Our Winter Solstice Celebration!

This year was our first year to celebrate the Winter Solstice/Yule.  I really wanted to make it special.  We started off making sure we were celebrating the Re-birth of the Sun and Thanking the Earth for what it has provided us.  We decided make some grapevine wreaths. One we decorated for us with pine branches.  We also made one that we wrapped in popcorn for the wild birds to eat and hung it from a tree.  We gathered pine cones and slathered them in peanut butter and rolled the in wild bird seed for the birds also.  We hope to help the birds throughout the rest of  the winter.  We lit candles to represent the Earth, the Sun and Family.  Ryan picked out the colors he thought represented all of those things best.   We had a wonderful candlelight dinner of venison, carrots and rutabagas.  We tried to make the dinner something that was a bit seasonal.  I also made a cake that looked like the sun!  We had a great time and will continue to celebrate the Winter Solstice/Yule.

Beginning our Solstice crafts after gathering everything on our hike.

Putting the peanut butter on the pine cones.

Our finished pine cones for the birds.

Ryan with our popcorn wreath.

And finally the wreath for the house!

Smooth Ambler Spirits

So, on our way to Perk Dairy we stopped in at Smooth Ambler Spirits, a wonderful distillery in Lewisburg near the Airport.  Wow, what an amazing place.  I was so cool to see how everything worked.  I guess you could call it a science field trip for Ryan.  Smooth Ambler makes; Gin, White Whiskey, Vodka and I think Bourbon.  They have been in business since 2009 and I hope for many more years.  If you are ever in the neighborhood, you should stop by.  Of course we didn't leave without T-shirts and a bottle of White Whiskey!  Find them on Facebook!

Inside the Distillery!  So many cool things to see.

You sure don't get to do field trips like this in Public School!

We each got to sign a bottle of White Whiskey!  I wonder where our bottles will end up!

OMG, where do I start!

Ok, so I really have to pick a day and blog on that day.  I have so much to update on and I don't know where to start!  I think I am going to have to write for several days in a row to catch up.

So, we got a Dairy Cow on November 28th!  We went and looked at her on the 21st at Perk Organic Dairy in Lewisburg. We also went to a Smooth Ambler Spirits.  I will talk about that in a bit!  We started hand milking her that evening, it took 2 hrs!  Yes, 2 hrs!  She has to be milked 2 times a day which will be about 6a and 6p.  We got up the next morning early, we were so tired and it was really cold.  On our way to the barn Mark said, "Who's idea was it to get a diary cow?"  FYI it was his!  Anyway that am milking took 1 hour and 45 minutes.....we are making progress.  That evening the milking to 1 hour and 30 min.  A milking machine was ordered promptly when we got back inside!  The machine came within 4 days and I have to say was the best invention in the whole wide world.  The actual milking process takes about 10 minutes. The cleaning process about 30.  She is a really great cow but we couldn't agree on a name so we just call her Brown Cow.

Just looking at the picture makes my hands hurt!

Mark and Ryan giving a thumbs up to the new machine!

We are currently getting about 2 to 2 1/2 gallons a milking.  All  the excess goes to the pigs.  I have also been making plenty of butter, cheese, yogurt and whipped cream.  Our morning coffee has never tasted so good, the fresh cream makes it amazing.