Our little barn. . .

Meet Selkie Santolina:

And this is Sarabi Saffron:

 

This is when we got them, at about one month old. We’ve had them for about three or four weeks now!  They were Mama’s dream present for her big birthday :).

These girls are such cuddlebugs! You can’t step out for two minutes without at least one of them trying to sit in your lap.

 

In addition to babysitting, I now “goat-sit”. They bleat pretty loudly when they want a bottle or company, especially now that they’ve moved to the barn outside. Previously they’ve occupied the screen porch off of the dining room.

They love cuddling together too. . .

 

And two weeks ago we got baby duckies! Another birthday present for Mama!

They came on Tarquin’s birthday, so that was fun to start the day with!

 

Their names are “Jemima Dorothy”, “Lucy & Ethel” and “Nancy Drew”.

These girlies are too adorable. They actually are little party animals – they chirp all night! Their favorite things to do are to take baths in a shallow bucket, swim in the big water dish, and dunk their heads in the little water feeder.

Ah, the goats are fun. . .

Whoever said, “Curiosity killed the cat” obviously never had a goat. They love, love, love to explore. When we had them on the porch, they would rush inside and jump on the couch, or try to eat paper from the shredder, among other things. Now every time you open their fence they make a mad dash to escape and explore as much as they can in their brief moments of freedom. 

 

Notice the ducks in the goat’s water bowl?

One of the cute things they do is sleep in crazy places. Like a metal bowl, or a cupboard, or under a hay bale. . .

They’re growing so fast! Next year they’ll be producing eggs and milk!

It’s a fun new experience for me. I’ve never been a big animal person, but now we have six of them. I love going to Del’s Farm Supply and buying 25 pound sacks of feed and bales of straw. I like waking up every morning and feeding the ducks. I tolerate preventing duck suicide (they like to try and jump out of their transportation bucket) and I absolutely dislike giving the goats medicine.

Meet Bradley

Here he is.

I met him when I was washing the Bok Choi from our garden.


Our acquaintance ended rapidly.

Garden Flowers

Christmas-y stuff and Peanut Butter Cookies

Well I just wanted to say that I hope you're having a good December!
It may look like I've turned this blog into a holiday version, but I've decided to blame my lack of blogging on Christmas presents, so after Christmas I'll probably be updating more.

We've been doing Christmas-y stuff at our house. My little sister made some cookies (her first time!):

This are really special cookies. My little sisters are allergic to most foods. There was a point where the only thing they consumed was a medical drink. That was two years ago, they can eat a lot more now, and are adding on foods regularly. However, their diet has been lacking in sweets, and it's been hard for them living with a sister who loves to bake. Said sister has discovered and altered a peanut butter cookie recipe for them, so now they can eat cookies, and even bake them themselves. Here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup Peanut Butter
1 cup Sugar
1 Egg
Sugar for rolling (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. Oil or parchment paper on baking sheets.
3. Combine ingredients.
4. Drop by tablespoon onto baking sheets. (They won't spread; what you see is what you get : ))
5. Bake for 10 minutes. The cookies should be cracked and pale.
6. Cool completely before serving.

The altered recipe to accommodate peanut and egg allergies:

Allergy Cookies

1 cup Sun butter (or other peanut butter substitute. Sun butter is made from sunflower seeds)
1 cup Sugar
1 egg substitute (1 1/2 T oil, 1 1/2 T water, 1 t baking powder)

The follow steps 1-6 on above recipe.


Recently I had an uncontrollable urge to make carrot cake with fresh garden carrots. My mama read that after a frost carrots get a lot sweeter, so this was a great time to harvest them. After bundling up in old (and odd) clothes, we went out to the carrot bed with trowels. It was raining, it was cold and the carrots were frozen into the ground! They were huge carrots too, like store bought carrots, but they were frozen deep into the ground. Luckily we have strong brother who can turn over hunks of earth in a blink of an eye, so he'd turn over chunks and we'd scurry over and grab the carrots and throw the dirty things into a bowl. We originally planned to harvest a few, but after all the trouble we were taking, we decided to take them all out. This little adventure definitely was a cause for cocoa and cake.


I also made some bread with our new baking stone! Baking stones are awesome, they are designed to imitate clay ovens and unless you line your oven with bricks (some people do) then this is the way to go for artisan type bread. Baking stones are the only product I've seen where the directions say: "WARNING: Handle with care. Do not drop. Product may disintegrate with explosive force. "

Anyway, Merry Christmas! Have a lovely Christmas and enjoy your family, enjoy your freedom and enjoy your life. What a wonderful God we have, that He would choose to give His son to us, to let Him die so He could be with us and give life to us forever.
My favorite Christmas song this year is "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" by Relient K. My favorite line is "I look towards the East and see a star/ Jesus Christ, it's blessed my life to know just who you are. You are my hope"

So, I still have a lot to do today before Christmas! I need to make gingerbread men, pies and presents. I also need to tidy up around the house and wash my hair.

Blessings to all,

Sophia

Fail!

I'm sorta upset because of the deadline I set myself. I won't be able to go to the fort tonight because I still have to set the skirt onto the waist. *sigh* Oh well, I'll still be able to wear the dress at the next camp and the Brigade encampment.

On the totally unrelated and bright side, our victory garden is really getting amazing! I just ran out and picked some strawberries : ). We also have zucchini, broccoli and carrots flourishing, as well as millions of tomatoes of all varieties! When I say millions of tomatoes, I mean quite a lot of plants, about like, 3 or 4 beds.

Today is a very hot day, and I've got a headache. Not because of the heat; I need new glasses. I actually ordered some new glasses online a few days ago, but I ordered using my old prescription! I feel really dopey for not noticing that...so the glasses are coming anyway, and I'll order some new ones with the right prescription when they do.