold for Linnea (our resident gardener) to get the baby plants in the ground. This is our first year to try to grow a majority of our veggies that our family will use. This is a huge undertaking, not only because we have a large family but also because we have a family that loves vegetables! Well, mom and children love vegetables. Tim looks with suspicion on anything green that isn't guacamole. We are working on that...

All in all, although we are cold and things look fairly bleak outside, farm life never slows down and we are already seeing signs (from baby goats to baby plants) that Spring is right around the corner--and it cannot come fast enough for us!

Dixie

2011-02-07T09:24:00.004-06:00

It is so much fun having a baby in the house! Everyday is something new to discover, whether it is Dixie learning about the world around her or her family discovering new skills each day. This week...Dixie is still trying to master crawling, she usually gets where she wants to go by a combination of the 'army crawl', rolling and getting up on her hands and knees, digging in her toes and lunging. She has, however started pulling herself up on anything that she can get her hands on. As her dad announces, "the fun is just beginning!".

She is an incredible mimic. When she hears someone coughing she copies them, although she cannot maintain her solemn little cough for long when everyone around her starts to laugh and she herself giggles in response.

Dixie goes with us to markets--her first market was when she was only five days old. The picture above was taken by a customer at a market when we sat Dixie in our sample bucket after we were not only sold out, but sampled out. At a few weeks ago a customer commented that her baby was within a week or two of Dixie's age and we chatted about the sheer pleasure of enjoying this stage. She was floored, however, to learn that Dixie was our twelfth baby and that the delighting in babies never grows old as her eighth month old is her first.

It really does never grow old and I hope that we will always have babies around to enjoy as the years go on.

VocabAhead

2011-02-07T07:57:00.003-06:00

I recently received a copy of the book "SAT Vocabulary: Cartoons, Videos & MP3S" to review. In general I feel that the best vocabulary builder is to be a voracious reader. That being said, we have used several different vocabulary programs in our eighteen years of homeschooling ranging from mundane to wildly imaginative. What we have never tried is a program that combines several different formats such as that produced by VocabAhead.

VocabAhead states that by using the different
modalities offered in their program you experience a "pull/push" effect, increasing effectiveness. "You will find that each page contains a cartoon illustration and a small text script that provides sample usages for the specific word. The illustration creates a visual connection for your understanding and recall. This is the "pull" model, which means that your brain "pulls" maximum information about the word from the information provided, and then creates a mental picture of it. The use of cartoon illustrations to express feelings and humor makes "pulling" this information an enjoyable process as well. Learning is always less of a chore if you can laugh at the same time!"

The layout of the book is a cartoon per page. Underneath each cartoon is the word definition, synonyms and antonyms. There are ten such vocabulary cartoons per chapter and each chapter ends with a review "quiz".

So far so good. If this was the entirety of the program it would make for an entertaining book to keep on hand in the car to read and quiz each other on during long drives.

The strength of the VocabAhead program, however, is not in the book at all, but in the other media forms utilized by the publisher (and available for download with the purchase of the book), and this is where the "pull" comes into play. "The corresponding audio MP3 files can be downloaded and played on your favorite MP3 player. In the car, on the bus, on the train, even sitting in the park, you can listen to the MP3 audio of the words you viewed earlier." (Or on Swede Farm "feeding your goats, during morning milking, while labeling cheese...") "This is the "push" part of the process. It sends information to your brain through audio channels, allowing you to reinforce your mental picture and connection with the word."

Additionally there are videos of the cartoons with narration. he combination of audio and visual helps reinforce the mental connections with the word. Best of all, these videos can be downloaded to the student's iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad through the iTunes software.

The book with downloadable audio and video is available through Amazon for $12.95. A DVD-Rom (which I did not review) is likewise available through Amazon for $24.99.

Ultimately, the strength of the program is in the website. The website has videos which may be viewed for free (although not as many as provided through the book downloads or the DVD.) The website also, in effect, creates a virtual community by allowing the student to create their own lists of words that they are working on as well as create "shared" lists with other students. Not only can a student view videos online, they can also post videos of their own creation and discuss other such student-posted videos. What a fabulous way to tap into 21st century tools to create a new generation of word nerds!

In the end I have to say...standing alone the book is nothing exceptional. If you are not planning to use the accompanying audio or video downloads then there are plenty of other options available that should accomplish the same goal. Taken as a complete package with the downloads and the website--this is a really fun resource that is more likely to be used than almost anything else I have seen due to how it taps into how students today communicate and interact with the world around them--and around the world via the web.

(Materials reviewed were provided free of charge in exchange for my unbiased review as a part of the This Old Schoolhouse Magazine Review Crew.)

We Are Digging Roman Town!

2011-02-04T22:05:00.005-06:00

I recently had the opportunity to review for the This Old Schoolhouse Magazine Review Crew the archeology-based game "Roman Town". This game is from Dig-It! Games, maker of interactive educational games.

No bones about it, we loved this game. Loved, loved, loved it. It helps that we love history anyway, not many families have as a favorite past-time visiting cemeteries and battlefields. It probably also helps that my children have cousins who have spent time living in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius, the setting for the game. Beyond those factors, however, the game is simply enjoyable!

The game was developed by archaeologist Suzi Wilczynski and it invites students to enter the world of archeology by becoming an archaeologist. The student manages a team of diggers, assigning them to specific dig sites and specifying which tool they are to use. When a digger indicates that they have located something of interest the student excavates the item at which point they are invited to L.E.A.R.N, or Locate Engrossing And Remarkable Knowledge (although really I guess it should then be called "L.E.A.R.K" but I guess that wouldn't make much sense). This includes lectures on the discovered artifacts and categorizing artifacts as well as the chance to reconstruct the item in 2 or 3D, distinguish between the artifacts and their 21st century counterparts, take tours and make reports. The game teaches vocabulary and history as well as giving a realistic look into the life of an archaeologist, from the frustration of having diggers who uncover nothing to the necessary report writing. There are additional mini-games offered free on the website as well as on the purchased game and the website also offers resources for parents and other educators such tips for expanding the game to create something akin to a unit study as well as links other archeology websites.

The game progresses through six different levels, with the mystery of the town of Fossura being uncovered with each progressive level. My children were obsessed with getting back to the game and mastering each level and what was discovered each day was a frequent topic at the dinner table.

The game allows for five different players and someone could play the game over and over as different artifacts are discovered each time the game is played.

I had some difficulties when I first received the downloadable version of the game made available to the reviewers (free of charge in exchange for this review). I am unsure as to whether the issues I was having was related to the download process or issues within my computer but regardless, the support I received at Dig-It! was exemplary. They went over and above what was necessary in their customer service to help me solve the problem and I am so thrilled that they did, as once we were able to properly download it we have really enjoyed this game. Mom played it as did everyone from a 21 year old daughter down to a ten year old son.

To summarize the positives--
Engrossing and definitely educational game, wide range of audience, many different permutations to keep the game fresh. Customer service really excelled.

Now the negatives--

The game seemed somewhat buggy in unexpected ways. The game itself was great, but there were a few times when playing the mini-games on the website that we were unable to have the game function as it should. The music was a little eerie but it may have been the fact that I think I was hearing it for hours on end some days due to the popularity of the game here at our house. This game is difficult for non-readers to play. My children tend to learn to read later than the age that they would enjoy this game and unless someone was sitting with them to read large portions of the game to them they would not be able to really learn all that they could from playing. It would be nice if the game has an option to allow for the game to be narrated. Lastly, the cost of the game at $39.95 would prove a bit high at my house for what is, in the end, a supplemental educational item although I could see purchasing it for a family gift and they have provided a discount code for readers of the blog that makes it affordable for almost any homeschooling family.

In the end I can say that we really enjoyed this review. I found several of my children grumbling a little bit when history each week we reviewed this was not Ancient Rome but rather the Puritans and early Colonial America because they wanted to expand on what they were learning while playing the game!

I can say without reservation that this game is a truly enjoyable way to learn history and I hope that Roman Town is just the start of many such games to come from Dig-It!

To receive the discount for TOS Review Crew blog readers use the coupon code TOS2011 to get Roman Town for $19.96! This coupon expires on February 21, 2011. The usual price for Roman Town is $39.95, so this TOS2011 coupon for $19.96 is a significant savings. System requirements for the game Windows Vista/XP/2000; CPU 800 Mhz; RAM 412MB; Hard Drive 350MB.

News from the (frozen) farm

2011-02-02T10:26:00.003-06:00

Well, it is cold here. Normally temperatures this time of year are in the mid-40's. Today it was less than 20 when I checked. It rarely freezes here, a light frost is noteworthy but today the feeders are frozen and the spigot that supplies the livestock waterer hoses are likewise frozen. Our electricity has been inconsistent (and with it our water supply due to the well pump being electric and our telephone, being cordless).

I know that others are much, much colder, but we simply are not well prepared. Some of my children do not even own socks, as they eschew "regular" shoes in favor of sandals and other slip-on type shoes! When we had goat shelters in the past the goats preferred the shelter of the treeline so when we moved the goat pen we opted not to even erect permanent shelters (although building them was actually on the agenda for this Spring). The goats actually seem to be coping perfectly fine, as do the chickens, ducks, hogs and horses. The rabbits are all cozy in their shelter. We are nailing blankets in front of the drafty windows and have soup simmering on the stove top and cornbread in the oven and for the first time in a long time I am not having to coerce the girls to help me keep laundry rotated as they are appreciating the added warmth that they are bringing to a normally much colder part of the house! Snow is projected for Thursday through Friday but interestingly enough it should be nice for the weekend's markets before turning frigid again on Monday.

In other farm news--Dixie has her first bumped forehead. Her brother (Noah, age six) decided that that she looked lonely as she played happily on the floor on a blanket so in the two minutes it took me to step into the hall to call someone he picked her up and put her on the couch next to him. You know what is coming, right? Headfirst onto the floor. Thankfully 1)the couch is short and 2)the floor is laminate with a good bit of give. It didn't even take nursing to placate her, just a kiss and snuggle but hopefully the small red bump will prove instructional for Noah that mom really means it when she says that he is not allowed to pick up his sister!

We have one more goat that is due to deliver imminently, then we wait until Valentines day for the new goats from New York to start delivering. In low production seasons like this it is hard to remember that we really do have seasons of abundance.

Linnea has been busy in her garden--harvesting lots of greens and cabbage and lettuce and starting seeds for everything from peas and carrots and beans--oh and she is planning to grow potatoes this year. Next on the agenda, learning to can the bounty!

We were recently able to add some small notebooks for use by the children for school. I have always been philosophically opposed to anything but one-on-one tutoring but we have recently started utilizing more online studies and supplements such as educational games thanks in part to working with the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew. We have found such options to be a good way to expand our time and skills while still maintaining the individual time and give and take that we have used for years. You might say it is the best of all worlds.

Lots of de-cluttering going on here. It seems to be a Spring routine every other year, the year AFTER each baby is born! I am enjoying seeing the house again without the stuff that accumulates. Tim is not as thrilled as the cleared spaces make it clear that we need to do some painting and other such home maintenance.

All in all, life is good. And looks to be getting better. All because God is good.

Cleo, or the dog who ran Nascar

2011-01-28T07:26:00.010-06:00

We had a litter of Great Pyrenees pups born here on the farm the middle of last year. Our Pyrenees are not pets, though we do love them and have one who shamelessly occupies the couch when our bed is not available! Our Pyrenees are working dogs who generally live their lives outside, with the goats. Their job is to protect the goat herd. They were bred in Europe (where they are called the Pyrenean Mountain Dog) to remain with the herd and defend them when the shepherd is not there to the point of fighting bear and wolves. We are lacking in bear and wolves here in Field Store, TX but there are Coyote in the area and the worst predator we deal with are dogs. It seems that people (the general idea is that these are people "from the city") who decide that they no longer wish to keep their dogs will drive out to the country and dump them on some back country road. (Like ours--we have actually watched it happen right in front of our house and now own two such dumped dogs.) The idea is that these dogs will then live an idyllic life roaming over hill and dale, communing with nature and returning to the wild nature of their ancestors.

What happens instead is that these dumped dogs die. They may be hit by a car, starve to death, fall prey to the Coyotes mentioned previously--or killed by farmers and ranchers. The problem is that these dogs get hungry. They have never had to hunt, so they form packs and turn to easy pickin's--livestock. Farmers who depend upon their livestock for their livelihood take very seriously the need to defend their animals and such "dumped dogs" are often poisoned or shot. As horrible as that sounds, let me tell you--going out to see several strange dogs ripping the head off of a goat is also horrible. Watching those strange dogs not even be alarmed when you shoot in their direction is concerning. Knowing that they are unafraid of people and have no problems attacking an animal weighing over 100 pounds causes one to wonder what they would do to a 35 pound toddler playing in the yard.

This is why we have not one, not two, but five Livestock Guardian Dogs. We learned the hard way that terrible morning when we did go out to discover our wonderful young buck with most of his head missing that having one is not enough. These dumped dogs are smart, as dogs usually are, and it is common for them to divide and conquer. Our one LGD was on one side of the property chasing off interlopers while the others were attacking on the other side of the property. We not only added more Great Pyrenees after that experience, we have also had occasional litters of Pyr pups in response to requests from other livestock owners looking for good dogs.

Cleo is one such pup. Called Cleopatra due to her distinctive eye markings, she was born to be a LGD and work with the livestock. When she was a young pup she was actually the alpha pup in the litter, dominant and aggressive. When potential buyers came to chose a puppy we told those looking for a pet that Cleo was definitely not the dog for them--this little girl was born to be with the herd, defending! This was not how things turned out.

When Cleo was five weeks old and the puppies had reached the age of exploration they were romping around our side yard. Cleo discovered her first guarding opportunity under the deck and decided to rush in where angels fear to tread. She apparently charged a snake and was bitten on the head. (Likely culprit in this area, in that specific location--a Copperhead.) Her face and head swelled terribly. It took several days for her head to return to normal size and the bite site to heal, but we were just happy that she lived! The bite also caused a distinct personality change. In the place of the aggressive and determined top-dog we now had a sweet, affectionate, loving puppy--happy to sit with her people and be loved on.

Then it became apparent that more damage was done than was immediately apparent. Cleo started circling. At first we laughed it off--that dog certainly was persistent in chasing her tail! Except that she did not stop. She no longer walked or ran in play--she ran in circles, like a car in a Nascar race. It clearly took great effort for her to actually walk in a straight line--we would watch her very determinedly pick up one leg, and fighting against the urge to place it to her left instead very carefully and deliberately place it in front of her. As she grew it became more and more of a concern because she would move across the property by circling and we feared what might happen if she circled herself into the pond or into the street.

We went to the vet for a complete exam and to discuss our options. What we heard was both comforting and dismaying.

It would appear that the swelling caused some degree of brain damage. It is irreversible. Cleo will always circle to the left like a whirling dervish, perpetually 'chasing her tail' if you will. The good news is that she is in no pain and not even dizzy--as the vet stated, she thinks she is walking straight! Other than this one issue she is healthy though small for a Pyr--likely due to the large amounts of calories being burned by her circling. Our biggest challenge will be in keeping her safe. It would be very easy for her to move herself to a dangerous location and not be able to move and she would never be able to defend herself from predators. Additionally it is hard for her to purposefully get anywhere so we have to make sure she has water and food brought to her or in several locations so she does not go without water in hot weather or without shelter in inclement weather. If we can keep her safe (or find her a home with someone who can keep her safe) then she is a sweet and affectionate and even playful pup. (She is now eight months old.) If we cannot, then as responsible owners we must consider other options such as euthanasia. We are trying to determine the best option for Cleo as we are concerned that as much as we love her, no matter how how sweet she is, that a working farm may not be the best option for her. This is one of the burdens of animal ownership, though. When we take on the obligation of caring for these animals, good stewardship demands that we make the best possible decisions that we can for the animals that have their existence due to choices that we made.

One thing is for sure--no matter the burden, Cleo (nor any other dog we shall ever own) will never become a "dumped dog".

Memories

2011-01-26T08:29:00.003-06:00

Christmas of 2003 I was given a journal. Never one to find much of interest in my life to write about I decided to fill the book with those incredibly cute sayings that my children come up with that I swear I'll never forget (but do).

In fact just this morning after I found the journal and dusted it off one of the half dozen children wrestling on the bed something incredibly hilarious. In the time it took me to find a pen...poof!...it was gone from my mind. (It did remind me to ask one of the older girls to run and grab my ADHD medication lest I lose another such gem to the vagaries of my mind. So all is not lost.)

At any rate I was commenting at breakfast that I can tell when I received the journal despite the dates because the majority of it is filled with things that Emma or Timothy said and I can tell that the richest treasure trove of memorable comments seem to come from age three to age eight. I can tell when we got animals--because for all practical purposes I stopped recording these things about then. I guess it got swallowed up in the day to day business. (and I thought I was busy with eight children in the city!)

We had a very enjoyable time this morning, me sitting in bed sipping hot tea (waiting for coffee beans to come home with Tim) reading from the book. "Read one about me now, Mom!" It proved to be a powerful encouragement for them to do chores because I was able to say "run and put your shoes on, then I'll read". It made me seriously regret those years that I failed to record. Thankfully the children remember a fair number of them (even some I was not privy to!) and I think we will start a new tradition of writing a few every evening after dinner. After all these are their memories too, aren't they?

Unusual day...

2011-01-24T23:04:00.002-06:00

Today was what has become a somewhat unusual day--I did not leave the property one single time.

I hate feeling like all I do is run around all the time, but there are always errands to be tended to, supplies to be bought for the dairy or the family. We did get a slower than usual start to the morning, not even eating breakfast until nine in the morning, but they finished milking before that. Then the kids did sundry chores and school, fighting over the computers so that they could finish their computer based courses. Tim worked on bills (and receipts for taxes, oh joy) and I tried to influence the river of children continually flowing past me all day. Did I mention that it was rainy and cold so it was definitely an inside kind of day for everyone?

We even discovered that somehow UPS came, dropped off packages and left--and we never knew it. It is very unusual for anyone to drive the curving driveway from the street and not have their presence heralded by the pack of white dogs that lope out to meet anyone who even thinks of approaching the house.

Late in the afternoon we had some farm visitors. They came to look at the animals and see how we do things. They were somewhat unusual for farm visitors these days in that they were not interested in milk or cheese but in getting stated in goats. They got a tour and because they were still here when the girls started milking, they stayed for that as well, with the nine and seven year old boys trying their hand at milking and drinking milk still warm, sweet, and frothy from the udder.

More farm chores in the evening, followed by chili for dinner.

Tomorrow will not be so quiet as I have to make arrangements to go buy hay as well as drive into Bryan to pick up feed for the animals and food for the people. (Interesting, how the usage of the word changes like that...) And we certainly would not complain if the Sears repairman actually manages to fix the washer while he is here tomorrow nor if a goat or two (or eleven) decides to actually have the babies for which we have been anxiously waiting.

But for today...it was a cozy-at-home kind of day and I will revel in it.

It's not the age that will get you, it's the miles.

2011-01-20T18:06:00.003-06:00

We have bought three washing machines in the past six years, two high efficiency frontloading machines and a top loader. The first machine lasted exactly one year before being replaced under warranty as a "lemon" when it was out of commission a full 25% of that first year.

The second machine was bought with the store credit given to us due to the "no-lemon" clause of the warranty on that first washer. The store credit combined with cash out of pocket bought us a washing machine that cost more than some of the cars that we bought in the first decade of our marriage. That second machine worked like a trooper for three years without nary a whimper before starting to complain.

The third washer was found on Craigslist. It was an emergency purchase to keep us limping along while the workhorse machine#2 was waiting for the repair appointment.

We are currently rotating back and forth between the hardworking front loader and the second string toploader. The frontloader has become very finicky. The repairman came and fixed the door lock, then the door hinges and now the computer board all in an attempt to return it to it's former glory. We are not there yet. We may never get there.

One of the main questions that we get when people learn of our family size is regarding our laundry situation. How much do we do? How long does it take? How big is the pile? Well, when we bought frontloader#2 it had the largest capacity drum available for residential use. When we are all caught up on laundry we do between four and five loads a day in that large washer, household laundry and dairy cloths combined. When that machine decides to take a vacation and we pull out the (still very large) toploader we do about ten loads daily. Honestly? That is pretty near impossible. This means that we are not only having to do laundry at home with the second string washer, we are also making at least weekly trips to the laundromat in town--fifteen or so miles away.

The frustration caused me to do some research. Why are our washers so short lived? How long should one expect a new washing machine to work? From what I have read a toploader should be expected to last 14 years and a frontloader will last 10-11 years, with an average use of 3 loads of laundry weekly.

Weekly. Which means that these days I am doing a weeks worth of laundry before lunch and the same during the afternoon. And another week in the evening. Three weeks worth of laundry a day.

At the "average" usage the washing machine should go through approximately 1716 loads in it's wonderful glass-fronted life. When the frontloader is working well, I do approximately 1642.5 loads a year. Shoot, let's give the machine a break and let it take that half a washload off this year. Even at that...I am running it through a normal lifetime of wear in less than thirteen months. I do not even want to crunch the numbers for the toploader.

So. Anyone feel like telling me that I am crazy for calling a salesman for a commercial washing machine like they have at laundromats? (Or hotels or hospitals?)

Or crazy for not having called before now?

The Invisible Holiday

2011-01-19T06:24:00.003-06:00

Earlier this week our nation celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day. We remember the sacrifices made so that our nation could become more fully what it was intended to be, a place where all men are equal, and are not ruled by others but are the determiners of their own future.

Unpopular though the remembrance may be, today as a state we also celebrate Confederate Heroes Day. We remember the sacrifices made so that our nation could become more fully what it was intended to be, a place where all men are equal, and are not ruled by others but are the determiners of their own future.

There are some who find the thought of this war distasteful. The thread of slavery is undeniably wound throughout the cloth. The fact that our state was involved in what proved to be a lost cause stings. Almost 150 years have passed since the war, six generations or more have come and gone. Embarrassment and the threat of being called racist or redneck have served well to silence those who find pride in their heritage leaving only those who write the history books to determine how we view our past. I think this is unfortunate. When we deny our heritage it serves to ensure two facts. One, that we will not take pride in and learn from that which is good and noble in our history and two, that we will not sorrowfully learn from that which was ignoble so that it may never be repeated.

To many in the South, the War for American Independence was still fresh in their mind. They recalled the stories told by their grandfathers of the battles and sacrifices made. They knew well the principles upon which the war was fought, to achieve freedom and self determination from a despotic government. Now they felt themselves to be embroiled in the same kind of struggle. They saw the increasingly heavy demands and controls by the federal government as akin to the tyranny that they experienced under England. The pivotal question to be answered was whether according to the Constitution the individual states or the federation of states as a whole were the higher arbiter. This was actually not the first time that states had claimed the right to secede and it would not be the last (if you doubt this, simply google the words "secede" and "states" and you will even find current secession movements).

In this time of questioning many men of Godly character found themselves facing unimaginable decisions. Just as their forefathers had to decide to follow the path of security at the sacrifice of their conscience or to follow what they felt to be right at the risk of their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, a new generation was called upon to make a similar decision. One of the most notable and visible in that generation was Robert Edward Lee. Lee was the son of cavalry officer Light Horse Harry Lee who was decorated by Washington for his service during the War of Independence. Lee was also married to the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. The family history of the Lees was inextricable woven with that of the nation. Lee was honored to be offered the command of the union army against the seceding states. Lee himself did not support secession, indeed felt it to be folly, yet he felt his supreme loyalty lay not with the overarching union of states but with his home state of Virginia. It must have been with an impending sense of doom that he watched support for secession grow, yet he never shirked from what he felt to be his duty, saying “With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword..."

In a time when our society is struggling with many challenges from both within the nation and forces without, what we need are more men who have the moral integrity to stand and do the right thing even at great risk to themselves. This week we honor, in two separate holidays, men who did exactly that, stepped forward to serve in their own ways, forever changing the history of their nation. It would be a grave mistake to paint the sacrifices made with the brush of relativism. Instead I challenge the citizens of our nation to look to the needs of our time and consider the words of Lee when he said “Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.” It is by recognizing honor and duty in those who have gone before us that we will be inspired to serve honorably and dutifully ourselves.

(This post revisited from 2009)

Pray for baby Ella!

2011-01-13T09:13:00.002-06:00

I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago how the kids and I have been following and praying for baby Ella. Ella is in surgery right now, one in a long line of surgeries she has had to undergo but as you might imagine, anytime you do open heart surgery there are risks. Imagine performing surgery on a tiny baby and it gets scarier so please keep the surgeons in prayer.

Also pray for Ella's mommy and daddy, I speak from experience that those hours between phone updates from the surgeon last an eternity in which your imagination runs away with you.

Ella's blog

Virtual Nerd

2011-01-12T07:55:00.004-06:00

As readers of this blog know as a member of This Old Schoolhouse Magazine's Review Crew I occasionally devote space here to a review of homeschooling resources. This is one such review. I was given access to Virtual Nerd to review for free in exchange for my unbiased review. We accessed, we used...here is the review!

Virtual Nerd is an interactive online tutorial service. The subject that it offers are Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II and Intro Physics. This is not an actual course in that it provides tests, worksheets, practice problems or other assessments of progress although they do expect to offer practice problems, quizzes and feedback sometime during the 2010-2011 school year. What Virtual Nerd is is access to hundreds of interactive step by step videos that teach concepts that may be challenging to your child in a manner that makes it more likely to actually penetrate with (as the website claims) an "innovative design makes it easy for students to stay focused".

The service is straightforward and easy to use. The student chooses which subject they want (say, Pre-Algebra). The student then searches for their problem issue either by a keyword search or by scrolling through a table of contents arranged by topic. Once the concept is found that needs to be reinforced, they click "GO" and the video starts. The video consists of a 'tutor' who discusses the concept, complete with examples. On the right side of the screen the steps and examples are written in phrases and are highlighted as the tutor discusses that particular step. I think this is excellent for those students who perhaps struggle to comprehend auditory instruction. Being able to read the statements as the examples are being written on the white board is the perfect way to reinforce the concept. The topics and concepts offered are in depth and clearly explained.

How did we like it here on Swede Farm? As I have mentioned on here before I have always been math challenged. I personally enjoyed spending time on Virtual Nerd. I had several AHA! moments in watching the videos, making me wish that this product had been available for me when I was struggling through math in highschool. I found myself just sitting down and actually scanning topic lists and choosing ones I had always struggled with in school just to see how the topic was handled and I was surprised to find myself actually enjoying the lessons. And understanding! My similarly math challenged children did not seem to 'catch' my enthusiasm, seeing it as yet one more math lesson. My math wizard daughter, who truly enjoys math truly enjoyed Virtual Nerd as well. She stated that she felt it would be a help in learning, especially if one is learning strictly from textbooks as opposed to using a video type math curriculum. She utilized it most appropriately, turning to Virtual Nerd to reinforce concepts as they were introduced in her actual math curriculum and felt it helped her to more smoothly progress through acquiring new skills.

I think for us, the best use of the service would be for teacher mom to watch the videos to solidify my understanding of the concept, then identifying in their textbooks when to turn to Virtual Nerd for additional explanations of the material.

I actually wish this was a complete curriculum, with worksheets and problems and tests--I might seriously consider switching to it, I so enjoyed the concept. Well..depending on the cost. Cost as it stands right now for the tutorial can be customized based on the degree to which your students will need to access the program. A student can access Virtual Nerd for one day (perfect for an otherwise math savvy student struggling with a particular concept) for $5. A week's worth of access costs $19, monthly is $49 and three months worth of access is $129. If a student is a fast learner, a day may be all that is needed to bridge the gap between their understanding and fluency in that area and $5 would prove to be a good value. The students that most need help would likely need monthly or even longer and for many families the cost may well prove prohibitive on top of a full math curriculum which would be compounded if the family has more than one student that needs assistance. The website states that they make no attempt to prevent the service being used for more than one student at a time under the subscription but that they do not recommend it due to customization that would be lost.

At any rate I can definitely recommend the product as worth $5 for a day's use to see if this is something that would be an asset in your homeschool. You may find it helpful enough to invest in it for a longer term.

Babies are here!

2011-01-06T19:06:00.003-06:00

The kiddings hve started! We had sixteen does due to kid this month. The first to go? Mystique, a brown and white Nubian. She gave us two doelings yesterday.

Today? Syrah the Alpine gave us one huge buck.

Did I mention huge?

Well OK. Maybe not HUGE, but quite large. She had a bit of an issue getting him out and usually she pushes them out like giving birth is a walk in the park.

Next on the docket? We are not sure, but Thyme and Vickie Rae both look like likely contenders. We'll keep y'all informed.

My Cup Overfloweth

2010-12-16T07:10:00.002-06:00

Katarina is home!

Our new goats are home!

And Kate brought me a very special Christmas gift--a goat!

I know that you are all saying "what is so special about that, you already have umpteen zillion goats!"

Let me tell you, there is something special about this goat!

His mom is SG Little-Rainbow WBC Fr Toast. She was the #1 goat for milk production for her breed in 2006. His dad is Kastdemur's Kiss This, with a long string of champions in his background, including several reserve national champions. To be honest, to be in possession of a goat like this after only six years in goats is incredibly exciting. I think Katarina and Lynn Flemming were disappointed because I was relatively quiet and maybe even nonchalant when they placed his collar in my hand but I think maybe I was just distracted and overwhelmed by Katie being home, all the goats being unloaded, etc. As the hours go by and I think more and more about it I am just humbled and literally brought to tears. It is not simply having the chance to own such an awesome animal but also the gratitude to my daughter who sacrificed both months away from home and a great deal of her hard earned money (interns at goat dairies don't make a whole lot!) for her mother and the family business. God is so good, how did I ever come to deserve this? The truth is I do not deserve this but it is all God's grace that has blessed so generously.

Then add to this the fact the chance to host in our messy, chaotic, overwhelmingly noisy home someone like Lynn Flemming, a breeder of such exceptional animals for so many decades, an inspirational cheese-maker and American Dairy Goat Association judge...and my heart is full of emotions that are beyond description. To truly enjoy the visit, wish it was longer and that we were neighbors was just the cherry on the top of my goat milk ice-cream sundae! I was able to pick her brain and ask questions about the practicalities of goat dairying and this was wonderful. In many ways we feel like we are inventing the wheel here. It was nice to be able to act questions about the day to day issues and hear how someone else handles these situations. I think this relationship, begun by Katarina living and working there for the past four months, will prove invaluable and a great confirmation regarding our efforts and goals.

So...we have eleven very sweet, very nice girls for the dairy that I get to know (how fun!) from one breeder in New York, two more girls from Lynn Flemming (actually one is Katarina's and the other with a very fun and slightly odd story connected to one that I hope to share in the next few days) and a dream buck that will influence the direction of our herd for years to come.

And my baby is home, not just for Christmas but to stay.

How much more full could my cup be? It cannot. It truly overflows.

2010-12-13T21:01:00.004-06:00

One of the most common questions that a homeschooling mom may hear is "what about calculus?" Well the hapless homeschooling mom no longer need quake in her boots, ALEKS is at hand. To quote from the website, "Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces is a Web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system. ALEKS uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and doesn't know in a course. ALEKS then instructs the student on the topics she is most ready to learn."

ALEKS has a series of courses one can access, from elementary school math to the no longer dreaded calculus. One can also study science (such as Physics) or business (Principles of Accounting, Business Statistics and more). Once the student is registered for a course they take an assessment test. Their results are shown in the form of a pie chart with each piece representing specific topics. In the case of the "Principles of Accounting" course that my daughter Grace took, the slices are "Basic Terminology", "Basic Transactions and Financial Statements", "Journal Entries", "Adjusting Entries", "Closing Process and Financial Statements" and "Merchandising Accounting". What the student knows at the outset is displayed as a darker section of the piece. The student can scroll their mouse over each topic to see the subtitles within each topic. Under "Basic Terminology" the subtopics are "Account Classification into Financial Statements", "Information Classification into Financial Statements" and "Components of Annual Report". The student is given the option of which topic they wish to study, being prevented from advancing beyond the level that they can understand. When the student chooses their subject they are walked step by step through the lesson. At any point they can click on a term of concept and another window is pulled up that gives a definition and practical example. Once the concept is explained the student has a series of practice questions. If the student gets the questions correct they move to the next concept. If they fail to get the questions correct they are slowly walked through the concept again with more in depth information until the student repeatedly demonstrates an understanding. There are printable worksheets available to the student in each topic. There are tools such as a calculator and dictionary available should the student feel the need to utilize them. There are also quizzes along the way.

The teacher (mom in this case) are kept informed of the progress of the student via email. The weekly email informs the teacher of the concepts mastered, the amount of time the student spent on the course and the quiz results.

The benefits of this program are many. This is a huge help for the math challenged parent. They can trust that the student is not simply sliding through the program with a less than secure grasp of the subject matter. They can keep abreast of their student's progress. They can feel assured that the student is being thoroughly taught in a step by step manner while taking advantage of the flexibility of accessing their "teacher" 24/7.

I really liked the benefits that ALEKS offered. I found myself working through one course with my older children simply because I enjoyed (re)learning a subject I had found difficult when I was in school in a non stressful yet structured format.

For us the only downside in using this program consistently would be cost. A three month unlimited online subscription is $19.95 per student, per month; $99.95 for a six month period or $179.06 per year. While this cost is not out of line per se for a higher level one year math curriculum where it would fail to be the wisest choice for us would be n that we could not reuse it for subsequent students. When one has twelve students, this becomes significant! They do have a family discount program wherein the more students one enrolls, the more money one saves, up to 43% and for some families this may make the program very reasonable. For our family if we were to use ALEKS we would likely use it as a remedial program in courses that we feel we are not making headway on ourselves and for this purpose the program is very affordable. Best of all, there is a free trial program!

I did receive a free subscription to ALEKS in exchange for my unbiased review. I review curriculum as a part of the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Heart Overflowing

2010-12-09T07:22:00.006-06:00

The purpose of this blog has been to give those interested an insight into the life of a large homeschooling family on a dairy farm. The blog is set up so that anyone on the farm may actually post-Tim, myself (LeeAnne), or any of the children old enough to desire to communicate their thoughts in writing. Practically speaking, however, this blog has become my domain. This is why you will now find posts that are only tangentially related to the original purpose of the blog.

This is one such post.

I am on Facebook. Facebook, like all such social networks (online and local, flesh and blood networking opportunities) has a great deal to offer. One can remain connected and informed regarding the well-being of friends so far flung that previously one had to wait for the ubiquitous year-end Christmas letter. One can utilize Facebook as a social calendar, helping one to be more consistent and prepared for activities. In our case we also use it heavily to keep customers connected with farm news.

Like all networking opportunities, of course, one can also find outlet for sin and inappropriate behaviors from wasting time to gossip to downright infidelity.

That being said, I have appreciated the opportunities it offers and due to the many constraints on my time I believe I have been able to remain focused and not allow it to consume time not allotted to it.

One aspect of Facebook is the ability to become aware of events and issues far removed from one's life. Today's post relates to this.

A Facebook friend posted about a baby in a hospital in Texas that was struggling and needed prayer. I visited the blog and read of baby Ella. Baby Ella has several heart conditions. I was captivated by her picture because, frankly, for some reason she looked so much like our sweet baby Dixie to both myself and Dixie's siblings. We made baby Ella's page a permanent tab on the browser and check it every morning. We have prayed for Ella and rejoiced with her parents over each bit of progress made although they are totally unaware of our participation. It has been a privilege and it touches me when my children, surrounded though they are by their own siblings care about this little girl hundreds of miles away. It is not unusual for one of the older children to ask in the course of the day "How is baby Ella doing?" and when the youngers such as Liberty (8 yrs old) or Timothy (10) see me at the computer they ask "can you go to Ella's page? I want to see if there are new pictures there..."

It may be that situations like this tug at me more than they might because we have had children in ICU, from our premature babies to Sara who spent more days at Texas Children's Hospital than I care to recall with her brain tumor. I know the grinding exhaustion that comes from sleeping on hospital couches, the frustration of trying to gain any indication of how your child is doing from tidbits dripped unthinking from the lips of nurse, respiratory therapist, residents...and the fear when those tidbits seem to conflict with previously given positive reports. I know the longing for a normal life where the biggest stress is having to change your clothes yet again due to a diaper explosion or dinner started late because you were too busy snuggling with your baby.

Regardless of the reason, we have been praying for baby Ella.

Ella's parents have a bittersweet network of their own, that of "parents of heart patients". I would assume that they have met parents of babies who have done well and taken courage from this as well as frank reminders that their parenting experience will forever be different from the one they contemplated when they first learned they were pregnant. They have also experienced the anguish of watching parents go through the hardest walk of all--of giving up their children. They have shared regarding these other families and it has become a privilege to share in praying for them as well.

Over the past few days they have shared of more than one family whose children are seriously struggling. One child is headed for a heart transplant. The other child does not even have that option and his parents are having to release their precious son here on earth.

Being aware of the struggles these families are experiencing is a stark reminder of how truly blessed I am. We have had struggles. We do know the exquisite intermingling of pain and hope that is experienced in handing over your child for surgery. Yet I sit here today surrounded by children. My children are today--right now--healthy and strong. I know that this may not always be so, yet the more days that pass between those days in the hospital and these blessedly mundane, noisy and chaotic days at home it is easy to lose the knife edge of that awareness and take for granted the blessing of healthy children. You think you will never forget to be thankful for normalcy--but you do. Reading of baby Ella and her fellow heart patients have reminded me. As I change Dixie's diaper I am thankful that it is not made more difficult by tethers such as IV line and monitors. As I notice how heavy she is getting I am reminded to pray that Ella continues to gain well so she will be ready for her next heart surgery in January. As I discuss with our oldest, Katarina (22 yrs) the need to find the perfect "Baby's First Christmas" ornament for her baby sister I think of those parents for whom this first Christmas will be in the hospital--or worse yet, will find them with only empty arms and memories, their hopes and dreams bankrupt.

We cannot live consumed by the pain of others and the anxiety of "what if". To live there constantly is to reject the incredibly humbling gift that God has given of healthy children. To never visit this place is to make brazen assumptions regarding our relationship with God that we are immune and protected from pain such as this. Why should we think that God will never allow us to face the pain of losing a child when He did not protect himself from this pain? We share burdens by holding these precious parents before the face of God in prayer. We gain by being reminded to hold our children both more tightly--for we are not guaranteed we will hold them forever, save in heaven. We are also reminded to hold them with an open hand. They are not truly ours, they belong to God as surely as His own son was His and as such the only plans that we can be assured of for them are those plans that are also God's plans.

Remember this today in your busyness.

Observations on ADHD

2010-12-03T13:12:00.002-06:00

I have come to the conclusion that having ADHD should be lots of fun as an adult--having the capability to act on those off the wall ideas that pop into your head at the oddest times...

and having a mom who decides that school sounds boring but exploring the neighboring county sounds intriguing should be fun!

Too bad that it is coupled with the grown-up voice in your head telling you what you should be doing.

Bright Ideas Press

2010-11-22T22:31:00.004-06:00

As a member of the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew I recently had the opportunity to review "A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers", one of the many resources offered by Bright Ideas Press. I was very excited to have the chance to use this in our home as we love music. When we lived in the city we utilized all of the resources that living in the fourth largest city in the United States had to offer and my children will tell you that some of their earliest memories are of evenings spent at the symphony or listening to music at home. What we have not had is a more formal curriculum to actually teach our children about the different composers and we looked forward to receiving this curriculum so we could put it into use. In fact the day it came my older children were lined up asking for their chance to take a look!

The curriculum comes either as a CD-Rom book for $29.95 or a 298 page paperback book for $34.95. IT is designed to be used for an entire year, or 32 weeks of lessons. There are lessons on 26 composers, interspersed with lessons on specific periods of time or genres such as "Music in the Renaissance" or "The Romantic Period". There is a recommended piece of music to be listened to each day of the week. The parents has a lesson to read aloud to their student. The parent is provided with a worksheet to give to their student for the second day of the week's work (complete with an answer key in the back of the book). There are also coloring pages and instructions on creating a folder-book, complete with cards of information for each composer and a timeline on which each composer is written, color-coded to show relationship between the composers, whether friend or musical influence. The resources in the book also include recommended books for further study on each composer, suggestions for a map activity and games. There is a glossary and even a certificate of completion. There are listening suggestions (and links to where you can find the music online) complete with tips to help the student get the most out of their listening such as asking (for List's Les Preludes "How would you describe the mood at the opening of the piece? When does the mood begin to change? Can you recognize some of the instruments as they are played?"

Overall I really liked this curriculum. IT takes the student through a systematic introduction to music history and allows them to gain a familiarity with the most common pieces that they are likely to hear. IT provides a great jumping-off place to do further research. We have a wide range of students in our home, from 12th grade down to preschoolers and this can be used with all ages which we appreciate as we seek to use products with as wide an age range as possible. Everyone can listen to the selections together, the youngest having their coloring pages, the olders studying the composers in light of the period of history that they are studying. We have not had a chance to go to the symphony since receiving this book but when we do go we will be utilizing this book to help prepare our children for the pieces that they will be hearing. As written this curriculum makes a great overview of music history. Additionally it can easily be adapted to complement the history curriculum in use.

The downsides--I would have appreciated having a CD set provided (or at least offered) with the recommended music selections included. I understand that this would likely increase the price considerably and for us it is not difficult to find the pieces right off our shelf but not every one has a sizable collection of classical music in their home and it is so hard to get a full sense of the subtleties over computer speakers!

The second downside is the fact that there are what I feel are some significant holes in the curriculum in their choices of which composers to offer. The authors did make the observation that they were constrained by time; wanting to cover the material in a typical school year. They also referenced the difficulties inherent in discussing individuals whose lifestyles may have been distasteful to say the least. This is a curriculum written for grades 4-8 and there are simply certain facets of lifestyle that are not appropriate for this age. Different families will have vastly different views of how best to approach these difficult subjects. I would have been more frank, using the hard issues as a way to discuss consequences of sin. One example is when it is mentioned that Scott Joplin "became ill with a disease that caused him to lose his mental abilities", spending "the last six months of his life in an "Insane Asylum". Scott Joplin died of Syphilis. Without going into intimate details of how such a disease is caught and how it progresses I'd prefer it to mention the fact that he lived a fairly dissolute lifestyle, dying of a disease contracted as a result of sinful behaviors.

And...as someone who appreciates music and the incredible work of God in a man to enable him to create such incredible experiences through music I have to say that it is stunning to me that they would include Joplin with his debauchery and not include Richard Wagner. That the man was evil cannot be denied. The fact remains that his influence was so deep and profound that to not include him is like trying to teach science without even referencing Darwin or history without discussing Marx or Hitler! The fact that references were made to him in chapters on other composers only muddies the waters further, I think. The man pioneered advances in music that changed the course of music history. I believe that he could have been included in a manner that gave a sense of the scope of his megalomania and self-idolatry without going into the gross details regarding his other issues such as his immorality and extreme antisemitism. Another composer similarly referred to in the text as having had significant influence on other composers yet not actually studied is Mahler. To have not included at least these two composers really makes no sense to me. I understand desiring to present a Christian perspective but I differ in that I believe that one could study a man such as Wagner in a manner that gives the glory for his abilities to God while denouncing the man's sin. If we are allowed in Scripture to "eat meat sacrificed to idols" I fail to see how we cannot enjoy the music of Wagner and study his influence.

I received this curriculum free of charge in exchange for my review.

True Confessions and a Discovery

2010-11-15T08:21:00.007-06:00

I have many children but as any mother of more than one child can tell you, they are all different. My mother used to tell people that she had "three only children" in reference to the disparate personalities evident in the family. That said, there is one trait that almost all of my children have shared--their propensity to prefer to eschew clothing somewhere between the ages of two and two and a half years old. Based on the date of this picture I know that it was taken when I was in the hospital having Dixie. This is good because it means that none of the milk taken during this incident was used for anything but family use--I doubt the dairy inspector would be much impressed with the notion of a naked toddler in the dairy! (The little boys are actually not even allowed in the dairy and I am surprised that their older sisters even took such an incriminating photograph--incriminating because it is evidence that they were not following mom's rules.)

All toddlers this age have a partner assigned to them at the Carlson household to prevent such a situation as this but it doesn't work very well! We know this because it is not uncommon for us to look up anytime we have a child between two and two and a half and wonder aloud "where did his clothes go and where is his partner?" as said toddler streaks across the yard, usually in full view of a customer or other visitor.

We actually debated about posting this picture, Tim finding it hilarious and worthy of a blog post. I tend to continually try to convince people that I have it all together and that 1) my toddlers would never strip and run around naked 2) my older children would never allow such a thing in the dairy--even if only milking for family use and 3) that my goats never-ever look as unkept and shaggy as in this picture. About the only thing I can boast of in such a picture of this is that 1) Seth is mighty cute 2) Seth loves his "goaties" 3) Sara just cannot leave anything unphotographed.

Now for the discovery. We all know how horrid disposable diapers are for the environment and I have many cloth diapers to combat the destruction of the planet on the basis of the Carlson family infants and toddlers. That being said, when it is kidding season for the goats--and mom--disposables are the only way to go. I did find the diaper missing in this photograph this morning and discovered that contrary to what we are all told--diapers do, indeed, decompose in less than a kazillion years. It only took about six months for this one to go from on the child to barely recognizable only on the basis of one lone sticky tape found when I was supervising a trash pick-up around the property. So if you want your cheap disposable diapers to return to the earth--drop them in the back yard, let them grow over with grass and be rained on for about six months and you, too will have a hard time figuring out what they are when they are rediscovered.

The boys chime in...

2010-11-10T22:08:00.003-06:00

A few days ago Seth was sitting next to me at the computer. I asked him "what are you doing?" he answered "Loving you..."

As I walked out the door this morning to go to market Judah looked up and said "thanks for making us money, mom!" and Seth chimed in "yes, thanks!"

On the way to market, sitting in traffic on 290 heading into Houston, Timothy asked "why do they call it rush hour if people can't rush in it?"

The Write Foundation

2010-11-10T18:32:00.004-06:00

I enjoy writing. I have been homeschooling my children for almost twenty years, now. Amazingly I would be unable to tell a novice homeschooler exactly how to teach writing to their students. If pressed I would probably say that good writers are first, good readers, and I still believe this to be absolutely true. Beyond this I would be at a loss to describe a protocol, or step-by-step plan or taking students from early reading and writing through a firm grasp of how to construct a meaningful essay.

It is for parents like me that "The Write Foundation" has published their curriculum.

I received the third level of the curriculum, essay writing from the publisher free in exchange for this review as a part of the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew. The third level is intended for ages 14-17, although the publisher recommends that you consider the particular student when determining which level to use. If you have a weak or resistant writer it is suggested that you start them at the level where they are at the upper level of the recommended ages. Conversely if you have an eager writer who is desiring guidance and direction to move quickly through learning to write well then you would want to start them at the level where they are at the younger age range. I have children at all age ranges and my children love writing as soon as they can, taking delight in expressing themselves in writing. It is as we move into a need for more formality and structure that we need guidance and it is for this reason that I desired to try the higher level.

Those who know me personally or who have followed my accounts of our homeschool in this blog will know that I chafe at structure. Where we do use a formal curriculum I appreciate it providing me with many options with which to tweak the curriculum and tailor it to our own style. I will be honest and say that at it's most basic this is not a curriculum that does this. The curriculum is written to allow it's use with both a co-op, in a group setting or individually, one teacher to one student. There are directions given to facilitate either option and I appreciate this. I also appreciate that the intent is to make this simple to use by giving step by step directions. Although my typical response is to determine where time and effort may be saved by cutting steps or combining processes, the admonition is given to mandate that the student repeat the processes given every single time. The goal of the curriculum is to make sure that a foundation is laid that will serve well for a lifetime of writing. The curriculum includes a teacher's guide which includes step by step lesson plans, grading system and instructions on using the program. It also includes a set of worksheets (reproducible within a family) and a CD with word games, record sheets, presentation sheets, and a reading list among other resources.

This is not a "ready made" program in that you can pick it up and go with no advance preparation. Much work has clearly gone into providing you with a well-rounded writing curriculum (including poetry, word games, critical thinking component and more) but it still takes time to print out the materials needed for the week's lesson. This is also not a program that you can hand to your student and have them follow to learn the material--this is very much a teacher-directed program. This can be good--if you have a student that needs very specific direction and guidance and a nuisance if you have a student who is interested and focused but who merely needs reviews and guidance on structure. If you have a situation where the student is self-motivated and it is the teacher who needs the hand-holding this curriculum could well fit the bill as there is no way that one would not feel as if they have covered their bases when they have completed this program as it includes day by day assignments to go with the weekly in-depth lesson plan.

I will be honest. I do not think that this is a program that will work in our homeschool. Our life is simply too often unstructured and on-the-go. Considering the fact that I may be called away from school time for a nursing baby, a goat (or person) in labor or I may simply be away, selling goat cheese at market, we need something that is more student directed and that needs less planning prior to the delivery of the lessons. We need something that we can grab, toss in a backpack and teach 'on the fly' if you will. That being said, I can pretty clearly recommend the program for families that have a more structured schedule, and desire more formality in a writing program or who appreciate the assurance that can come from following a complete program that they have been thorough and 'covered their bases'.

The program includes the spiral bound lesson plans, the worksheets for the lessons and the resources CD. The program can be used with different levels so one level (1, 2 or 3) can be used for any number of children. Parents have the option of buying lessons 1-30 for $100 (for a very motivated student or a homeschool that is a smoothly oiled machine to complete within a year) or $65 for lessons 1-15 and later, $65 for lessons16-30. Instruction manuals and resource CD can also be purchased separately.

Updates

2010-11-08T06:35:00.005-06:00

It has been a while since I have posted updates, so here goes...

As I write this we have four baby goats in a bin in the living room which means that we are seeing lots of bottle feeding as in the picture here! We actually are not planning to keep many, if any, babies this year. We have never not retained any babies, but we have lots of work we want to get done in the dairy, some new cheeses we want to try our hand at, plus yet another senior in our home school so figured that this year might be a good one to "take easy". (HA!) Thankfully pretty much all of these babies are spoken for and going to good homes.

Katarina (oldest daughter) is still in New York finishing up her internship at a Lynnhaven, another goat dairy. She is working hard (hopefully learning that mom and dad are not all that unreasonable in the things we require!) and she is also working hard at cramming as much tourism in as she can on her weekly days off. She returns in December after four months away and we cannot wait to see her! (Or maybe the goats she is bringing home with her?)

Christin (21) is handling at least one market a week for us and generally helping to keep the farm running in Kate's absence. She is tending to herd health and general animal chores. And learning to drive. I have decided I would almost rather potty train a toddler than teach someone to drive. Almost.

Grace (18) is continuing to help greatly in the cheese making department. She is also the senior referenced earlier--she will make the third that we have 'graduated' from our home school. She is considering either vet tech or farrier for post-home school work.

Sara (17) is keeping things humming in the dairy--covering for her dad when he doesn't get up in time to milk before going to drive the bus in the morning as well as in the evening. We promised her a new, enlarged rabbit house for her birthday and we are still slowly trudging towards fulfilling that promise. Her birthday was in August. Looks like we could use some help. Anyone who loves farming in farmville want to come and try their hand at the real thing so we can get her birthday gift finished before her NEXT birthday rolls around? We can always use a few extra hands around here...

Linnea (14) is keeping us fed. She is in charge of the kitchen right now. She enjoys trying out new dishes and gets offended if we have anyone else try to cover for her if she starts running behind. She is a tyrant, though--breakfast is at 8, lunch at 12, dinner at 6. If you do not come to the table when called--well, you missed your chance. It doesn't matter if you are milking, or saving a goat's life--you missed the dinner bell, too bad. Clearly we need to work on flexibility and grace with her. Thankfully she makes up for it by keeping the kitchen clean and our tummies filled. (As long as you get there on time.)

Emma (12) is lending a hand in the processing room as well as keeping baby goats fed (which she loves). The processing room job means taking out the trash, cleaning up, organizing supplies so that the cheese and yogurt maker doesn't have to. When she applies herself she does a fantastic job. When she doesn't--well, she doesn't. She has done a fantastic job with the chickens. I wanted to get rid of the chickens. The dairy inspector frowns on free range poultry and I simply did not have the time to tend to them in a shelter (feeding, watering, cleaning, etc). Emma resurrected an old portable chicken shelter (called a chicken tractor) and has taken over the feeding and watering and egg collecting. She now sells the eggs to farm visitors and people at church and is very proud of her eggs and the care she takes of her chickens.

Timothy (10) is our dairy helper. This means that he helps the main milking person by running, fetching, handing and otherwise assisting. He also takes out the trash and other sundry tasks (like training his little brothers to torment their older sisters). Like Emma, he can be a huge help--or not.

(A side note--I mentioned in the last few posts having to work with some of the kids in areas such as diligence, patience, etc. Some who read this are reading of our children and feeling as if we need to crack down on those areas where they are not measuring up. Others who read this are likely aghast that we are having our children carry these heavy loads. We see it like this--we did not decide to have a large family in order to work the farm. We actually moved to the country and started the farm six years ago from the city. We started the farm because we had a large family. We did not look around and say "hey! Look at all this free labor! We might have something going here!" Instead we looked around and felt heavily weighing on us the responsibility to raise young children to become responsible adults of good character. We felt that having the opportunity to work hard and to play hard would best facilitate reaching these goals and we concluded that a farm could be instrumental in this. This is behind the responsibilities that our children have. They are not here to do the chores--the chores are here to help mold the children.)

Liberty (8) is right now a floater--we send her to lend a hand where-ever it may be needed. Sometimes this is the kitchen, sometimes picking up the property, sometimes entertaining baby Dixie. As I mentioned a few months ago, Liberty is slowly moving out of the "Princess" stage so she is taking baby steps. The good thing is that she has stopped fighting this transition, but she still is needing to learn to be diligent. (Don't we all?) Liberty to me personifies the difference between a city kid and a country kid when it comes to the baby goats. We brought babies to church yesterday because they needed more frequent bottles and no one wanted to stay home with them. The children at church (we still go to church in the city) were oohing and aahing over them. They wanted top talk about just how stinkin' cute the babies are. Liberty's first questions on seeing them are more pragmatic. "Who did they come from? Who is their dad? Has mom been milked yet? How much is she giving? Did they come out head first or breech? Have they had their colostrum yet?"

Noah (6) just learned this morning what a feather duster is! He is having fun with is and if he keeps it up it will be a huge help! Being on a farm we tend to have a fair number of flies. Which translates to a fair number of spiders. Keeping up with the dust from the outside and the spider webs inside is almost a full time job and I am thrilled to think that someone may want to tend to this job. As I said, though, he just learned today, we'll get back to you with an update in the weeks to come.

Judah (4) is a one man demolition derby. I fail to understand what he does and why 90% of the time. He has a habit of attacking people, animals, anything whose attention he wants with his head--literally head-butting them. He also is almost obsessive compulsive that he has to have a kiss goodbye before anyone leaves the property. Often not just one kiss, either. I guess one can never get too many kisses. Theoretically he helps clean up his room. It's a theory, anyway.

Seth (2) has to be our most verbally expressive child at this age. He routinely will 'discuss' issues with you saying "well, actually..." He is also a chocolate addict and when he wakes up in the middle of the night does not ask for a drink of water. He wants chocolate milk. In fact he will tell us "No, I need chocolate milk. From the dairy."

Dixie. What can I say? She is six months old now, Pink round cheeks, sweet giggles and attempts at being mobile. She is growing too fast and I am working very hard at treasuring these precious days because I never thought I would get another daughter and I do not imagine that there will be many, if any more.

Tim (wont share his age) is still driving a school bus for insurance. He is the face of Swede Farm. He does the website, makes the phone calls, farm tours and milks in the mornings. He also juggles the budget and the bills for which we are all very thankful.

I (LeeAnne--my age is Tim's minus one) work on many things and often feel like I am in the middle of a hurricane. Well...I guess not the middle for the eye of the storm is calm...so I will simply say that I often feel as if I am caught in a hurricane! Home schooling (an increasing amount done online), overseeing things in the dairy and milk plant (aka cheese/processing room), running errand, keeping us stocked up on essentials such as food for us, feed for the goats, bottles for milk, etc. I retired from midwifery this year, 23 years after I started training. I am reviewing products for a home schooling business, insanely volunteered to lead the 4H Vet Science group in our county and am seeing a ADHD coach. So far I think I am mainly providing him with entertaining diversion in the middle of his "normal" clients. The house is not what I want it to be, neither is the dairy, neither is homeschooling. But I am working on it.

In reviewing this post I think maybe that ADHD coach is worth something anyway, look how organized I am becoming--without even meaning to (during a time scheduled for something totally different) I inadvertently wrote our Christmas letter a full month ahead of time! Maybe I can actually get this one mailed out unlike the last five years...

Financial Accounting for the Goat Dairy

2010-11-03T21:05:00.002-05:00

I am a retired midwife now busy raising and educating twelve children while overseeing the day-to-day operations of a goat dairy. I am also someone whose check-balancing abilities leave much to be desired.

My husband Tim, while the owner of said goat dairy, in a previous life was a business major, manager of a rental car agency and spent approximately a decade working in pension administration.

So being no dummy, when we were sent Financial Accounting free in exchange for an unbiased review as part of the "This Old Schoolhouse" Review Crew, I handed it to Tim and said "have at it, sweetie!".

He did. I will share his assessment later in this review.

First, however, I get to share my overview.

Financial Accounting is what happens when an accounting professor at a university is also a homeschooling dad. Talk about the ultimate in bringing your work home! Produced by Professor in a Box, the Financial Accounting course features Professor Michael Licata from Villanova University. This course is formatted on 4 CD-Rom that include a lesson plan, lectures, slides in printable format, quizzes and tests (as well as all pertinent answers). The course is designed to be used in one of two ways--either as a full semester long course or as an abbreviated CLEP prep course. Frankly we will likely turn to this as a year-long course of study.

The course is designed for high school students who have a basic grasp of algebra. The student watches the lecture, completes homework, checks the answers and takes the exam. There is no heavy (and expensive) college text to plow through--the course is contained in it's entirety on the 4 CDs. The course can be repeated over and over for each child in a family, which makes the sales price of $99.95 an excellent value. (For those who really want to continue the theme, Professor in a Box also has a marketing course and coming in 2011, one on Entrepreneurship.)

For our family there was one major downside to the course--our children have never really been taught in a lecture format so for them, sitting down and absorbing college level material in a new manner of learning would prove to be a challenge. This does not mean that there was no applicability for goat farmers--we did end up having an intriguing discussion as to whether the dairy goats themselves were "tangible assets" or "natural resources". There were other applications appropriate to our business such as discussions of what constitutes "land improvements", including erecting fencing. (Speaking of which this reminds me of a job to add to someone's chore list tomorrow--we have a fence post that needs shoring up!)

Bottom line--the course was dry--but thorough, and it appears useful even for a goat dairy.

Unfortunately for us, the colorful graphics on the case convinced the preschoolers that this was something intended for them. This means that our first two CDs are badly scratched and the fourth one is missing altogether.

Tim was impressed enough that we will likely be buying another copy because he has decided that his accounting skills could use some refreshing--and he wants all of the older children to do the course with him--he thinks it will be very useful in running the dairy which is, I would imagine, what the creators of the course desired--a course that would have practical applicability in real life, be it CLEP credit or more effective home business management.

Food Stamps* at Farmer's Markets

2010-10-11T11:16:00.003-05:00

Short and sweet semi-rant--

I have been told by several farmer market managers that food stamps at markets really aren't necessary or a good idea because those who receive them aren't likely to want to shop at markets. I have even been told that due to the fact that items sold at markets are higher-priced items that it isn't appropriate to have food stamps (new moniker--SNAP--Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) spent on such higher priced items. (But spending them on higher priced items at Wally World is OK I guess?)

Nonsense!

Markets accepting the EBT card (Electronic Benefits Card--like a debit card but for food stamps) will...

1) Allow those who are economically disadvantaged to at least be able to provide healthier food for their children, breaking the cycle of sub-clinical malnutrition in those of lower incomes in our cities.

2) Provide more income for farmers, allowing them to remain farmers.

3) There are many farmers ON SNAP--wouldn't it be nice to allow them to shop where they sell rather than allow them to produce good food but have to buy sub par mass produced food?

4) Funnel federal dollars into the local economy.

Any others? I know that I may have more horses in this race than others as both a farmer that sells at markets and as someone who has been on these programs but surely there are more than four good reasons why this would be a good idea? Please feel free to share your thoughts...

*in the interest of full disclosure--I do not like the food stamps/SNAP program. I am conservative/libertarian enough that I simply do not see this as a role for the federal government. No one asked me, though, other than for a few votes here and there. So while we have the system--as a tax payer can we talk about making best use of our dollars here?

Neches and Nueces

2010-10-10T17:46:00.008-05:00

These two sweeties are Neches and Nueces. (Neches being the cream colored doe and Nueces being black.) Despite their appearances, they are twins, born from Grace's LaMancha doe, Lightnin'. This picture was taken when they were still within the 24 hour "you are little and cute and oh-so-small so you'd best sleep in the living room" period as evidenced by the red bucket (incubator for many a baby goat). It is understandable that they would be curled up together, after all they were just born in the picture, had just spent five months curled up together! The amazing thing is that Neches and Nueces have remained very attached to each other. They lay down together, get up together and it is rare that one is not on the milkstand without the other. Recently Nueces had surgery. Neches was standing by the fence when we left the farm with her twin--and standing there when we returned later that day. As Nueces recovered from her surgery, having a drain tube in place necessitated her being in a pen by herself so that no other goats would pull on the tube--so Neches slept on the side of the fence opposite Nueces, where they could be next to each other all night long.

Neches has what I think is our best ever home-grown udder. Udders are very important in the goat world--because they are what produces and stores the milk, a healthy strong udder helps make for a healthy strong goat and trying to improve on an udder in a bloodline can be important to help avoid lower production and infection in a goat's offspring. Neches and Nueces come from a line of great producers. Their dam's udder is functional, but beyond that simply isn't that great, neither is her granddam's and although Nueces has a very respectable udder and is a definite improvement, it is nothing on Neches'! I am so proud of that udder, it is a clear sign to me that we are on the right track, breeding wise!

The problem is Nueces.

As the size of our herd has increased as the dairy grew, Nueces clearly did not do as well n a larger herd. She seemed to feel like she had to be constantly proving herself and asserting her place in the herd--which was always smack-dab in the middle of everyone else! In a smaller herd she was sweet tempered and mild mannered. In a larger herd she was always out of sorts, picking on smaller goats, pestering larger goats--just not herself.

So we decided--for Nueces sake--that it might be best to find a new home for her.

But how to separate Nueces from Neches? (and oh! so hard to let that udder leave!)

We couldn't. So later this year Nueces and Neches are leaving to a new home where the new owner has assured me that she will keep them together.

It was the only way to handle it--but they will be greatly missed.

Weary

2010-10-07T21:11:00.003-05:00

Tuesday evening Judah was put to bed and I noticed tell-tale signs of respiratory distress. I had heard him coughing but not seeming to struggle so it was a bit of a shock. We tried Albuterol via an inhaler with a spacer to no avail. So it was off to the hospital of our choice (as per the pediatrician). I chose Texas Children's. There are many places closer but after spending much time there as a mom-of-many-asthmatics (many less asthmatics after moving to the farm but apparently some still fall prey to the wheeze on occasion) plus having almost lived there one horrid August when Sara had a brain tumor--TX Children's is my hospital of habit.

Except this time we stepped off the elevator into a lobby that should have been dead quiet and instead looked like a lock-in from hell.

So we asked for a quickie check of his blood oxygen level to see if we could chance a trip back out to Cy-Fair. We could and we did.

I got home just in time to kick the bed and mutter "Tim! Time to milk!" before falling into bed. He did, waking me up when he came home from driving the morning bus route. We then went to Conroe to get bottles for this weekend's milk and Chinese food and chat time for nutritional and emotional sustenance.

Then home for a nap for me--only for me to awaken to the realization that the upper respiratory bug that had assailed Tim and sundry offspring this week had gotten me as well. And Dixie to boot.

So we managed to make it through evening chore time, visited with Morgan Weber of Revival Meats when he came to pick up three of the Ossabaw Easter piglets, examined Linnea's injured eye then fell into bed--for stuffy-nosed Dixie to fuss and fidget all night long. So a second night of very very little sleep.

Woke up to Linnea's eye still weeping and red so off to the local pediatrician--then off to the Houston specialist who confirmed that she had a corneal abrasion. Interestingly in Waller they were more interested in admiring the baby than hearing how she hurt her eye (erecting a fence to protect her expanded Fall garden). In Houston there was much questioning and amazement over the fact that a 14 year old could and would garden. Antibiotic drops RX, myriad errands and business calls on the way home--now maybe to sleep?

To sleep, perchance to dream...???

Tomorrow--Noah's sixth birthday! The first baby born after we moved to the farm, he is our first 100% 'farm kid'.

LanSchool

2010-10-06T19:50:00.002-05:00

There are many different ways to implement a program of educating one's children. There are those who chose to implement a school-type setting in their homeschool, complete with desks, flag (for the obligatory pledge) and raised hands for questions. Others fly to the other extreme and allow their children to learn "unfettered" by the structure and requirements imposed by following a set curriculum--or even set hours for school. There are many who utilize computers in their homeschool, for many families most or even all of the instruction is done via computers. I have seen large families who have rooms where an entire wall was a bank of computers for each child to have their own computer work space.

It is for applications such as this that LanSchool is designed. LanSchool is "class management software". It is designed to allow teh teacher (in homeschools usually "mom") to oversee the work being done by their student (henceforth to be named "child") from a main teacher's computer. This allows mom to see when said child is visiting sites that they are not supposed to. It also allows mom to shut down said child's screen should they discover child on a site that they should not be visiting. Mom can use LanSchool to guide their child's research online as well as use it to "send" web pages that she has predetermined to be appropriate to the student computers--either collectively or individually. Children can ask questions of mom and receive answers on their screen. Additionally mom can blank out the student's screen and use it as a white board of sorts to teach concepts. Mom can see thumbnails of what each student is doing at any given point of time, give quizzes, redirect students. Mom can also take what one student is doing and make it visible for all students. This makes it possible for teacher mom to assess the amount of time being used by the students per subject matter to better be able to tell when the student has grasped the subject matter or when they are struggling with the topic.

At our home we do not heavily utilize computers. Our children's math is all online and obviously as they grow older, more and more research is done on the computer, but they do not use it for much more than short segments of time throughout the day. Furthermore, our computers are limited to two--the main desktop (in the master bedroom) and mom's laptop. The laptop does get pulled out when dad is doing the business books on the main desktop or another sibling is already doing math or researching something like an appropriate dinner menu for the upcoming Reformation party. For us at this time, this is not something that I would make much use of, other than the fun of blanking out someones screen or leaving notes for them. I could see that if one is utilizing computers for teaching more than one student at a time that this could be very helpful. I can also see that if mom is unable to make the rounds to check on what each child is doing at any given point in time (bedrest? nursing a baby?) that this system could be very helpful. We are contemplating becoming more computer-centric in our school in at least some subjects and this will make a convenient way to keep track of what each person is doing and the progress that they are making. There is also an application making it possible for the teacher's computer to be an iPod or iPhone--how cool is that?! The software comes with all the support that a mom should need to make this program work for their homeschool although I found the online tutorial alone to be a huge help.

The software retails for homeschool use for $99. This is for a perpetual license and three years of support and upgrades. As a member of the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew I received the product for free in exchange for this review.

"Life on the farm is kinda laid back..."

2010-10-01T18:59:00.003-05:00

Isn't that what John Denver sang in his song "Country Boy"?

Sounds good, but I am still looking for the laid-back part...

Up, chores done, review written for TOS, went and brought home 2 round bales of hay for the horses, pasteurizer pump broke with 23 gallons of milk in the vat ready to be bottled, cat had her kittens on Grace's bed, bottled said milk thanks to a loaner pump from the neighbors, took kids to Washington-On-The-Brazos, home to milk again and pack for market--oh and apparently Timothy decided that even little sisters need their scalp split by sticks once in a while and so Liberty got bopped on the head just as the oven burst into flames while pizza was baking.

I just love laid-back and relaxing days.

Ever Wonder "What Was it Like When..."?

2010-10-01T08:36:00.003-05:00

We recently reviewed the fictional book "Foundlings", book one of the Peleg Chronicles. As described by the publisher (Zoe and Sozo) "Foundlings, book one of The Peleg Chronicles is Historical Fiction that takes place in the time period of Peleg, soon after the tower of Babel dispersion. In its pages we meet dragons, giants, false priests, the death hunt, an under-city of the Dwarven Brotherhood, and many memorable characters."

I must admit to being somewhat cynical when we received the book. Unfortunately I have read too much poorly written fiction that seems to escape critical review simply because it is labeled Christian. This is unfortunate because as believers I believe we have the highest example of imagination and creativity to follow as we seek to emulate the creator of all. We should accept nothing less than truly exceptional examples of art of all kind because we work for a God who calls us to not only work for him but live for him. He created us to worship and I believe that we do this in the works that we create. Instead too much Christian fiction seems aimed more at providing a non-offensive alternative to the world.

All I can say is that I was prideful in prejudging this book. Period.

One or two of our children wanted to read this as soon as it came but we asked them not to. I wanted to use it as a read-aloud. We often do this with books that we feel may have ideas or doctrines that we do not agree with so that we may take the opportunity to discuss them with our children. My plan was to read this book over several weeks during lunch time. This plan did not work very well. Within the very first three chapters we were hooked. This book was read over a period of barely more than a week as it was read at breakfast, lunch and anytime that the kids were finished with their chores with minutes to spare. This book actually seems designed for reading aloud especially in that the chapters are not overly long. You can take this book in small bites or read more chapters at a sitting if you have the time. Additionally the author has mastered the art of keeping you hanging at the end of a chapter, which worked well for us to urge our children to be timely in their chores because they all wanted to know "what happened to...", the most intense time of desire to get back to the book coming as well put the book away after one of the characters ascends a stone wall only to pull himself over a ledge and finds himself at the end of a drawn sword. I was followed around by the boys and Emma (12 yrs old) alike asking "what happened...who held the sword...what did he do....?" until I finally was worn down and promised an additional reading for the day!

This book captivated our imaginations. It prompted us to revisit our ideas and assumptions of what the world was like in a shadowy time of history. It inspired to do all to the glory of God as we followed the characters through their days relying on God to bring them through. We do not fight dragons, here on Swede Farm, nor giants--but we do have to work with oft-times difficult animals and that doesn't even include siblings! This book was a good reminder of how we can gain confidence and strength and comfort by relying on God and turning to his word. There is Scripture through and through this book as the characters make the words of The Book their own.

In the spirit of Tolkien, there is also enough swashbuckling to keep even young boys in their seats for the reading--as well as intrigue which serves to keep olders engaged. The book prompted discussions about the nature of dragons and giants and witches.

The book does touch upon some hard subjects--it is one thing to read of references in the Bible of sacrifices to false idols and to later read of civilizations (such as ancient Corinth) that practiced child sacrifice and yet another to contemplate the actual horror of such when the proposed victim is named "Suzie" and is your same age. This and similar hard issues may make this book a bit too much for some younger children, and the overly imaginative may find themselves in need of extra reassurance against beasties.

Overall this book is a great read that prompts discussion beyond surface issues. Although I received this first book free in exchange for this review (it retails for $11.95), we will likely be buying the subsequent books of the series fairly soon--if for no other reason that we simply must learn what happens to Fergus and McDougal after they leave the protection of the walls of the city with the Lady Mercy!

This review was done as a part of the This Old Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Goat Profile--Tea Rose

2010-09-29T07:49:00.007-05:00

Tea Rose (called "Tea", pronounced "TEE-uh") came to us July of 2005, from Maine, of all places! I saw that she was for sale on an email list that I was on and liked what I saw--a finished champion, she had her milk star, denoting a good solid milker. (For those in the goat world she appraised 90 EEVE.) It seemed like she would be a good addition to our small herd (3 strong at that point) and my father-in-law offered to buy her as a birthday gift for me. We hired a livestock transport to bring her down to us and we were able to follow her progress on the two week long trip via email updates from the shipper as well as from folks along the way who saw her as their animals were dropped off. Several people milked her along the way and I got almost daily emails stating "whoever is getting the red doe--she is a beauty!" or "just milked that red LaMancha--she is wonderful, so sweet!" so that by the time she arrived I couldn't wait to see her!

She came off the truck looking rather ragged after 2 weeks on the road in the middle of Summer, but she quickly settled in and settled down to doing what she did best--making great milk and beautiful babies. She also came to share herd queen status. Each herd has a queen--but interestingly for those years we had Tea she shared that role with Nyla, our first goat. You could literally see them share keeping the younger goats in line. I would watch them as a younger goat did something that pushed their buttons, and Tea and Nyla would look at each other to see who was going to put the young upstart back in their place, teach them some manners. Sometimes it was Nyla, sometimes Tea, but they always looked at each other, seeing whose turn it was.

We liked what we saw so much that we kept a series of sons from her and used them rather heavily so that Tea is in over half our herd now. Her mark is clearly seen by her offspring's distinctive solid and strong body shape along with great milk production. Her sweet and friendly but undemanding personality is also evident in most of our LaManchas.

Tea Rose died in 2008. She was not very ill, just 'off', not herself for a few days, finally after we tried all we could think of we took her to the vet. The vet felt she had some kind of obstruction keeping her from being able to bring up her cud. He bragged that his new 'toy', a super-duper X-Ray machine would show us exactly what was wrong. He seemed embarrassed when he told us they didn't get a good picture, needed to repeat it. Then again. Then again.

Finally he told us that they repeated it because they didn't believe what they were seeing, assumed it to be a mistake with the machine, but it wasn't. Somehow Tea had ruptured her diaphragm, likely in headbutting another goat to keep them inline a freak blow to the chest did irreparable damage. They had never seen it before and could not believe that she was even on her feet! It explained why she hadn't wanted to lie down in the last few days--she couldn't breathe well that way! We put her down to end her suffering.

We still have her son, River, and hope to see many many babies form him in January--each one a reminder of our sweet Tea and the excitement and promise she brought to our herd.

Old Skills Rediscovered--or, the $29 Potholder

2010-09-26T22:10:00.002-05:00

From what I can see in many ways my parents generation seemed in a hurry to leave old things behind and press on to that which was new. I guess this is obvious, after all my parents came of age in that pivotal decade, the 60's, yet to me it has proven frustrating. It wasn't simply the old moral order and family structure that went by the wayside, with mothers working outside the home, families no longer meaning the obligatory one father, one mother, and sundry children--as we as a society grew in our modernity and self-conscious worldliness, old skills went by the wayside as well. Who needs to know how to grow vegetables successfully when you can have them flown in from across the world? Build a fence or a front porch? Why, who sits on a porch these days anyway? Sew? Knit? Crochet? Can those veggies you grew? Why?

As Tim and I chose a different path for our family I felt the absence of those forgotten skills. It felt like we were having to reinvent the wheel at every turn! It helped that we had my father here for the first four years of farm life--he had grown up on a farm in East Texas and had some skills he had retained that he shared (such as teaching Tim how to turn chicken from feathered and gasping on the ground to ready to be turned into dinner after the "Great Christmas Chicken Massacre"). He also built the best and sturdiest hay feeder this farm has seen--which had to be a sacrifice for him as he never quite understood why goats when we could have had a good cow or two? But the inside the house skills? I was on my own for that!

A few years back Tim and I sat chatting on the swing on the deck. We discussed how we were getting older and yet we still likely had at least half of our lives ahead of us. Adult children notwithstanding, perhaps there were some things we had always wanted to learn and never had had the opportunity. We challenged each other to chose one or two skills to learn and make our own. He chose playing the harmonica and...something else. I don't recall. It doesn't matter anyway, it was his to learn. I decided I wanted to learn to garden and to crochet.

I haven't made much headway on gardening. Seems every time I decide to start I find myself pregnant and nauseated. Or my father is very ill. Or my father-in-law is ill. Or we are starting a dairy. Or it is summer, meaning very very hot outside. At any rate, I haven't gotten far on that.

But none of those excuses applied to crochet, so I decided enough delay, I would start with that. I got books from the library. I watched videos on youtube. I made a vague request on facebook for anyone willing to trade crochet lessons for cheese. I realized that the books written that teach crochet all seem to be written by someone who did not recall what it was like to TRULY be a beginner and that videos are hard to focus on when trying to watch the yarn slipping through your fingers at the same time while trying to keep the toddlers from tying each other to the bedframe with the other end of the yarn. I also realized that I would be just too embarrassed to have someone that I actually knew see me fumble my way through their well-meaning attempts to teach me.

One day in search of cheesecloth (in my pregnancy induced muddle-headedness I had let the old cloths go unwashed and moldy when I carried them not to the washing machine but to the garage for some unknown reason?), I visited a quilt store in Bryan, Texas. It was a lovely place, full of colors and patterns enough to almost make me wish I'd chosen quilt making as my new skill. They also, as the helpful owner informed me as I was checking out, taught classes. One could even sign up for crochet classes, if I had friends who wanted to take a class with me? I had not friends in mind, but daughters, so once I had Dixie and had recovered enough to remember how to do most anything with a baby in my arms, Grace, Liberty, Dixie and I all had a crochet class. Dixie slept through it, Liberty wanted to know why she had to stop making chains and start actually crocheting, Grace seemed to enjoy it, and I? I was thrilled! All the bits and pieces I had read in the books came together. It not only made sense, it was so easy! The class cost $20 (per person, Grace and Liberty paid for their own), the supplies (hooks and first of many skein of yarn) were approximately $9 together, coming to a grand total of $29.

$29 may make for an expensive potholder that first day, but to follow was a set of super-soft washcloths for baby Dixie, dishcloths and towels galore, a super cute hat for Dixie, a large bulky crocheted basket that holds Dixie's "stuff" such as ribbons and bows, many headbands for the many daughters and now a super lacy pastel blanket being crafted for Dixie. Next on the docket is a hat that looks like a baseball for Noah's birthday, gloves for Katie and when I get up my courage, a sweater--for myself.

And I promise that any of my daughters that desire to learn to crochet will not have to pay strangers to teach them. Or any friends, for that matter.

Gardening...yet to come, though it is getting cooler...

Great Books!

2010-09-22T20:51:00.007-05:00

The subtitle of this blog makes reference to raising twelve children. Intertwined with the 'raising' for us has always been 'teaching'. We knew years before the our firstborn Katarina arrived that we would be homeschooling. Tim and I each received what could be considered a very solid education which included private schools for both of us as well as well rated public schools yet as we looked back over our time in school we both felt that there were large areas of knowledge missing, ways that we felt unprepared. As we grew into our roles as homeschooling parents we realized that not only that was homeschooling a natural extension of parenting we also came to realize that it was a fantastic means of filling those gaps that we perceived regarding our own education.

Our belief is that if we can create in them a desire to learn and put at their disposal the means to gain knowledge, that learning will be a joy. In light of the kind of education that we wanted for our children we were drawn to a teaching style that heavily uses primary source documents, biographies and excellent children's literature to teach history, philosophy and faith. A natural consequence of this approach to education is that our home is, shall we say, resource rich. We love books. Bookstores are one of our favorite places to go for relaxation and refreshment but even more than that we love library sales and although we delight in our acquisitions, we are often sad to see such wonderful old books leave the libraries for good, simply because they haven't been checked out enough probably due to not being "modern" enough. I fail to understand why a library would rather lose such treasures than highlight them and seek to make the next generation aware of them. They work so hard to build displays to one modern author of twaddle after another and pay homage to this cause or that but cannot make a single display to adventures and dramas of the past that might do far more to open one's eyes to the world than a display on "the world of chocolate"! That being said, even we have found it absolutely essential in the last few years to schedule regular "purgings" of our stash of books, lest we find the need to add shelves in the dairy to help house the exponentially growing collection, having outgrown the shelves in every other room of the house save the bathroom. (The bathrooms became exempt from holding bookshelves when we realized that the moisture tended to make the books musty before their time.)

That being said, when I learned we were to receive books from Salem Ridge Press we were pretty excited. They sounded like they would prove to be the kind of resource with which we love to fill our shelves and I was right!

Salem Ridge Press is "dedicated to bringing back children's books of the 1800's and early 1900's for a new generation of readers". While not every book is explicitly Christian, they are explicitly "moral" which stands to reason, considering the time period in which they were written. It may be hard to fathom that these books--with their detailed descriptions and attention to detail coupled with a scarcity of illustrations were actually children's books but this is a sad commentary on what we demand of our children--very little when it comes to reading and imagination. I like it when my children are forced to paint pictures in their heads rather than wonder how "Marie" will look when the movie comes out!

We received three books to review, one print book, the other two being e-books. The books that we received were "From Bondage to Freedom" and http://www.salemridgepress.com/gythasmessage.html by Emma Leslie as well as "Marie's Home" by Caroline Austin. "From Bondage to Freedom" and "Gytha's Message" are from the church history series. I expect them to be devoured when my oldest returns from her 4 month internship in New York as she loves church history. My goal is to keep her younger siblings from ruining them for her by divulging every jot and tittle! These two remind us how easy we have it as believers in this time and country. We like to tell ourselves that it is persecution when someone is less than polite to us when they learn we are a believer. No, persecution is what the characters in these books experience and they learn through it how to truly trust Christ. Beyond the faith lessons learned in these treasures, we also learn history in a way that causes us to think harder and dig deeper for understanding (what does it look like when a civilization crumbles?).

"Marie's Home" uses the time-honored literary technique of parallel story lines when a Marie receives for her fifteenth birthday, her great-grandmother Marie's fifteenth birthday gift--a journal. Whereas the first Marie's journal first came into her hand pristine and ready to be used, the later Marie finds it filled with harrowing and heartbreaking accounts of the bloody times that her great-grandmother lived through during the French Revolution. She also learns what it takes to have character and courage.

I read "Marie's Home", I have not yet had my children read it as I wanted to save it for when we study the French Revolution later this year. Sara (17) and Emma (12) read "From Bondage to Freedom", Sara twice as can be seen by the less-than-new appearance of the book when I went looking for it yesterday. Grace (18) claimed "Gytha" and gave it her whole hearted approval (after the observation "I don't think there has been a book written about Saxon England that isn't named Hilda!"). Each book we found to be deserving of a place in our homeschool and they will be used to supplement our history studies as we move through those periods of history in the upcoming years. (Even though we have now been homeschooling for seventeen years and have seen two of our children graduate we are guaranteed to repeat teaching historical eras as we have at least eighteen more years ahead of us thanks to baby Dixie who is asleep next to me as I type this!) Thankfully these books were enjoyable enough that I need not fear grumbling should anyone have to reread one of them--in fact Sara tells me that she has read "From Bondage to Freedom" twice already!

We received our copies free in exchange for this review by being part of the This Old Schoolhouse review crew. The books we reviewed retail from $12.95 for softcover to $24.95 for hardcover. For our household this might make the hardcover books a family Christmas gift as I suspect that they will be read many times and we try to get hardcover for books that we know will be loved for years as these will be.

Oh! And I also see that they have a new biography of one of my children's favorite authors, G. A. Henty. I think we may have just rounded out our Christmas list!

PLEASE give it back to me when you are done!

2010-09-21T09:47:00.005-05:00

I guess it is a good thing when the book that you are supposed to be reviewing is constantly disappearing, only to be returned to you with an earnest request that you return it as soon as possible. Character concerns regarding selfishness aside, it should likewise be considered a positive sign when the book is constantly being hidden so that one doesn't lose it to the siblings who are anxiously awaiting their turns.

How much more exciting is it when the book in question is technically "school"?

I recently received a copy of "Vocabulary Cartoons, SAT Word Power" by New Monic Books, Inc. to review as a part of This Old Schoolhouse review crew. As always, I received the book for free in exchange for this review, but the book typically retails for $12.95. As soon as the book arrived and was opened, the book disappeared. Rumor had it that Linnea had it. This was confirmed when Linnea approached me some days later with great indignation that "someone stole my book!". The book was found and returned to Linnea, with the admonition that it be returned to the sister who had "borrowed" it so that they could likewise enjoy it. Linnea agreed, but added the request that makes the title of this post. This was the typical scenario for this handy little book and one I relished seeing.

The book is, as is obvious by the title, a book designed to strengthen one's vocabulary. It is based on the scientifically proven and time honored principles of mnemonics. As explained in the introduction, "A mnemonic is a device that helps you remember something by associating what you are trying to remember with something that you already know". The publisher assures the parent that students that use "Vocabulary Cartoons" "score 72 percent more words than the student that used the traditional rote memory studying methods". It also claims that students tested several months later had a 90% retention rate for the words learned. The book teaches one word per page. The word and definition is highlighted and the link given. A cartoon is shown, along with a caption utilizing both the word and the link. Three examples of the use and variants of the word are at the bottom of the page. One word is "NOXIOUS (NAWKS shus) adj. physically or mentally destructive or harmful to human beings. Link: KNOCKS US. Below this is a cartoon of a woman walking down a sidewalk with men and skunk lying gasping for air behind her and the caption "Her cheap perfume was so NOXIOUS, it almost KNOCKED US out". At the bottom of the page are the examples *The NOXIOUS pollutants discharged into the bay by the paper mill killed all the marine life.* *The NOXIOUS waste produced by nuclear power plants is stored in special containers.* and *Bob covered his nose and mouth with a wet paper towel so not to inhale the NOXIOUS fumes of the fire.

After every ten words is a review where the student is to match the word with the definition and to insert the appropriate word (in varied forms) into test sentences.

My children really enjoyed this book. Period. They enjoyed the cartoons and they also enjoyed the challenge of the review quizzes. I will definitely be buying volume two for them, it may even end up as one of Linnea's Christmas gifts, seeing how much she enjoyed it. It is pretty funny to have to chastise your daughter for doing this...

instead of helping sort through the books on the shelf behind her for the annual Swede Farm book purge which is what she was supposed to be doing!

One reason why your Swede Farm milk costs so much

2010-09-20T10:03:00.006-05:00

We had to put Zelda down this morning. We are not sure what was wrong. I do not care to go into details, except to say that she was hale and hearty last night, but this morning at morning milking time she was clearly suffering and ill beyond recovery.

Animals get sick or injured and have to be put down. This is inevitable. It is also unpleasant. We could have carried her to the van or trailer, wrestled her in (she was a big girl, close to 200 pounds) and made a frantic drive to the vet, pulled her out of the trailer and let her be subjected to poking, prodding and handling. The poking, prodding and handling would have been extremely stressful for her but would have been acceptable if it saved her or even simply provided relief--but we could clearly see that there was little that we could do and if she was going to die, better it be in our arms here on the farm where she spent the majority of her life rather than alone in the back of the van as we hurtled over every bump between here and Navasota or surrounded by strangers at the vet office, should she have survived the trip (unlikely).

So we handled it ourselves.

This is a responsibility that falls to Tim. He bitterly resents this part of farming and every time it is called for it creates a serious bout of "why are we doing this?" It is such an affront to what we try to do, give our goats a good and enjoyable life. We pour so much of ourselves into analyzing every aspect of their life, what they eat, the vitamin and mineral supplements they like, even what treats they enjoy most (animal crackers and Black Oil Sunflower seeds). They are not often ill despite the fact that it may seem like more to readers of this bog because it tends to drive me to blog whereas the healthy and happy days often slip by without comment. When they are ill it can be very discouraging for us and to lose a battle can be debilitating, at least for a season. This is a part of farming that is far off and vague when you daydream about starting a homestead and raising your own food. It is a concept, not a reality at that point and it is easy to roll right over the question "what will you do when...?" with an answer that seems well thought out ("the vet is ____ miles away" or "I will not be lax to provide the relief that my animals need myself") until it is needed and the time is at hand. It is a responsibility that we thought we were prepared to handle but we were kidding ourselves--no one is ever really ready and if they find it easy perhaps they need to be in a different line of work because having to end a life should never be easy.

If this is a part of owning livestock that would-be farmers rarely focus on, I can guarantee that it is a part of the cost that is never counted by consumers. In a CAFO-type setting the animals are only numbers, income generators. The decisions are made based on what is expedient. This is why the products that come from those types of livestock operations are less expensive. The bottom line is more closely adhered to, no deviations for sentimentality or for compassion, no choices made that take away from the efficiency of the business. Choices like scrapping the day's schedule to hold and comfort an animal are made when the animal is named and known and valued for more than their production capacity.

Why does your milk cost so much? So that the goats are valued as more than dollar signs. So that you don't have to put down your own goats.

That's just the way we see it sometimes here at Swede Farm.

Things heard here...

2010-09-19T19:47:00.003-05:00

The boys were dragged in at dusk to get ready for bed.

Noah informed me (as he rubbed his forehead) "I just bumped heads with another goat!" (So now I guess my second son is a goat himself?)

Judah proudly held out a handful of greenery "I brought you some mint weafs!" to which Seth agreed "yes, mint weafs". They all informed me that they sampled them first "and they are yummy!"

It is nice having animals and acreage for them to enjoy, unlike the backyard that the girls were limited to when they were that same age. Now that I think about it, the girls didn't even get out to that yard much because there was a car wash that backed up to the other side of the fence and as often as not there was music booming with objectionable lyrics.

Life is good.

Perspective

2010-09-09T08:27:00.004-05:00

A few days ago I was walking from the dairy to the house. Liberty was walking beside me and I was carrying Dixie. Liberty asked to carry Dixie and I automatically started to tell her no, that she wasn't old enough but then I remembered that the family rule has always been that you have to be seven to carry a baby and Liberty is eight, so obviously old enough and I handed over the baby.

Watching Liberty carry four month old Dixie I was uneasy to see how small and young Liberty looked. It made me nervous to see my tiny baby in the arms of someone still so small herself. I literally had to keep reminding myself "she is eight, she can do this, she is eight..." and I wondered who on earth had come up with such a stupid and ill-advised age limit of seven in order to hold a baby? Obviously it was mom who made the rule, but what was I thinking?!

I remembered having this rule from very early on, I remember using this as a guideline when Linnea was born. I did the numbers and realized that Linnea would have been the first baby born when I even had a child old enough to qualify under that rule. When Linnea was born Katarina was seven. When Linnea was the same age that Dixie is now, Katarina was eight. As my oldest she undoubtedly seemed mature enough and large enough for me to say that seven was old enough to hold and carry a baby.

Liberty is not my oldest. She is likely not significantly different than Katie was in size or dexterity, so what makes her seem too young to hold a baby?

Perspective. I had no-one with whom to compare Katarina, she was the oldest largest, most mature. Liberty is the youngest (of Dixie's older sisters, at least), smallest and least mature of the older sisters. So although they are roughly the same size and maturity level, one was clearly ready for the responsibility and the other does not seem to be.

Then again it may have been the desperation born of needing one more set of hands when you have five children in the home all under eight years old!

For the record when Dixie was born we had five children under eight in the home again, but we also had seven olders who could help--and three of those five youngers were Noah, Judah and Seth. My hat goes off to those friends of mine who started off with all boys and had nothing but little destruction makers in the house--you have my admiration as well as my sincere apologies for any and all thoughts I may have had regarding any holes in walls, stitches needed, broken bones and nightly happy hours for mom!

Math Tutor DVD

2010-09-08T10:20:00.006-05:00

One of the questions that anyone who home schools their children will invariably receive is "what about ____________ ?" (Insert most loathed upper level course taken in high school.) This course may be science, such as chemistry or physics and when it does it is often centered around the perceived challenges of setting up a laboratory facility at the kitchen table, but most often it seems to be about math, algebra 2, calculus and trigonometry seem to be concepts which cause fear and trembling to arise deep in the soul of the most accomplished mom. It matters not that you may have managed an office full of engineers, or unruly preschoolers or presented cases before the most irascible judge in the county prior to taking on the mantle of homeschooling mom, the thought of teaching math seems to conjure up old, long forgotten anxieties.

I have never suffered these anxieties--mainly because my math phobias are so deep seated as to be laughable. Calculus? Trig? I struggle to explain place value to second graders! I manage enough math skills to be able to multiply pulse rates when at deliveries with my midwifery clients, medication dosages for goats or when multiplying recipes to enable them to feed the small army here at Swede Farm. I survived math in school, but I definitely did not thrive which means that I have a basic understanding of the how but not the why. Because of this I have managed to retain enough of my laboriously gained math skills to do the calculations that I need to function in my life, but definitely not enough to teach it. Me, teach math? The concept is laughable and scary.

Yet we have graduated two from high school and have one more as a senior. How did this happen with such a mathematically challenged mother? We have carefully researched and chosen curricula that tends to be taught by those other than mom, but rather through a well written and designed textbook or software. This is more than helpful in our home it is essential! Additionally I sought out math-minded friends who could troubleshoot for me when those oh-so-carefully chosen tools failed us, but obviously this fall-back method has it's limitations, although it would be helpful, I do not have a math teacher living next door with nothing more to do than explain concepts to my children and to be honest, even if I did I would feel guilty to utilize their skills more than one or twice.

When I learned that I would be receiving DVD to review from Jason Gibson, The Math Tutor, I felt guilty. Here we would be receiving (free of charge in exchange for the review) the fruits of some one's labor and I sincerely doubted that ours would be a good test home. I wondered if a home in which math is enjoyed and looked forward to might not be a better test home.

Once again, I was mistaken.

We received two DVD to use and review, "The Pre-Algebra Tutor, Volume 1" which retails for $34.99 and "The Texas Instruments TI-83/TI-84 Calculator Tutor", retailing for $31.99. When I finally forced myself to actually sit down and watch the DVD I was amazed! Jason explains concepts in a very simple and direct manner. No fancy animations to capture my attention, just a man and a white board discussing in simple words some very basic concepts--that he understood that the student watching may be scared or uncomfortable with advanced math skills but that he would be able to explain them in a manner that would enable the viewer to understand along with examples and enough problems to do that the concepts would be reinforced and thoroughly retained.

And he was right!

Jason Gibson has a very real talent in dealing with the math phobic such as myself (and many of my children). The Pre-Algebra lessons begin with his statements that the very word "algebra" is intimidating, but that he would walk through the concepts slowly. He explained that algebra (and pre-algebra) is like learning a foreign language with new words and ideas. That is obvious even to me. He then said that he wanted to viewer to simply "watch and absorb" the lesson before trying to actually use the problems--as if when you were two years old and learning language from watching and absorbing from those around you. What a wonderful idea!

I have to admit that I am embarrassed to realized that I actually hushed one of my children when they wanted to talk with me while I was watching a lesson. Jason really does explain concepts in a manner that is easy to grasp. As he explained concepts I was excited to realize that I understood them and that this really wasn't so difficult after all.

I do not think that one would call the Math Tutor DVD a complete curriculum. (Though it is possible that some math skilled families may be able to use it as such, I just know that we could not.) Instead I see DVD are rather like that next-door neighbor who doesn't mind being used to explain concepts that mom struggles to be able to express (or the regular textbook fails to communicate in a manner the the student can really grasp). It is a resource to take that textbook to the next level, from a class to be endured to skills truly gained so that the student does not need to feel that there are surely large gaps in their understanding (as I did) and that math is simply something that they "just don't get". These DVD are excellent companions to any math course and invaluable references for when teacher mom finds herself staring at a page in a textbook finding the words to express the how and the why of the problem eluding her.

And look! Jason also does geometry! And physics! With more advanced math coming down the pike. The website allows previews of selected lessons in each course. Additionally one can become a member and this allows significant discounts on all courses as well as down loadable worksheets, a forum to discuss the products and how one is using them in educating your children and access to all of the lessons online 24/7.

I just wish that these had been available to me when I was struggling through Pre-Algebra!

Community

2010-09-03T11:25:00.003-05:00

Recently while at a farmer's market I smiled at a woman passing by and asked "would you like to try a sample of goat cheese or our chocolate milk?

She turned her back on me. There was no way she hadn't heard me, it was clear that her response to me was deliberate.

I was unsettled by her response to a degree that took me by surprise and tried to discern the root of my reaction. As a mother of many I am adept at dealing with comments regarding very personal lifestyle decisions with what I hope is grace and humor. As a mother of a multitude of teen aged daughters and preschool aged sons I am accustomed to responses that range from bizarre to belligerent and as a midwife I am well practiced in letting the emotional responses of others slide off without bothering me. Yet there was no denying that this woman's slight did make an impact and I was at a loss in determining why.

Finally I realized that what was different about her response was not the response itself but the location at which the response took place. Farmer's markets are not just places of commerce. Markets have sprung up all across the country and I believe the driving force is not simply a desire for a way of buying groceries that are healthier for people and planet. I believe that markets exist because people are seeking a sense of community. When one lives in a town that is as large as Houston or Austin (or any of the many other cities across the fruited plain where markets have developed and thrive) one often loses a sense of 'neighbors' and 'neighborhood stores'. Mom and pop stores have been replaced by big box stores and the family doctor has been replaced by an internist, obstetrician, pediatrician, allergist, pulmonologist, ENT and chiropractor--all for the same family and "personal banker" has become nothing more than a marketing phrase. For those who have turned to markets for their weekly grocery shopping they also find a community. They can see the farmers every week, watch their children grow up, ask "how is Katie doing in New York?" Customers see each other as they chose which basket of tomatoes looks best and chat about recipes. For the farmer who often works long and crazy hours this community is vitally important. Customers become friends--often almost family. They are missed when they don't show up--at least to chat. I know for our family we have had customers who stop buying from us due to a change in diet but we still look forward to seeing them weekly to touch base with how the chapter in the book that they were writing in coming along and for others, seeing that tummy grow larger and larger to be replaced by--a baby! Overarching this development of community is a sense of caring, almost of commitment to participate in the community. When someone deliberately turns away at a farmers market it seems less a decision to not sample a given product--but more a decision to not participate in community.

I understand that there are many possible explanations for the actions of the woman with whom I had an almost-interaction. She may have been in a hurry, allergic to goat cheese or perhaps even deaf (though I do not believe so). The truth remains that the reason that it impacted me as it did was because it was so unexpected, a reminder of how the world acts outside of market and it felt like a violation of what market is created to do, something that is in some ways, holy. There is in the conscious participation of people to create community a sense of what we are created to do, to come together for the edification, the blessing of individuals. This is what we do each market day. It may be hard to see when market is hot and humid or even stormy, and when the person just in front of you in line got that last basket of tomatoes (or half pint of chocolate milk) but it is there, none-the-less, and can be seen when you look for it. There is also the opportunity to lift some one's spirits and carry their burden. I believe that we are all endowed by the Creator with not only the ability but the desire to give and to take in community and that when we chose to turn our backs on this and live in an insular world where we only interact to the degree necessary for our transaction to be completed that everyone loses something precious.

It doesn't have to be a farmer's market--as a Christian, obviously I believe that the same community thrives in church--or at least ought to.

But at any rate let me encourage you to seek community and to invest in it this week--and for the rest of your life. For the sake of all of us.

If I Was a Proper Mother...

2010-09-02T08:29:00.003-05:00

I would be bothered when my two year old preferred to be naked. In the front yard.

I wouldn't just sigh and say "put them on anyway, it's just the grocery store" when we discover that the only two shoes that we can find for four year old Judah don't match.

I would not try to reason that ice-cream makes for a healthier breakfast than most of the cereals on the store shelf. Especially if it is strawberry ice-cream (more vitamins) and especially if it is Blue Bell (more creaminess must mean more calcium, right?)

I would try harder to discourage my teen-aged daughters from discussing goat breeding in the potluck line at church just to freak out the boys.

I wouldn't encourage the kids that a barbie head makes a great car antenna decoration. (What can I say, we were studying the French Revolution...)

I would be bothered more by the items on the roof of the house.

I would be hunting for only the best educational toys rather than letting them be convinced that the 5 acres of woods are adventure enough.

Vacations wouldn't be focused around where we can pick up the latest addition to the herd. (the goat herd, this is not an announcement)

My children's favorite music wouldn't be from the 50's--the 1850's--and when asked who their favorite actor is they wouldn't answer "Errol Flynn".

I would sing "Jesus Loves Me" to my four month old baby, not the Coyote song from "Hank the Cowdog". ("We don’t give a hoot, we don’t ever wear a suit. We’re nothing but animals, outrageous cannibals, we don't give a hoot!")

If I was a proper mother...

I guess I wouldn't have twelve children.

Give that girl a prize!

2010-07-25T07:16:00.006-05:00

Eight years old seems to be a season of "prickliness" in my children, a time of transitioning, at least in the family's expectations, into an age when more responsibility is expected from you. Prior to this age any chores that are given are small, short in duration and usually single-instance jobs such as "Hey, Noah, can you come and help me, I need someone to hold this while I..." Starting around eight years, jobs become more structured and repetitive such as "I need you to make sure that you empty the bathroom trashcans each and every day, replacing the old bag with a fresh bag and also, please wipe out the sink, here is how you do it..."

Liberty is eight years old now, so she is in the phase of learning to be consistent and reliable in her jobs. We moved to the country originally because we wanted to grow character in our children and believed that having the environment for them to have the space to work hard--and play hard--would facilitate this growth. Liberty is suffering from "princess syndrome". For too many years she was the beloved and pampered baby girl, even though she had several younger siblings. Here at Swede Farm aka the Carlson household, children (and adults) are given monthly AOR, or "Areas of Responsibility" to tend to. These AOR may be as simple as "please keep the front hall picked up" to "make cheese for the month". For Liberty, the mention of her AOR is often met with much hand-wringing and moaning. We have had several conversations that have gone like this "I'm boooooored..." (Big mistake, as her older siblings know and Liberty is learning!)

"Liberty I cannot fathom why you would be bored, you have so much that you could be doing. In fact, have you tended to your area of responsibility yet today? I do not believe that you have. And if you are still bored after that, I have a list of jobs that need someone assigned to them, I'd hate for you to be bored, so I would be glad to help you out by giving you a few tasks..."

(Deep signs and almost--but not quite--foot stomping as she drags herself off to tend to her responsibilities.)

She is a fast learner, though, now she gets as far as "I'm bor...oh! never mind!" when she sees me getting ready to give her additional tasks to alleviate her boredom, although she did try on at least one occasion to tell me that she wasn't that kind of bored, she was the kind of bored that could only be helped by fun things to do.

Yesterday Liberty went with her older sister Christin to sell at one of our farmers markets in Austin. Frankly this assignment was made to spare the oldest at home the burden of dealing with Miss. Princess and her hand-wringing drama. I figured Christin would be too busy to be much bothered by it and hoped that Liberty could be of some assistance, not having ten acres to run off and play in. So when she climbed into the car after market I ask her "Liberty, did you behave?"

"ummm...no. But I did help!"

She continued...

"and I started to get bored, but then I decided that instead of being bored I would try to help Christin and you know what? I wasn't bored anymore!"

There may yet be hope for Princess Liberty.

Fun Times on the Road!

2010-07-22T00:16:00.008-05:00

As readers of this blog are aware, the title of the blog includes the phrase "How to raise twelve children, operate a goat dairy and deliver babies..." As you should know by now, those are twelve homeschooled children. We have always educated our children at home, having decided three years before our first child was born that we would do so. (Amazingly there was a time before children--I just do not recall it very well!) To be precise, all twelve of them are not being taught at the same time, two have actually graduated and three of them are really too young to be considered to be "homeschooling", although with a father whose motto is "life is school" there really is no time when they are not learning.

One thing that we do not do that often, is travel. Therefore when I received the E-book "Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others" to review I was unsure that there would be much in the material that would apply to our family. The E-Book is written by Donna Rees and published by The Old Schoolhouse and is available for $12.45 for immediate download. I received my copy of this E-Book for free in exchange for my review of the material as a part of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. In the past, prior to owning a goat dairy, we did more cross-country travel and I always tried to have a small bag or box with toys or coloring books to entertain the youngers and keep them from repeating the dreaded "are we there yet" ad nauseam. I expected the E-Book to be a pleasant reminder of the benefits of keeping the kids in the back row(s) entertained so that mom and dad can reduce the amount of Tylenol needed on the trip because no matter how well behaved and sweet tempered one's children may be, hours in close confinement can make anyone twitchetty and the effect increases exponentially with each additional passenger. (I did appreciate the honest recognition of how hard travel can be in the comment in the book that Tylenol could be a useful item to include in the travel kit for parents!)

I was taken aback at the length of the E-Book. Frankly I was hard pressed to imagine what could be said about the subject to fill that many pages! The first few chapters were pretty much what I had anticipated, an introduction to the concept behind travel kits and the benefit that they could be. There were specific things suggested to consider that made me see travel kits as more than simply a tool for parents and more as a thoughtful gift for the recipient such as considering the particular needs of the child, likes and dislikes and even creative packaging. A big floppy sun hat to hold goodies for a trip to the beach--what a good idea! The section on wrapping each gift individually was such an obvious one that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself, after all what child doesn't enjoy opening gifts and the sense of anticipation that would be inevitable with a mass of small gifts is undeniable. The book actually does exactly what it promises, offer many different--though simple--ways of blessing others and as such, has something to offer for almost every family and situation.

As I moved through the sections that delved more into specific ideas I was smug as I saw some of my ideas from years gone by mentioned--and put to shame when I read ideas I'd have never thought of before. Everyone has spent many a car trip trying to distract themselves by crossing off things on a list as they see them on the road, be they license plates from as many states as one can find or as many black trucks as can be seen. But the idea of making BINGO cards with the potential items represented and playing BINGO as you look for said items? A sense of competition keeps the mind sharp and minds that are thus engaged are far less likely to be engaged in devising ways to make your older sister squirm!

The book also touches on ways to adapt the ideas presented to other situations such as a travel kit for children to make for their grandparents, or a very special gift from home for a young adult away from home for the first time.

I found myself enjoying it more and more as my imagination started working on ways to take the suggestions and make them our own, until I thought "but how often will we use something like this? It isn't as if with twelve children and a hundred goats that we will be setting off for parts unknown anytime soon!". It is a mark of a well thought-out and creative book that I was actually prompted at that point to try and consider occasions that we might actually have to use such ideas and I was embarrassed at how simple it was to see a need right in front of me that I had never even considered--our weekly trips to Austin to sell our products at the farmer's markets there. To the adults on the farm the trip is simply a commute, a necessary part of bringing great products to great markets. To the children, however, it is over four and a half hours of car travel each and every week, followed by five hours outside watching (and sometimes helping) while mom and dad sell goat cheese. Yuck! (The day in general, not the cheese, the cheese, as always, is wonderful.) Inspired by the book, I was able to take the basic concept and make it my own. This will need to be a travel kit with staying power as I simply cannot create a new kit weekly. What I can do, however, is to start with a container that will work well for the needs of our vehicle and fill it with a "starter kit", in our case this will be a simple scrapbook and some basic supplies, along with a disposable camera. Each week this kit will be expanded both with supplies such as stickers and an assignment sheet for each week's market such as "how many pictures can you take of the different dogs that come to the market today?" or "interview one vendor today and write an article about their farm". Before someone cries that this sounds more like a school assignment than a thoughtful gift, let me assure you that my children love nothing more than exploring the market and talking to other vendors, this simply shapes their interaction with the other vendors. Market time itself has always been enjoyable for our children, implementing the ideas in this book will also make the travel to and from market not only enjoyable but--just maybe--educational as well.

Addition and Subtraction--Part Two

2010-07-21T22:26:00.010-05:00

In my last post I shared of the recent additions to the farm. It would be appropriate to share the subtractions as well. This is not a fun post to write, even though it is delayed by several months. Living on a farm these kinds of losses do occur; simply by means of the sheer numbers of animals and people we have living here we should and do expect to experience more losses than the average family. This does not make either experiencing or writing of the losses any easier. Nevertheless, I committed when I began the blog that those who read would not only get the amazingly wonderful parts of farm life with a large family, they would also get real life on the farm. So here it is.

We have been "in goats" for almost six years now. We have lost our fair share of goats due to age, illness, birthing complications and, sadly, predators. (Though no loss seems "fair" at the time!) We have even had a loss due to what we strongly suspect was a two-legged predator helping themselves to one of our young goats. One thing that we had never had was a loss of a mature milker due to kidding complications. We had lost kids before, but never the mothers. We counted ourselves blessed in this, but as time went on the prospect that once caused a shudder to go down my spine along with a silent "please, no losses of that kind, Lord" became a vague problem that happened in other goat herds, not ours, and my anxiety regarding such a situation faded away.

Then, in December of 2009 we lost a doe 36 hours after kidding. After piecing together the scenario we concluded (with the agreement of several mentors, both goat breeders and those in the field of veterinary medicine) that we had lost her to a tear in a uterine blood vessel. It happens. It was sad, of course, especially since the goat in question was Dawn, daughter Katarina's pride and joy, but we felt like we had handled it responsibly and that really there was little we could have done.

In March we lost a second goat. This doe was my pride and joy, Texas Rose, the black LaMancha pictured on this blog post. I had delivered her (it was a complicated birth) and later anxiously waited for a doeling from her. She liked to keep us waiting, first she didn't get pregnant her first year. Her second year she gave us two boys. Her third year she gave us two boys again! This, her fourth year she gave us a beautiful daughter, but oh! what a struggle it took! Her kids were seriously tangled. I was not home and the girls left here at the farm had to go inside her and rearrange tangled kids. (This is called a "train wreck" in goat parlance.) Within 36 hours she, too had died, in a decline that resembled Dawn's a few months earlier. Even this loss seemed to be explainable in the same manner as Dawn's death--even more so given the degree of manipulation that delivering these babies had taken. I was heartbroken, but it made sense, was rational.

Within a week we lost two more in the first days after kidding. It no longer made as much sense. With the number of losses we saw in a short week's time it was clear that something was seriously amiss. These goats were not the dairy does, the non-registered cross-breed goats that were added to the herd when we started the dairy, the goats that tended to be rangy, goats, adapted to almost anything that you threw at them. These goats were from our high end, fancy-pedigrees show herd, either some of the first goats that we bought or descended from these first goats that were expensive investments, the "race cars" of the herd. Two of them were even sisters, Texas Rose and Rosa Blanco, born a year apart from my beloved Tea Rose, a finished champion who was a birthday gift from my father-in-law in 2005.

When we realized that we were losing the third, and then the fourth, and that there was something else at work in this situation, we made the sad decision to have the does necropsied. (An animal autopsy.) The conclusions that were drawn from the examinations and the tests done were heartbreaking.

During the last few weeks of these goat's pregnancies we had been forced to temporarily change the hay that they were fed. The hay that we had to transition them to was lower in many key nutrients, most notably protein and calcium. These particular goats were not accustomed to non-high octane "fuel" This forced their bodies into a nutritional deficit that caused them to not be able to undergo the stresses of labor and delivery as well and set them up to be susceptible to fast moving uterine infections.

Basically they died due to our management decisions.

The fact that we had no real options at the time in our choices brings little comfort, these were animals that depended upon us and we were not able to give them what they needed. The other goats in the herd did not have the nutritional needs that these goats had been bred to have and as our herd size increased we lost the ability to micromanage for each goat that we had when we began in goats.

There are times when even now, four months later, that I still shake my head. I simply sometimes cannot grasp the fact that we lost two of three of my Tea Rose daughters, and four goats in total. I know that as we remain in goats, that these will not be the only goats that we lose, but having so many losses together, to a cause that theoretically could have been prevented was particularly hard. It is part and parcel of farm life, but still...it hurts.

Addition is always so much more enjoyable and fulfilling.

Addition and Subtraction

2010-07-16T20:56:00.004-05:00

I'd begin this blog post by commenting what a busy time of year it is on the farm.

Except that is it always a busy time of year on the farm!

This Spring was exceptionally busy. In addition to the usual baby goats being born, we also had a baby alpaca born, a sweet all-white baby girl whose fleece feels like one might imagine a cloud to feel. She was named Paris, in honor both of her owner's trip to Europe a year ago and, of course, the town in Texas, all things named on Swede Farm being required to have a "Texas" name.

On Easter Sunday we were surprised when Emma can running breathlessly in to the house yelling "Grace! GRACE! "Mrs." did it, she has babies!" "Mrs" is one of the female Ossabaw Island Hogs. We had seen no evidence what-so-ever that the male was inclined to do the manly thing and make babies, so we were totally caught off guard! She had seven but we lost two in the mud due to not being prepared. The five that survived have thrived. We are so excited about this! They say that there are only 200 Ossabaws on the mainland United States, they are a heritage breed that is extremely endangered and much desired for charcuterie. They are also the porcine stars in the book "The Perfect Pig" by food critic Peter Kaminsky. We are hoping to find Texas chefs and artisans who are interested in reviving interest in the breed because by developing a following for what the breed has to offer we hope to gain ground in preserving them. Essentially we think that by eating them we can save them.

Lastly, a few short weeks after Paris and the piglets were born, our own twelvth baby was born. Dixie LeeAnne was born healthy and whole at 7lbs 11ounces and is adored by all. Although we now have twice as many girls as boys, we were thrilled to have a newborn wearing pink in the house for the first time in eight years. She has been going to farmer markets since she was five days old and could well be considered a veteran by now, at an ancient eleven weeks old.

Those are the additions here at Swede Farm (along with the baby goats that we kept, named Frio, Santa Fe, Opelousas, Dick Dowling, John B. Hood, Bluebonnet, LaBahia and more!) Sadly we also had subtractions, having lost more than the usual number of milkers this year. That is the nature of farming, but it is never easy. We also managed to squeeze in a litter of kittens (for the barn) and Great Pyrenees puppies (livestock guardian dogs). So if anyone has a herd to guard...

WHY?! (or the difference between girls and boys)

2010-07-03T19:49:00.008-05:00

Every parent can share the story of how frustrating it is to live through the age of "why?". This is the age that tries mom's soul, with never ending questions that often cannot be answered--at least not to the satisfaction of the preschool set.

I have come to the conclusion that much of the difference between little boys and little girls can be found in examining the nature of the "why".

With little girls the questions are oriented around what they see and experience.

"Why is the sky blue?"
"Why does it rain?"
"Why can't I dig up the seeds to see how they are growing?"
"Why does ice melt?"
"Why do I have to take a nap because YOU are tired, Mom?"
"Why did my kitten die and why can't I keep it anyway?"

While these questions are wearying in the fact that they often lead to a second, third and fourth question and sometimes embarrassing in that they reveal large gaps in their parent's knowledge, they serve a very real purpose. These questions help little girls to understand the world around them and how they relate to the world.

With little boys the questions are oriented around what their beleaguered parents see and experience--in fact the questions are not asked of the parents but by the parents.

"Why did you flush your sister's barbie down the toilet?"
"Why are you stapling the refrigerator?
"Why are you trying to feed the baby crayons?"
"Why did you shave the cat's tail?"
"why did you stick a ladybug up your nose?" and lest we forget...
"WHY ARE YOU ON THE ROOF?!"

These questions serve a very real purpose as well. The parent asks these questions in a desperate attempt to understand what happens inside the mind of a four year old boy that causes them to become an entity bent upon dismantling things around him and pushing the edge of the envelope in taking risks.

These little boys are in search of the same understanding that the little girls are after--to understand the world around them and how they relate to the world. They just seek to gain their understanding in a very different manner than their sisters. The girls talk their way into understanding. The boys act their way into understanding.

The parents pray their way into understanding. Or at least into surviving.

How Did They Do What They Did?

2010-05-30T18:26:00.002-05:00

Considering that tomorrow is Memorial day it is worth considering the sacrifices that have been made by people serving our country. As you may know Swede Farm is named after our Uncle Arvid. A customer of ours brought back to my attention the biography of him that we have posted on our website. I went back and read through it. We tend to forget what things say as time renders our memory stale. Anyway I was clicking through links I had posted and noticed a link to a copy of the commendation for the HL Edwards on which Arvid served during WWII. Here is the text from the Secretary of the Navy:

“For outstanding heroism in action against enemy Japanese forces in the Saipan-Tinian operations, June 12 to August 2, 1944; Palau, September 6 to 29, 1944; the Battle of Surigao Strait, October 24–25, 1944; Iwo Jima, February 14 to March 9, 1945; and Okinawa, March 21 to April 18, 1945. Operating in the face of continued and persistent air attacks throughout five major campaigns, the U.S.S. HEYWOOD L. EDWARDS blasted Japanese shore emplacements, screened our attacking transports and effectively laid support barrages for amphibious assaults. On the night of 23–24 September, while on patrol duty, she detected a column of fourteen Japanese barges attempting to reinforce the Palau garrison and aided in destroying the whole group with its 650 enemy troops. During the Historic Battle of Surigao Strait, she gallantly led Section Three of Destroyer Squadron FIFTY-SIX in a coordinated night torpedo attack against the enemy’s Southern Force and rendered invaluable assistance in the utter defeat of these hostile units. In retiring, she made a thorough search of the Battle area and aided in sinking a crippled Japanese destroyer. At Iwo Jima she furnished continuous fire support for eleven days and during the Okinawa assault, spent 128 days on fire support and radar picket stations, conducting 350 bombardment missions. When several enemy aircraft attacked her fire support group, she scored direct hits on three of the planes and assisted in destroying a fourth, all within ninety seconds. Superbly handled by valiant officers and men, the HEYWOOD L. EDWARDS rendered distinctive service, sustaining and enhancing the finest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

Our Uncles portion of this was as a torpedo man. The original of this commendation, that Arvid received, is framed in our living room along with other reminders of his service. I often think about what he did and am fairly convinced that I would not be able to do what he did.

Iron Chef!

2010-05-25T08:55:00.002-05:00

Although we no longer have a television (other than to watch the occasional DVD), for a lengthy period of time we not only had a television, we also had satellite which enabled us to watch even more hours of vitally important programming. Besides the ever entertaining weather channel, seeing the neighborhood on "Animal Cop Houston" and getting cranky babies to sleep to the tune of the "Game Show Network", the television usually stayed stuck on the Food Network. Seems I have a batch of budding chefs here at Swede Farm. Terms such as "plating", reduction" and "chiffonade" not to mention the ever popular "throw down" became standard at our home.

With the propensity towards enjoying food related competitions and the fact that we are growing a small army of foodies, it was a given that we would jump at the opportunity when presented to serve as sponsor and place Swede Farm products in a local Iron Chef competition.

The mom and dad farmers decided to make it a date and attended, to the great frustration and jealousy of every single junior farmer at home, from age 22 down to at least 9.

The competition in question was held April 24 at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at our alma mater, the University of Houston. (Yes, I haven't blogged in a while. I've been busy, had a baby you know...)

The teams competing were comprised of students from Culinary Institute Alain & Marie LeNôtre and Houston Community College's Culinary Arts school. The rules approximated those of the television version, complete with commentary and explanation of the actions of each team by the capable and entertaining MC.

We were thrilled to see our cheese used as a component of a crème brûlée. The dessert dish which incorporated our cheese was the highest scoring dish in the competition! A night out, great entertainment, praise for our product and new fans. What more could one ask?

Houston Livestock Show

2010-03-11T12:28:00.003-06:00

We are right in the middle of the three-week long Houston Livestock show. We did not show any goats this year, though I'd have loved to. When we crunched the numbers the sad reality was that we simply could not afford the milk lost for the three days that the goats would be at the show. We are having a hard enough time meeting demand with all of the goats here, I am not sure our customers would forgive us if we sent a batch away for three days and were down that much more milk!

The girls are showing their rabbits, though. (We are not yet selling rabbit milk, will keep you posted on that one!) I am not actually sure what they are showing, maybe Mini Rex and Dutch? but this is Secretariat, a Californian. Oh, and Sara.

If you are at the show, stop by and see the buns--and the girls.

Pictures!

2010-03-03T13:56:00.003-06:00

Well, my camera has gone missing again.

No great loss, though, because we now have our own personal farm photographer! A few weeks ago we were contacted by a photography student from the University of Houston (GoCoogs !). She asked if she could use our farm as her project. Being the shy and retiring types we were hesitant to agree, but finally decided that our obligation to help a fellow Cougar outweighed our natural reticence to be in the public eye in any form or fashion. (We simply aren't the types to be public about who we are and what we are doing...it isn't as if we invite any and all to the farm for visits...or blog...or talk to thousands of people every weekend...or agree to have a movie shot on our property or be interviewed by varied magazines...nope, you'd never catch us doing anything like that!)

Besides the fact that Shannon has been great fun to have around, we are reaping the benefit of great pictures. The one posted here will likely be the next picture to go on the back of our next batch of business cards.

For those who will ask...Katie (21) is in the way back. The front row is (from left to right) Seth (almost 2), Liberty (7) holding aMiniMancha doeling , Judah (3), Noah (5). The row running diagonally right through the middle, from left to right, Sara (16) with her hand on Helga, Emma (11), Timothy (9), Grace (almost 18), me and my sweetie. (Not sharing our ages, sorry.) Linnea (14) is in front of Tim and Christin (20) is next to her holding her Christmas gift, Santa Baby. She wants to train him to pull a cart goat.

Thank you Shannon for such great pics! I am sort of praying that the camera is never found!

Babies!

2010-03-01T07:01:00.003-06:00

An unavoidable fact of dairy farming is that in order for the goats to make milk, they must have babies.

So, most of the goats on Swede Farm have babies once a year. We have worked hard to have goats that are desirable to other goat breeders, so many of the babies born on our farm are spoken for before they are even born. Most people who buy dairy goats want the babies fed by people 'moms', not by the goat moms. There are many reasons for this, too many for this post. Suffice it to say, feeding babies is a big part of our day during certain seasons and we are in one of those seasons right now.

These babies are eating from a "lambar". They suck on the nipples and milk is drawn up through a tube not unlike a person drinking through a straw. Last month Sara (16) and Emma (11) were responsible for feeding the babies three times daily. They quickly learn that the person walking towards them with a bucket in their hand is "mom".

These two white girls here are LaMancha and Saanen crosses from the batch of goats that we bought in Iowa this past November. The black dog in the background is "Charlie", a dog that was dumped on the property as a tiny puppy and has appointed himself the "nanny". He LOVES babies and is often found cleaning them and curled around them when asleep.

OH! Have to go...kids just ran in the door with three dripping wet babies--did I mention it is kidding season?

Edited to add--make that FOUR babies, the first quads ever bon at Swede Farm. Two boys, two girls.

Linnea

2010-02-28T17:24:00.002-06:00

I am a few days late, but last Friday was Linnea's 14th birthday.

Linnea is our organizational wizard. If I have a closet that drives me to distraction, I call Linnea. She is also ruthless at following schedules and chore charts...if it is dinner time and she is serving...you better be there on time or you starve. It does not matter to her if you were late because you were reading under the covers or if you were saving a goat's life. Yes, we still have lots of work to do in the area of flexibility and patience with her, but I honestly have to say that there are days when she is what keeps the farm running in some semblance of order.

She is also our most freckled child--in fact one long time friend who hadn't seen her in a while asked who she was, sure that she was a neighbor child.

She is a history fanatic (as most of us are, here at Swede Farm) but Linnea is absolutely devoted to the Civil War and can share the most arcane facts. She is absolutely absorbed by the idea of re-enacting and had her birthday not fallen on one of the busiest days of our work week, her day would have likely been spent at the living history farm about 30 minutes from our home.

She is also, as the picture shows, another horse person. Grace's birthday gift to Linnea was to let her ride Grace's horse, Cowboy. This is huge. Grace has been working with and training Cowboy since his birth and only recently started riding him herself. I am not sure that Linnea recognized the sacrifice and relinquishment of control that this took on Grace's part!

Linnea's birthday at the end of February kicks off birthday season at our place. With the exception of Noah, every birthday falls within a 23 week period. This means that once Linnea has her birthday, that we will have a birthday about once every 2-3 weeks--sometimes more than one a day. This gives a perfect opportunity for me to introduce everyone in the household as their birthday hits.

Don't worry--we won't expect you to remember all the birthdays--not even all the names!

Work Day!

2010-02-25T16:01:00.003-06:00

Call it nesting or Spring fever, it doesn't matter which. Bottom line, I have had it with the way that the property looks and the unfinished projects and so have called a "work day". I am seeing limbs picked up from a Winter's worth of wind and fences taken down and moved. Tarps are being replaced and toys picked up, while inside clothes are being sorted and stashed.

It's about time...hopefully everyone's energy can hold out.

Tonight we have not one, but two practices for Little League and tomorrow...Linnea's birthday!

Destructo strikes again...

2010-02-22T09:05:00.006-06:00

Destructo is Noah. Noah is five years old. Noah is responsible for at least 80% of my gray hair and, likely, 100% of the gray hair that I have seen recently popping up on Tim's head as well.

There is nothing he won't try to take apart and no challenge too great. No emergency room too obscure to deem worthy of a visit to be put back together.

He did a new one yesterday.

The master bedroom door and the door to the main bathroom are across the hall from each other. Both doors open into the rooms that they service.

I got up early to use the facilities across the hall.

When I tried to exit the bathroom the door could not be opened. Well it opened, just about four inches. I managed to look out the door and discovered that someone had tied a rope to the bathroom doorknob...and tied the other end of the rope to the bedroom door. The rope was short enough that when I tried to open the bathroom door it only had enough give to open a few inches...and if anyone in the bedroom (namely, Tim) had tried to open the bedroom door it also would only open a few inches. Trying to open both doors at the same time would have resulted in both doors opening even fewer inches. Pulling harder on the door only succeeded in pulling the knot on the rope tighter so that it was impossible to open.

And, of course, everyone else in the house was asleep. Everyone, that is, but me and the culprit, Destructo.

Thankfully Destructo is not spiteful nor mean, just, well, five years old. He had great glee in taking a knife and cutting through the rope to free his mom.

I just cannot figure out where they get these ideas, though?

I swear, I thought I knew how to parent...until the boys started coming. I really wonder, sometimes, if it is even possible to parent boys, or if the name of the game is really damage control.

Long time...

2010-02-17T07:40:00.003-06:00

It has been an inexcusably long time since I have posted. Never-the-less, although I won't call them "excuses", I can call them "reasons".

We had eight goats have babies in early December. We kept very few of the babies, but still, raising babies takes time and energy! In January and into February we have had seven more kid. Same story.

In mid-January Tim's 86 year old father (who has been living with us) entered the hospital for what was supposed to be a simple out-patient procedure. He is still in the hospital and everything is pointing to him not returning to our home. We are his only family. The hospital is 63 miles away. This translates to more time away from the farm than we like, but you do what you have to do.

Continued child raising and homeschooling.

Milking, pasteurizing, bottling product and going to five markets weekly.

Hitting the last trimester of pregnancy, meaning less energy.

We are getting ready for our real kidding season, with as many as thirty goats due from the middle of March through the middle of April.

Mud. It has rained hard at least once weekly for the past few months, meaning we are socked in with mud, making every job much harder and longer.

Lastly is the obligation that I feel to write something other than "hey folks, this is hard work! Great work, fulfilling work, but HARD work!" How exciting would that be to read, day in and day out? I have reminded myself that part of the reason for starting the blog was to both have a record for myself as well as to allow people to share vicariously in the day to day activities of the farm. I guess this includes hard, even mundane work as well. So, now that the camera (which once was lost and now is found--again, just yesterday--is available, I will endeavor to post at least one picture and some form of update at least every few days.

2010-01-19T22:43:00.001-06:00

This is a repost from last year in honor of today's Texas state holiday.

Today as a nation we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr Day. We remember the sacrifices made so that our nation could become more fully what it was intended to be, a place where all men are equal, and are not ruled by others but are the determiners of their own future.

Unpopular tho the remembrance may be, today as a state we also celebrate Confederate Heroes Day. We remember the sacrifices made so that our nation could become more fully what it was intended to be, a place where all men are equal, and are not ruled by others but are the determiners of their own future.

There are some who find the thought of this war distasteful. The thread of slavery is undeniably wound throughout the cloth. The fact that our state was involved in what proved to be a lost cause stings. Almost 150 years have passed since the war, six generations or more have come and gone. Embarrassment and the threat of being called racist or redneck have served well to silence those who find pride in their heritage leaving only those who write the history books to determine how we view our past. I think this is unfortunate. When we deny our heritage it serves to ensure two facts. One, that we will not take pride in and learn from that which is good and noble in our history and two, that we will not sorrowfully learn from that which was ignoble so that it may never be repeated.

To many in the South, the War for American Independence was still fresh in their mind. They recalled the stories told by their grandfathers of the battles and sacrifices made. They knew well the principles upon which the war was fought, to achieve freedom and self determination from a despotic government. Now they felt themselves to be embroiled in the same kind of struggle. They saw the increasingly heavy demands and controls by the federal government as akin to the tyranny that they experienced under England. The pivotal question to be answered was whether according to the Constitution the individual states or the federation of states as a whole were the higher arbiter. This was actually not the first time that states had claimed the right to secede and it would not be the last (if you doubt this, simply google the words "secede" and "states" and you will even find current secession movements).

In this time of questioning many men of Godly character found themselves facing unimaginable decisions. Just as their forefathers had to decide to follow the path of security at the sacrifice of their conscience or to follow what they felt to be right at the risk of their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, a new generation was called upon to make a similar decision. One of the most notable and visible in that generation was Robert Edward Lee. Lee was the son of cavalry officer Light Horse Harry Lee who was decorated by Washington for his service during the War of Independence. Lee was also married to the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. The family history of the Lees was inextricable woven with that of the nation. Lee was honored to be offered the command of the union army against the seceding states. Lee himself did not support secession, indeed felt it to be folly, yet he felt his supreme loyalty lay not with the overarching union of states but with his home state of Virginia. It must have been with an impending sense of doom that he watched support for secession grow, yet he never shirked from what he felt to be his duty, saying “With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword..."

In a time when our society is struggling with many challenges from both within the nation and forces without, what we need are more men who have the moral integrity to stand and do the right thing even at great risk to themselves. Today we honor, in two separate holidays, men who did exactly that, stepped forward to serve in their own ways, forever changing the history of their nation. It would be a grave mistake to paint the sacrifices made with the brush of relativism. Instead I challenge the citizens of our nation to look to the needs of our time and consider the words of Lee when he said “Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.” It is by recognizing honor and duty in those who have gone before us that we will be inspired to serve honorably and dutifully ourselves.

Dorie Does It...Sort Of...

2009-12-06T19:30:00.003-06:00

Dorie was the last to kid.

Dorie has somewhat of a checkered history here at Swede Farm. She came to the farm in March 2006. She was newly in milk and we needed a milker. We had recently acquired three new baby goats and none of our does were due to kid (and thus be in milk) until May. She performed her job admirably and we were pleased to have bought her. I thought she was lovely. My children found her most unattractive. When we had her appraised the ADGA appraiser stroked his chin. "Hmmm" he said "what an interesting goat..."

What?!

"I would love to see her as a five year old...she will either be incredible--or horrible!"

I was certain she would be wonderful. My daughters voted for horrid.

In 2007 she kidded with two bucklings.

In 2008--nothing. Then in the 2009 kidding season--nothing again.

This was not good. Dairy goats are made to make milk. Dorie was doing nothing but getting fatter and fatter. Not only was this not good for Dorie, it wasn't good for our feed bill to support an animal that wasn't producing. Finally we decided to give her one last shot and bred her out of season to kid late in 2009. And finally, she 'took'.

And we waited and waited. LaManchas tend to go earlier than other breeds, but Dorie decided that it was best to keep us waiting some more.

Finally this morning she was our last doe to kid.

After all that waiting it would be nice to see a doeling out of her...but no, she gave us two bucklings. Very nice, very healthy bucklings,but bucklings all the same.

I guess that is for the best. If we got a doeling I'd want to keep her and would be nothing but frustrated if her daughter carried on the same laid back approach to being a productive dairy goat.

Now we just wait and see if she is wonderful or horrible as a five year old--that will be in the Spring, when she will again be appraised.

Frustrations aside, I still vote for wonderful.

The Nubians decide it's time to get in on the action!

2009-12-06T14:41:00.002-06:00

We had nine due this week. Three Alpines, two Nubians and four LaManchas. All three Alpines have kidded and as of Friday morning, three LM has as well. The Nubians decided to get down to business yesterday. Mid-day, as Tim and I and the oldest two girls were out at farmer's markets, Dawn kidded. The Grand Dame of the milkers, Dawn has looked for teh past month like she had two barrels in her, end to end. In that incredible girth she was hiding two bucklings. She usually has triplets! And we have now owned her for almost three years without a single daughter to show for it.

As we were turning off the lights for the night, Maria kidded, a single sweet doeling.

Now we just wait on Dorie the ditsy LaMancha. And as I type this Grace and Sara came in to inform me that they think she may be pushing, they were going to check.

It would be so nice to have this round of kidding over and done with!

Lottie delivers...

2009-12-04T09:16:00.002-06:00

First timer Lottie (a LaMancha) had a BIG white boy this morning and is acting like nothing happened. She did great, I think she is a keeper! (She was anyway!)

Biggest news (to my children, at least...) SNOW!

The Texas goats (even those originally from Montana and Idaho) think they are dying, it is the end of the world, this white stuff coming out of the sky! The goats brought home from Iowa less than a month ago are reveling in the cold!

The Texas farmers, though, are dying. Sorry Houston, sorry Austin...you will have to find somewhere else to get your milk, yogurt and cheese--we are moving further South.

I hear Belize is beautiful this time of year...

And Princess follows suit...

2009-12-03T00:00:00.002-06:00

Lest Grace (who has been promising all day that Princess would kid today) be humiliated, Princess came through. A black doeling, that looks like Princess and a huge buckling hat looks like Reuben his daddy.

Maybe now we can sleep? Unlikely, with technically four more goats to kid, cheese to hang and baby goats to feed...

Aggie heard we were snickering

2009-12-02T19:33:00.001-06:00

and decided that she better get the show on the road. She had a single buckling--twice the size of any other baby that we have had born this year. Solid black and already spoken for.

Next on the docket? My money is on Princess...

Kidding update!

2009-12-02T18:20:00.001-06:00

Well Christin was right--sort of. The next doe to go WAS a LaMancha--but it wasn't Aggie--it was Yo-Yo Too, our Lucky Star doe. A doeling that looks just like her daddy and a buckling that looks just like mama. The girl is staying (one of the five doelings we will keep this year) and the boy is already spoken for. And Yo-Yo will be glad to be milked--she hasn't been pleased with having to walk around her udder for the past few days! From the looks of things she had better get used to it--I have seen pictures of her twin sister and she has a lovely udder.

Right on time...

2009-12-02T07:00:00.001-06:00

Today is the actual official due date for the 9 goats all bred the same day. One kidded on Sunday, then nothing. First thing this morning--two more baby goats. Twin boys. We already know the home that they are going to. Alpines. Christin's bet is that the next will be LaManchas--Aggie, a first timer is looking like she is in labor.

Best laid plans,...

2009-11-29T08:37:00.005-06:00

I had planned to finish the story of the trip to Iowa. I'll try to get to that in the next day or so.

Then yesterday I decided to post pics of the nine goats due this week along with descriptions, maybe even ask for guesses about who would go on to have what.

I may still do that, but it will have to be of the eight remaining goats due because Helga decided to get the ball rolling. No kids yet, but pushing right along...

Update: a baby girl that looks exactly like her mama and Helga did just great being milked for the first time.

Road Trip--in detail

2009-11-20T08:35:00.007-06:00

Earlier this month I mentioned that we were leaving on a road trip. We had the opportunity to drive to Iowa to pick up some new goats. Everything fell into place--the right time of year, the schedule allowed it...everything coalesced to make it doable, so we decided to seize the opportunity and do it.

The trip was tiring. Anytime that you drive for 8 or more hours each day when you are not accustomed to it will be a challenge. Making the trip with an often cranky and confused 86 year old and an often cranky and confused ancient livestock trailer only adds stress. But there is something intoxicating about the notion of setting off for parts unknown and seeing things outside of your day to day routine which makes up for the challenges so off we went!

We left on Monday the second of November. I was anxious about the weather on the way up but all reports indicated that the roads would be clear and the temperature...well, temperate! Accompanied by my two biggest shutterbugs, Katie (21) and Sara (16) we had to stop along the way and buy extra memory cards for the camera. As I expected, we ended up with more pictures than I will ever manage to wade through.

We saw lots of beautiful countryside, thanks to my GPS (named "Jeb" after the famous scout of the Confederacy). Jeb felt obliged to take me on every back road possible on this trip. He did this despite the settings being repeatedly reconfigured. This was fine and we enjoyed the glimpse we got of rural America except that there was an astonishing amount of construction going on on these back roads. Apparently the road construction segment of the economy is not suffering.

We saw the Mississippi from the town of Guttenberg, Iowa. This was actually our destination, where the goats were living and milking and crying out to be rescued from the impending winter. The girls enjoyed seeing the lock and dam on the river. It seemed like there would be ample to keep you busy sightseeing in the area for several weeks. Everyone was extremely friendly. When we discovered that not only was a headlight out on the van but that we had not one but two nails in one of the livestock trailer tires we asked Jeb to find us an auto repair place and he led us to Boubin Tire Co. in Manchester Iowa. I walked in and they asked what kind of a day I was having. I replied that that depended on if they could help us or not. They assured me that they would try, what was the problem. "I have a flat tire with a nail in it."

"No problem!"

"On my livestock trailer."

"No problem!"

"With ten goats in the trailer."

"oh...now that's baa-aaaaaaad."

Obligatory goat noise jokes out of the way they went to work, fixed it, got us on the road with fantastic customer service. Jeb had proven himself and was forgiven for all of the back route forays.

More to follow on the joys of milking your way across the fruited plain in motel parking lots...

Black Jack

2009-11-19T06:59:00.005-06:00

I am not a cat person. True confession. We owned a cat for 21 years, but still I could never really say that I was a cat person, for all the reasons that most non-cat people usually give. They are aloof, ungrateful, they walk on the counter tops...they don't wag their tails. When Yaz, our ancient cat died I swore--no more cats. I loved Yaz, but that was the extent of my interest in cats.

I soon had to amend that no-cat declaration. It seems when you store quantities of animal feed (especially grain) that you soon attract quantities of rodents. Cats being the obvious solution, I acquiesced to allow barn cats--strictly outside cats. Not pets, but tools, if you will.

When we developed a mice problem in the house I bent enough to allow one of the more friendly barn cats to take up occasional residence inside.

But I still didn't do cats.

Shortly before Halloween this year I was stopping at Popeyes Fried Chicken on the way home from taking a child to the doctor. (Their spicy chicken strips along with the best biscuits in the world has been a pervasive pregnancy craving.) As I sat in the drive through making my order my eyes caught a glimpse of a kitten. It was tiny and black and sat under the menu order board. I thought how that wasn't a very safe place for such a young animal--if the car traffic wasn't dangerous enough, there was the bait station of rat poison it was sitting on. Out of my mind, I told Emma to hop out and see if she could catch him--which she readily did. As she caught him a Popeyes employee came out the back door and, seeing Emma, started and said "oh! you have my kitten!" Emma assured the woman that she had no clue that the kitten belonged to anyone and would immediately put him down. "No," she was told, "he isn't really mine, I just call him that. Please, take him!"

So we did.

Scrawny, tiny and solid black the kitten came home with us. My husband thought I had lost my mind. I did as well. Named Black Jack after the town in Texas (all things on Swede farm requiring a Texas name) he spent the first week or so doing nothing but cuddling, sleeping and eating. Then he came alive. He has now doubled in size and though he will still cuddle (he and I shared my pillow last night) he has gotten well enough rested and fed to remember that he is a kitten and we are enjoying the insane antics that only baby animals display. Having heard dire stories of the fate that can befall solid black cats around Halloween, the plan was for him to stay inside until Halloween was past. It seems now that he is to stay inside, at least that is what I think the litter box signifies.

Judah calls him "Bad-ack". He also calls Kathleen (one of the other farm cats) "Caffeine" which I find particularly amusing.

I am still not a cat person. I guess I will have to call him a gnome or something. Oh no! Maybe he is a baby chupacabra!