All individuals and families have strengths and weaknesses in these areas. As a family, we continue to work on these areas but recently we have specifically addressed continuing education, gardening, canning, grain storage and grinding, weight loss, and more consistent evening family prayer.
Neal and Keri took a Saturday morning class offered through our city to learn about rain water harvesting and build a rain barrel. The parts were cheap but it did take a bit of time to hook it all up. We have had very little rain this year and are experiencing drought conditions but have been able to provide additional watering to our vegetable garden with the harvest water.
Our garden did very well this year. We even were able to learn canning to store up some of the bounty from the cucumber and pepper plants. Our friend, Heather, also reintroduced Keri to canning beans. It's easy! Just takes a bit of time and the right equipment.
This year we added a grain mill to our kitchen tools. We went with a manual grinder because it is fun, easy to crank, and usable in a black-out. It takes about 10 minutes to grind 3 cups of flour but it's good exercise and, again, fun. Sophie does need a little assistance but is very excited to grind wheat. She should have no trouble turning the crank by age 7 or so. We refridgerate our freshly ground wheat and use it within 2 weeks otherwise flour goes rancid and loses its nutritional value--on of the reasons we try to avoid store bought flour.
Our friend, Jessica shared some of her whole wheat sourdough starter with us. We have been pretty busy and haven't baked bread with it yet but have enjoyed some yummy sourdough pancakes.
Learning these new skills has been a blast and we are thankful to our friends that willingly share their knowledge with us. Thanks for blessing our family!
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