If your dog has been sprayed by a skunk

1. Get your dog RIGHT IN THE TUB. Do NOT let him walk around the house while you read this. This was the biggest mistake I made. The house smelled like skunk for weeks.

2. Grab 4 items and get to work:

• Murphy’s oil soap (dish soap if you don’t have Murphy’s)
• baking soda
• hydrogen peroxide
• vinegar

3. Apply the 4 magical items in this order and put each round on without rinsing the previous round.

1. murphys oil soap–scrub it in where ever the dog got sprayed.
2. baking soda–really scrub this in, and let it sit for 5 minutes. I used an old cleaning brush to scrub it in.
3. hydrogen peroxide–I poured this on the brush then scrubbed it over top of the baking powder. Let this round sit for 10-15 minutes.
4. vinegar–this is the final round and can be rinsed off immediately.

What to do next

If your dog is rid of the skunk oils at this point (surprisingly Bixby was) brush his teeth a few times. (I actually did that while we were waiting in the hydrogen peroxide stage.) And, of course, while he’s in the tub, give him a quick bath to hopefully get off all the smells.

If after one round of these cleaners you can still smell lingering skunk oils, repeat all 4 steps. As many times as needed.

What else can you do?

There are many other simple solutions that are, I’m told, pretty effective and I wrote about them the first time Bixby danced with a black-and-white stripped friend a few years ago. Read all of those ideas right here. (Why oh why didn’t he learn?)

But–true story–when Bixby got sprayed tonight I pulled up that old post of mine to remember what worked best the first time and I got confused trying to quickly–under stress–find the info I needed sooooo I thought this topic was worthy of a simple, straight-forward post laying out the best way we’ve found for dealing with the nastiness when a dog gets sprayed by a skunk.

It’s bound to happen.

Of course it’s bound to happen when you live rurally and you have a dog, but I kinda hope Bixby’s done dancing with his black-and-white-stripped friends.

If you’d like to know how I trained Bixby to be an amazing homestead dog who never chases the free-ranging chickens or ducks, I’ve written the full scoop about that and I have printables in my Resource Library as well.

Now if I could only train him that the skunks are off limits.

Other Articles You May Like:

Other Skunk Smell Remedies

5 Steps to Training Your Dog to Be Friendly with Free-Ranging Chicken and Ducks

10 Things You Need to Know Before You Get a Barn Cat

Bixby’s Favorite Things

Talk to me!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. And please tag me on ig to introduce me to your favorite pooch (whether he or she has or has not tangled with a skunk) @souly.rested.

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Our latest barn-cat momma cause quite a stir, and a bunch of worry, around the farm this week, so I thought I’d share the story.

Meet E.B., barn cat momma extraordinaire

The momma is a deep gray, green eyed, valuable mouse-capturing member of our farm crew here on our New England homestead. We dubbed her E.B., tongue in cheek after E.B. White, since she’s deep gray and always on the hunt for Stuart Little for breakfast. And she was proving to be a fantastic new momma to her litter. Until we realized her over-attentiveness was a problem…

Six weeks ago, E.B. had chosen what appeared to be the quintessential best corner of any barn attic to ever give birth to five sweet kitties. We discovered the balls of cuteness nursing contentedly in what we call “the dark room,” in the attic above our old carriage house. (Go here if you’d like to know what a carriage house is in an old New England farmhouse.)

Some previous owner of our 200-year-old farmhouse had built a closet area in the attic that quickly became “the dark room” for my daughters, who set up a screen printing station in the pitch-dark area–as a perfect little room for drying emulsion, without any chance of light exposure.

The small, tucked-away, contained area must have seemed ideal to E.B. who had her kittens best interests at heart, wanting to control their wanderings and keep them safe. And it seemed ideal to me too. Until earlier this week, when we all panicked.

We thought the barn kittens were blind

One afternoon, while checking in on the balls of fluff, we toted them all to our warm kitchen, to let them stretch their legs. That’s when noticed their eyes looked odd and they didn’t acknowledge the movements of our hands in front of their faces.

And, at almost 5 weeks old, they had little desire to explore their exciting surroundings. When they did take a few timid, very wobbly steps, they had their little noses to the ground, relying on their sense of smell like a dog, and quickly hid behind one of the many safe-feeling barriers around our farmhouse kitchen.

Ideally, at about three weeks old, kittens start to explore their environments, and momma encourages her kittens to learn from experience. She’ll sometimes make a strange sound to call back those who have strayed too far. By a month old, the kittens should be “walking like the big cats,” then playing, jumping, and climbing by six weeks.

But this litter of barn kittens had been completely sheltered by momma and subjected to complete darkness for 5 weeks.

Studies of blindness in kittens

I immediately did some googling and got more worried the more I read. The abstract of this study explained, “visual experience early in life is critical for the refinement of retinal circuits and for appropriate signaling of the spatiotemporal properties of visual stimuli, thus influencing the response properties of neurons in higher visual centers and their processing of visual information.”

And another study explained, “When imposed within a critical period that ends at about 10 weeks of age, darkness exerts severe effects on vision”

We moved the litter to a nice spot down in the barn, planned on watching them closely in the days ahead, and hoped that by removing them from the total darkness their eyes would learn to work properly.

Within an hour we realized E.B. had moved them all and panicked when we realized they were not back in “the dark room.” We spent the next half hour hunting high and low and finally hearing a whimpered tiny meow between the floor boards of the barn. Then we spent another half an hour finding how to rescue them from the tiny obscure pocket in the floor that their momma had deposited them. I have no idea why E.B. was so intent on keeping them tucked away in darkness, but I’m sure she was protecting them in her mind, because she’s attentive to their needs, leaving them only when it’s time for herself to hunt for food.

Once we managed to precariously rescue all the kittens, we carried them back to the kitchen, in a basket, to evaluate them as well as our next move.

They barely moved in the basket, stretching a little but not attempting to climb out; very unusual for kittens their age. They did seem to “look” at things but we quickly realized they were responding to noise, not light.

We relocated our kittens, to a well-lit area

We tried, successfully, to feed them milk with a medicine dropper while googling more and reading that sometimes some sight damage can repair itself and often poor sighted kitties can adapt, so we knew we needed a plan to help these precious little balls of timidness as best we could. At first we thought it would mean separating them from momma (since they could drink milk on their own), but we quickly came up with a better plan. We wanted them to have momma’s milk if possible, as well as her valuable instruction, teaching them to hunt for food in the weeks ahead, knowing they would never have a productive life if we simply sheltered them more.

So we found an old dog cage and made a litter box and set them up on our front screened porch and prayed their eyes would start to improve.

By the time we had done all this, and spent a lot of time cuddling and playing with the kittens, they very slowly had started to explore our kitchen.

By the next day, they were exploring the front porch a little more and sniffing the ground less as they did so, all the while their unsure wobbly legs getting stronger.

All are now doing well

We are still checking in on all often, and letting E.B. out whenever she asks, although she seems content to use the litter box if we don’t notice her request. When she goes exploring, she always returns in a half hour or so and wants back in with her kittens. Realizing she was unable to move them elsewhere this time, and also realizing they were indeed contained, she has settled in well to her new, temporary abode. Which is exceptionally odd because of all our barn cats, E.B. has always been the most independent and the one who hated ever being forced inside.

By the end of their first day living in the bright natural light of our front porch, the kittens appeared to be seeing better. If their vision is less than perfect, and they have just adapted, I guess we’ll never know, but I’m confident we realized the problem early enough that all are going to be fine.

Raising Barn Kittens–5 things you need to know

1. Kittens are blind for the first 7-10 days of their life.

So their location can be totally dark at that stage and all is fine. In retrospect, I would have, of course, intervened in E.B.s choices many weeks sooner than I did. It just never crossed my mind that vision can’t develop in total darkness.

2. Barn cat moms can be determined.

When you take them out too young, or take them where momma doesn’t want them, be prepared that she may hide them away. Really well. In retrospect, I would have been more creative that first time that we moved them or at least never taken my eyes off of E.B. until I was sure she was going to settle in fine to the new location.

3. Barn cat moms can make big mistakes.

Think about where momma has them, whatever stage their at, and relocate them (with watchful attentiveness) if it’s not a good location. On one hand, I still will always trust a momma’s instincts at first, but on the other hand, I now know from experience that animal mommas will err, just as us human mommas sure do from time to time, yes?

4. Excessive darkness can lead to blindness in kittens.

I feel so inadequate that this never crossed my mind. I often thought what a great, safe haven E.B. had made for her littles. Since I never thought of this problem, I assume you may not either, so please take my warning and learn from my failures.

5. Give barn kittens lots of love. Often.

Whether their sight is perfect or not (due to being new borns or stuck in darkness), handle kittens often, pet them, and play with them. We do this weird thing where we will constantly turn kittens onto their backs and make them lay still in the crock of our arms for a few seconds. No idea why we first started doing this, except maybe it protected us from random kitten scratches. But it’s turned out to be a great way to get the kittens used to being handled by people, which has been invaluable to friends, family, and neighbors who have adopted our kittens. They’re great hunters (therefore earn their keep around a farm) but also cats who do well around people. We pride ourselves on raising friendly barn cats who don’t mind sharing their barn with people.

Meet Some Other Newborn Kittens

Meet our very first litter of barn kittens, many years ago here on the farm:

Other articles that will encourage or help you:

12 things to ask yourself if you think you want a farm.

My mistake that killed my hens.

A big mistake I made when incubating eggs.

The attitude you must have if you’re considering homesteading.

4 questions successful parents ask themselves.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth… Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. Isaiah 11: 3-5

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

The post Raising Barn Kittens… 5 things you need to know first appeared on Souly Rested.

Last month I told you about a gorgeous dozen roses, three jobs, three lessons learned, and a dozen great ways homesteaders can make money. All in one post. Right here. But I left out part of the story. That’s what I saved for today’s post.

(Oh, and if you just want to dive into those 3 tips for setting homestead goals, scroll to the bottom of this post.)

What BHAGs Are and Why They’re Important.

This part of the story is all about setting goals. And here’s where I draw out my words all nice and slow–in true Paul Harvey fashion– “Here’s. the rest. of the story.”

If you just clicked here for the 3 tips for setting homesteading goals, scroll to the bottom. But here’s my story of setting crazy goals (and succeeding… eventually…) after way too many mistakes to count…

So two of those jobs I took on last year? They came about in baby steps. Tiny steps towards huge goals I set for myself. But how did little ole me–blogging away in no-where-ville, rural New England–get to that point, that I had publishers vying to print Sweet Maple and made friends with Jill Winger, of The Prairie Homestead?

It’s simple. I set goals.

Okay, I set three goals.

Okay, I set three ridiculous, crazy goals.

But I wrote long ago about BHAGs–Big Hairy Audacious Goals–and how I always encouraged them in my children throughout our crazy amazing, impossibly difficult journey of homeschooling. (Read about BHAGs and kids right here.) So why not set some for myself, am I right?

Why I Did 3 Ridiculous Things.

First, after I had only been blogging for a short time, I asked Jill Winger–of the hugely successful, wonderful little corner of the internet known by millions as The Prairie Homestead–if she’d like to share a new post I had written with her readers, cause I had found an amazing solution to a huge homesteading problem that we were personally facing. And I legitimately thought maybe I could help a few folks if anyone ever actually read it.

Goal #1? I decided very early on with this “homesteading thing” that I was going to use my failures to help others.

It turned out Jill loved my post. Because my failures at dog training led to my eventual expert-status in the very same area, andJill saw great value to what I was writing about. She shared it with her readers that same week. Go here if you’d like to read that post.

But don’t skim by that little paragraph and miss the whole point… the point that totally transcends little ole mistake-making Michelle, or hungry dogs, or chicken-flavored, feathery dog snacks… the crux of the story is that our failures can lead to wonderful consequences. If we work hard and set goals to make it happen. If we make sure to not waste the pain, or loss, or grief, or embarrassment and instead use it for good.

Even so, you might not see “the good” for a while.

__ __ __ __

“A Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is never about instant gratification.”

__ __ __ __

Other than the biggest traffic day in my little blog’s history up to that point, it seemed like not much really “came about” from that BHAG of mine back then. But that’s not what BHAGs are about… immediate gratification… they’re about being in something for the long haul. And that initial little reassurance that if I just kept on learning in the midst of my failures and if I just kept on being transparent and sharing what I was learning, well I was on to something. I truly could help others. And some days–few and far between back then–a few folks (who weren’t relatives) would actually read things that I wrote.

SOME TIPS ABOUT SETTING UP A BLOG

If you’re considering starting a blog but need to save every dime, like I did, you can design your blog yourself. I designed this site myself, using WordPress and choosing a free theme I liked (the hard work was already done for me and didn’t cost a penny) and going to WPBeginner when I had questions. They offer great helpful info like this: 40 Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them. Then I searched long and hard and did months of research to choose my hosting provider. I chose Hostgator. (If you’d like to know the other providers I considered, I explain more right here & in this article as well, about How I Make Money Blogging.)

I should say, you don’t NEED a hosting provider with WordPress. You can use a free domain and have .wordpress.com at the end of your website address. That’s how I started out. But as soon as I started learning how to do much more with my site that wasn’t allowed with the free domain, I had to find a hosting provider.

After being with them almost 5 years, and having to call them and have one of their awesome tech support folks “hold my hand” through some issues, I can honestly say I made a great choice with Hostgator. Go here if you’d like to know more about them.

Goal #2? I decided no timeline was too long when it comes to the important goals. (For me? It was my childhood dream to see my name on the cover of a book.)

Years after training Bixby to behave with the chicken, I was determined to finally see my true lifelong BHAG come to fruition.

I had no aspirations that a publisher would want to purchase my little ole book about what I’d learned while failing miserably at making maple syrup here on our homestead. So I read everything I could about self-publishing, and sat down and wrote my book.

This is where the second crazy thing that I did with Jill Winger comes in. I asked Jill if she’d be willing to glance at Sweet Maple–back when I was almost ready to push the button to self-publish it.

__ __ __ __

“I have no idea what gave me the audacity to ask such a thing.”

__ __ __ __

When I got the message from her that she was in love with my book–the photos, the lessons, the stories, and the recipes–well, I just about cried. When she went on to say that she was going to write an endorsement for me? I did a jig in my muck boots… Right then and there… In the juniors section of Kohls… With my teenage daughters right beside me. Yes, I embarrassed the heck outta them. But that just makes the story better, cause I live for moments like that.

Am I saying all you need to do to be noticed is to bug some influencers? Heck no. This was years after Jill had shared one post of mine. And both things that I approached Jill about were intense commitments that I had worked hard and agonized over a lot… daily training Bixby for three long months, and making syrup, taking notes, learning all I could for many long years (then spending two more years in the long process of documenting it all and creating amazing maple recipes and designing a book). No it’s not a quick step to fame to bug some influencers and get their ear.

And, honestly, all along, I just kept failing at all kinds of homesteading efforts. And I just kept learning more. And I just kept writing. For almost 5 years now. And little by little, folks like you realized I had a few worthwhile things to read. And my number of followers grew.

Goal #3? I decided it’d be pretty fun to share something delicious with a new friend.

So then, right before I found myself in the midst of 4 different publishers vying to print Sweet Maple (but that’s another separate story of crazy hard work and outpouring of God’s grace), I did the craziest thing of all.

I sent Jill one of my favorite recipes that I was printing in Sweet Maple and asked if she’d like to include it in her cookbook that I knew she was currently writing. And guess what? Well, you gotta check out page 158 of The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, (which you can preorder now btw, at that link) for the rest of that delicious story that culminates in some wonderful maple sandwich bread.

But I didn’t learn to make amazing homemade bread overnight.

In fact, it was a crazy long process of trial and error. I really wish I had had another baking expert right there with me, showing me the ropes and saving me tons of heartache, wasted hours, and expensive chicken scraps. (That’s what happened to the loaves that were too dense or totally wrong. I fed them to the chicken.

Now, this part of my story is all about YOU; maybe I can help you with a goal or two today? Here are my 3 tips for setting giant goals. Three tips that I’ve kinda figured out over the past few years…

So what are you waiting for? Start a few tiny steps towards a great, big, audacious homesteading goal today!

Three Tiny Tips for Setting Giant Goals.

1. Learn from others mistakes…

There’s a lot to be said for learning from others’ mistakes. Can I get an amen? So you might like this post about a dozen mistakes I’ve made along the way on this homesteading adventure. There’s a lot to be read out there about other’s mistakes… soak it all in. And then don’t do those things. (Yeah, pretty basic, I know. But I find I need to be reminded of the simple things sometimes.)

2. Revive an old dream & make it happen…

I explain in this little video how signing with a book publisher was this girl’s childhood dream come true and invite you to come along as I sign my contract and take it to the post office.

But my point is, just because it’s an old dream doesn’t mean it’s not a great one. Just because it’s never come to fruition doesn’t mean NOW isn’t the time to work on it again and make it happen… so it’s just like the unnamed dude asks in the beginning and end of Pretty Woman… “What’s your dream? Everyone has a dream.” Maybe it’s about time you dust off an old dream and take a few tiny steps towards making it a reality.

3. Learn something new (and delicious!)… 

I find creating and learning something new can be very empowering and inspiring. It can be something simple, like a new recipe that turns out perfectly delicious, and suddenly I’m motivated that maybe I can do this homesteading thing. (Mind you, I’ve been playing at the homesteading “thing” for over four years, but not many days go by where I don’t question myself if I’ll ever “succeed.”)

Maybe you’d like to learn to make bread, but not feed dozens of loaves to the chicken? Or maybe canning, curing meat, or fermenting seem fascinating but overwhelming or just too time consuming? I get it. There are so many other aspects of heritage cooking and homesteading that I still haven’t conquered.

Like fermenting. While I love making yogurt and kombucha, that is the extent of my fermenting ability.

After getting to know Jill, and after she asked me to work with her, I have had the utter joy of working behind the scenes over on The Prairie Homestead on an amazing Heritage Cooking Crash Course that blows any other option out of the water and makes even the hardest heritage cooking skill doable and painless. It’s seriously like you’re right there, in the farmhouse kitchen, elbow-to-elbow with Jill, the new Ma Ingalls on the Wyoming prairie. Follow along on facebook or instagram for reminders of all the freebies and giveaways going on next week.

Oh, and if you decide to join in on the course–and the amazing VIP group for course members only–you’ll get access to many wonderful bonuses, including books and instructional videos all about two subjects I happen to know a lot about… maple and kombucha… written and produced by guess who?

Yep. Moi. My eBooks and video courses are part of Jill’s wonderful Heritage Cooking Crash Course. Seriously, there is so much to love.

But it’s a no brainer, really, because the whole course comes with a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

So go here and check it all out. You got nothin’ to loose. And amazing sourdough breads, home-cured meats, and 30-minute Mozzarella to gain!

Oh, and check out The Prairie Homestead Cookbook and all the amazing bonuses you get with that purchase! Just order here (affiliate link), and you’ll get all the information you need to snag over $130-worth of goodies. Seriously. In fact, between the Heritage Cooking Crash Course and the cookbook bonuses, you’ll  have access to two brand-new instructional videos I’ve just produced–about maple sugar and kombucha–as well as 3 of my mini ebooks!

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of other supplies I use for maple syrup making (as well as gardening, homeschooling, homesteading topics, nature journaling, and more).

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? You won’t find this deliciousness anywhere else… until Sweet Maple is in print this fall.

The post Setting Crazy Goals (& Messing Up) first appeared on Souly Rested.

And if you DON’T have a dairy cow, that’s totally fine. You can still make your own butter! Read on, my friend…

Three years ago today my daughter brought home her most exciting, biggest purchase ever. She brought home Scout, our family cow. In honor of that wonderful day, I think it’s high time I fill you in on the simple details you need to know to make your own glorious, wonderful butter.

It had been about 7 years in the making really, half of Kayla’s life at that time, the story that led up to Scout’s homecoming. I wrote about that 7-year-old entrepreneur with big dreams right here. But for those of you who may wonder why it’s taken me so horribly long–3 years!–to share this wonderful post with y’all about these amazing things I make with our raw milk, I guess I should explain.

Our inital set back was the fact that we didn’t know enough about breeding. (I explain more right here.) We thought Scout was bred when she wasn’t. Ten months later, we bred her again and 9.5 months later finally welcomed a sweet heifer on our farm. Whew. So then the butter started to flow, right?

Wrong.

The milk started to flow, of course, but we never had much cream. Why? Two reasons really.

First of all, momma cows are pretty smart and very talented. Somehow they are able to give us milk when we milk them yet hold back their cream for their baby. I have no idea how this works biologically, but it’s true.

Second of all, Scout is a Holstein. This means she has wonderfully tasting, low-fat milk. By their very nature, Holsteins don’t have creamy milk. While a Jersey may give you 30% cream, a Holstein may only give you 5-10% cream on any given day. In Scout’s case, it seemed even less. We’d have to save up for so long to have enough to make anything that we often went for ice cream when we had enough, and, well, our barn cats were the best fed cats for miles, I’m certain, cause we wound up giving cream to them since we didn’t have much for doing other things.

This fall, for reasons completely unknown to me, I noticed the cream line was thicker than usual. And I decided it was time to take a stab at butter making.

Read here if you’d like to know about my ridiculous 10-month mistake with our Holstein that meant NO MILK for the first few years we owned her.

This post explains the first–pretty ridiculous–mess up right after our Holstein had her first calf.

And then read this one for my full blown circle of mistakes that meant we lost an animal we loved.

How I make butter.

To make butter, and buttermilk, I first let the day’s fresh milk sit in the fridge for 24 hours. Then I skim off the cream. While it’s super easy and really doesn’t need much explanation, I show you how I skim the cream in this fb live. I’m always showing little snippets of our day–the good, the bad, and the delicious–on both facebook and instagram, so please take a second and follow there.

After I’ve saved up 6 cups of cream (I just store it in a jar in the fridge), I’m ready to make butter. That’s almost the maximum amount my food processor can handle at once. And I learned the hard way that I definitely need to respect the boundaries of that maximum fill line. (But Bixby liked cleaning up from my mistake that dripped down to the floor.) And 6 cups of cream makes exactly one cup of butter.

I should interject a little fact here… you do NOT need to have a family cow to make your own butter! You can do this exact same process with heavy cream or whipping cream that you purchase at the store (look for 30% fat or higher). 

If we’re having something for dessert that night that would be extra yummy with fresh whipped cream I fill my food processor right to the maximum fill line and scoop out a few cups of cream before the butter starts to separate, but I’m getting ahead of myself and this post is getting too long, so more about that another week.

I let the cream sit out for many hours on the counter, so it’s room temperature. At this stage I could add just a little bit of a culture like this one and leave it sit out for a few days to make cultured butter. I just haven’t evolved to that stage yet. I’ll let you know when I do.

When it’s filled with cream, I turn the food processor on high and let it do it’s thing. This is my food processor; one of my best investments ever.

You can use a jar, an old-style churn, or even a mixer.

You don’t have to have a food processor. You can shake it in a jar. For all night. (Yes, I am exaggerating. Slightly.)

Or you can get an old-fashioned butter churn like this one from Lehman’s. And really improve your arm muscle physique.

My well-meaning, awesome husband got just such a arm-toning delight for my daughter right after Selah was born. Read more about that exciting birthday here. It has sat in the barn attic ever since the first and only time we used it. We gave up before we actually had butter.

You can also use a mixer to make butter from cream. This is mine and I love it, but you’ll have to cover the whole mixer with large towels and still do a good bit of cleanup afterward. But all of those options are definitely do-able.

But a food processor sure makes for the least amount of work.

I’m really thankful to have my food processor for doing this job. Plus, it works hard making homemade peanut butter many times a week around here as well.

After maybe 8-10 minutes of listening to the food processor whirl its heart out, you’ll finally notice a change in sound and volume. This little clip shows the mixer at the beginning, before the cream had built up and maximized the bowl. But when the mixture completely maximizes your food processor bowl and looks fluffy instead of sloshy, you’ve made a huge amount of amazing whipped cream.

Keep mixing and in another 3-5 minutes you’ll noticed a different sound and volume again. You can see the magic in this little clip. It’s suddenly really sloshy and obviously less volume than the cream. At this point, the buttermilk has completely separated. And you have made glorious butter. Well, almost. You do still have a few more simple steps.

I feel like I should ease one worry here that you may be having if you’ve never tried making real butter before. If you’re like me you may be wondering if you will somehow deter the process if you turn off the food processor and look at the progress. Have no fear. You can stop and start it as many times as you want to check in on the magic. You won’t hurt it.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Once your butter has separated, strain it out and wash it. (But make sure you keep your buttermilk for the wonderful recipe below.)

Yes, I know it sounds weird to say “wash your butter.” But it’s true. This means you get to play with your food.

Under cold running water, mush and goosh your butter. Fold it over and over again in your hands. Knead it and let it squish between your fingers. Can you tell this is my favorite part?

I’ll turn the water off and literally squeeze out every drop of water I can then do the whole thing again. At least 2 more times. If you do this in a bowl of water you will notice the water was very cloudy the first time and almost perfectly clear by the end, because you’ve effectively washed out the buttermilk.

Then it’s time to add salt, if you want salted butter that is. My family definitely wants salt in our butter. We add 3/4 tsp. for this amount of butter, which measures at almost 9 ounces (8.85 to be exact. I love my kitchen scale.), so a little over a cup, or about the amount of two sticks of store-bought butter.

Once the salt is nicely mixed in, I form the butter into two sticks, simply because we like storing it in our butter dish on the counter. They aren’t perfect or pretty, but they’re gorgeous to me. I’ll wrap my two sticks in saran warp, label with the date, and stick them in the fridge, or the freezer if I have a few fresh sticks already in the fridge.

Of course you can form your butter into all kinds of fun shapes with many different butter molds, like this adorable hen-shaped, hand-carved mold  (affiliate link) or this one, which Lehman’s offers in a medium size as well. Or this pretty mold shapes a full pound of butter into one pretty bar.

More in future posts about one thing I love to do with fresh cream and how we use our buttermilk.

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He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth. Psalm 104:14

 

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Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

And hop over here to find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

Please take a second to follow along here on SoulyRested to catch up on a few of my memorable mishaps, discover fascinating things about my centuries-old farmhouse, glean a little parenting/homeschooling insight from this momma who’s been failing at the effort for almost 2 decades, or enjoy the inside scoop on the secrets other legit homesteaders might not tell you.

I hope my focus always encourages you, because simple joys require hard work. Let’s face it, we all need all the encouragement we can get! As soon as you subscribe (in the box at the end of this post), you’ll have immediate access to my Resource Library, which includes my FREE EBOOKs, and amazing recipes for things like whoopie pie cookies, maple sap switchel, and my grandmom’s perfect pie crust.

If you already ARE a subscriber, just hop over to the Resource Library here and enter your personal password. (If you don’t remember your password, no fear, we always include a personalized reminder in every Thursday email, “Hard Work, Simple Joys.”)

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Lilac Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? You won’t find this deliciousness anywhere else. And I think you’ll be shocked that you can create something so easily wonderfully uniquely “YUM” in your kitchen.

The post Glorious real butter (and why it took me so long to learn how to make it) first appeared on Souly Rested.

But first, I gotta tell you a big excitement around here this week! Temperatures are finally just right and the sap is just now starting to truly flow. We did have 2 days of sap flow back in January, which yielded one jar of syrup, but this week our syrup production will (hopefully) really get started.

I shared a facebook live video today about the big excitement… it was actually the sound we heard all day that I wanted to share…  check out my video to see what I mean…

Oh, and before I share my dozen errors, I should preface this post with this youtube video I just recorded this week, highlighting the 3 secrets you really gotta know if you somehow have a notion that this homesteading life is glamorous easy. (Ha–no one would think it was glamorous would they?)

Chicken escapades, errors, and elation

Turns out that one of my biggest homestead heartaches ever was enriching and helpful to a lot of readers last year. For that, I am truly thankful.

#1: Read here about my BIG FAT MISTAKE that killed many young, beautiful hens.

One of the hardest efforts we’ve taken on—and completed successfully!—not only paid off beautifully for us, but the lessons we learned have helped tens of thousands of readers.

#2 was that we came really close to giving up when WE TRAINED OUR DOG TO BE CHICKEN FRIENDLY.

Most people I know personally who own chicken don’t incubate their own. They’d rather just go to Tractor Supply in the spring and pick out a box of chicks. But there must be a lot of readers out there who feel the same way I do—that hatching your own little fluffy chirping bundles is a highlight of spring—because my post about errors I made with incubation was very popular last year.

#3: Read about A HUGE MISTAKE I MADE WHEN INCUBATING CHICKS.

And then, in spite of all my mishaps and sad lessons learned, last spring I was blessed with one of the most rewarding things I’ve witnessed in our few short years of homesteading. Apparently lots of readers found my story just as heartwarming as I did.

#4: Read about HOW TO successfully ENCOURAGE A BROODY HEN to adopt chicks.

Secrets revealed

Seems my readers like to be “in the know.” And, like my country boy daddy, I never saw a reason to not share what I know with my friends. So this year I dished out the info on the realities of homesteading and living in an old farmhouse.

#5: Read here for the 3 Secrets Legit Homesteaders might not tell you. (This is the topic of the video that I shared at the top of this post.)

#6: Then there were those other secrets I revealed: 3 secrets that Old-Farmhouse Owners might not tell you.

#7: And I spilled the beans about the 8 Things Wanna-be Homesteaders Should Know.

If you’re thinking about getting a family dairy cow, one thing you need to know if how to cream your milk and what to do with all that glorious cream, am I right? Join me in my kitchen for this little YouTube live video:

Gardening

#8: I’ve tried my share of seedling planters and shared in this post which planters seemed to fail for me and why.

#9: I also explained why I knew nothing about trying to grow a garden from seeds, why I needed to learn, and the 5 steps I could share on this topic, in this post about how to grow a garden from seed, after I learned myself the hard way.

Cleaning

#10: I had no idea how to clean my wool rugs… especially my treasured antique rug that my husband’s grandma braided when she was first married. Needless to say, I was elated when I learned the right way to clean a braided wool rug.

Making Maple Syrup

#11: My long list of mistakes trying to make backyard maple syrup can’t be summed up in 10 posts, but if you’re just gonna read one thing I’ve ever written about backyard maple syrup, this list of the 8 steps we go through with every batch of syrup is the best place to start.

#12: I learned the hard way–the expensive way–that I needed to save money with our backyard syrup production. Readers seem to love my solution that saved us hundreds a year.

If you’ve been wondering if you should try your hand at making maple syrup this year, trust me, if I can do this YOU can do this. Plus, you don’t have to make all the same mistakes I made my first few years of sugarmaking, cause I’ve written about all of them here on the blog, hoping you can learn from my mistakes and avoid repeating them. You can even pursue all my posts about our maple experiences right here.

Or read on for how to buy my 218-page book, Sweet Maple, that I think you’ll love.

Even if you don’t live in New England or have maple trees in your yard, trust me you may still be able to do this! Check out my numerous resources in my Resource Library for lots of information that will help you. You’ll find a long list of many varieties of trees you can tap for syrup as well as two eBooks about maple syrup that you can download for free. One answers the 8 questions you should ask before you tap and helps you decide if you might live in an area of the country where your tapping would be productive.

Or just skip right to the chase and grab a copy of Sweet Maple (aff link there), where I itemize and write in depth about everything you’d ever want to know about backyard sugarmaking (oh, and how to bake with maple, including more than 30 recipes my family loves.) Read more about the book, including what others are saying about it, and get a peek inside, right here.

Have a great week, and for next week, watch for a wonderfully exciting announcement, as well as my post that will explain why I was elated to find this chunk of ice in my sap buckets today. (UPDATE: Read about the ice in my bucket right here.)

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11a

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. Micah 7:8

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Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

 

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But last week I told ya’ll I think I can narrow it down to two aspects that are the most difficult for me. Today I’m discussing the second one. And boy does it cut this southern girl to the bone.

Death is One Painful, Difficult Aspect of Homesteading

I explained last week that I’m a farm girl at heart, and I understand that the very nature of homesteading involves death. In fact, I wrote, “I’m truly in favor of good, profitable death on a homestead, if it’s done well, with thanksgiving to the Creator and with respect to the animal.”

Go to the link right here to read more about my thoughts on when an animal’s death is an extremely difficult aspect of homesteading for me.

Bad Weather is Another Painful, Difficult Aspect of Homesteading

Since as I write this it is in the negative temperatures this week in New England, and I’m cold sitting in front of a fire . . . Since our old farmhouse windows are covered in thermal blankets to diminish the draft, but I’m still not warm . . . Well, obviously the foul weather I’m thinking of right now is the bitter cold days of winter.

If you’d like, read my favorite story about old, golden windows (when they’re not covered in thermal blankets that is), or read about the bitter truths and joys I’ve discovered as an old farmhouse owner, horribly drafty windows and all.

Of course unbearable drought, intolerable mud and rain season, or tenacious heat waves would all also qualify as bitterly disheartening to a homesteader.

I’m a southern farm girl at heart.

As I said, I’m not only a farm girl at heart, but a southern farm girl. I was born and bred in the MidAtlantic area and I’m a lot like my southern boy Daddy when it comes to bitter cold. I don’t like it. Yeah, I know Mid-atlantic is not really “south,” but it’s referred to as “south” by every New Englander I’ve ever met. I’m pretty sure most people don’t realize that little old Delaware falls to the right side of the Mason Dixon line.

My daddy was a southern farm boy.

My daddy grew up in the diminutive, neglected pocket of Maryland that is landlocked by a rigorously straight Pennsylvania border on the north and a mischievous, non descriptive West Virginia border on all other sides. There he grew up a Marylander who never really felt like a Marylander. He lived right on one of those jagged edges of West Virginia and always considered himself part West Virginian. I kinda imagine he thought West Virginia sounded just a wee bit more southern, just a wee bit warmer than Maryland.

You see, Dad had something unusual called Raynaud’s disease. Every winter he’d be colder than everyone else. His hands and feet would be especially cold, sometimes his restricted blood vessels turned his hands whiter than snow. So, yeah, Dad wasn’t crazy about cold weather.

But Dad didn’t really know true bitter cold as a kid. He cared for farm animals. But not in blustering, windy New England snow storm. . .  He helped gather eggs. But never in temps so cold he had to keep every inch of skin covered for fear of frost bite. . . He refreshed animal’s water troughs. But not twice a day because the ice needed to be broken often so they could drink. . .  He helped milk the family cow. But never in -22 degrees.

So have my recent bitter-cold days made me dislike a lot of things about homesteading? Ummmm, absolutely.

Have I considered throwing in the homesteading towel? You betcha.

Will I be putting up a “For Sale” sign this spring and heading south? Nope. At least not this year. One of these winters may do me in and send me packing. But not this year.

My Solutions to This Difficulty?

I’m the first to admit this thing called “homesteading” was never on my radar. And when animals die because of my mistakes, or when severe weather makes animal care close to impossible, I truly consider giving up.

-1- We remind ourselves of our blessings.

Yes, I consider giving up, but I’m still here, on my brutally cold New England homestead in the midst of a brutal winter storm. Because I can’t innumerate the joys homesteading has provided our family. One sweet day last July (Wait. Pause. I need to stop here and take a moment to remember the warmth of July . . . okay, back to what I was saying . . . ) The day our beautiful calf was born provided the deepest joy I’ve experienced as a homesteader.

You can read about sweet Selah’s birth–and the most comical mistake I’ve ever made as a homesteader–right here.

And I remind myself that just six short weeks ago we had our first snowfall of the winter and it was truly magical.–>

-2- We always take our best friend with us.

Seriously, my labradoodle, is my secret to joy some days. Bixby, is my always-by-my-side loyal companion and I can’t help but be content when he’s trudging alongside me, through a foot of winter snow or inches of spring mud. If you don’t have a farm dog, but you have a farm, what are you waiting for? If you’re afraid a dog won’t do well around your free-ranging chicken, never fear. You can train him well.

Read here if you’d like to know every step in the process of how we trained our labradoodle to be a chicken-friendly best friend.

-3- We think delicious thoughts.

We get through some of the worst coldest days by reminding ourselves that one day, indeed, spring will arrive. And, before spring comes sugaring season. If we have maple syrup left still from last sugaring season, winter is my favorite time to bake some of my family’s most-loved maple-infused recipes. We love maple in breads and pies. We use it in marinades and glazes. Honestly, there isn’t much we haven’t baked with maple.

This link takes you to all my insights I’ve shared about our DIY backyard syrup operation.

And this link connects you to some recipes I’ve shared. And you may want to snag a copy of my new book, Sweet Maple, which is bursting with delicious maple-infused recipes.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

-4- We dress the part.

It’s very importance to wear the right gear when you have to go out in sub-zero temperatures to care for the farm animals. Like warm, lined overalls. (I like wearing a men’s pair, in a loose-fitting size, so I can easily slip them over my regular clothes.) And under gear is imperative, but I like thin options for tops and pants, so I don’t start feeling like an abominable snow lady when I’m all geared up.

Just a few days ago it was a balmy 15 degrees, so my daughter was content in her beautiful knitted hat and she didn’t have to bundle up too much to check on the animals’ water in the afternoon.

That’s my Engineer, by the way. Almost four years ago, one of my first blog posts was about her adventure heading off to college after a lifetime of homeschooling. If you’d like to see the gorgeous quilted pillows she loves to hand piece and sell, check out Logan’s Etsy shop here.

-5- We limit our outside time.

But more importantly, I limit my amount of time going outside as much as possible. To keep the chicken and duck water thawed as long as possible (at least on a sunny day, when the black bowl retains any tiny heat the sun gives off), and to have a tough, flexible option that’s easy to twist or even turn over and stomp on to loosen the ice, I love these water bowls.

-6- We don’t milk the cow in sub-zero weather.

And–my best secret EVER to help weather the really unbearable freezing temps that occur every once in a while? We don’t milk the dairy cow when the temperature is below zero.

I actually never knew it was possible, in any circumstance, to not milk a dairy cow routinely, morning and night. Until my teen homesteading daughter bought her own cow and taught me a thing or two.

You see, as long as the momma has a nursing baby, you actually have a lot of freedom in your milking routine. Our family of 4 (because 2 are away at college now) can get all the milk and cream we can use if we only milk Scout once a day. And especially on cold winter nights we like not having to try to go milk for the second time of the day. So we let Selah, Scout’s 5-month-old calf, nurse all day and evening long. To guarantee we have a good supply of milk for the morning milk time, we usher little Selah into her own stall, locked away from momma, but right beside her, every evening. As soon as we finish the morning milking routine, Selah is allowed free-reign once again, all day long, on all the milk she wants from her momma.

And here’s the real beauty. . .  on the nights when the forecast calls for unbearably cold morning temps, we don’t lock Selah away. As simple as that. Yes, it means we’ve had to buy a few gallons of milk the last month, but it is so worth it.

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post The hardest thing about homesteading first appeared on Souly Rested.

If I’m feeling honest, I will admit my frustrations to anyone who asks. (Scratch that… I’ll unload and border on whining some days…)

I’ve had many moments over the last 3 years of homesteading when I considered throwing in my muck boots. I don’t mean those times when I threw up my hands and yelled out loud, scaring poor Bixby–my loyal labradoodle who is always by my side–in the process. No those moments happen pretty often, but they’re momentary, because most days I genuinely love what I do.

If you’d like to know the whole process of how I trained my dog to be kind to my free-ranging chicken, I explained that in great detail in this post.

But there are those distinct times, that I remember well, when I logically thought through the process of how I could quit this ride. Get off the homesteading bus all together. Give away the animals and move to a new little house close to town. Every one of those specific times always revolved around one of two situations. One is the topic of today’s post. The other you can read here.

Death is One Painful, Difficult Aspect of Homesteading

I’m not thinking of the animal processing when I mention the death that disheartens me.

I’m a farm girl at heart.

I grew up in the home of a country boy and a farm girl who grew up on poor family farms during the Depression. Mom and Dad moved to midAtlantic suburbia when they were young newlyweds. They traded in daily milking, acres of hand plowing, and annual hog butchering for a tidy little home on 1/10 an acre of a fenced-in, well-manicured square of Kentucky bluegrass, a small rectangle of a vegetable garden, and a 5-minute commute to 3 different brightly-lit, fancy-tiled grocery stores.

I understand all homesteads inherently involve death.

Yes, even as a child I was acquainted with the reality that animals must die in order for us to eat. My favorite childhood memories revolve around my granddad’s old farmhouse with the enclosed, narrow, windy stairs that led to the chilly room I shared with cousins every Thanksgiving, because it was deer hunting season, and occasionally again in the spring, because it was butchering season. After the hunters had a successful day in the fall, we would all gather in my uncle’s cinder-block basement to process the meat.

I have wonderful childhood memories on my granddad’s old farm. But I didn’t realize I was a part of was a quickly dying, self-sustaining way of life.

In the spring I loved watching the entire process from beginning to end of how a pig that had been given a good life then provided delicious food for my uncle’s family all year long. (That’s 8- or 9-year-old me behind my grandmom’s wood stove in the farmhouse kitchen, where many a rabbit stew provided great, welcome nutrition to a family of 10 kids in the country.)

I’m truly in favor of good, profitable death on a homestead, if it’s done well, with thanksgiving to the Creator and with respect to the animal.

It is very sad to me to see animals die from a defect or problem at birth, that’s not the death I’m referring to either.

We’ve nurtured baby rabbits successfully when a young momma didn’t allow them to nurse and seen them grow into healthy thriving adults. But we’ve also spent many hours dropper-feeding a sweet newborn bunny who died even after tender care.

I helped my daughters care for and nurse the premie all afternoon after its momma seemed to be rejecting it. In the night, the momma finished preparing her nest and gave birth to many more; she then took this little one back under her care but it died a few days later.

We spent a long night wrapping the deformed, splayed leg of a chick and helping her stand and learn to bear weight on her wrapped foot. She learned within hours and grew to adulthood.

But we have also anxiously watched more than one baby chick die within a day or two of birth from neck and leg deformities.

But I despise it when my foolishness kills animals in my care.

The most difficult aspect of animal death on a homestead is when animals die needlessly because I make a foolish mistake. Last month, a foolish thing I’d done for years, without realizing it was foolish, cost the life of a beautiful rabbit who was only days away from providing our family with a nutritious, farm-raised meal.

Yes, we raise meat rabbits. Rabbit meat is one of the most nutritious, healthiest options you can consume, especially if you have personally cared for the animal and know everything it has eaten. So we’ve raised them for years. We have many cages set up, needing to leave babies with mommas for many weeks, then keep males and females apart until processing. Beside our cages, we have a tall pile of bowls that we interchange in their cages, to fill with food and water. (A “perfect food bowl” is one of my favorite finds at the “give and take” room at our local dump. That and old cooking pans to line under their cages, to collect our “fertilizer.”) But never once did I consider choosing their food dishes based on if they were top heavy or easily flipped over.

Last month when I discovered a rabbit stiff, cold, and lifeless with his head trapped under one of those bowls and one of his peers sitting on the upturned bowl, well it was one of those distinct times when I logically thought through the process of how I could quit this homesteading life. Get off the homesteading bus all together. Give away the animals and move to a new life.

I cried big tears that made warm tracks down my cold cheeks as I cradled his stiff, sad body to the marsh to dispose of him. I did a lot of praying on that journey through the cow’s pasture and down a wooded slope, asking God why this way of life has to be so very hard sometimes. Asking Him why I have to keep on orchestrating so many bitter blunders.

After praying more and talking things over with my daughter, I came to the decision that for now we will keep on keeping on with meat rabbits. Maybe someday it will be time to take a break from raising rabbits, or ducks, or hens, or dairy cows, but I am certain that, for now, homesteading is the difficult but rewarding way of life I am supposed to be living.

But the #1 reason I would consider giving up homesteading? I explain the #1 reason I would ever consider giving up homesteading in this post.

My Solution to This Difficulty?

Our pile of dishes by the rabbit’s cages is much smaller. I went through and tossed all the ones that the rabbits would be able to get their noses under and tip over. So hopefully this foolish loss won’t happen again while rabbits are in my care.

I also decided the best I can do, for now, is to keep on learning from my mistakes and keep on sharing them with you.

And I’m grateful that many of you have told me how my huge mistake with my rooster saved many of your hens.

My learning experience with my broody hen helped you train a hen to adopt new babies.

And my failure at hatching eggs helped you incubate successful flocks.

So there is benefit in the sorrow. For that I am extremely thankful.

In my next post I share the #1 hardest aspect of homesteading, in my opinion, and my best solution I’ve come up with for that one too.

And in this fb live I have an open, honest chat with you about some huge difficulties I’ve recently faced and yet another reason that homesteading is really difficult for me at times…

Other Homesteading-related Reading & Podcasts:

Listen in to the Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast when I share why homesteading matters & why I initially had a difficult time with the transition from suburbia.

Check out a dozen mistakes we’ve made on our homestead and how you can avoid them.

Then there’s 8 Things Wanna-be Homesteaders Need to Know.

Recovering from Homestead Hardships

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

The post Hands down, the two hardest aspects of homesteading first appeared on Souly Rested.

Thankfully, some days she can be a gentle mentor who rewards your labor with white blankets of snow and at least offers serene, soothing skies as a prelude to cold evenings.

Although our family had just been introduced to her, having moved 400 miles up the Atlantic seaboard the previous spring, our first New England winter in our old house taught us a few lessons.

Lessons an Old Farmhouse Teaches in the Winter

While the lessons felt, well, pretty “cold,” we’re still thankful for our little cape that sits up on the hill, at the bend in the road, where the lake’s dam spills into the river. Thankful even on the day that taught us lesson #1… thankful even as I was cleaning sticky frozen soda drops off the ceiling…

Unheated areas may get messy.

Don’t get too zealous about your old farmhouse’s unheated back hallway and see it as a “walk-in refrigerator,” storing all your food back there, unless of course you would enjoy waking to the serenade of coke cans bursting in mini firework-sounding explosions, leaving brown ice crystals on your ceiling.

Giant wood piles diminish quickly.

Don’t expect any amount of wood you have cut and stockpiled will be enough. Five months of long, windy nights in a home that has 100-year-old wavy-glass windows tends to eat through a large stash of wood, no mater how efficient your wood-burning stove is. Drafts of crisp air cut to the bone even deeper on dark February nights when you know that wood piles are running low.

Water in cold pipes isn’t water for long.

Don’t forget that water will turn solid in its frozen state, and in New England in February water tends to, well, prefer being in a frozen state… even in pipes leading to things like, say, washing machines and dish washers.

Once you utilize heat tape to its full advantage; redistribute explodable, freezable food to warmer rooms; and drape heavy blankets over the most offensively drafty windows, you just may start to delight in some things in their frozen state (yeah, lakes, not pipes). in fact, you may wind up relishing all that a New England winter in an old farmhouse on a lake has to offer…

Do you like to repurpose old treasures? Then you’ll wanna snag a free copy of my instructional booklet, Give An Old Door New Life, for free, like right now… in my Resource Library.

You won’t believe the fun stories behind these old jars that I found on our homestead, and you might love the way I use them today.

Breathtaking snow-skimmed mountain views that remind you that you are infinitesimal, yet mountainously loved.

Darkness so deep, pierced by star light so intense, you realize you never truly saw black or stars before.

Mist rising over the river and winding among the snowy branches, convincing you of the reality of Narnia.

And twisting, white journeys that lead to general stores where the owner pulls up a seat for you by the wood stove, inviting you to warm your wet boots on the same hard wood floor that stage coach riders trod on over 200 years ago.

In reality, though, no matter where I live on this beautiful planet and what roads I trod, in any season, God directs me and holds me in his hand. No matter how many pipes burst or frozen difficulties fill a bitter cold day, He is a gentle instructor, guiding and teaching me right there in the midst of that problem. He promises that He causes all things–-and, yes, that includes broken wash machines, or whatever sadness fills anyone’s day… loneliness, debt, sickness–-to work together for good if we are striving to fulfill His purpose in our life. His purpose? To make me more like Christ. If He can seriously accomplish that amazing feat, well, no lesson is too difficult.

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Romans 8:28-29

 

More about our old farmhouse:

Refinishing our old wide-plank pine floors

Bitter truths of owning an old house

Making pie in an old farmhouse kitchen

3 Secrets Old Home Owners Won’t Tell You

 

 

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please join in on my resource library. I’m often adding sweet bonuses.

The post 3 Lessons I Learned my First Winter in an Old Farmhouse first appeared on Souly Rested.