a frame a day 2014

I take at least one photo every day. I have done this for the last three years. I cherish this collection of photos so much. It brings me pure delight to see our year in a frame a day. Here's a look at 2014. 

See also

 2013 

2012

Books I've Read in 2014

I really wanted to read more books than I did last year. It was actually a new year's resolution. But I haven't had as much time to read since moving to our homestead and homeschooling our kindergartener. Some days it's all I can do to stay awake until bed time because I'm so exhausted. It's an exhaustion that's a good exhaustion and filled with lots of joy, but I still haven't been able to read as much. So here's a look at this year's chronological list with a few little notes added after some of the books I read.

1. Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life by Shauna Niequist
2. Growing into a Farm: Before the Walden Effect (Modern Simplicity) by Anna Hess
3. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish (learned quite a few homesteading tricks)
4. Mud Season: How One Woman's Dream of Moving to Vermont, Raising Children, Chickens and Sheep, and Running the Old Country Store Pretty Much Led to One Calamity After Another by Ellen Stimson (very entertaining)
5. An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler (gave me new inspiration to cook that I haven’t had in a long time)
6. Adopting an Abandoned Farm by Kate Sanborn (written in 1891, loved the peacock chapter)
7. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
8. Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet by Catherine Friend (now I really need some sheep!)
9. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (I’m convinced a garden can cure most anything.)
10. A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations by Mother Teresa of Calcutta (such a wonderful little treasure)
11. All Flesh Is Grass: Pleasures & Promises Of Pasture Farming by Gene Logsdon (great resource)
12. Stiches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott (bawled my eyes out reading a few of the chapters in this book)
13. More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity by Jeff Shinabarger (What is Enough? such a thought provoking read)
14. Beginner's Guide to Sustainable Homesteading: A Simple Plan From Buying Property To Succeeding Long Term by Shelby MacArthur (very quick read, didn’t really learn anything new)
15. Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions by Rachel Held Evans (I love Rachel Held Evans.)
16. Cold Antler Farm: A Memoir of Growing Food and Celebrating Life on a Scrappy Six-Acre Homestead by Jenna Woginrich (as usual with anything by Jenna Woginrich,  I loved it!)
17. The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year by Spring Warren and Jesse Pruet
18. Life, Love and Vintage Housekeeping by Alison May (a fun, easy read)
19. Ten Acres Enough - How A Very Small Farm May Be Made To Keep by Edmund Morris (written in the late 1800’s but is applicable to so many things today)
20. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (for Book Club)
21. The Giver by Lois Lowry (for Book Club)
22. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (not my favorite)
23. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (read aloud with Seth)
24. Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading by Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone
25. The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom by Mary Griffith (thought provoking)
26. Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World by Ben Hewitt

Christmas 2014

This Christmas season included...

a nativity parade, caroling, 

 and an ugly sweater party

crafting homemade presents

silly family photos

 

a special Christmas Eve service

 

a few simple gifts

  

and our annual Happy Birthday, Jesus party

We hope your holiday season was filled with as much love and joy as ours.
Merry Christmas!

Happy Winter Solstice 2014!

On this darkest day of the year, we embrace the new season. Here's to eating dinner by candlelight, slowing down, and gaining strength to hit the ground running in Spring. Happy First Day of Winter!

from the {Little Barn Kitchen}

 a peek at what I've been cooking and we've been eating/drinking...

{Drinks}

 stinging nettle tea combined with a bit of honey

 

{Main Meals}

venison, homegrown potatoes, cooked (local) apples, and (local) tomato slices

  

pumpkin risotto with leftover venison, sheep's milk cheese, and peas

  

pork burger (local), mashed (local) potatoes, green beans, 

homemade with (local apples) applesauce, and homemade bread

 

(local) lettuce, (local) apples, (local) bacon, pecans, and olive oil 

 

{Snacks}

gluten free Chex Mix

 

 beautiful (local) apples turned into applesauce

 peanut butter cookies

{Gratitude} Lately

Every day I look around in amazement at all the 

beautiful, yet simple, things that I'm so thankful for.

Lately I've been grateful for...

 rooftop adventures and brave little boys

 

 cool kids

 

 two parades in one weekend

 Monday afternoon rituals

 little ones making connections all on their own

 

and second floor library shenanigans 

Our 2014 Christmas Tree

We have a full size Christmas tree this year! 

It's the first time in two years.

We cut it down from our own yard. 

We even bought a few new ornaments.  

It's not the prettiest, and it was a little painful to decorate, but we kind of love it.

Gobble, Our Thanksgiving Turkey

I made a couple of secret resolutions at the beginning of the year. I kept them to myself because I wasn't sure if they were even possible to fulfill. I wanted to move to a homestead in the country and I wanted to raise a turkey for our Thanksgiving meal. As you know, we made the move to the country. We also bought a few week-old turkeys at the beginning of the summer. All of our turkeys had names. We nurtured, enjoyed, and loved them until the day before Thanksgiving. Gobble, a bourbon red, was the turkey we chose for our Thanksgiving meal.

We did the harvesting and processing ourselves. It was cold. It was messy. The whole process took a while. Taking the life of an animal will always feel uncomfortable and it should be.

For the past few years we have known where our Thanksgiving turkey was coming from, but this year, that place was just outside our back door.

from the {Little Barn Kitchen}

If you have been following the story of our family, you know that we made a huge shift in the way we eat a few years ago. I have documented those changes, and we have settled into a completely gluten-free and mostly dairy free diet for our family. I get questions often about what we eat, and at first I didn't want to write about it in this new space, but so many have asked. 

(I'll have to take more photos of what we eat in the future.)

The big change this year was our shift from buying mostly local foods to actually raising some of our own! It's what we want to do and the reason we made the move to the country. We did still have a CSA share from Rough Draft Farmstead, and we still purchase our meat (in bulk) locally, but we might not have to do that much longer. We have BIG plans for next year! 

So here's a look into our kitchen and at some of the things I cook and we eat...

{persimmon jelly}

(We have a persimmon tree.)

  

{gluten free bread}

{gluten free short bread cookies}
(These were pretty, but didn't taste too great.)

{rosemary, blackberry ginger ale}

{stove-top popcorn}

{potato soup}

(made with coconut milk and sheep's milk cheese)

{gluten free apple pie}

{Gratitude} Lately

Every day I look around in amazement at all the 

beautiful, yet simple, things that I'm so thankful for.

Lately I've been grateful for...

afternoons splitting and stacking wood as a family

 

quaint, little polling places and the freedom to vote 

 

 leaf piles with Nana

 

a decorated mantle

 and for new haircuts that also provide others with hair

Farm-Girl Essentials

With the shorter days and farm chores that can't be completed before it gets dark, a headlamp is so helpful. It's been added to my farm-girl essentials list, for sure.

Little Barn Academy: Our Kindergarten Schedule

  

This fall we officially started Kindergarten. I've been teaching Seth (and Silas) since they were two. Initially, I documented what we did every week. Then I documented every month. As much as I loved doing that, and I did, it just wasn't possible once we started homeschooling.
We started Kindergarten the last full week in August and it has been wonderful. Both boys love to learn, but I couldn't have imagined how peaceful teaching and learning would be. We stick to the same basic schedule Monday through Thursday, and only modify the time we start on Thursdays (I attend a women's Bible study on Thursday mornings so we do school after 12 and into the afternoon) or if some crazy event happens. Seth also attends a Kindergarten class at a local Co-Op on Fridays.

I chose Five in a Row for our guiding literacy curriculum. We've been learning sight words, working with word families, and working through First Language Lessons. We also try to read at least an hour a day. We already finished the Kindergarten Workbook A in Singapore Math and are working on Book B. We will work through the first grade book in the Spring. We also try to read a story from the Bible each day and I have been reading aloud the book The Story of the World. Next year, we will read through it again and will also work through the workbook/activity book that goes with it.  We do art and music and crafts and field trips as they fit in with what we are learning each week.

So here is our basic schedule:
-Prayer/Bible
-Read through our Five in a Row book of the week (we read the same story every day for 5 days)
-Do Five in a Row related crafts or activities
-Play Break  (outside if possible)
-Journal (Seth writes one sentence of his choice and draws a picture to go with it.)
-Handwriting Practice
-Play Break/Skill Building
-Math (calendar, counting to 100, math games, workbook practice, etc.)
-Reading The Story of the World
-Reading books aloud
-First Language Lessons
-Play (outside if possible)
-Read (we read off and on the entire day, everyday, even on weekends)
-Play

We begin our day between 8:30 and 9 and are usually done shortly after our lunch. Our entire schedule is flexible though. If we are working on an activity and we want to continue with that, we go with it. That is very different from my classroom teaching days! It is so nice to have the freedom to work on something all morning and not feel pressure to work on something else just because we have to follow a rigid schedule. We can work until we finish or need a break. If Seth catches on to something really quick (say in Math) we can move on to the next thing. If something needs to be cut from the day, the history and language lessons are the first to go. We try to cover everything else everyday.

The teacher in me will probably always worry about whether I am teaching everything that I need to be teaching, if I'm lacking anything, or if I'm doing too much. But my role as parent helps calm that fear and that's the beauty of homeschooling. I love the idea of unschooling but that really doesn't mesh well with my personality and teaching style. I also love the thoughts of Charlotte Mason and with a bit of tweaking I'm trying to lean more towards that.

Each year we will learn and figure out what's best for our family. If Kindergarten is any indicator of the years to come, I can't wait to teach these boys of mine. It always has and always will be the best job in the world!

{Gratitude} Lately

Every day I look around in amazement at all the 

beautiful, yet simple, things that I'm so thankful for.

Lately I've been grateful for...

Friday breakfast dates with this one

faces of amazement and a hermit crab named Speedy

 a new gluten free restaurant in town

 tooth powder and the special friend that made it

 an afternoon spent with a kindred spirit while 

popping garlic (for planting) and picking persimmons

 and time spent lounging in the hammock with a good book