I Feel Like a Farm Wife (LOL!)

That up there is definitely an LOL kind of statement. 

Because the truth is that we live in a cookie cutter neighborhood (with an HOA) in a small town, on plot of land approximately the size of a postage stamp, and the only garden item we have (other than the glorious perennials that blossom every spring along the side of the house--inherited from the former green-thumbed owners, God bless ‘em!) is a small potted basil plant in the kitchen, which was gifted to me recently by my daughter-in -law Ginger.  We don’t have chickens or goats, or even a dog or a cat or a goldfish. The only “critter” we have on our property is the Bigfoot statue in our perennial garden, a nod to my late dad (because that’s what his grandkids called him, per his request!).

So it’s safe to say that a farmer’s wife I am NOT!

You can definitely see Bigfoot better in the winter!

But my husband and I have recently decided to mill our own flour and bake homemade bread (and other yummy pastry items, too) with it.  So far, I’ve made four loaves of bread and one pan of brownies with our freshly milled flour.  As my two loaves were rising today, I told my husband that this homemaking task makes me feel like a farm wife.  :)  It’s so satisfying!  It means that even if I accomplish nothing else all day, I've made bread!  All by myself!

(BTW, I mentioned our plan to start milling our own flour from wheat berries, at the end of a post here not too long ago, if you missed it and are interested.)

In other news--we also joined a co-op, and yesterday we picked up our first two gallons of raw milk.

What?!

At 65, my hubby and I have decided to eat healthier.  (Or crunchier...potato, po-tah-to.)  Our goal is to try to maintain our health without going on any daily prescription meds.  So far, so good; but at our age, we figured it might be a good idea to really ramp up our efforts so that it can hopefully stay that way.

I mean, I'm not gonna lie: my husband and I both love store-bought white breads and rolls. I sheepishly admit that we both enjoy so many fun, overly processed snack items that can be found at the grocery store. (I know you’re supposed to only shop the outer perimeter of the store and avoid the middle aisles…but the middle ones sure have a lot of hard-to-resist offerings!)  And I definitely like the look of store-bought milk better  than the raw stuff straight from Bessie, which is a little yellower in color.  (I can be squeamish about food that has a different appearance than what I'm used to.) 

HOWEVER, we’re determined to make a change in our diet!  So flour-milling and bread-baking and raw milk-drinking it is! 

Hard white wheat berries, before milling.

And the flour that is produced from those berries in no time flat, 
using this electric mill.

Bread-baking ingredients.  And Mary looking on.  (I just love my
Kitchen Madonna!)

Last Friday, I made my first two loaves, using hot water, oil, honey, lecithin, flour, yeast, and salt.  It was pretty good…maybe a tad dry and crumbly.  But okay.

I baked my favorite brownies as a Sunday treat, using soft white wheat berries to make the flour.  They were dee-licious.

Today, I baked two more loaves of bread, but this time I used butter instead of oil and I added the optional egg to the dough.  Then before I baked the loaves, I brushed the tops of them with an egg wash, which gave them a nice shiny brown crust.

And oh my, these loaves were so much better than my first ones!  I don't know if it had to do with the added egg, or with substituting butter for oil, or if possibly the hot water I used on my first batch wasn't quite hot enough.  But I think we have a winner here!  I like knowing that I can bake an eggless bread, because I have a few grandchildren who are allergic to eggs (and I'm going to experiment more with the eggless recipe to see if I can get it to turn out a little moister and fluffier).  But the loaves I made today--YUM!

To give you an idea of the difference between the first loaves I baked and the ones I made today, in the picture below that's the first try on the right and today's bread on the left.  Quite a difference in appearance, am I right?  I'm almost wondering now if the problem was that I didn't let my first batch rise long enough.  (Hopefully after a bit of experience at this, practice will make perfect and I'll feel confident that I can tell when my rising dough has doubled in size!)  

Did you want to hear about homemade bread today?  Was this post absolutely riveting?  LOL!

I'm just so tickled about all of this, and it makes me kinda wish that we did have enough land to have a chicken coop out back, so we'd have fresh eggs as well, and room to plant a vegetable garden. I think if we had gotten this bee in our bonnet many years ago, my husband and I would have jumped on the homesteading train that seems to be popular with lots of younger folks these days. I'm afraid that ship has sailed, though (or that train has left the station!).  But I do think we're going to enjoy making breads and baked goods with our vitamin- and nutrient-rich home-milled flour.  

I'll try not to write too many bread-themed posts.  But I can't promise that this is the last you'll hear about it!

One last note before I sign off: lest you think I regret that we chose our pleasant little house with no land to speak of, located in a sweet but crowded small town neighborhood, instead of a farmhouse on a couple of acres, where we could grow our own food (and maybe even milk our own cow!), nothing could be further from the truth.  We have already created so many wonderful family memories in this VA house, which is located close to so many of those whom we hold dear to our hearts and is a perfect central meeting place for our VA boys and their families.  When I look out my door, I don't see rows of vegetables reaching toward the sun, or chickens wandering about pecking in the dirt...but I often see sights like this. Grandchildren running up our front walk, excited to come to Papa and Grammy's house.

I might not be a farm wife.  But I'm a very happy Grammy.

Like Leila, Like Laura (Maybe?)

I have been so inspired lately, reading Leila Lawler's "Like Mother, Like Daughter" blog (which is often graced with lovely, well-written posts by her grown daughters as well).  How I missed her all these years that I've been immersed in the blogging world is beyond me.  She is just awesome (as are her girls), and I pretty much agree with her mindset on every aspect of the vitally important triple vocation we share: wife/mother/homemaker.  I mean, I feel like we could be best friends if we ever met (although I'm so shy and terrible at making new friends that she might be less enthusiastic about the whole thing than I.  But I think we could be Internet friends, at least...).

Like "Auntie Leila," I  have striven to live by the "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without" philosophy, which she often espouses on her blog, throughout my marriage. I've tried to be as thrifty and frugal as possible--to make our home as comfy, warm, and beautiful as I could, even during those early years when I had to do it on a shoestring budget. And then by the time I could have spent more, I was hesitant to do so--because the habit of trying to make what I had work for us, and if not, to find something old and used and in need of a bit of TLC to make it "perfect," was deeply ingrained in me after years of creative housekeeping. 

I am quite lucky, I realize, to enjoy the type of hobbies that go hand-in-hand with my three-pronged vocation: cooking, baking, home decorating, furniture refinishing, painting, drawing, sewing, crafting, reading, and writing, to name a few! I even like to clean.  (Should I be embarrassed to admit that?  My husband calls me the "mad vacker," because I love to vacuum way more than I should.) 

Also, Leila Lawler is the only blogger (other than myself!) whom I've ever seen touting the benefits of wearing an apron to do housework; my boys like to tease me about my apron-wearing.  It's true that I am rarely seen without one during waking hours if I'm in my own house.  By I don't sleep in one, as one of my funny sons has accused.  (I blogged about aprons once upon a time; if you're interested in visiting my archives you can read that post here.)

I have a proverbial wardrobe of aprons, actually.  Holiday-themed ones even.

My Mrs. Clause apron.  (And a darling chocolatey-faced elf!)

Anyway, Leila Lawler is a seamstress.  (See, there's another thing we have in common.  She even said in one post that in spite of being at it for 40 years, she tends to make lots of mistakes and relies heavily on a seam-ripper.  Me, too!  I'm beginning to think we might be twins who were separated at birth!)  After reading some of her old sewing posts, I felt motivated to organize my sewing room for the first time in ages.  In one of the big plastic bins that held some of my fabric stash, I found some fun treasures that I'd almost forgotten about, including a few unfinished projects that I decided I'll have to get to ASAP.  (I'm not getting any younger, you know.  I'll be 66 in July.  If I don't finish them now, then when?!)

I found a patchwork quilt that I began to put together in the late 1970's, while I was still in college (it was for my "hope chest," kind of), and then continued to work on after my husband and I got married in 1980 and started having our sons.  It was made with soft, almost threadbare squares of fabric, taken from old clothing and scraps from craft projects I'd worked on. (BTW, what was I thinking making the squares so small?!  Each is only 5"!)  I'd added some appliquéd hearts, with the names and birthdays of the first two boys on them; the next two sons each have a heart appliqué with their names and birthdates penciled in, but I never got around to embroidering them; and the fifth son never even got a heart on there before I abandoned this quilting project (probably because I was too busy raising said boys, four little guys who were born within a span of four years and three months).  Son #4, the last one represented on this quilt, is 36 now, so it's been more than three decades since I did any work on it!

Finally finishing that decades-old quilt is on my to-do list now.

I also found the top of a baby quilt that was made by my best college friend in 1983, as a gift for our firstborn son.  This quilt originally had batting inside and the layers were hand-tied together with yarn at some of the corners where the rectangular pieces on the front met.  After washing it a number of times, the batting got all lumpy, and I took it apart, planning to put new batting in it and then put it back together, possibly doing some machine quilting, too, so it would hold up better.  But alas, I never got around to it.  My friend had made it before she knew whether we were having a girl or a boy, and it had an awful lot of pink in it.  When we kept having boys, I put it away to save in case we ended up with a daughter, but we never did.  Our oldest son has six girls now, and one boy, and the youngest, a girl, is still a baby.  So I think I'm going to fix it up and pass it on to him for his little one.

How fun!  I had almost forgotten that baby quilt existed!

Another treasure I found was a zip-lock bag with some pre-cut 8" quilt squares in it.

What is special about these squares is that most of them (all but the dark blue, which I must have gotten as a filler) are Laura Ashely fabrics, taken from sheets, pillowcases, and curtains that we used to have in our bedroom. Way back in the early years of our marriage, my mother-in-law (a T J Maxx clearance shopping pro who had no equal!) gifted us a king-sized Laura Ashley puff/bedspread (in the dusty blue with little cream-colored flowers on it).  We had a double bed at the time, but she said we would probably go bigger eventually, and she wanted it to fit.  We had that puff on our double bed for about ten years, before we finally got a king-sized bed in 1993.  By that time, my M-I-L had gifted us sheets (in the coordiating cream with little dusty blue flowers), curtains, pillow shams, and throw pillows in that same pattern.  Then eventually, she got us a new king-sized quilt, in the floral pattern that had some pink in it but was in the same color palette and still went with the curtains from the other pattern we'd had for so long, and a king-sized sheet set (top right fabric square in the picture) to go with it.  

We slept on Laura Ashley bedding for so many years that when we finally made the switch to something different, I wanted to have a little memento of it.  So I'd cut out those squares, intending to make a little throw quilt.  But like so many other projects I'd started over the years, I never got around to sewing those squares together.

Well, guess what I did today?

It's not very big, just a lap quilt.  It just needs a back (I'm not sure I'm even going to do a layer of batting inside).  I'll probably keep it draped over the back of the upholstered arm chair in our room, as a reminder of those early days of our marriage.  And of my beloved mother-in-law as well.

I found some other goodies that had belonged to her--beautiful linen-and-lace napkins, pillowcases, pillow shams, etc. (some bought new on clearance, some vintage, some with lovely embroidery on them, many stained from decades stored in the attic after the house fire at my husband’s childhood home).  And I have projects planned for them as well.  So stay tuned for more sewing talk in the coming weeks, dear readers.

Or not!  I realize that this post might have been boring to many of you. (But perhaps it wouldn't be to Auntie Leila?)

Sisters, Sisters

You know that song, right?  It's the iconic Irving Berlin number that was in the movie White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Cluny.

I've had that song—and some others from the same delightful show—in my head for several days now, ever since my husband and I joined son #2, one of his older boys, his father-in-law, and a friend to attend the spring musical at his wife Ginger's high school alma mater. (She had planned to come, too; but the sitter she had scheduled to watch their little guys fell through, so she stayed back.)  This small Catholic school (about 400 students, grades 7-12) is absolutely swimming in talent.  Two years ago, I saw Hello, Dolly!, and I was blown away.  But White Christmas was even better!  The vocals were truly extraordinary.  The leads were terrific—but even some of the minor players who had singing parts were exceptionally good.  (My husband and I turned to each other a couple times, wide-eyed, both thinking the same thing: "Can everyone in this school sing?!") There were about 180 students involved in the production, which included lots of expertly choreographed dance scenes with dozens of moving pieces on stage at once. I wish I could aptly describe how PHENOMENAL this show was!  This was the 32nd Annual Spring Musical at this school, and it is the institution’s main fundraiser.  It is worth every penny of the ticket price, let me tell you.  

My husband and I have a list of must-see Christmas movies that we try to watch every December, but I'm embarrassed to admit that neither one of us had ever seen White Christmas until Christmas 2022, when our youngest son and his wife traveled from Nashville to spend the holiday with us.  It was our daughter-in-law's absolute favorite Christmas movie growing up, and she couldn't believe it wasn't on our list.  (It is now!)

I'm telling you, those high school kids put on a show that was every bit as entertaining as the famous Hollywood movie of the same title.  I wish I had been allowed to take a video of the two young gals who did the "Sisters, Sisters" number seen in the YouTube video above.  Their performance was amazing.  I just can't praise that high school musical enough!

Anyhoo, now for the clever segue—

Speaking of SISTERS: when we made our recent trip up north to check on our Oyster Haven rental house and watch the eclipse, we were able to get together with my mom, and my own two sisters and their husbands, for a lovely Sunday brunch.

Sisters, Sisters...

I am the second-oldest of five, with one brother born before me and one after; my sisters are the two youngest in the family.  Both of my sisters live close to my mother. The older one is about 45 minutes away.  She is a hard-working teacher's assistant and the mother of two sons.  She recently welcomed her first grandchild. My baby sister (far left in the picture), also a mom of two and a Grammy to one, lives really close to my mother: as in, in the same house with her.  

About a year after my dad died in 2016, my mom moved out of an assisted living residence and into my baby sister's home, and she’s been there ever since.  At the time, her health had deteriorated to the point that she literally couldn't get herself out of bed; she couldn't walk, even using a walker, without an aide to help her; and worst of all, she appeared to be suffering from dementia and going downhill fast.  She was practically at death's door, and my sister hired almost round-the-clock aides to help with her care.  I would post a picture of what she looked like back then, so you could compare it to the beautiful, vibrant octogenarian in the above photo—but she would be horrified, so I won't do that. Suffice it to say that you would be truly amazed by the transformation.

And it's all due the love and care she's gotten from my sister and her husband.

*For many years before my dad died, these two were my parents' close neighbors and helped them in so many different ways (with things such as yard work and home repairs--and my sister even used to stop by and load their pill boxes for the week, so they could keep track of their daily medications!).  My dad trusted my sister's husband with what was most precious to him: Dad took my brother-in-law aside at one point and asked him to be sure to take care of my mom if he should die first.  My B-I-L obviously took my father's solemn request to heart; and he in fact was the first one to propose that Mom should move in with them, when it became apparent that she was not healthy enough to stay at the assisted living home anymore.  He's got a heart of gold, that guy, and I think my dad knew this about him.  And my sister...well, there aren't enough words to tell you how amazing she is, how loving and selfless and self-sacrificing.  And she's incredibly organized, too (she jokes that she's got OCD; I say she's just Marie Kondo on steroids!).  She runs an incredibly tight ship, with humor and the most positive attitude in the world.  You have to be an organized person to take care of an elderly parent, to keep up with the aides' schedules, the doctor's appointments, the medications.  There is no one I can think of who could do a better job at all of that than my baby sister.  One also needs to be kind, of course, and she is that in spades; but she is not afraid to be firm with my mother either, if her health requires it. Because of my sister's attention to detail, because of her tireless energy and research, at 88, my mother is on very few daily meds--far fewer than she was more than a decade ago.  My sister is just a rockstar caretaker; she might the youngest in the family, but all of her siblings are in awe of her.

A few years ago, my sister went through old medical records of Mom's and stumbled upon some doctor's notes: apparently, my mother had a condition for which there was a fix, but it had not been addressed.  In the last years of my father’s life, she’d been suffering with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, and it was causing her to have both physical and neurological problems.  She'd started falling quite often, leading to a broken hip and hip replacement surgery.  The doctor would drain some of the fluid that kept building up in or around her brain, and she would improve for a time; but he had told my parents that if she kept falling, they should consider having a permanent drainage shunt implanted (and this had been noted in her records).  Somehow, however, this had never been done.  We think perhaps that my dad, who was going deaf but refused to wear a hearing aide, hadn't really heard what the doctor was saying. And Mom was too out of it to take care of herself during that time.  But as soon as she got that shunt, her physical and mental health drastically improved.  It was as if overnight, she seemed 20 years younger.  She's 88 years young these days, with a very full life packed with friends and activities.  She has 31 great-grandchildren now, and she likes to read the local newspaper obituaries and compare that number to the ones she sees mentioned there.  (So far, among her peers in the area she's winning the great-grandchildren contest!)

Thanks to my baby sister, my mother got her life back. She and her husband are saints, they truly are.  A few years ago, his mom started failing, too, and they took her in (I believe she's 90).  Both moms live with them now, each with her own bedroom and a shared bathroom between them.  Isn't that amazing?  What a blessing my sister and her hubby are to those lucky ladies.

Saints do live among us!

It's great that every time I want to visit my mom,
I get to visit this sister, too!

To know this sister is to love her.  

Sisters are such a blessing.

Especially mine.

*On April 23, I added this paragraph.  I really hadn't adequately described how wonderful my sister and her husband are.  Maybe you'll have a better idea now!

Some Exciting "E" Stuff (Such as Easter, Eggs, the Eclipse, Etc.)

Hi there!  The last time I was here, it was Holy Saturday and I was preparing for a lovely, relatively quiet Easter celebration with son #4, his wife, his four young children, and his mother- and father-in-law.  Well, I'm back to report that we had such a blessed day.  The weather was glorious for our after-lunch Easter egg hunt and the kids played happily in the yard for hours.  We are always up for the big, wild-and-crazy celebrations with everyone who lives down here (and sometimes even the ones who don't, but travel to join us); but this more subdued, gentler version of family fun was a special treat, and we had such a wonderful time.

My darling D-I-L Braveheart and I didn't plan on twinning for Easter, but when she arrived we realized that we were wearing very similar Sunday Best finery.  The floral patterns and styles of our dresses were different, but the color palette was the same, as was the general soft flouncy-ness of the fabric (I think I just made up a word!).  We figured a picture was called for.

We all ate in the dining room, and the meal was simple but tasty.

My hubby and I long ago decided that roasted pork (seared and then slowly cooked in a proverbial vat of butter) is always a winner.  A large pork loin gives you the most bang for your buck; it can feed a small army and tastes like heaven.  On Easter, it didn’t disappoint.

I can just hear you thinking, "Did she actually share a picture of her not particularly beautiful-looking plate of food?"  Yes, yes I did!  

I said that it was a quieter Easter than usual, and it was.  But son #3 and his brood stopped by after Mass, on their way to Preciosa's college friend's house, where they were going to meet up with son #2 and his gang.  (This was before we sat down for our meal.)  Our house happened to be on their way, and they had a bit of time to kill before they were expected at their friend's gathering.  So for a little while, we had nine cousins playing together, which was fun.

Cute (while hastily arranged and very imperfect!) front-porch group pictures are becoming our jam here at Casa Papa and Grammy.

Anyway--

After lunch, we had a little Easter egg hunt for the four grandkids who were staying.

Four days after Easter, my husband and I headed north to Upstate NY, to check on our Oyster Haven rental house and get it ready for our first guests of the season.  These folks were coming from Utah for the solar eclipse, because our area of NY was going to be right along the narrow path of totality, right on the center line; and as long as the weather was clear, it promised to provide a perfect front-row seat.  

Aside from the two of us, four of my husband's siblings (along with two of their spouses) were together for the big event on April 8. We all met up at his older sister's successful brewery beforehand, where a large contingent--many of them people who'd traveled long distances (from all over the US, and even from as far away as Scotland and Ireland!)--were gathered on the grounds outside, picnicking and drinking her award-winning craft beers.

When the eclipse started, my husband and I quickly made the short drive over to the family homestead, because he wanted to monitor the video camera he'd set up to catch the whole thing for the siblings who couldn't be there to watch in person.  So the two of us watched the total eclipse of the sun from the back deck of his childhood home on Lake Champlain.

I took a before picture of my husband, when there was a crescent-moon shaped sliver of sunlight still showing:

Then a during picture, when the sun was completely blocked by the moon and it looked like nighttime (but you could still see some light over on the Vermont shore of the lake):

Then an after picture, when a crescent-moon shaped sliver of sunlight was appearing on the opposite side and instantly, the world was filled with bright daylight again.

Before the total eclipse, I took a picture with my iPhone; but it's amazing how hard it is to capture with a camera lens what you can see with the human eye.   I took the picture when there was just a sliver of sunlight that hadn't been blocked out yet.  Here's what I got: 

My sister-in-law (the brewery owner) had a friend who was able to get a pretty spectacular shot when the eclipse was total:

It was quite an experience.  I don't think I would have traveled half-way across the world to see it, like some people did...but since we had to go up to check on things at our rental anyway, we had a good excuse to make the trip from VA.  And I truly won't soon forget it!

Some things to think about, regarding this 2024 solar eclipse:

The eclipse took place on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which was celebrated on April 8 this year because its usual date (March 25, exactly nine months before the birth of Our Lord) fell during Holy Week.  And since the week following Easter is considered a week of solemnities, it had to be moved to the first available weekday that was not a solemnity.  Monday, April 8 was that day.

What are the odds, right?

The Annunciation celebrates Mary's Fiat, Her "yes" to God, the acceptance of Her role as God's instrument in the Incarnation--and Her vital role in salvation history.  Mary's Fiat delivered a fatal blow to the devil, which is why She is often depicted crushing the head of the serpent under Her feet.  How fitting is it that this recent solar eclipse should happen on this important Marian feast day (reminiscent of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, is it not?). 

And there's more:  apparently, the "Devil Comet," last seen in 1954, was due to return on April 8 as well, and was going to be visible during the total eclipse.  We didn't see it.  (Did you?) But think of the symbolism there!  The Devil Comet, showing up after seven decades on the very same day that we are celebrating the Annunciation (and Mary's defeat of the devil!), during an awe-inspiring event that shows the majesty and power of God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.  Whoah!  Coincidences?  I think not!

That's probably enough for now, I think.  I have one other "E" thing on my mind--Vitamin E, and how it (along with a lot of other vital nutrients) has been processed out of the bleached and "enriched" white flour that is on the shelves of our grocery stores (the flour with which I have always loved to bake goodies for my family!).  And how eating carbs made with this over-processed wheat flour has been detrimental to our health.  And...etc. etc. etc.  It's a long story, but I'm sure you don't want to hear all the details. Suffice it to say that my husband and I watched a three-hour-long podcast that really struck a chord with us, and we have decided to start milling our own flour at home.  We've ordered an electric flour mill and we're going to buy some wheat berries and start grinding them up.  In the next couple of weeks, I plan to start baking my own bread with this flour.  (Wish me luck!)

I foresee future blog posts about bread-baking adventures (or possibly misadventures).  So stay tuned!  :)