Adios

The two littlest are sleeping sweetly and so I look forward to updating this blog a bit.
Tomorrow I will kiss my firstborn goodbye and put him on a southbound plane to Texas. He'll be spending a week with his cousin, and will have all sorts of boyish adventures, I'm sure.  

Exciting for him and bittersweet for us. I expect the house will certainly be a bit quieter and, dare I say, more peaceful without his pre-teen antics, but he will be missed! I've never been away from him that long. It will be interesting to see how Garrett, (his only brother and inseparable pal) will deal with this short term loss. Tonight I let him pick the menu for his farewell dinner. He chose french toast, with angel food cake for dessert. In other words, we'll be having two desserts for dinner :) I think I'll serve the french toast with homemade strawberry topping rather than syrup to decrease the amount of sugar we'll be consuming. I love this recipe :

Sugar Free Berry Fruit Sauce:
12 oz can white grape raspberry juice concentrate
1 can water
4 Tbsp cornstarch
16- oz pkg. frozen berries- any kind you wish

Dissolve cornstarch in 1/2 cup of water
Heat juice and remaining water in saucepan until boiling
Add cornstarch mixture and stir over medium high heat until thickened
Add frozen fruit, stir and remove from heat

The angel food cake will be store-bought because I simply do not have enough eggs for both french toast and angel food cake. We were consistently getting about 5-6 eggs from our 7 chickens for a while, but they've slacked off again and we're down to 1-2 a day. That hardly supports my baking habit. Good thing we've got these now:

Is there anything better than a baby chick in a chubby hand?

6 new pullets (3 buffs and 3 rir's) and one rooster. Because I believe every flock needs a rooster.

He will be a handsome barred rock and Ava has named him Julian.

Can you find Julian?

Nothing spells SPRING in the Sliwa house like a boxful of brooding chicks. Joe has plans for a larger coop for them and the elder chickens, along with the Cornish rocks and turkey poults we'll be getting in May. I look forward to admiring his carpentry skills once again, though I have really liked having the (grown)chickens in with the goats. They seem to have such a symbiotic relationship. The goats poop, the chickens follow behind and turn it under. I've really enjoyed watching these two species coexist.

Other things going on include LOTS of soap making, salve making, label designing, not to mention money spending, to get our little business off the ground! It must be true when they say you must spend money to make money...  we should be ready to start selling in about a week.

We're into March here. In like a lion, they say. I'm quite sick of snow. Apparently, the kids are not:

Who would get tired of jumping from roofs?

Today- rainy, windy, overcast. But in the desperate need for the out of doors we all bundled up and headed out for a hike. When we came home, dripping wet and cold- but invigorated, we enjoyed a cozy lunch of bread, warm from the oven, with honey. We love our hikes through the woods to the creek, and this morning was no exception. But I really can't wait to make the trek in flip flops, through fragrant green grass, with the sight of sundress-ed little girls and shirtless little boys running on ahead in the sunshine. Without the mess of 5 soaking wet snow pants, 10 muddy boots, and hats, mismatched gloves etc etc...

But for now...

we will seize the day.

~Elizabeth