Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Boo Boo Goo

I love using natural products, especially when I can replace a store-bought, petroleum-based product with a natural product, and even more so when I can make that product myself.  I few years ago some friends gave us some homemade natural healing salve.  We came to call it "Boo Boo Goo."  I've been meaning to make my own forever, but just never got around to ordering beeswax and all that.  Well, I finally did it.  I found this recipe, which sounded perfect:  www.mrshappyhomemaker.com/2012/11/healing-boo-boo-salve-a-k-a-homemade-natural-neosporin/

Should you attempt this, beware the honey does NOT want to mix in!  I stirred mine as it cooled to mix the honey up, which got kind of messy and ruins the perfectly poured look, but it worked.  Next time I will just add the honey after the salve begun to solidify.   Anyway, it came out wonderfully.  I've even used it a few nights as a healing lotion on my hands and they are amazingly soft in the morning, with any cuts, scrapes or cracks in the dry skin feeling all better.

This time around I ordered the comfrey and calendula from the shop on Etsy recommended in the blog link above.  This summer I will hopefully, finally have my own comfrey patch, and I often grow calendula.  I will definitely make a bunch of this salve.

Monday, March 18, 2013

And More Baby Goats

Amazing how returning to this blog feels almost like coming home.  Like coming home and like “getting away from it all” at the same time.  Neglected for over a year, it’s time to throw open the windows, dust off the furniture, start some dinner in the crockpot, post some flowers…

056It feels like a new beginning and and old friend.  Maybe it’s just nice because I haven’t told anyone yet that I’m writing here!  Ha.  Yep, this is me writing to absolutely no one.  Guess that will change here in a bit.

Today was the first milking of the year.  We’ve been getting goat’s milk from a neighbor for the past few weeks, but it’s nice to milk my own again.  We ended up drying our gals up early somehow, so it’s been nearly three months instead of the usual two since we’ve milked them.  Anyway, it’s such a pleasant routine.  And milk means baby goats, which are wonderful, which we happen to have two more of today.  I posted about April’s kids on the old blog.  Daisy had twin bucklings just after midnight Friday and Rochel had twins this morning.  The turkey.  I’ve been watching so closely the last few days, thinking she was very close, but she was giving us mixed signals.  This morning I guessed she’d be a few hours, but within two she had birthed them both, a buck and a doe, and we all missed it!  Oh well, everyone is healthy and adorable.

Rochel and kids, the doe would be the white one, of course.  White goats are, well, just kind of boring.  The brown one is the only one of the six that looks like its papa.  (Apparently my camera corrects for red eye, but not blue eye.)

065

Daisy with Oreo (named by Atira).  Alfred P. Doolittle (“Alfie,” named by yours truly) is behind her; he’s solid black, I think with some small dark brown spots; will know for sure when we get them out in the sunshine.

032

April’s kids, one week old now.  The black one is the doe, named Reverse by Royal (because she came out backward) and the brown the buck, Merlin (named by Farra). 

035

It’s disappointing to have so many bucks.  It’s a sad reality that on a farm the males just aren’t as useful or as valuable as the females.  I really would have liked to keep a doe kid from Daisy; maybe next year.  It’s still wonderful to have so many kids, all healthy, to be in milk again, to have such good, attentive momma goats…  Daisy has the most incredible mothering instincts.  She talks to her babies all during labor and when she has a contraction she turns and looks around like she is expecting a baby to be there.  When they’re born she cleans them up promptly and thoroughly and they are sometimes nursing before they can even stand.   Fascinating.

The goat life is the good life.

Maybe I’ll tell you about my garden next time.  =)

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Home Again, Home Again

Jiggity jig.

Man, is it ever nice to be back at Blogger!  The reason this time?  Well, there’re some new owners over at homeschoolblogger.com and in order to stay I would have to do some exporting and importing and blah blah blah and now that I have high speed internet—yes!  Me!—it occurred to me to check things out here.  So far, so good.  Even if my offline program, Live Writer, doesn’t work, I can compose online because I’m always online anyway.  HughesNet Gen4.  This is month two and I love it.  Worth the cost.  Write it off as a homeschooling tool.

So, I gotta pop around this place and do some updating.  I see my blog roll is sadly outdated (if you have some time, check out my friend Denny’s blog, Our Tomorrow), as is my profile info.  It used to say something about "serving my heavenly father."  I’m no longer serving a heavenly anything, no longer trying to live up to the unclear expectations of the Bible.  You can read about my spiritual journey at my last blog (now moved to , but the long and skinny of it is that last October Bobby and I got into some Bible study that lead us right out of the Bible, out of Christianity, out of Hebrew Roots non-Christian Christianity, out of religion entirely.  To suddenly see that the Bible and its god were the works of man was a shock and slightly terrifying at first.  We were certainly not looking for it.  I toyed around with Deism for a bit after that but now I honestly don’t care if there is a creator god or not.  I might philosophize about it occasionally, but I’m tired of wasting energy on things that mankind can’t possibly know and wouldn't matter if we did.  Life is too damn short.  Too damn full of amazing (real) people and things to learn and explore.  It is every bit as rich as it was a year ago and a far sight more enjoyable as a whole.

That said, as I look back over the last few posts here my heart kind of quivers.  Do I regret the time I spent as a Bible-believer?  In some ways.  But I don’t regret for a moment the friendships I formed.  The Fourniers, Singhs, Tuckers, Sweeney’s, etc…  so many dear families.  Funny, now that I’m outside religion I see it for the box it is but I have no reason to reject those within it.  Unfortunately, those within it have reason to reject me.  I am Lost.  I am Infidel.  I am Other. 

I try not to let it bother me, rather just accept it for what it is, glad I had that special time with special people.  I have shed my tears and grieved for all of those friendships lost.  Now I will have new special times with new special people.  I already have amazing new people in my life.  And family relationships have lightened up now that we are not so religious.  I have spent some wonderful time with my brother, for instance, with all the walls down.  I even have some Christian friends who have stood by me, who have seen that I have not changed so much, and love me for who I am, not what I believe about the Bible.  It was just before the Feast of Tabernacles last year that we made our Exodus and I very much missed that enchanted time of camping and fellowship in TN.  This year we plan to get some family and friends together for an extended camping weekend because it’s such a great fall tradition.  I decided we should also work in a spring time family tradition, a float trip in late April or early May.  I am very much looking forward to that!   If all goes well, there will be a summer vacation to Vermont to visit long-time friends and family, and around that the summer holds promise of many enjoyable nights of universe exploration, astronomy with local friends, some community activities…   I can’t tell you how tickled I am that my transition out of religion, which could have been so painful, was instead made smooth by new friends and new activities.  Not just the new friends but old ones, too, like I said.  Pat and Lisa and Rafe from VT, whose visit and entrance/re-entrance into my life was timed perfectly, and the renewed friendship with my brother…     Waking up each day and realizing, if I take the time, that everything that really mattered is still here and is more vivid somehow.  To set my feet on the floor, yawn, stretch, and know that my life is my own, to make whatever I want of it.  Mostly that is exhilarating and the most peaceful thing I’ve ever known, but I don’t deny I have moments I wish the responsibility wasn't mine!  It would be nice to have someone else to blame, some days.

Now the hour is late and sleep beckons.  There is a beautiful spring storm surging and splashing and flashing outside, the perfect lullaby.  More later in the week!