Second Annual Memorial Day Shindig

Yesterday, our family hosted our second annual Memorial Day Shindig at our place. We were afraid the weather might have prevented it from happening, but the Lord provided a beautiful day! We calculated that we had about 110 guest total. We had a great time of fellowship with all of our friends! -Morgan

There were hayrides,

Tug of War matches, boys against girls.

The boys won the first round fair and square, but then some of the men took pity on us girls.......

And so our team won the second round.

Feats of strength.

Jump Rope competition.

Even the boys got involved.....

Virginia Reel, complete with live music.

Visiting

Tree Swing Acrobats

One of the favorite pass times over here at the Wilson house is playing on the tree swings. We've got four swings on one tree, you get everybody on one and you've got yourself a regular amusement ride, except even better because you've got to time it just right our you'll crash into someone! An experienced tree swinger can make some pretty impressive moves........
-Morgan

Cooking Update:

We've have been cooking for the past couple of days and here's what we've made:
(Keep in mind this will last about a week)

1 huge Lasagna (the equivalent of 3)

1 huge Tater Tot Casserole (the equivalent of 3)

6 dozen Chocolate Chip Muffins

2 dozen Blueberry Muffins

5 loaves of Pizza Bread

5 loaves of Stromboli Bread

4 loaves of Cinnamon Bread

3 loaves of Pumpkin Bread

2 Meat Loaves

Still on our to do list:

2 Batches of Granola Cereal

4 loaves of Lemon Blueberry Bread

2 Casseroles

Green Salads from our Garden and Pasta Salad as side dishes

Cookies

Cooking and Gardening

This week we're going to be processing lots of broilers, so today, we girls did some cooking prep so we'll have food pre-made ahead of time for the days we'll be processing. Today we mainly made bread and muffins, we planned to do more but we ran out of sugar, we'll be doing more cooking tomorrow. We also did some work in the garden, "debugging" our potato plants, weeding and putting compost around the corn. The recent rains have caused everything to burst into color and grow twice as high in the gardens and field's. We are loving the warm weather. Dad had Katie and I spreading manure around the corn. With our shovels we went back and forth from the compost pile to the garden. Gabe was "helping" by chopping at the compost pile with a hoe twice his size and Katie and I would pretend to pay him when we filled our shovels. He would hold out his cupped hand and we would pretend to give him money, (nothing really) and he would act like he was really holding it and carefully pour it into his pocket while making a clinking sound for effect. Gabe was also fascinated with the grubs that were dug out of the pile, we gave him one to hold in his hand and every time it moved he would scream, drop it on the ground and jump back a few paces. Then he would squat down, study it for a few seconds and then pick it back up with two fingers and repeat the whole process! I wish we had gotten some pictures of that! Here are some pictures of the bread baking anyways. -Morgan

Grinding the wheat








Adding the freshly ground wheat flour to the dough. (warm flour is so nice to bury your hands in!)

Getting ready to roll out the dough for cinnamon bread.

Hannah adding the brown sugar and butter filling. (yum!)

Rebecca rolling out her little bit of dough.

Katie and Rebecca made blueberry muffins.

Farmers Notes

Our method of raising chicken is not without its drawbacks. And there are probably work-arounds that I have yet to discover that are solutions to these problems. We raise our chicken in portable shelters pictured at the left. They are great in that they are small enough for us to pull with a rope to new pasture each day, bright enough to let in plenty of sunshine, and shady enough to protect from rain, high enough to dissipate heat on hot days, practically perfect in every way… except… in high winds they like to take sail and fly away. A real problem when you have 70 chickens needing that protection! The only solution to this problem discovered so far is staking them to the ground by pounding in rebar posts in each one with a heavy mallet. This is time consuming to the point where you really only want to do this when high winds or thunderstorms are expected. So how can you always make sure you always have stakes installed when you need them?
You subscribe to a weather alert service that sends text messages to your cell phone warning you of impending weather conditions. This is really a great thing as long as it’s not 2AM in the morning and you realized that you didn’t stake yet and you slept through (on purpose) two text message beeps on your phone, and it’s already starting to rain, and it’s the thunder that really woke you up, and… Yes, you get up and wade through the mud in your tennis shoes because you couldn’t find your boots (remember, it’s 2 a.m.) , and stake those shelters!

Thanks for your support.

-Scott

These are some neat cloud shots Maddie got the other night when a storm blew in. The clouds were churning and simmering! One in particular looked as though it were dropping. It was a little bit frightening but none the less beautiful. God protected us, as He always does, and we didn't receive any damage from the winds. The storm came in quickly and left quickly.-Morgan