Beautiful Summertime In The Country

The birds are singing at the first crack of dawn. We're starting to gather a beautiful harvest from the garden. There's new baby animals on the farm, which I'm excited to show you. But life, this time of the year, is beautiful everywhere you look and there's work wherever you look. It seems so much to do and such a critical time of the year for farmers. But I hope you enjoy this little glimpse into what it's like raising our family of seven here on the farm in the summertime. For breakfast this morning, I think we're going to just do a fairly typical farmer's breakfast, if you will. We'll do some toast. This is fresh milled, long fermented sourdough bread and then some eggs, which we have a large abundance of right now. I need to make egg pudding again or something because we are a little bit overwhelmed with eggs in the best way. And then we'll do some bacon, maybe some fruit and call it breakfast. But Hudson was requesting if we could do it out on the Blackstone this morning. He loves any food done on there and so I think we'll just take it out. It's a beautiful morning so may as well. I try to make a block of cheese like this about once a week. So this was pressing overnight and this morning I just let it air dry a little bit. It's a little bit like damp to touch and I just feel like it keeps better and it just has a better consistency to in the morning. Pull it out and let it air dry for maybe an hour or so before I'll wrap it up and pop it in the fridge. Hey Lord, I thank you for the food. Thank you for a beautiful morning. In the 14th year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice. Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice. It's back to school season and as we settle into these autumn rhythms and routines, what better way to enjoy cozy evenings at home than with your kids making music. Instead of driving your children to these music lessons, the whole family can actually take lessons for the price of less than one private lesson. And VoteBridge Music Academy offers a wide variety of instruments, but a few of them being mandolin, guitar, ukulele, piano, fiddle. Your children will be so motivated by quarterly challenges, cash prizes, contests, and you can even get these badges mailed straight to your door, which is super fun especially for kids. VoteBridge Music Academy's instructors are available 24-7 and will offer your students the support that they need from unboxing their instrument to tuning it to playing their first song the first week. I know my kids were so excited about that when literally within a week they could play a simple song and we've been using VoteBridge Music Academy now for oh my is it a year, a year and a half, something like that, and our oldest two are really enjoying it. Our third is wanting to get started and so I love that all of them can take these lessons and they kind of compete with each other which adds another fun element in the family. They often want to play the piano as we have our family devotions now which is just so sweet, but if you are looking to make your child's experience with music fun, affordable, effective, and efficient, check out VoteBridge Music Academy. They were so kind as to offer you guys, my viewers, 25% off your first month when you head over to votebridgemusicacademy.com and use the code GOLDENHOUR25 at checkout. So there you go. This time of the year, this is my to-do list. I feel like I spend the majority of my time either out here in the garden or cleaning up produce that I've harvested and I love it. It's some of my very favorite things to do, but it is a lot. So the best way to stay on top of it is just to do it every day. A lot of things are doing really well in the garden. There's a couple things that are not, but one of the things on my to-do list that I really need to tackle today, and I've been putting off way too long already, is pulling my cabbages. So unfortunately, we're having a lot of rabbit trouble in our garden this year, and they are going to town on my cabbages, which is so sad. It seems like the purple ones they're not really going after, but the green ones they are. So I'm going to pull, I think, at least three cabbages that I have to pull. I already did most of the cabbages in this box, which was, I don't know, four or five or so. I love turning it into sauerkraut, so that is what I'm also hoping to do with these. And then also pull my onions. So I don't know if I'll get to all my onions. I need to see if Josh can set up my drying table. It might actually be a good time for it because it's supposed to be really sunny and I like to have them just out in the air to air dry and kind of toughen their skin a little bit after pulling them. But in the past, I've waited a little too long, I would say, with pulling them. I've waited as long as till the stems are completely brown and that is too long. I think you're technically supposed to pull them as soon as the tops fall over. So we have been enjoying them just for eating and they're so delicious and big. I put my mom's advice to work this year and it really does work. But anyways, for now, we're going to do those two things. And then from there, I think we might move on to tackling some tomatoes, green beans. I don't know what all we'll get done today, but we better get right to it because, oh my, time is a fleeting thing in the summer. This is what I'm talking about with the rabbits. It's so sad. It was such a beautiful head, but there we are. So I don't know if I should just plant more purple cabbages or what, but at least those are still looking nice. With the cabbages cut out, I want to make sure I'm getting rid of all these leaves because moist and dark like that is prime location for all kinds of disease and pests. Hi, sugar. Tomatoes. You want these? Should we go take these inside? Okay, let's go. No, not today. That's a lot of tomatoes. We got those in it. So I need to run my basket of goodies up to the house, but 48-ish hours ago, our little toy poodle had puppies, and leave me your guesses in the comments as to how many you think she had. They kept coming and coming, and bless her heart, she was so big. She looked like she could split the last couple days of pregnancy. I was like, there is no way she's making it to her due date, which she was a couple of days early, but the excitement is high now because we have not two, not five, not even six puppies. There are eight baby puppies and everyone is loving on them, but because there's so many, obviously she can't nurse them all at once. So the girls are getting a little taste of motherhood because at first it was every half hour. Now it's every hour we have to switch out puppies to make sure that everybody nurses because otherwise it's survival of the fittest. So anyways, let me take you up there and show you our newest little arrivals here on the farm. And then these are the ones that are happy and fed right now, taking a little snooze. So cute. Their little noses are adorable. And that's not all. We also have two adorable little kittens these guys are about four weeks old. Actually Kyra thinks they're exactly four weeks old today and she named them. This is Darcy and this is Dakota. Isn't that so cute? Darcy and Dakota. Hey guys. What are you girls playing? Orphanage. All right. We have six babies. Wow, that's beautiful. And we have two kittens. All right. Hey, let's see when we put them in. I don't know if you can see this sprinkler behind me here, but one of the challenges that we have faced this summer and continue to face, we are praying and praying and praying for rain, but it has been extremely dry for us. A couple nights ago it started to rain and we were like, yes. And so grateful, but it did not last long. It basically just wet the soil in the end. So that's super sad. Our cornfields are looking more like pineapple fields, which is not a good sign. So pray with us that we get some rain, but for now, at least in the flower beds, and we can't obviously do this in the fields, which is more of a big deal as a farmer, but we are at least moving sprinklers around flower beds and trying to stay on top of keeping things nice. This crepe myrtle, we just planted this summer before the wedding, and it has not been too happy. It needs so much water and we planted it in pretty much the hottest time of the year. And so we're trying to keep it watered enough and hopefully it pulls through. Once it's watered, it perks up a little bit more. Right now, it looks like it's just on its way down, but we're doing what we can to keep everything happy and healthy. It is time for barn snacks. And so I think what we're going to do is kind of a thick smoothie slash healthy ice cream idea. I have a bunch of frozen bananas right now, so I'll throw those in the blender. I think I'll add some cottage cheese, maybe some of our freeze-dried collagen powder. I have some peanut butter. Maybe I'll add some cocoa powder and make it like a chocolate version. I'm not sure. We're going to just start throwing stuff in. I also have some homemade yogurt on hand right now. Maybe we'll throw a bit of that in, but basically, hopefully in the end, we have some creamy, delicious, high-protein concoction. I actually just saw that I still have some butterfly pea powder, and so I'm going to add that for a fun little pop of color. Okay, I ended up adding a little bit of freeze-dried strawberries as well, grinding those up so we have this beautiful kind of lavender color, and we'll just make that into parfaits. I am having a hard time pulling myself away from planning for homeschool. We have actually started on the homeschool year already, but just barely, and there's still things that I'm trying to figure out, but it is time to make dinner. A while ago, two years ago, a year ago, I read a book. Let me actually grab it for you because it is so good. Okay, this book. I know I've shown it to you before, but it's been quite a while. It has so many beautiful pictures of gathering outside and all these beautiful table spreads. Anyways, it really inspired me to do more of that. Just make things special for really no reason other than just to celebrate life. And so this summer, I've been trying to be intentional about that again. Today, I thought, you know what? Let's do that. Let's do picnic style. It's not going to be this big, beautiful table, but maybe I'll have time to pick some flowers to set down, just spread out a big picnic blanket, and we can have a little cookout. So little things like that, I find, make the best memories. They don't need to cost anything more than just cooking a regular meal for in the dining room, but those are memories that the kids seem to really remember and cherish. And so I think that'll be super fun for the meal. I've been cooking some chicken here for a good part of the afternoon, and I thought I would do kind of like a lazy man's version of a chicken pot pie. I actually don't have peas or carrots, which you would definitely think you need for a pot pie, but I do have green beans and corn, and so I'll just kind of do, you know, throw in what I have, and then we'll put the filling in the bottom and top it with some fresh milled biscuits. Starting off with some butter, and this is one of the herbal butters. We'll get that melted, and then we'll add in some seasonings. Then I'll add in a teaspoon of onion salt, and then a third cup of flour just to thicken this. See if we can get about one and three quarter cups of broth from the chicken here, and we'll stir that in. And then I have some cream here, so I'm going to do about a cup of cream. You could also use milk. Stir that until it's like a gravy-like consistency. All right, that is looking so delicious, and that means we're ready to add the chicken and the veggies. So I'm going to do about three cups of chicken and then some veggies, whatever I have on hand. And then finally, of course, a bunch of herbs. I picked a bunch of dill in the garden. To me, dill is like the scent of summer, the taste of summer. Add it to any dish, and it tastes like summer. And so my dill is going to seed, but there's still a lot on there, so I'm kind of throwing that in everywhere these days. For the biscuit part of this dish, I am referring to the recipe in here. Buttermilk biscuits from the cookbook Prairie Flower. And some of you ask sometimes, what's your favorite fresh-milled cookbook? This is the only fresh-milled cookbook that I have, but it is really good. Of course, I like to make some little tweaks along the way, but when don't I do that? So this is apparently a classic southern biscuit and looks pretty easy to throw together, which is good because we are running out of time. It's pretty much six o'clock. Instead of rolling out my dough on the counter, I'm just going to use my cookie scoop and spoon it on. I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart. I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart to stay. And I'm so happy, so very happy, I've got the love of Jesus in my heart. And what a gift evenings like this are. I hope you enjoyed this tiny little glimpse into life on the farm in the summertime. I feel like today was very low-key compared to some days, but it was still fun to take you around, show you a little bit of what's going on. I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll look forward to seeing you next time. Bye, friends!