Vaughnshire Farm

We have lots of stories and lots of things happening around here….like our last minute trip where we spent more time in the truck driving to our destination than we did at our destination…and more baby chicks…and the unexpected visitor the boys found sitting in the chicken nesting box…ohh, and our new CSA groceries…but alas, we have had limited computer time to journal these stories as of yet.  I hope to have a whole slew of posts coming up this week …

Our family website is up and running!  My husband and I will be blogging in one location from now on and all new posts and updates will be posted on Vaughnshire 

Over the next several weeks, I will be transitioning a lot of my posts over to Vaughnshire and any new posts that we make will be there…. 

See Vaughnshire for more details…. 

I will be posting a guest blogger post soon entitled “This Is The Way We Wash Our Clothes”.  I intend on having this blogger write other homemaking how-to’s in the future…so stay tuned…

Vaughnshire is our family website located at www.vaughnshire.com

We are working on posting articles specifically related to the farm, agrarian living, escaping from the corporate american rat race, reviving local community, and raising a large family in an anti-Biblical culture. 

We are just getting this site started and for now I am posting my articles about farm life over on Vaughnshire as well.  My husband is also posting…but we have very little spare time to revamp the site yet.  We are hoping to add lots of pictures and a detailed account on our exit from the regular ol’corporate american job to working from home on our farm.  As we are still in the process—lots more to come.  We hope to use the site as a journal for our children to be able to look back on with much laughter and praise to God for sustaining us through the good times and the bad. 

To sum up my life lately….  I am not completely unpacked although I am functioning and I found my computer.   I have been consumed with our new endeavors of farm life and am loving every minute…almost…of it.   

Soon, I will post some pictures and maybe give a virtual tour on life around here.  For now, I have learned that:

• We are definitely south of the gnat line. Flies and gnats are a normal part of life when you live next to cattle farmers.
• Cows don’t just moo….I can’t even begin to describe the sounds of a herd of cattle during a rain storm.  African Elephants come to mind. 
• NEVER buy just one baby turkey.  After trying to figure out what was wrong with this bird who was constantly distressing with loud continuous peeping sounds, we read, “Never buy just one baby turkey….they don’t like being alone.”   After a few days, this turkey successfully gave me a headache and irritation that made me want to return him back to the Farm and Feed store.  My husband said absolutely not…we would be known as the “new people who returned the turkey because they didn’t know what they were doing”.  I thought, “Well, at least we aren’t known as the people who asked the sheep farmer about buying some of his goats”  (…That is a true story that happened when we bought our little fixer upper house several years ago.  At least now we can tell the difference between a goat and a sheep.)  So after I came back to the house one day and found the turkey out of his box and wondering around my house….he soon found a new home in the shed. 
• My boys didn’t think twice about bringing a sunfish they caught in their trap into the house and making him a new home on my kitchen counter.  Needless to say, he didn’t survive the attempts of 4 boys to make him a new, better home in the house and died the next day.  My oldest son buried it in the garden and planted a bean seed on top of him.  We recycle around here. 
• Snakes and ticks are a part of country life…..at least in the south.  We have some guineas incubating at a friend’s farm and will be soon releasing guineas to hopefully help control the tick population.  
• I do not like pigs… They are feisty and unpredictable, but very fascinating to watch them use their nose to plow up the dirt — but more entertaining than that is watching your children chase the escapee piglet around the yard with a large fishing net trying to catch it.  It didn’t work.  They eventually decided to trap the pig using their opossum trap.  That, however, did work and the pig was returned to its pen after they repaired the problem spot in the fence.  It was two days before he got out again. 
• Dogs like to tear clothes off the clothes line and run away with your laundry. 
• I love gardening.  Even with the rocks and weeds, I love the work of cultivating the ground and watching little plants grow and produce fruit.  It slows life down and causes me to think about important things. 
• My little boys are more entrepreneurial than I thought.  They have been collecting “critters” around the farm to sell at the farmer’s market on Friday.  So far they have 2 tree frogs, 1 ring neck snake, 3 butterflies, a couple of bees and two salamanders that just escaped. 
• My first milking experience lasted 5 minutes before I gave up and headed back to the house.  My husband met me at the door pretty impressed at my milking skills until I told him it wasn’t possible to milk that goat.  He headed  back out the door with me so we could “try again”.  With his help, we were able to get a whole 6 ounces of fresh milk.  Just enough to be proud of and make banana bread with ;-)  More on that fiasco later.  If you have ever seen The Fox and the Hound movie, the scene where the fox disturbs the cow, upsetting the milk pail, sending the chickens flying up into the air and knocking the poor old woman off her milking stool….well, that was a close representation of what happened. 
• Every day is a stark reminder that, as a culture, we are a pampered, lazy people that depend on fat corporations to to take care of us.  Were we forced to live pre-industrial revolution lives, many of us and our children would die the first week because we have sucked off the teat of convenience, material possessions and a life of ease for far too long, which has turned us into a bunch of lazy, ignorant saps.  I am speaking to myself really.  I can’t tell you how many times I have said, “I can’t believe we are so ignorant” and then think  ”Wow…I can not believe how much work this is.”  Right after that thought comes the, “Wow, I am such a wuss.”  I have running water, a bathroom, a dishwasher, air conditioning, a refrigerator…… We have it so easy.  I caution myself almost everyday to not become so comfortable in my ease, that I magnify idleness.  I challenge myself to love and embrace work.  Work is good for the soul and body and brings me closer to God as I draw upon His strength instead of doing “things” in my own power. 
• Pioneer women deserve our utmost respect and the more I think about what my great, great, great grandmother’s did, it inspires me. 

Though we are far from growing our own food and living a life of family interdepenence, our goals are to be more self-sufficient as a family.  Our desire is build a family that is a light in our community.  We desire to communicate the old fashion idea of the importance of  family and community, which has been lost in our mega-society of mass corporations and fragmented families who can’t live without them. 

We are excited about the beginnings of the local farmer’s market here and while our family won’t be making a showing with tree frogs and butterflies, we soon hope to be taking some produce goods from our farm to sell in the community market.  Last week, I bought some fresh mixed lettuce and spinach that were absolutely wonderful and I didn’t worry about whether or not it had ecoli.  Another friend gave me a loaf of her home made bread that she baked in a ceramic pot.  It was delicious.  We are anxiously awaiting the garden produce that will soon be showing up at the market from various farms around the area. 

While we all do not have access to these avenues for supporting sustainable agriculture or the local community economy, I have found that there are a lot of people looking for this.  Even if you live in the city, it is not impossible to arrange for your meat to come from a farmer that grows pasture fed cows or chickens even if you can not grow your own.  It is exciting to see people starting to research and change how they eat and what kinds of food they buy.  It won’t take too many more food recalls before we all are seriously considering abandoning the globalized markets.  I am already there, however, still reliant on way too many things. 

Now that I have rambled on and used up my computer time for the week, I will close with saying:  I completed our new working schedule this morning and only allotted 1 hour of computer time on Monday.  My husband said I should add more time, but I couldn’t pull it out of the days yet, so for now, I plan on posting a journal update each Monday. 

This upcoming week is going to be a busy week for our family –actually, the next 3 weeks.  We will be preparing to move to our farm and as you can imagine, this long awaited moment, is producing great amounts of joy and anticipation from the oldest to the…well…next to youngest. 

Yesterday, we spent a large portion of the day out at the farm visiting with previous owners.  It was a cool, rainy day, yet the guys were able to learn how to drive the tractor and check out other things on the land.  We learned more about the house and spent some time getting to know some of the animals — for those of you who do not know, our animal ownership more than doubles — which is causing quite a stir around here from the children who have been discussing who is taking care of what animals.  The girls want to be the goat, garden and flower farmers, the older boys want to be the cow and chicken farmers.  The 6 year also wants to be a dog farmer (ha!ha!).  The 4 year old is insistent that he is going to be the pig farmer –which is fine with everyone since we don’t even have pigs.  The 2 1/2 year old argues with everyone every time they mention an animal by saying, “NOOO, ME! I do it!”, which is all the more funny when you know that she is terrified of the animals anyway.  My oldest son’s solution was, “We just need more children, because we have enough work for more helpers to be involved.”  All the children agreed with their oldest brother’s solution with a unison verbal agreement and the nod their heads.  I kept working on breakfast for an army and enjoyed listening to their planning talk over the kitchen table while they were waiting on breakfast. 

Yesterday, I took home some “how to” milk goat information and just finished reading a book entitled, “Raising Milk Goats The Modern Way”.  While I learned a wealth of information that I am sure multiplied my brain cells, or maybe fried them out???, I learned a slew of information that had me making out loud groans and moans along with detailed facial grimaces and contortions.  Believe me, I had no idea!

I can officially say that I have the book knowledge on how to disbud a goat and can tell you in detail how to castrate a buck;  the burdizzo method, the good ol’ fashion sharp knife method or the handy elastrator tool method.  You pick method, all can be done at the family farm!  You may grimace at that, but you should have read the book!  Coincidently enough, I became first hand acquainted with the metal elastrator tool the day before I read the book – the previous owners were kind enough to leave a box of useful and necessary farm supplies for us!  For that we are sincerely thankful for their help in our transition, I just realized that my “country girl” skin isn’t thick enough yet!  I expect that to change very soon, since I am married to a husband that can do anything and who believes in giving me the opportunity to do things that I don’t want to!

Back to the book:  More interesting to me, was the actual information on the milking part of raising dairy goats.  Being a breastfeeding mom, I was, as first, becoming a bit concerned on how much I could relate to the information being presented.  Engorgement, let-down, supply and demand, regular milking, problems such as mastitis….sounds familiar right??? I am actually very excited on learning about these milk goats and how to use the milk for our family.

As we busy ourselves with connecting loose ends here, we will soon be back up and running…although running a bit differently. 

For now, your irregular and sporadic blogger friend who confuses her readers with her wide rage of non-related post topics….

…brings new changes. Although I had already intended on having my blog readjusted by now, the duties of a stay (that means work) at-home mom are never ending and growing. The cold winter days are trying our sanity at times but brief jogs around the yard or a trip to the library have been welcomed life savers.

We have been spending a lot of time on getting our house organized with some days being productive and other days wondering where the show is for the work we did. Today was one of those productive days. My laundry mounds are now under control and the kitchen was finally lassoed in today. Some deep cleaning made my day complete with much satisfaction. My children produced some excellent work today in the areas of Bible memory chores, music practice, and schooling.

My oldest son spouted off an untold amount of ocean animal science facts to me all day in between serious reading marathons of reading a book called “Dangerous Water Creatures” from the Encyclopedia of Danger. He ended the day by announcing that he was completely resigned to never stepping foot into the ocean again. He is also currently reading an interesting book about a submarine in the Great War.

Supper time conversation:

All day today…these are the types of sentences I was bombarded with……Did you know that an octopus doesn’t have bones. Did you know that a sea urchin can go through steel. Did you know that a swordfish can sink a ship…..

At supper he says…Dad, Did you know that some fish are toxic…. Dad, did you know that a cone shell is worth thousands of dollars but it is fatal if you touch it! HEY, Did you know that a Weever fish stung a guy’s finger and he had to amputate it because the pain was so bad!!”

The 6 year old loudly chimes in, “Amputate means he had-uh cut off his finger with a knife.”

Around the boys, you start to hear multiple conversations about cutting off fingers, blood, fish bites and stings…etc….etc….etc…

I say….Ok..boys — NOT supper time conversation.

Obviously the book has captured their interest. And for their sister, who disallows them to use words such as dinosaur or dragon in her presence after 12 noon, she was not thrilled at such “interesting facts”.

So, for the mean time, I am much overworked and haven’t the time for computers.

Late Breaking News and Updates:

1.) We all celebrated with much joy and anticipation as we harvested our first bites of BROCCOLI from our winter garden. It was the best tasting broccoli, not only because our broccoli is organic, but things always taste better coming out of your own garden — hard work tastes so goooood!

2.) I discovered how to make mouth watering biscuits the other day and will be posting the easy recipe discovery. You do not know how exciting this news is, as I have been trying and failing to make biscuits for a long time.

3.) I have some other announcements, articles and pictures but will be posting more later….

As we are in the last minutes of 2006, we have been gathering, as a family, today thanking God for His kind Providence on our lives. We rejoice for a well lived year in 2006 and are grateful for all the abundant blessings and trials! We look forward to a new year in our Lord, 2007!!!

Proverbs 16:9, “A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”

Ask any mother who has boys and she will tell you a tale that is sure to dazzle you….a true tale of the mysterious wonder of what we call…. a boy! The simple fact is boys are different than girls no matter how loud the feminist scream! They act different. The learn different. The play different! They are not girls and neither should we try to put them in the “girly box”.

Having 4 boys of my own…and 4 very male boys, our life is full of interesting twists and events. I grew up in a family of boys so my experience as being a mother of boys is only a sweet continuation of the antics and experiences I had as a child. I love boys and their energy and vigor for life. I love the creative zeal and though I don’t quite understand how their brain functions, I appreciate the incredible vastly different set of wiring bestowed upon them.

Looking at the biblical roles of a man, you can see all the more clearly of why boys are the way they are. The are leaders, protectors, providers, dominion takers. They solve problems and fix things…They are aggressive…They are rough and tough…even at 3 years old. All this for a reason.

Feminism has sought to wage an all out attack upon our boys from the church house to the school house to even the home.

Kevin Swanson has a must read article on “The War Against Boys” in which he states,

“Today we sit in a “gender blender.” For parents with vision, for parents who take the raising of their children seriously, we must go back to the Owner’s Manual and define a vision for raising our sons and daughters.”

Mr. Swanson also has an online audio interview called The War Against Boys. Kevin Swanson interviews Christina Hoff Sommers author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.

If you have a boy, you need to listen to this interview.

So how do we protect our boys from this perversion? The family is the greenhouse for young children to grow and mature. Father and mother both play vital role in teaching boys. For the first several years, young boys generally spend most of their time with mom, however, as they get older, they need to spend more and more time with dad learning the ways of manhood. We know many home educators whose boys are completely home schooled by their father once they reach a certain age.

Even in the home school setting, it is important not to neutralize the home education of our children. The focus of education is teaching them the ways of the Lord and His design for their lives. Everything else flows out of that premise. In relation to boys, we use lots of boy related books and activities that promote healthy, moral boyhood and water the appetite for good literature and work. While many subjects and activities can be done with both girls and boys, I think that it is important to gear most of a boy’s home education from an approach that engages his masculinity and promotes his manhood from a Biblical perspective. In the same way, a girl’s education can easily be distinctly feminine.

Some ways to cultivate role distinctiveness in home education:

“How to” books are excellent for boys. Currently, the boys are working on making batteries from lemons, coins, foil and wire. They enjoy Henty books, books about catapults (thanks to this book we have three catapults in our woods), mystery solving books. Boys are interested in how things work, the nuts and bolts of something, in big bugs and mysterious animals. They thrive on adventure and conquest and dominion. Logic and solving problem books or activities inspire them.

Creative play with legos, wooden blocks and lincoln logs; simple things like ropes and sticks or more complex things like electronic or science kits are excellent for a boy’s mind. Our newly 6 year old built a house out of wooden blocks and wired it with scrap wire. He inserted a small flash light light bulb and attached it to a battery and wire to produce a house with a real working light. Boys will learn far more from this sort of play learning because it engages those boy brain functions that are dulled or lulled to sleep in a feministic environment.

In addition to the normal handwriting, phonics, spelling, one other way we promote education for our boys in a way they can thrive in, is by “Man School”. We started “Man School” in an effort to further promote healthy boyhood and education at the same time. We took the strengths and interests of boys and how they are naturally wired and tried to put together activities that they would not only love, but would learn from. “Man School” is not for babies or girls (the girls have Lady School). “Man School” is just for boys - energetic boys that are bursting at the seams to do something!

“Man School” may be sending the boys out to the back to work on their catapults they built in the trees. They have various “weapons”, i.e. junk, they have collected that sit disorderly around the launching site: A old cooking pot, a engine belt, a brick and about 10 other various items. In “Man School”, I might tell the boys to go out and work on the catapult but here are their assignments. I hand them a paper with these problems.

1. Write down each “weapon” you fire from your catapult.
2. What is the weight and shape of each “weapon”?
3. Write down which “weapon” went the farthest and why?
4. How many feet did it go? How many yards?
5. Write down the “weapon” that was the most ineffective and why?
6. Measure the length of distance each “weapon” went in feet and yards.

Other various problems may include measuring the circumferences of the trees in our yard and locating the biggest trees, drawing maps of them, calculating heights, identifying types and estimating age. Another “Man School” activity may be to measure the perimeter of the garden and to double and triple the perimeter by staking out their calculations using flags. “Man School” may be as simple as going to a business meeting with dad or working on a business plan. We are working to identify a host of other projects and activities that engage and challenge boys. Boys that work on this type of thing need not be drugged because they are forced to sit in a feminized classroom talking about how they feel about the rain forests.

Our goal is to produce powerfully effective manly leaders who understand their roles as men from a Biblical perspective, who protect women and children, who honor their elders, who fight for what is right and who despise wickedness and seek to do much damage to the kingdom of darkness. These are real men. Real men are not produced in the government feminist factories, they are produced, with God’s grace, by mothers and fathers who follow God’s pattern for the education of their children.

For further study on boys: (These are all web audios)

Created for Work interview with the author Bob Schultz (who has written a number of books on raising boys.) We are reading his book, Created for Work, to our boys and it is an excellent resource for encouraging the biblical work ethic.

Teaching Boys to Delight in Work - Applying knowledge to real life — something schools do not do!

The Youth Fetish and the Myth of Adolescence - Interview with twin 18 year old young men who run the website www.therebelution.com

Although we have had temps drop below freezing already this Fall, we have not yet needed a full time or mostly full time cold frame. Broccoli, lettuce and cabbage are doing very well here thus far. I have tiny broccoli heads on my broccoli plants and am anticipating fresh home grown broccoli soon.

Today my husband and sons work on a more useful cold frame in preparation for the freezing weather this week.

Below is useful son #4 taking a break on his toolbox.

Scrap wood pieces from the house we are remodeling were used to build a rectangle frame that he will staple plastic to.

I have seen a variety of cold frames made from different items….old windows can be attached to wood frames with hinges with the ability to be propped open during nice winter weather and closed for freezing weather.