Mooooooooo!

Yeah! Our White Parks are here. Unloading them was awful because the trailer kept getting stuck in the mud. My poor father in law, it was his property getting torn up! For now our 4 heifers are in his pasture with his cows. They are pretty cool looking cows, for a picture scroll down.

So why am I showing you a picture of flour? Well this is freshly ground wheat flour. It isn't the best picture, but this is the flour I am going to try and use 100 % of the time now. I bought a hand cranked flour mill and used it for a while, but it took too long to grind to do it all the time. My mother and father in law bought me an electric mill and I used it for the first time last night. I LOVE it. We have been weaning out white flour as much a we can for a few years now, but it is difficult to substitute 100% whole wheat for all recipes. I learned online (through the Heavenly Homemakers Blog) that white wheat can pretty much be 100% substituted for regular white flour. I have also struggled with finding wheat berries to grind. We planted wheat this past fall, but it won't be ready until summer. Well, the country variety store (Amish ran) that I frequent carries white and red wheat berries. I bought a 50 lb bag. It worked out to be 70 cents a pound to buy. I have no clue if that is a good price or not. The red wheat berries were around 50 cents a lb so I could have gone cheaper. I hope I can really do all my flour this way. It will be way healthier for us and no doubt cheaper in the long run.



Here's more canning I have been doing. I made corn chowder. It doesn't look real "chowdery" because the dairy has not been added. It is not recommended to home can dairy product or "dense/pureed" soups. I am sure there are ways around this but I am not taking any chances. No botulism for us please.



Here are the soup and beans that I canned. I am not sure that it is cheaper to buy dehydrated beans and can them or to just buy cheap canned beans. My sister in law and I had this discussion just last week and I have never done a price comparison. I need to. I am sure it would make sense to buy bulk beans also and see the price. Anyways, I had these beans just sitting in my cabinet (where they had been for at least a year).



Asher can be such a ham. I was getting a picture of all the kids eating breakfast (the next pic) and Asher climbs up on the chair and says "cheeeeeeese." It was pretty funny.



Eating breakfast on a rare weekday morning that Leah was home (no school Monday). Mmmm, oatmeal.

Ryan and Asher out checking out our new cows.

Anna, our little animal whisperer.

Two of our girls. Pretty eh? I guess you would have to like cows to think they were pretty, but come on, these are some nice looking animals! All four of our heifers are due to calf this spring, probably early May.

All the kids making sure the cows like their new home.

Later Gator,

Julie