Mid-morning yesterday while I was up to my elbows in teaching math to three different children at three different levels at the same time, my husband got busy in the kitchen scrounging up something for all of us for lunch. He is very good at putting together whatever he can find and making a good lunch out of it. At some point, I vaguely noticed that he was in the kitchen making a batch of mozzarella cheese.

We make our mozzarella cheese more or less following Ricki Carroll’s instructions in her must have book Home Cheesemaking - Recipes for 75 Homemade Cheeses. The directions in her book are generally the same as the ones on her web site with the bonus on her web page of there being photos included. (I am only linking to the directions for “30 Minute Mozzarella without using a Microwave” because microwaves are bad, bad, bad!) We have made so much of this quick type of mozzarella over the last couple of years that we can do it almost automatically.

So my husband made up a batch of mozzarella cheese and added basil to it. Then he pulled out the leftover pasta sauce from the night before, sliced the bread in the bread basket, fired up the oven and made us some delicious “toast pizzas”, I guess you could call them.

The reason I mention all of this is that we were scrounging. There didn’t seem to be much to eat in the house and we can’t go shopping for a while yet. When we all sat down to eat, I looked at what was on the plate and laughed. What were we eating?

Organic sourdough bread that had risen twice for 12 and 4 hours respectively;

Flavorful homemade pasta sauce;

and fresh mozzarella made from unprocessed, grass-fed milk and flavored with sea salt and organic basil.

In this day and age, such tasty and nutrient dense food is hard to come by and expensive when you find it. But for us on the old homestead, this was what we came up with by scrounging! There surely are some benefits to living like this…

By the way, I recommend trying your hand at making this quick type of mozzarella. It is easy, satisfying and delicious and a great way to introduce yourself to cheesemaking. Go to Ricki’s web page to learn more or better yet, get yourself a copy of Home Cheesemaking.

Bon appetit from the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

In my never ending quest to make warm, nutritious breakfasts that aren’t sweet, are inexpensive and reasonable to make during our very busy farm mornings, I have started making Cream of (Fill in the Blank) Cereal once a week so or so. We have had cream of wheat, cream of spelt, cream of rye and cream of kamut so far. I haven’t tried cream of rice yet and I wonder from time to time about the possibilities of cream of barley cereal. Be that as it may, all the hot cereals we have had so far have been delicious and the children have eaten two or three bowls full each time. I must say, though, that my personal favorite is cream of kamut.

If I were of a mindset to worship a grain, my choice would be kamut. The berries are large and golden and buttery looking. They just glow really and make you want to eat them and partake of the glorious nutrition Nature has created for us.

As the Walton Feed people say:

As [kamut] hasn’t been altered by modern plant breeders, it retains its ancient nutrition, flavor and goodness.

They also note that:

Due to its slightly higher fatty acid content, Kamut can be considered a high energy grain, and compared to wheat, Kamut also contains elevated levels of vitamin E, Thiamin, Riboflavin, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, pantothentic acid, copper and complex carbohydrates. All around, Kamut seems to be a very healthy grain.

To read more about the history and nutritional value of kamut, you can look here, here and here. There is also an entire book devoted to kamut entitled Kamut: An Ancient Food for a Healthy Future (see link at end of post). I haven’t read this book yet but it is now on my Amazon wish list! For an astonishingly detailed review of what the word “kamut” really means, read this analysis on Polyglot Vegetarian. It is complete with coptic writing and mentions of various Egyptian dictionaries and all sorts of interesting things. (It is truly a wonder what you can find on the internet…)

Donna Spann, whom I have mentioned in a previous post about millet, notes in her Grains of Truth that:

You can use Kamut for most of your baking - breads, muffins, cookies, even cakes. Some folks will cook up Kamut as a hot breakfast cereal, or a pilaf as a side dish. Flaked, Kamut cooks up to a similar consistency to oatmeal. I also like to use the flaked grain in granola and cookies. Don’t be afraid to experiment with this terrific and ancient grain that narrowly missed extinction. p. 68

In making an exotic Kamut, Candied Pumpkin and Hazlenut Cake, Mercedes of Desert Candy tells us:

So I got out my standard cake recipe, and I fiddled and tweaked and practiced, and the result was this Egyptian-inspired version. I used kamut flour, a grain similar to wheat, in place of some of the regular flour. Kamut is traditional in Egypt, it is very nutritious, very easy to grow, and a much-higher yield crop than wheat (I don’t know why it isn’t more widely grown in America, but I suspect U.S. agriculture subsidies have a lot to do with it); the flour has a light yellow color and a slightly sweet buttery note.

Interesting point. Rosa Jackson, on her blog Edible Adventures Paris, Nice and Beyond, describes using kamut flour to make a special homemade pizza:

For my pizza crust I used 20 per cent kamut, resulting in a pale yellow, slightly sweet dough with a lightly crunchy texture.

I have also used kamut flour in pizza crust, bread, biscuits and a number of other baked goods. Aside from my wild enthusiasm about kamut itself, I think using a range of grains in our daily fare is a sound health practice so I switch around which grains I use both to take advantage of their individual characteristics and also just for the sake of variety.

Cream of kamut cereal is probably about the easiest thing you could make with this or any other grain. Here is how I do it:

1. Put 9 cups of water and a teaspoon of salt in a heavy bottomed pot and put on a burner on “high”.

2. Meanwhile coarsely grind 3 cups of kamut berries.

3. Pour 3 cups of water into a bowl or large Pyrex measuring cup. Slowly add the kamut flour, stirring madly all the while, to prevent lumps from forming. The resulting mixture will be very thick.

4. Once the water on the stove is boiling, pour the kamut/water mixture into it. Be careful to not get burned by any splashing as the kamut hits the boiling water in the pot.

5. Turn the heat down somewhat and stir the pot until the cream of kamut is steaming hot and thick. If it is too thick for your taste, thin with a bit of water.

That’s it. Breakfast is ready. The amount above makes just barely enough for us. Leftovers store well in refrigerator. Smaller families may appreciate the following amounts: 1 cup ground kamut, 4 cups water, 1/2 tsp. salt. Follow the directions the same way (i.e. boil 3 cups of water, mix ground kamut into the remaining cup of water and so on) and also follow these same directions for any other grain of your choosing. If you don’t have a way to grind grain, make your cereal with the freshest flour you find at the health food store.

Most folks eat this kind of cereal sweet in which case you may add butter, cream and a sweetener such as maple syrup, agave nectar or sucanat. I, of course, prefer serving it in a more savory manner with lots of farm fresh butter and salt. So satisfying and nutty and delicious and the kamut is a lovely golden color. This morning my husband hit upon the happy compromise of serving it salty but with the addition of dried cranberries. This was fantastic and there were no leftovers whatsoever.

Here is a listing of other kamut recipes on my list to try:

Kamut, Lentil and Chickpea Soup

Kamut and Cheese Muffins

Kamut Breakfast (although I will have to come up with an unsweetened variation)

Kamut Biryani

and a number of things from this page of kamut recipes at Food Down Under and especially lots of delectable looking recipes at kamut.com.

So we will happily keep eating our fast and tasty cream of grain cereals. If cream of barley turns out to be good also, I will let you all know.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

Why do I love reading about “old pathways” and past ways of living? I am drawn to the descriptions of lives lived closer to each other and to the land. I am drawn to the hints of useful everyday knowledge of yore now almost entirely lost to us. I appreciate the ingenuity, the self-sufficiency, the common sense, the patience and the contentment I often find in certain kinds of readings from the past. I also just really enjoy learning about other ways of life whether that be from the past or from a radically different culture right here in the present.

I stumbled across A Childhood Reminiscence by Anne Knight in my web travels. With just a few paragraphs and photographs, the feeling of an entirely different way of living is evoked. Imagine this as a way to tell time every evening:

In the evenings he would drive them back to the farm to be milked. The cows plodding along at their own pace, taking their time, and pushing their horns through the hedge in our front garden and munching at the dandelions as they passed. Turning patiently into the farmyard, each one went to its own stall to be milked by hand, patiently waiting their turn.

Imagine receiving your fresh, unprocessed milk this way:

Each day Mr. Mansell, his flat cap at a jaunty angle, would deliver the milk. He rode on a horse and cart, a type of open cart with milk churns at the back. The horse needed no instructions, he stopped and started at all the customer’s houses and Mr. Mansell dispensed the milk from the churns. He would dip in the measure and bring it out of the milk, frothy and creamy, and pour it into the largest jug we had. Milk was rationed, but he always filled our jug and milk was one thing we were never without.

Imagine having bread, fish, groceries and all sorts of other necessities (including “stone bottles of lemonade and dandelion & burdock”) delivered to your house. Imagine knowing the person who grows the food and delivers it to you. Imagine sharing simple vegetables with your neighbors along with seasonal chores. There are so many things to imagine.

Nathan Griffin, author of one of my favorite homesteading books Husbandry - The Sure, Cheap Way to Plenty & Prosperity in the Country, started early in his homesteading career reading old books:

I neglected to mention that my antiquarian-bookselling friend handled mainly religious books, but he also specialized in old agricultural books. In the year I worked for him I read, borrowed, and bought dozens of books. I learned a great deal, things which made life easier in the days before America became petroleum-based. Finding much scientific lore too, I began experimenting with low-cost ways of making a good living with less money, less labor. Little by little, our tiny farm began taking shape. p. 8

One of the ways that I think investigating the old pathways readies us for even a startlingly new future is that it disengages us from modern, conventional mindsets. We become vividly aware that there are other ways of living and that industrialization, rampant materialism, loss of tight family and community bonds and ties with the land, pretend food, too much choice of goods and services as well as a host of other modernities represent a loss. By disengaging from the present ways of doing things, we can think in refreshing ways about how to solve our problems of life. We can rethink what our goals actually are and ply a new course towards them.

Unhooking from present day helplessness by engaging in past modes of self-sufficiency can build the skill sets, knowledge bases, thought force, and inner qualities of intuition, confidence, courage and faith that will be absolutely critical to participating in a radically different future.

So I would say, “Yes, following old pathways is one of the first steps we need to take towards a new future.” The old ways aren’t necessarily an end in and of themselves. However following at least some of them can be a lever that moves us towards a more natural life and a wedge that opens our mind to possibilities beyond what we see in front of us. When we habitually come from the perspective that what is preached by society at this time is not “truth” or “the only way” or even “reality”, then we will have taken a giant step towards becoming more open to the new ways Nature is already mapping out for us.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

It has been a few years since I have read the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books out loud. I have recently read aloud several of the news books about Martha in Scotland (look partway down on the left sidebar) and they were delightful for all of us. However with all of the hee’s and haw’s (which is how you tell draft horses and oxen whether to turn left or right) we heard on our recent field trip to Tenley and Dennis’ horse powered farm, I was inspired to take Farmer Boy down off the shelf and read it aloud. It is kind of outside the progression of the other books in the series and can be easily read out of order. During our first evening of reading, we came to this passage:

Almanzo took his own little milking-stool, and a pail, and sat in Blossom’s stall to milk her. His hands were not yet strong enough to milk a hard milker, but he could milk Blossom and Bossy. They were good old cows who gave down their milk easily, and hardly ever switched a stinging tail into his eyes, or upset the pail with a hind foot. He sat with the pail between his feet, and milked steadily. Left, right! swish, swish! the streams of milk slanted into, while the cows licked up their grain and crunched their carrots…

When Almanzo had finished milking, he filled the pans for the cats. His father went into Blossom’s stall with his own pail and stool, and sat down to strip the last, richest drops of milk from Blossom’s udder. But Almanzo had got it all. Then Father went into Bossy’s stall. He came out at once, and said:

“You’re a good milker, son.”

Almanzo just turned around and kicked at the straw on the floor. He was too pleased to say anything. Now he could milk cows by himself; Father needn’t strip them after him. Pretty soon he would be milking the hardest milkers. pgs. 20-22

The last time I read this aloud, I had never milked a cow. I hadn’t trained young children how to milk cows nor seen their triumph when they first managed to milk one out on their own. Every single word of this passage is now rich with meaning both for me and for the children. We paused here and talked a bit about what the passage meant and how they related to it. It was a very sweet conversation.

In thinking more about this later, I realized that there are many seemingly small yet important facts embedded in this short passage. Some of them are brought out by the wonderful accompanying illustration by Garth Williams.

To start with, you can see in the drawing how short Blossom’s legs are. It is easy for Almanzo to get in there and reach everything as her udder is fairly close to the ground and the pail can stand between his feet. That is not often the case any more these days. Just like the short teats I wrote about a couple of days ago, dairy cows tend to have long legs these days. It is easier to get machinery situated down there when the legs are long. When you are hand milking, however, long legs means lots of splashed milk because the force of it “slanting” down into a pail that far away causes lots of splashing up out of the pail. Pezra (our red and white cow) has those long legs and I get splashed every single day! Phoebe (our black cow) does not have those long legs so you can milk her and not get milk splashed on your clothes.

See that little stool Almanzo is sitting on? You can’t quite tell but it is surely a three legged stool. You can’t find three legged stools of the right height for milking for love or money these days even though everyone had them in the “old days”. Again, long legged, short teated cows plus milking by machine adds up to no market for sturdy, three legged milking stools.

A stinging tail can hurt not only because of the speed of the swing and the coarseness of the hair at the end of the tail, but also because it is often soaked in urine. Yup. You definitely don’t want to be hit by a tail while milking, especially if you are a little child. Our cows are so settled in now that the only time they might switch their tails is during the summer milkings when they are trying to get rid of flies. You do kind of learn to dodge them after a while though.

Hearing the cows munch on their feed while you are milking them is one of the very pleasant things about hand milking a cow. It is interesting that Almanzo’s prosperous farmer father feeds his cows grain and carrots (and also potatoes it says elsewhere in the book). I know that was a practice in past times in England. Turnips and greens were also fed. During this night of milking in Farmer Boy, it was apparently 40 degrees below zero. It was so cold that Almanzo’s father had to get up in the middle of the night and awaken and run the 25 young cows that were sleeping outside under a shed so that they wouldn’t freeze to death in their sleep. I don’t know what this degree of cold implies about whether or not cows could be grass-fed only. I do know that the move away from the most natural livestock practices started quite a while ago. Probably everyone managed just fine until recent times, however, when unnatural practices were raised to commercial and legal standards through sheer force and profit-mongering.

Now about Almanzo’s father going into Blossom’s stall after Almanzo to strip the last, richest drops of milk from Blossom’s udder. “Stripping” is when you put the top of two teats between your thumbs and first one or two fingers of each hand and then squeezing your thumbs and fingers together, drag your fingers down the teat. You can apply much more pressure this way than with methodically squeezing the teats with your whole hands which gives you the force to get out any last drops of milk. The “last, richest drops of milk” refers to the hindmilk. It is the same with all mammals. The richest, highest fat milk comes at the end of the milking. As you need that creamy milk to make butter (and to digest the rest of the components of the milk by the way), getting every drop of cream is an important goal with every milking. Besides, getting all the milk out keeps milk production up.

But Almanzo had got it all and “You’re a good milker, son.” are great accomplishments for a young child on a farm. To have the strength and presence of mind to completely milk out a cow is a valuable benchmark of maturity. To be able to add another qualified milker on to the rolls of a farm is also a great thing in terms of distributing labor during the course of a farm day.

Two of the four children listening to me read Farmer Boy have gone through this experience themselves. They learned to milk a bit at a time until they were doing most of a milking of one cow. Finally the day arrived when they could totally milk out a cow and that was a big day for all of us. Our 9 year old can actually milk out both cows one after the other during the morning milking. Their milk is pretty low now so it is manageable for him. He won’t be able to do this when they freshen again (i.e. calve again and bloom with large quantities of milk). Anna and Will glowed with pride right along with Almanzo as they listened to this meaningful passage about a rite of passage on the farm.

We are doing well here on Natural Path Farm to now have four children who can milk out the cows. This is wonderful in a lot of ways although I personally really enjoy milking and don’t want to get too far away from it. I have milked more often lately with the cold and wet weather as that added challenge is pretty tough on the 8 and 9 year olds.

In any case, one of the things I appreciate about living a simpler, closer to the earth life where we are providing much of our own labor rather than just buying finished products all the time is that there are many possible benchmarks and challenges to overcome for all of us - but especially the children. When you know how to pray, build a barn, milk a cow, cook breakfast, do math, recite historical events with verve and narrate Shakespeare all before the age of 10… well, I think you are off to a pretty good start in building the confidence and the “inner knowing” that will be needed to face life’s challenges.

Farm life and reading rich literature are strengthening all the way around. As a matter of fact, I think the world needs many more highly literate, deeply thoughtful, well skilled farmers.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

I learned these shocking statistics about the overwhelming pollution of plastic bags in the world in Dr. Mercola’s February 15th newsletter:

• Between 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide annually. That’s more than one million bags PER MINUTE!!

• U.S. consumers use more than 380 billion plastic bags annually

• Taiwan consumes about 20 billion bags a year, or 900 per person annually

• Australians consume 6.9 billion plastic bags each year, or 326 per person

• Ireland consumes about 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person

Of these billions of plastic bags:

• Only 1 to 7 percent are recycled

• It takes 1,000 years for polyethylene bags to break down

• During that 1,000 years of photodegradation, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain

We have been led to believe that paper bags are an appropriate alternative to plastic but this is apparently not the case:

1. 1. Producing a paper bag requires more than four times as much energy than it does to produce a plastic bag.
      
      A plastic bag uses 594 BTUs, compared to a paper bag, which uses 2511 BTUs during the manufacturing process.
      (Source: 1989 Plastic Recycling Directory, Society of Plastics Industry.)
   2. The majority of paper comes from tree pulp, so naturally the impact in the form of deforestation is enormous. In 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone.In fact, paper bag production delivers a detrimental double-whammy as forests (major absorbers of greenhouse gases) are cut down, combined with the actual manufacturing process of the bags, which produces toxic greenhouse gases, acid rain, and water pollution.
   3. Although paper bags have a higher recycling rate than plastic, only 10 to 15 percent of paper bags are recycled. And, making matters even less attractive, it takes 91 percent LESS energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.
   4. Last but not least, current research indicates that paper does not degrade at a substantially faster rate than plastic once it’s in a landfill. This is because virtually nothing degrades completely in modern landfills due to lack of water, light, oxygen and other factors necessary for successful degradation.

Just in case you think this all adds up to nothing but plastic bag eyesores, read the following information also included in the newsletter:

The problem is so bad that a plastic “stew,” twice the size of Texas has formed on the Pacific Ocean. Scientists have dubbed the mass of floating plastic trash the “Eastern Garbage Patch,” and its volume is growing at an alarming pace. Even more shocking: when researchers tested the water of the Pacific Ocean, they found it contained six times as much plastic as plankton, by weight!

It’s not just marine animals that are poisoned by all these stray plastic bags. You too (and your breast fed baby) are ingesting plastics every day through the food chain. It’s a hazardous mix of chemicals and additives, such as:

• Cancer-causing PFOAs
• PBDEs, which cause reproductive problems
• Phthalates; another group of reproductive toxins
• BPA, which disrupts the endocrine system by mimicking the female hormone estrogen

The end result of breathing, eating, drinking and absorbing all of this plastic includes obesity, declining fertility rates and other reproductive problems, and cancer, just to name a few.

Using cloth bags and woven baskets for carrying our groceries and other purchases is clearly the solution to mounting dumps of plastic bags all over the earth. We simply have to use them in order for them to work.

I have quite a few cloth bags to use for grocery shopping and have had them for years. I used to use them all the time but gradually I started forgetting them in the car all the time. When we used to do big shops at the Whole Foods in Charlottesville, I could have anywhere between 4 and 6 children with me and 1 or 2 full shopping carts. If I didn’t remember until the end that I had forgotten the cloth bags again, I was not in a position to run out and get them from the car. Besides, I chose paper bags in the winter and we used them to help start fires in the woodburning stove and I reused the plastic bags the rest of the time for all sorts of things. Otherwise I recycled them.

Since moving to Floyd, I realize that I have basically forgotten about the cloth bags altogether. The health food store here takes them and reuses them with other customers so I have been taking ours there. But obviously not using them at all is what is best.

I used to have a lovely steel trap mind. Really I did. But sometime during the last decade or so, my mind seems to have settled into a half open/half shut position and the steel has metamorphosed into a somewhat more giving material. I don’t know if this is due to many years of little sleep, hormonal changes, or just plain old constant overwhelm. Whatever it is, I had better overcome it with regards to using our cloth bags again for grocery shopping. I am startled by these statistics and must do the right thing.

I know - I will train the children to get the bags out of the trunk of the car before we go in to shop. Their young, fresh minds are just what I am looking for! As a matter of fact, young, fresh minds and cloth bags are together probably the real solution to the problem.

Oh, and do sign up for Dr. Mercola’s newsletter. I have been reading it for years and years. It is full of timely and important information about health, the environment and even Google tips.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

No matter how hard we may work individually towards our spiritual progress, whatever spiritual progress is created in us is not for us, per se. Nature does not grant gifts for the sake of the individual alone but rather grants gifts to striving individuals so that they may expand on those gifts through sharing them with others. Spiritual gifts come with an obligation to use them towards Nature’s ends. While the spiritual Masters cherish and attend to each individual, it is ultimately for the purpose of restoring all of humanity to its original birthright. An individual is not an end in and of his or her self.

“Religion and politics make poor bedfellows” is an old gem full of many potential important meanings. But I will add this at this time, “Spirituality can at least direct the housekeeping in charge of that bed until such time as we all move into another house!” What do I mean by this?

I don’t know about other spiritual paths but in Sahaj Marg, we are strictly warned against mixing politics and spirituality out in the marketplace. However we are enjoined to exercise our civic duty with character and spiritual insight. On a spiritual path in which we may be in the world but not of it, what might spiritual discipline bring to our exercise of civic duty, as in the example of voting for a President?

Spiritual discipline brings self-knowledge: With self-knowledge both about who we are as individuals as well as who we are because we are human beings, we have an unshakable center. As such, we can be less easily swayed by political rhetoric and less inflamed by political drama. With self-knowledge at hand and the goal of human life in view, we will never forget that politics are not and will never be the source of our salvation! Politics is just that… politics. There is no place for hating a leader just as there is no place for a cult of personality although there is plenty of room for caution and for hope. A clear-eyed view of ourselves, the candidates and the nation of people as a whole is required for voting for the sake of the country.

Spiritual discipline fosters brotherly love and inspires a commitment to service of others. With such an attitude, we are less inclined to vote based on single issues as our softened hearts would make us painfully aware that a whole range of issues for an entire people is at stake. I interact with many religious people who stoutly maintain that abortion is the single most important issue and, therefore, our votes should be cast accordingly. This narrow approach has given us eight years of damage and death (and nothing that has stemmed the tide of abortion) that I believe still remains largely unknown by most folks. At the same time, I recently read someone’s urging that we should vote for one particular candidate because the health plan they have put forward includes access to alternative medicine. Now aside from the enormous gap that will exist between the form of the first comprehensive health coverage passed in this country and anything anyone has written down in a plan to that end at the moment, voting based on (most) single issues is generally not appropriate. Narrow self-interest always leads to unintended consequences - even when those narrow self-interests are apparently moral or “good”.

Spiritual discipline creates a disciplined mind. A disciplined mind is more likely to see through spin and is more likely to see through the issues made ever more complex and find the simple root underneath it all. A spiritually disciplined mind thinks originally and powerfully and is less affected by convention and rubrics like “left” and “right”. A spiritually disciplined mind is the landing ground for revelation and can point to the past or the future with ease. The great insight available to a spiritually disciplined mind and devoted heart can transform the mundane yet important act of voting into a small step towards a new future.

Spiritual discipline is a foundation for increased inner sensitivity which develops our ability to read a person’s character/condition/tendencies. In choosing a President, for instance, we are choosing an entire person who will be functioning as a generalist under very stressful circumstances and with access to more power than most humans at this time are really prepared to handle appropriately. Issues come and go and chart unpredictable courses in any case. What of the deeper nature of the person we are considering for this post of President? What will the crucible of the Presidency bring out in their characters and what effect will that have on the people they serve both here and abroad? That is perhaps the single most important aspect of any of the candidates’ application for the job. When we have at least some ability to read their “application”, we should make a discerning choice based upon what we are capable of reading there.

Putting together the short list of strengths that arise out of spiritual discipline of self-knowledge, brotherly love and service, a disciplined mind and the ability to read the deeper nature of others together with devotion to the upliftment of humanity can create a desire in us to “be on the side of what needs to happen”, as my husband says. It creates in us the desire to work with Nature’s plans and leave things like narrow issues or allegiance to “sides” or emotions like fear behind. What is the highest goal and in light of that, what is the highest choice we can make? Everything else will unfold as it will.

Just as conducting an intense spiritual pursuit in the midst of family life is not easy, the links between spiritual discipline and civic duty are not always obvious or easy either. It is whispered to us that so many things in the distant future will be very different than they are now. Will there even be a “politics” in the far distant future? I wonder about these things a lot. Be that as it may, in the meanwhile we can at least conduct family life and exercise our civic and economic duties in the light of our spiritual insights, gifts and discipline. May it be for the betterment of us all.

From the mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

We all enjoyed fresh tortillas hot off the grill yesterday morning for breakfast with our leftover Indian food. They were especially flavorful and ready to eat extra early because I made the dough up the night before the “nourishing traditions” way.

While I thoroughly appreciate the Nourishing Traditions principles of soaking grains for a lengthy time before eating them, I don’t always manage to do it. We eat an awful lot of grain around here in one form or another and, well, it isn’t always planned out a day ahead. (I am working on that!) The other day, however, I came across a post on Brian Glass’ nourishing traditions based blog about making tortilla dough with whey and letting it sit for 12 - 24 hours before rolling out the tortillas. Ah, a good and simple idea which I implemented right away.

You can see his more usual sized recipe in his post. Ours was a little different both because I make tortillas in much larger amounts and because I don’t include oil in my dough. I guess this makes the flat bread I make a cross between a tortilla and a chapatti which works out fine for us because we eat them with both Mexican and Indian food!

Overnight Tortillas

6 cups freshly ground whole wheat flour

3 tsp. sea salt

6 Tbl. whey plus enough lukewarm water to make a soft dough

Mix flour and salt with your hands. Measure the whey (I specifically used kefir whey as it has the greatest capacity for breaking down the phytates in the wheat) into a glass measuring cup and fill with the water up to about 2 cups. Add the water to the flour and stir with a fork. Add more lukewarm water or small amounts of unbleached flour to the dough until you get a nicely mixed soft dough. Flour the counter and turn out dough. Knead for a couple of minutes. Leave on floured counter, well covered, over night. The next morning, roll out tortillas and bake on a hot griddle.

We were all amazed at how much more flavorful these tortillas were than the usual “let sit for a half hour so the dough relaxes before rolling out” method of making tortillas. And they had such a wonderful chewiness and sturdiness that my husband used the uneaten ones to make mini-pizzas for lunch. I will definitely be making tortillas this way from now on. I think I had better also make up a batch or two and freeze them so that we can have these wonderful overnight tortillas on a whim!

For any of you who aren’t accustomed to making flour tortillas, I know this isn’t enough information to properly get you started. As soon as I can, I will put up more detailed instructions along with photographs and a video. Making tortillas is a family affair around here which is really fun and something I have been wanting to share.

As a matter of fact, I think I will go start one of those batches for the freezer this morning.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

I have been wondering about the human directed re-shaping of cow teats for a couple of years now. It has been my suspicion that modern farmers have probably been pulling for short teats in their breeding programs in order to fit their cows to their milking machines.

You know that human tendency to rejigger nature in order that she may fit into our mechanistic ideas of the good life? How could that not have been perpetuated upon cows? Of course it has.

I have Googled this subject of short cow teats more than once but have never found anything concrete. Today I read Farming Today Yesterday’s Way by Cheryl Walsh Bellville to the children. We picked this older book up at the library and it now seems to be out of print. It is a photo documentary and useful explanation of life on a horse powered dairy farm in Wisconsin in the 1980’s. On page 10 it says:

Modern cows are not built to be milked by hand - their teats are too short - so Tom uses a milking machine.

Aha! And here we have another advantage of milking heritage breed cows. You can raise cows with decent teats an adult can get their hands around. It is no good on a homestead to have cows with teats the right size for a child to work and udders holding so much milk that only an adult has the stamina to get through the milking. Our red cow, Pezra, has “machine teats”. They are small and particularly hard to milk when her udder is very full. Paul can’t milk her at all under such conditions. She is strictly a woman and children cow in the milking department. Now Phoebe has nice long teats that anyone can milk no matter how full her udder. We look forward to seeing the same thing on her heifer and we wonder what kind of teats Clover, Pezra’a heifer, will have.

It seems to me that we humans are spending a lot of time and energy painting ourselves into corners. Virtually all grocery store eggs come from one breed of laying hen, for instance. What if a disease gets a foothold for which that one breed is particularly susceptible? Well we will end up with lots of empty shelves in the dairy cases of grocery stores from coast to coast.

What if there are massive power outages or the cost of power rises so dramatically that our electrical activities are put in jeopardy? Well we will be going without lots of things in such a scenario, of course, but among other things we will be going without milk or cheese. Now even if some scrappy homesteading, homeschooling young people showed up who not only knew that cows can be hand milked but actually had experience doing the hand milking, what cows would they milk? Well I guess they would have to use their scrappy perspicacity to scour the countryside looking for heritage breed cows with teats still under the original warranty and designed to sustain both humans and calves.

So lets some of us at least raise children and cows today “yesterday’s way” so that the people of tomorrow may eat.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

Within Charlotte Mason home education circles, the evocative term “mother culture” refers to those special activities engaged in by busy mothers for the purpose of providing themselves inner rest and nourishment. Occasional dips into loveliness can certainly renew mothers who have a long, long marathon indeed to run. However, I believe that the most powerful component of “mother culture” is maintaining an unwavering view of the true goal of human life.

Referring to particularly stressful times in the household, Miss Mason wrote:

If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their
children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, of a half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, Life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. School Education, Vol. 3, p. 33

This is sound advice. Having the ability to recognize early that we have temporarily hit our limit requires self knowledge. Taking measures to diffuse the situation and employing ways to quickly refresh ourselves indicates that we acknowledge the differences between working and toiling. It is “working” that we wish for for ourselves and our children. We wouldn’t wish a life of toil on our children, right?, so we must model living a life of work as opposed to a life of toil. At the same time, I think that stopping to go for a walk or look at a beautiful painting for some mothers may be closing the barn door after the animals have already fled. Let us look more deeply into the problem.

In the Parents’ Review article “Mother Culture”, the author notes that:

There is no sadder sight in life than a mother, who has so used herself up in her children’s childhood, that she has nothing to give them in their youth… Is there not some need for “mother culture”? But how is the state of things to be altered? So many mothers say, “I simply have no time for myself!” “I never read a book!” Or else, “I don’t think it is right to think of myself!” They not only starve their minds, but they do it deliberately, and with a sense of self-sacrifice which seems to supply ample justification. Vol. 3, p. 93

The diagnosis of a mother who gives up reading or “doing anything for herself” while her children are little goes much deeper than her possibly superficial notions of self-sacrifice. No, the diagnosis goes right to the heart of a woman’s nature as juxtaposed against the goal of human life.

It has been said within circles of spiritual science and pursuit that women love easily such that they also easily love whomever is put in front of them. So while loving easily is of benefit on the spiritual path, the tendency to love whomever happens to be in front of us distracts us from our spiritual goal (as the spiritual goal entails loving One overwhelmingly). Men, on the other hand, do not tend to love easily but are very goal oriented by nature. Once they do open their hearts to their spiritual goal, however, men often end up being able to reach their goal more easily than the women who have been waylaid by life.

When I first started hearing this general truth about our natures, I admit that I resisted it a bit. But the longer I live and the more I observe, the more I see how true it is. Hence the importance of this statement from “Mother Culture”:

The only way to do it is to be so strongly impressed with the necessity for growing herself that she herself makes it a real object in life.

There is one true goal of human life and that is the spiritual one of returning to our Original Home. Anyone who swerves from that goal will fail to some extent in whatever material job they undertake in life and this is probably more true of mothers and their vital work than anyone else. Attachment to our children is not the same as loving and guiding them. Loving them must always deepen both them and us but the common time consuming and emotion spending attachments and entanglements that cause us to stumble on our spiritual path must be loosened. This is not an easy proposition but it is always instructive!

The author suggests that mothers plant their children comfortably about the house and

Then she can listen to her children, and perhaps do a little thinking - not about frocks and foods, but about characters, and how to deal with them; or she can take a book, and “grow” that way. This would do something but not enough. Mother must have time to herself.

Yes, mothers need to think about characters and how to deal with them but that should not be the first order of business during precious and scarce time to herself. The first order of business during time to ourselves, to my mind, is meditation, prayer and sacred reading. Ideally we mothers are first and foremost spiritual devotees. The fact that we happen to be devoted mothers does not change that in any way. The goal of life is the goal of life regardless of how we happen to be spending that life. There is no material job or position in life that trumps the spiritual goal of all life.

The author ends with:

If we mothers were all “growing” there would be less going astray among our boys, less separation in mind from our girls… But, if we would do our best for our children, grow we must; and on our power of growth surely depends, not only our future happiness, but our future usefulness.

Is there, then, not need for more “Mother Culture”?

I think that the problem is somewhat different these days. At least I think it is typically somewhat different outside of the kind of homeschooling circles with which I am familiar. I think it is common these days for people to not sacrifice enough for their children and to not work enough towards creating a better world. People are very focused these days on what they perceive to be their own “growth”. However I think this is as off the mark as what Charlotte Mason and the author of Mother Culture were describing. No matter in what direction we are straying from the spiritual goal of life - whether that be an over attachment to one’s children or an over attachment to one’s material happiness - we are turning our backs on the light. Whether we are turning left from it or turning right from it is immaterial.

Is there a need for mother culture? Yes, and that culture first and foremost is created through fanning the flames of spiritual devotion in our own hearts. Through that process so many other perplexities of home life will naturally resolve and dissolve. Maintaining inner balance, deepening self knowledge, increasing sensitivity and discernment about the ones we love and are responsible for, keeping the mind sharp and the heart lively all will flow naturally from a devoted and effective daily spiritual practice of one sort or another.

I freely admit that I am miserable at getting “down time”. I really need to correct this. I do read though. I have always read and always will as I cannot not read. I am always reading many books at once on the many subjects so crucial to my “profession” as it were. However, I don’t perceive the mere reading of informative and skill based books to be something that for me maintains something as profound as what can be meant by “mother culture”. I think, though, that getting up at dawn or earlier when the world, the house, the atmosphere and my own mind are quiet, and meditating and praying and reading the sacred books that open my mind and feed my heart comes as close to creating mother culture - or in fact human culture - in myself as anything I could do. It is only through constantly being reminded of the highest goal of human life that I can manage to get through the up’s and down’s of daily life with perspective and an unquenchable hope for the future.

So in answer to the question about what renews me as a Charlotte Mason educating mom of a houseful of stair step children I would have to say …

rising at dawn and plunging into the Highest.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

I just came across the article Raising Rare Livestock Breeds: Learn About the Challenges - and Rewards - of Raising Rare Livestock Breeds and find it to be the best article about raising rare breed livestock I have read so far. It begins with this:

Ten thousand years or so ago, humans partnered up with denizens of the animal kingdom to create the world’s first domesticated livestock.

Since then, thousands upon thousands of types and breeds of poultry and farm animals have evolved through natural and human selection, all tailor-made to suit the needs of the people who kept them and the climate and conditions in which they lived.

Now they’re disappearing from the earth at an alarming rate and it’s up to dedicated conservators to save them.

The article goes on to discuss reasons why many farmers and homesteaders chose to raise rare breed livestock such as commitment to maintaining biodiversity, a desire for livestock bred for their particular climate, or simply wanting food that tastes better.

(The ALBC 2004 census shows that half of the breeds of chickens in the United States are endangered including this Plymouth Rock.)

At the same time, Don Schrider of the American Livestock Breed Conservancy cautions people against being “fly-by-night breeders” because the results of a quick in and out can ultimately hurt a breed more than if you had never gotten into them in the first place. He suggest that you start by learning about the nature of rare breeds and then carefully consider your commitment and resources.

What really makes this article stand out for us is the advice it contains for farmers or homesteaders considering getting started raising a rare breed. Advice includes cutting your teeth on a mainline breed first, understanding the limitations and economics of scarcity, finding a mentor, and finding a vet knowledgeable about the breed or breeds you have in mind. The article also includes a long list of organizations devoted to the conservation of rare breeds along with their contact information.

Not only do I want to encourage homesteaders to consider raising rare breeds of livestock on their places, I highly recommend reading this article in order to create an effective plan. The rare breeds deserve all the planning and resources we can provide them. They will more than compensate us in return!

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie