Raw Honey

We have added raw honey to our product line - not just any raw honey, but the best honey we have ever tasted. I would never have dreamed of licking the honey spoon in the past - ugh. But, things have changed. Until we moved here, we'd never tasted anything like it. Everyone who tries it agrees. Not only is it delicious, but there are many health benefits to raw honey. It contains a complex assortment of enzymes, organic acids, trace minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and antimicrobial compounds, vitamin C, vitamin A, beta carotene, the complete complex of B vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, sulfur, chlorine, potassium, iodine, sodium, copper, manganese, high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, and formic acid (to name a few!). Honey contains more than 75 different compounds! Many of the remaining substances in honey are so complex (4-7 percent of the honey) that they have yet to be identified.

Because of the high sugar content, honey absorbs moisture in wounds, making it hard for bacteria to survive. Honey can contain large amounts of hydrogen peroxide which is regularly used to disinfect cuts and scrapes. In laboratory tests, raw honey applied to seven types of bacteria killed all seven.

About a year ago, Josiah (a.k.a. Adventure Boy), was riding his bike with a wrench in his pocket (who knows – don’t ask!). He crashed and got a cut where the wrench broke through his pants. A few days after the crash, he came to me and told me that his cut was hurting. I found a red, inflamed, angry looking wound. I immediately covered it in goldenseal and bandaged it up. It felt and looked much better the next day, but one evening a few days later (I should have been more attentive to it), it was back to its painful, swollen status, except this time, the redness was growing and there were small bumps further down the leg; tell-tale signs of a developing staph infection. First, I freaked out, then I slathered the cut with raw honey and bandaged it up. By the next morning it looked totally different: the redness was gone, it was no longer swollen, and the bumps had disappeared. It had begun healing and we didn’t have to attend to it again. I have also taken raw honey in a bit of warm water for food poisoning with dramatic results. Raw honey is amazing. And it is nice when it tastes unbelievable on your biscuits too! ;)

Hello Chia

Goodbye flax seeds, hello chia. Remember chia pets? Those crazy porcelain animals that grew "hair" in just a few days? That is all I knew about chia seeds until reading about them recently, so I was thrilled to receive some chia seed to try from More Than Alive. I had previously taken flax seeds for fiber, Omega 3 fatty acids and the detoxification benefits. Unfortunately, in order to get the benefits out of flax you have to eat them freshly ground, so I did not take them as often as I should have - lazy me. I was thrilled to read that with chia seeds you do not have to grind them to receive their benefits. Not only do they contain a great amount of fiber, but they also contain both Omega 3 & Omega 6 fatty acids at a 3 to 4 ratio and provide great detoxification properties. Here are some other great benefits of chia seeds: high in protein, high in calcium and boron (which helps your body absorb calcium), help detox your body from intestinal yuck, high in vitamins E, C, and B, and regulate your blood sugar. AND they are so easy to take. You can add them to all sorts of foods you already eat including salads, cereals, smoothies and soups. Just last night, I was halfway through making cornbread before I realized that I was out of eggs. I had read that chia seeds and water will substitue as an egg when baking. I tried it and it worked great. It seemed a little flakier than usual, but the cornbread tasted great. Chia seeds actually taste good by themselves - they have that oily crunchy taste that flax seeds do. Just be prepared to spend the next fifteen minutes picking htem out of your teeth if you chew them up. I just take 1-2 teaspoons and wash them down with water. What an easy and healthy addition to your daily routine. For more information about chia seeds, check out the More Than Alive website.

No More Laundry

There is at least one good thing about being without a washer and dryer for two weeks.....I don't have to do laundry. It's nice having all that extra time every day and not digging my way out from under Mt. Laundry. of course, there is that issue of running out of undies and kitchen towels and all......but I am trying to think on the positive side. Until MY underwear run out.

Relocated Californian

I had an interesting experience today. Maybe it was because I was alone shopping at Costco without my 5 kids distracting me or maybe I would have noticed anyway. As I was walking out, I saw a guy walking in wearing an Encinitas Surf Shop hoodie. I had to suppress the urge to jump up and down and run over saying "Hey, we're from San Diego!!"; overcrowded San Diego with it's really clean cars (no kidding), beautiful hip people who look like movie stars, busy freeways, and lots of craziness - all things that I am glad we got away from. I realized at that moment, that although I am glad that I don't live there, I am happy to be FROM San Diego. It seems odd that it was somehow important that I was from that place that his shirt was advertising. It wasn't that there was anything interesting about him, in fact, it had nothing to do with him at all - I have no idea what he even looked like. Maybe it is because we spent so many years there or that all of my kids were born there or that I'm still on auto pilot when I drive out there or that we love visiting or that there are many people we love there. Or maybe I just had too much coffee yesterday. At any rate, I am truly glad that I am a relocated Californian living now - and forever (God willing) in Montana.

2 moms, 9 kids, 342 pounds of apples and 120 quarts of apple sauce

And an all day into-the-night experience. When I told my kids "just keep picking" until all the 5 gallon buckets, laundry baskets, boxes and bags in the Expedition were full, I proved just how truly terrible my spacial reasoning /eye balling measurement skills are. I was just hoping that I had enough to make the applesauce experience worthwhile like it was last year - how could I be expected to remember what the 215 pounds of apples we had last year looked like? Well, I can tell you that it couldn't have looked anything like that pile of apples I hauled in, because we had 342 pounds....hello!! We pulled in the Rickel's driveway at 10 am and left at 2am; 120 quarts of applesauce later.

The kids pared apples for 8 hours!!


NO wonder they look psychopathic here.


At 6pm, when it looked like this, I knew it was trouble - we had two ovens and 2 roasters baking apples so that we could run them through the mill; 2 large pots of cooking applesauce on the stove; 2 cannisters of canned applesauce processing (with 7 quarts in each); and all those apples UNcooked on the counter - still needing to be cooked in the roasters/oven. It was bad - very bad. About that time, I started apologizing for my over-zealous, apple picking episode.

The really crazy thing is - I don't even like applesauce, in fact, it grosses me out. BUT 4 people in my family do LOVE it and that makes up for it, I guess. And that's just the kind of self-sacrificing mother that I am. It had nothing to do with the fact that I am just a little bit social and spending all day with some of my favorite people sounded like a party to me, and I can't stand to miss a party - no, it had nothing to do with that - it was all a sacrificial, giving kind of thing on my part.
I don't think anyone will let me pick the apples next year (or any year after) without some very strict guidelines and supervision.

socialization and patience - the two biggies

This post appeared on Pioneer Woman this week from a contributor. I love her explanation of the questions that all we homeschoolers get asked on a regular basis - I think that her answers are the best I have heard. The one that really gets me is the patience one. I am certain that when my kids are supposed to be doing math and I enter the room and they are ALL doing anything BUT math and my head spins around and sub-human noises spew from my mouth, that no one in the world would confuse that with patience. We are not born with it, nor do any of us just have it - well, Jessica Mallery I think might and Rebekah Tolopilo, but the rest of us got stuck with a little more of that sin nature than they did. I do believe that, although tough days make us wonder, that we learn patience through homeschooling - we just don't have any other choice. Anyone considering homeschooling their children should not determine they ought to do so based on their level of patience....it is a much larger decision than that. As the above blogger so wisely mentions, it is a family conviction put into action - don't let the reason you don't homeschool be your lack of patience. And forgive that previous double negative, grammar no-no!

Hobo Point

Our friends, the Meulis, have a great 40 acres on the shore of Lake Mary Ronan - a perfect, lovely place where there are not many boats and almost NO people around. They affectionately call it Hobo Point. Every year (well, this was the second, but it has been tagged a yearly event now) we all get together (the Millers, Meulis, Rickels, Sibelruds and Dunhams) and camp for three days on the water. We waterski, tube, swim, canoe, float, eat, play airsoft, and get really dirty. We decided to start taking a group photo each year so that we can see everyone growing up as the summers go by - but maybe next year we ought to do it at the beginning instead at the height of our grubby-ness.