I remember as a kid being addicted to ketchup. One time I even cried on the way home after I realized there was no ketchup for my French fries. I was so picky that I wouldn’t even eat them until I got home. When I started cleaning up my diet due to some health issues, I switched to organic ketchup. It didn’t taste the same, but it was better than nothing. I knew the organic ketchup wasn’t as healthy as if I had made my own, but I had tried several times to make ketchup, and nobody liked it. I kept giving up. A couple years ago I quit eating ketchup altogether, but my family still ate it. I don’t like the large amount of white processed sugar in organic ketchup, and I’m convinced that there’s something in there that’s not listed on the ingredients, (I have learned recently that this is very common) so I decided to try again.

Several weeks ago, our family was enjoying a Sunday afternoon with friends at a lake. One of the snacks we brought with us was apples from our orchard along with our homemade pecan butter. While this tasted great, we all noticed that the peanut butter was hard to spread on the apples. That week I started experimenting with a recipe that I hoped would be delicious, and easy to dip, with ingredients that I had on hand from our farm. Our family really liked all of my experiments, but this was their favorite, and the dip stayed on the apples with little effort.

We have had our new pigs for two weeks, and it’s time to introduce them! Because I wanted this to be a surprise, I didn’t tell anyone until right now. Except my son posted a video today here, so I guess the secret’s out! The Lord has put it on my heart to try to help save the Gloucester Old Spot from extinction. Please don’t ask me to pronounce that! 

Before I knew much about herbs, I assumed that they were useless. I can now look back at my life and see that I was very influenced by the culture in my thinking. I believe there’s been a movement in our country to make users of herbs appear foolish, wicked, uneducated, or magical. Think of the movies that portray a witch standing over a big kettle with her potions, or the headlines shaming people for taking a more natural approach to healing. Because of what I witnessed in my own health, along with stories from other people, I now find herbs to be my best option as medicine and nutrition.

Last night we were all reminded that while pastured meat birds carry many benefits, they also have their own set of challenges. As the wind began to blow last night and the rain started to fall, everyone headed to bed feeling grateful for the rain again. When the storm ended, Cory headed out to check on the chickens in the pasture, and Aiden went out to check on the new baby goats on a different pasture. A few minutes later, Cory called to ask for help because all the chickens, turkeys, and ducks were in the pasture and their shelters were all gone.

For the last year, our area has been in a severe to exceptional drought. In the spring of 2022, the wind blew fiercely most days and the rain didn’t seem to want to fall. I had a feeling it was going to be a dry summer and that we should cut down on our animals, but I kept seeing chances for rain on the weather and the little that did come had us hopeful. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive much rain and ended up selling off a lot of sheep and cows in the fall after we had overgrazed some of our pastures. We have learned a lot from this, and I believe we will look back at this with thankful hearts.