Little House in the Valley

Rosetta Stone has been the #1 foreign language curriculum among homeschoolers for a while -- next week they are unleashing a brand new curriculum, and you can WIN the *all new* Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3… FOR FREE!

This is a $219 program (and believe me it's worth every penny!) and the winner gets to pick from any of these 14 languages: Spanish (Spain or Latin America), English (American or British), Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Hebrew, or Russian.

This will also include a headset with microphone, and students will participate in lifelike conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program. Rosetta Stone still incorporates listening, reading and writing as well, in addition to speaking. Many homeschoolers requested grammar and vocabulary exercises, and with Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3, they're included! For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program and allow parents to easily enroll students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, and view and print reports.

To win this most excellent program -- in the language of your choice -- copy these (blue) paragraphs and post it in (or as) your next blog post -- then to enter the contest, go to the original contest page HERE: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/JenIG/501132/ and leave a comment with the link showing where you blogged about it. And please make sure the link works to get back to the original contest page when you post it. And good luck! The winner will be picked randomly on March 26, and will be notified thru the link they left to their blog pg. And if you have more than one blog, you can post them and enter those separately for more chances to win. Yay for free stuff!

So excited....

Hurry up Spring!

Recipe ~ Herb Stuffed Pork Loin

I made the yummiest pork roast for my dad's birthday and I have to share the recipe with you. It smelled so good cooking today and it tasted even better :)

Filling:

1 Tbsp fresh finely chopped sage
1 Tbsp fresh finely chopped thyme
1/2 tsp dried crushed rosemary
4 green onions chopped finely
3 large cloves garlic minced
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 heaping tsp dijon mustard
1/4 tsp sea salt
freshly ground peppercorns to taste
2-3 lb. pork loin roast

Preheat oven to 350*F.
Combine the first 9 ingredients together in a small bowl.

Now butterfly your roast by cutting it in half but not all the way through! You want it to open up like a book :) Spread your filling on one half of the roast and then starting from the side of your roast with no filling on it roll it up and then tie it tightly with some butcher's twine or string like in the very first photo. Don't worry if some of your filling squeezes out, you can push it back in or just put it on the top of your roast. Once you have your roast all tied up you can give it one more dusting of salt and pepper and place it in your roasting pan with one cup of water. This will make it super moist :) I cover my roaster with tinfoil before I put the lid on to so that I can keep all of the steam and juice inside the pot to make sure it stays moist. Bake for about 2 1/2 hours or till well done at an internal temp of 170*F. I think it took mine just a tad over the 2 1/2 hours to reach the right temp. When it's done you will have a beautiful roast and the herbs infuse the meat so you get the wonderful herb flavor throughout the meat not just in the center :)

Enjoy,
HuberHof

Could this be the prize winning pumpkin?

Calling all strong men! LOL. We've been waiting for Dh to come home so that he and my dad could come and lift the pumpkins.

Here is K's prizewinning pumpkin! It is nearly as high as his waist and weighs a ton to.

There was no way that they were going to be able to carry them all the way to the house so we recruited our wheelbarrows to do the job *grin*

Here's Dh with K's pumpkin, it pretty much fills up the entire wheelbarrow.

Here's L's monster of a pumpkin :) She has been so excited watching it grow since it was the size of a tennis ball.

And last but not least Baby M's pumpkin : )

Here goes the wheelbarrow brigade. LOL. I was surprised K could pick up his and push it!

And they're off!

I just love these photos of them all together :)

L snagged a ride back with Opa.

I thought it would be fun to weigh the larger ones so we dug out my fishing scale from the garage and put them on one by one. Here is Baby M's weighing in at 45 lbs.

And here is K's weighing in at a whopping 125.9 lbs!! See I wasn't joking when I said it weighed ton *grin*

L didn't think it weighed enough so we sat her up on top of it to beef it up a little : )

Dh and my dad putting them in there final resting place. I think they were glad to be done with them after I had them pose for photos.... can your turn it my way.... oh lift it just a little higher..... oh come on hunny I know you can get the scale out so we can weigh them. LOL. They are definitely staying put until they start to rot *grin*

Blessings,
HuberHof

A Fungi Photo Diary ~ Can you name any of them?

We talked Opa into going with us on an excursion to the Salmon River Estuary where I had heard there was a goldmine of colorful and interesting fungi to say the least. Okay enough with the small talk and on with the show! Make sure you check out the last couple of photos because there are some really freaky mushrooms out there!

This one reminds me of the ones you see on tv in fairy tale shows with the red and white spots. It is so neat and this one was in perfect shape. Some of them appeared to have been nibbled at or cracked and damaged from the weather.

Here's another one. I put one of my camera batteries next to it so that you could get an idea of the size of it. It was the largest one of that kind we found.

Next we found these little ones. Of course we were very curious about them and poked at them a bit with our shoes to see what they felt at. They were amazingly sturdy, not spongy at all!

Now I'm sure many of you have seen these ones. They're the ones that are nearly hollow inside and that let out that greenish colored smoke when you touch them. My dad was tapping at it with his walking stick while I took the photo but I just couldn't capture the smoky powder coming out of them : )

I love the stem of this one and it looks like someone had been nibbling on his top. Could he be a safe one to eat? I think we'll leave that up to the forest creatures :)

These two were very interesting with their super high gloss sheen and they were bowl shaped so that the water sat in the center of their tops.

This one here looks sort of similar to the first picture I showed you but it looked jelly on the top, you just wanted to give it a little poke to find out but we managed to keep our fingers to ourselves *grin*

These ones were gigantic and had a really rubbery looking texture. Those spots that you can see on it were actually raised up little nubs about half a centimeter high.

This one looks just like a rose! Don't you think?
Okay now for the truly weird and freaky!!

What is this!? It was like squid legs but they were velvety in appearance.

This one and the above mushroom we found side by side and they are the most beautiful shades of purple and this one was velvety in appearance as well just like the previous one.

And last but not least this absolutely intriguing creature. It looks like it belongs in the sea, perhaps on a coral reef somewhere with little tropical fishies swimming in and out of it. LOL. I actually do know the name of this one but not in English. It is a Baerentatze the German name for it since that is all my dad knows for it.

Now if you know any of the names or have a good guess as to what you might think they are could you pretty pretty please share them with me? I went to the bookstore to get a book on mushrooms today and she was completely sold out! Her shipment had come in a couple of days earlier and all the books on fungi flew off the shelves immediately. She has promised me a copy next week when she gets more so until then I would love to hear your guesses and then I'll look them up when we get the book : )

Blessings,
HuberHof

Wheel Barrow 'O Squash & a recipe

Raised Vegetable Garden Beds

Chocolate Cake Recipe (just in case you couldn't view the smilebox one)

I am always looking for cake recipes that turn out like a Betty Crocker cake in a box but made from scratch. Well this one comes up just as high and nice and moist! And I can use my freshly milled flour : )
Enjoy,
HuberHof

Ingredients:
2 cups of freshly ground Soft Wheat***
(packed really well into your measuring cup)
2 cups of sugar
1 heaping tsp. baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter
4 heaping TBSP cocoa
1 cup of boiling water
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 beaten eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup of raspberry preserves
2 cups of fresh cream whipped until stiff

***Substitute white flour for the soft wheat if freshly milled flour is not available

Directions:
In a large mixing bowl sift together your flour, sugar and baking powder.

In a saucepan melt your 1 cup of butter, add in your 4 heaping TBSP of cocoa and whisk together well. Add your 1 cup of boiling water to the mixture and let boil for 30 seconds then turn off heat and let sit.

Measure out your buttermilk, add your 2 beaten eggs and tsp. vanilla. Stir together.

Pour chocolate mixture over your flour mixture and mix it slightly to cool it down, add your buttermilk, egg & vanilla mixture next and mix until no flour is visible. Pour into a well greased bundt pan baking for approximately 55 minutes @ 350*F or until a knife comes out clean.

To finish off your cake, let it cool completely on a wire rack, cut horizontally into 3 pieces. Spread half of the raspberry preserve on the first layer plus a layer of whipped cream. Repeat for the next layer, place top on and then frost with the remaining whipped cream.

Chocolate Cake Recipe

Please pray for Noah

I'm sure that some of you are familiar with the Estes family on Homeschoolblogger but for those of you who are not they have a precious little boy named Noah that just turned one and is in the hospital with a really bad staph A infection (which thankfully they just found out is very responsive to antibiotics, praise the Lord!). He has had a couple of surgeries recently, a new feed tube and he is only getting half of the nourishment that he needs right now because that is all that his little body is accepting. You can go to their personal prayer blog at:

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/ourquiverfull

to read more about his recent condition and keep up to date with what is happening. They would appreciate all prayers that you could send up to the good Lord for Noah right now. I have also created a little prayer button for Noah that you can place on your blog sidebar if you have a blog to spread the word of his needed prayers. Go to my HSB blog at:

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/BChsMamaof3/386870

to see it (it is also on my sidebar on this blog) and you can email me personally if you would like me to send you the html code for it.

Thanks so much.

Blessings to all of you and your families,

HuberHof

My baby's growing up :)

Above Rubies Email Devotional ~ Two Blessings for the Home Pt.1

TWO BLESSINGS FOR THE HOME, PT. 1

Ezekiel 34:15, "I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. "

God is the true Shepherd of his flock. As we parent in His likeness, He shows us how to shepherd the little flock that He has graciously given to us. When Nehemiah went back to Jerusalem to restore and build the gates of Jerusalem he started with the Shepherds' Gate and ended with the Shepherds' Gate. There are many things we do as a shepherdess in watching over our flock, but there are two main things. The Knox translation of Ezekiel 34:15 says, "Food and rest, says the Lord God, both these will I give to my flock." Above everything else, the true shepherd provides food and rest for his flock. They are the most important.

FOOD

To feed our families is a very important part of motherhood. Many mothers despise the hours spent preparing and cooking meals. It seems endless. You can never get away from it. It is day after day. Can I remind you that this task is not unimportant, even though it may seem thankless at times. It is the chief role of the shepherd. We read the testimony of a shepherdess/mother in 1 Timothy 5:10. The first attribute it mentions is that she "brought up children." The Greek word for "brought up" is teknotropheo which means "to nurture, to feed, to nourish, to pamper with food." Providing food is a very big part of bringing up children.

The true shepherdess/mother will not give any kind of food to her family. She provides them with good food, "rich feed for them to graze." (v.14) She leads her children to eat wholesome foods to nourish their bodies. She turns them away from all junk food--the devitalized and refined food that lack nutrients. She throws out all white bread, white flour, white rice, white sugar and so on. She would not dream of leading her children to pastures of sugary cereals, soda and pop. The true shepherdess leads her family into wholesome pastures. God says in Psalm 81:16 NLT, "I will feed you with the best of foods."

Good food is enjoyable and should also be eaten with joy. In the Scriptures we see how God links eating with joy and gladness.

Esther 9:19 "A day of gladness and feasting ..."

Psalm 103:1-5, "Bless the Lord, O my soul... who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

Ecclesiastes 9:7, "Eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart."

Acts 2:46-47, "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their food with gladness..."

Acts 14:17, "He gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."

But there is more to feeding our family than food for their bodies. The responsible shepherdess/mother also provides wholesome food for her children's souls and spirits. She provides rich food in conversation and teaching, excellent books and music. She does not lead them to the destroying diet of TV, but provides them with wholesome DVDs that will nourish their souls. She does not keep any junk food among their books, music or DVDs. Everything in her home is for the purpose of inspiring, enriching and nourishing.

When raising our children I continually prayed Paul's prayer for the Thessalonians, "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:23) It is not enough to care for your children's physical needs. We must enrich their souls and spirits too. Psalm 107:9 tells us that God "fills the hungry with good things." Good food for the body and good food for the soul and spirit.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

"Oh Lord, please help me to be an enricher of my children's souls and spirits as well as their physical bodies. Show me how to fill my home with good food. Amen."

AFFIRMATION:

Junk food out; good food in!

Many women like to save these devotions. They print them out and keep them in a folder to read over and over again. Some print them out and pin them on the fridge with a magnet to read through the week. If you are printing this devotion and need it to be smaller, highlight and change to a smaller font.

If you know others who would be blessed by these devotions, you are welcome to forward them or let them know they can subscribe by sending a blank email to subscribers-on@aboverubies.org

To unsubscribe from the Above Rubies Devotional, send a blank email to subscribers-off@aboverubies.org

PO Box 681687, Franklin, TN 37068-1687, U.S.A.

Chanterelle Mushrooms

K went mushroom picking with Opa today and brought me home a surprise : ) A big bag full of chanterelle mushrooms just for me. Yipee!

These are two of the largest ones and he wanted me to take a picture of him with them to share with you : )

They have the neatest texture on the underside of them. They have to be the best mushroom hands down *grin* I spent the whole morning wiping them clean to get the little bits of dirt and moss off of them. K's new at picking so he got them pretty dirty.

I put most of them in my food dehydrator so that I could store them easily and then I cooked up some for dinner tonight in the gravy for the roast. Another good way to store them is you can fry up onion then add you chopped chanterelles, cook them down till they are nice and soft, then sift in some flour slowly until it just soaks up the extra liquid and starts to get thick and then put them in freezer safe containers and freeze for instant use in gravies, stuffings or what have you : )

Blessings,
HuberHof

Our Pumpkin Patch

Cucumber Salad Recipe

Got extra pickling cukes that have over grown or just plain old need using up?? Then how about making a yummy cucumber salad with them : )

This is my handy dandy mandolin slicer and it makes quick easy work of slicing up your cucumbers but by all means not necessary if you don't have one. You can slice by hand or you can try using the slicing attachment for your food processor as well : )

I sliced up twelve, 6 -7 inch length pickling cukes really thin. Once you have them all sliced place them in a plastic or glass bowl (not stainless steel like I did. Ooops, forgot that salt can pit the bowl but luckily my bowl looks okay!) and mix in thoroughly with your hands 1 Tbsp of salt. Cover and let sit 3 hours at least or overnight.

The salt will draw the excess liquid out of your cukes like shown above. You want to strain off the juice by either squeezing it out with your hands or you can put them in a colander and give them a good squeezing that way to. Don't worry if you can't get every last drop : )

Now you will want to add:
1 cup of sour cream
5 cloves of garlic minced

Mix it all up really well...

and you have one really great salad with a bit of a bite from the fresh garlic : ) If you slice your cukes the night before, strain them in the morning and make your salad early the flavor will set up perfectly by dinner time. The longer it sits the tastier it gets : )

Enjoy,
HuberHof

Our new tractor attachment : )

I wanted to share with you our new grass cutting attachment that we got for our Massey Ferguson tractor : )

I was browsing through the Buy and Sell paper (you never know what goodies you might find but didn't know you needed *grin*) and found cutter attachment right here in the town that we live in which is great because we didn't need to travel to get it! So we went to have a look at it and ended up getting it for $50 less than the asking price....

and he threw in a plow (above pic) as well! We needed that as well since our fields are in terrible need of re-seeding.

We finally got it off of the truck and onto the tractor. It is a really heavy piece of machinery and it took both me and my dad to wiggle it off. What is neat about it though is that it is stamped with made in Canada all over it. Even on the bolts : )

Here is the cutting blade. It is a large steel bar and then a row of teeth spaced out on top of the bar. The wooden drive shaft goes to make the teeth slide back and forth across the bar like scissors cutting the grass. It was seized up a bit and some of the teeth were bent so we had to replace some of them and oil it up really well to get it to move smoothly.

K got to help out to by fetching teeth, watching to see which ones were catching and using the grease gun on all of the moving parts. He knows just about as much about it as my dad now!

We finally got it freed up and here he is heading down to the field. We were all so excited to see it work : )

Yay!! Look at it go. It's actually cutting down the grass. We have never had our own machinery for cutting our hay or anything like that and have always had to rely on someone else to come in when they had time, cut and bale, and then of course they always took a portion of the bales. So this is a big achievement : )

Blessings,
HuberHof

Hay

My dad cut a bunch of the hay down in one of our fields trying out our new mower and it has been laying on the ground because of the weather so today the kids and I went out with the wheel barrow and our pitch fork and started to clean it up.

K would bring the wheel barrow to me while I loaded it into it with the fork until he could barely see over the top *grin* and then he would roll it to the chicken coop, come back and we'd start all over again! It only took us 2 hours. Could have been worse : )

Now I have this HUGE pile of hay in the coop, but I have great plans for it. In the fall I'm going to transplant out some of the flowers in the garden beds in front of the house and I'm going to turn them into raised beds for veggies next spring. The soil isn't very good there so I'm going to turn the hay into the dirt as a mulch and then cover it with black plastic to make a wonderful hot bed that will compost into beautiful soil. We do it always for the potato beds and it makes the soil great for replanting : )

Baby M came along with us when we were working and hung out in his stroller. The grass was so high around us that I could barely see from the other side of the field! I didn't want to let him out in it because of the drainage canals right beside us. Just in case he slipped at the edge while we were busy :( But he was a real trooper and played with a bunch of toys and made his own fun to entertain himself!

Blessings,
HuberHof

My little girl turned 4 today!

I can't believe my little girl is 4 years old already! It just seems like yesterday that she was just a little baby in my arms : )

She was so excited today when she woke up this morning that it was her birthday and kept asking when Omi & Opa were coming for her party : ) It was hard to keep her from going bonkers waiting for them to come for lunch! She kept asking me why I didn't get her a mermaid cake to because all she saw yesterday was the mound of the cake and no mermaid so she thought that was all she was getting *grin* You should have seen her face when I pulled it out of the fridge and unveiled her surprise cake. She was beaming from ear to ear : )

I am so happy it turned out as well as it did since I wasn't sure exactly how I was even going to make it. I tried to get a cake pan that made the domed shape for Ariel to sit on but couldn't find one so I ended up baking it in one of my stainless steel bowls! Who says you have to use a cake pan? LOL.

Here's my little princess with her new feather boa and feather pen that Omi & Opa gave her...

and keeping with the dress up theme she got this fun book called Fancy Nancy. All about a little girl that loves to dress up : ) It's really cute.

It was a fun afternoon and we took lots of pictures so that when daddy comes home he can feel like he was right there with us : )

Blessings,
HuberHof

Corn Chowder Recipe

I just finished making a pot of Corn Chowder and I thought that I would share the recipe with you just in case your interested : )

Ingredients:
2 ~ 398 ml cans of creamed corn
8 medium sized potatoes peeled and cubed
1/2 pound of bacon chopped into small chunks
1 large walla walla onion diced
2 ribs of celery diced
3 Tbsp flour
2 liters of milk
salt & pepper

In your soup pot fry your bacon, onion & celery until tender. We like our pieces of onion and celery fairly small but you can chunk them as small or large as you like : )

While your bacon mix is frying peel and cube your potatoes. I like to cook them ahead of time so that it cuts the time down on the entire soup making process. So I place them in my steamer basket so that they don't loose any nutrients by boiling and steam until my fork just goes through. Don't overcook them since they'll be doing a bit more cooking in the soup pot : )

As soon as your bacon, celery & onion are cooked put in your 3 heaping Tbsp. of flour....

and stir it all together to make a thick & pastey roux. This will make mixing the flour and milk together easy so that you don't get lumps! Now it's time to add your milk. I start with 2 liters and go from there. You don't want to add more than that to start with or you may not have room for your potatoes and corn to be added in : ) Another secret is if you want to have a lower calorie soup make it with powdered milk which is what I did today. It tastes the same and is easier on the waist line *grin*

Start by pouring in about 1/2 a liter of your milk into your soup pot and then whisk it all together well to incorporate the flour covered veggies and the milk. It will be quite thick at this point but as your pour in the rest of your milk it will thin out again : )

Now add in your 2 cans of creamed corn and your pre-steamed potatoes. Stir it all together and season it with salt and pepper until it tastes just perfect : )

Here it is. I'm going to let it simmer on the lowest setting for a bit until we're ready for dinner : )

We're going to have bruschetta with it. Mmm all I have to do is add the Asiago cheese and melt it in the oven and we're in business.

Enjoy,
HuberHof