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Persimmon Bars Recipe
We love food made with persimmons. If you’ve never tasted a persimmon, it has a unique flavor but it goes well with recipes calling for pumpkin puree. We’ve started harvesting our 2013 persimmons, so...
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10 Reasons to Eat More Sweet Potatoes
I never had sweet potatoes growing up. I don’t think my mom liked them, so she never cooked them. I suppose I saw them at Thanksgiving time, but as a kid I thought they looked nasty even with...
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Rainbow
Many of you know that we have been through a difficult time dealing with the trauma from being on the scene of a fatal accident. I may write about it later, but right now I just wanted to share with...
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Family Photo Shoot
I’ve wanted to get an updated family photo for many months. But as you can imagine, getting everyone ready is quite an endeavor. We were supposed to do the photo last week, but with the accident,...
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Hiking at Charlestown State Park
Hiking has always been one of our favorite family activities. Our local park was Charlestown State Park, but since we’ve moved, it’s over half an hour away. We decided to go back one last time for a...
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How to Cook Artichokes
In my experience, most people have never eaten real artichokes. Sure, they’ve had artichoke hearts or artichoke dip. But the whole artichoke? Nope! In fact, most people are very surprised to learn...
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New Toys
We were blessed to be invaded by family this Thanksgiving! Since there were quite a few extra children, Jim decided that all of the cousins were going to need some indoor activities to keep them...
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How to Cure Goat Milk Soap
Now that we have goat milk soap logs and log pieces available, we are often asked how to cure them. I asked Emery to put together a video of the process for everyone. Didn’t he do a great job? Let us...
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Picking out a Christmas Tree
This is the first year in our new house and the children had their heart set on a HUGE tree. So we went to a local tree farm where we first found a huge pile of geodes. We took a hay wagon ride to the...
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Kids Cooking – Breakfast Birthday Cake
We generally don’t make a big fuss about birthdays around here, but we do have several traditions that are important to us. One of our birthday traditions is to start the day with Breakfast Birthday...
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How To Use Shaving Soap
Many men have only used shaving cream to shave. In this video, Emery learns how to use our shaving soap to shave Jim. Please be aware that even though we didn’t show the entire thing, Emery actually...
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Blooper Reel
All of the videos we have been recording lately have provided lots of material for bloopers. I didn’t even realize they had some of this stuff on tape, but it’s pretty funny. Which is your favorite...
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Kids Cooking – Egg Sandwiches
We have been getting a lot of eggs from our chickens lately. One of our favorite things to cook when we have an excess of them are egg sandwiches! They are super easy, which makes them great for the...
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Kids Cooking – Caramel Apple Salad
One of our favorite desserts to fix when we have company is Caramel Apple Salad. It is super yummy and good for apples that are getting a little old. Before Emery started, he washed his hands with goat...
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Kids Cooking – Baked Oatmeal
One of our favorite breakfast recipes is baked oatmeal. Its easy- all the kids are capable of cooking it. It can also make a good vegan recipe if you replace the butter and egg with applesauce or olive...
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Ice Hockey
Since it’s been so cold for the past couple of weeks, our creek is frozen solid. (Yes, completely solid.) So the kids decided that they wanted to have a little fun. What started as tossing an empty...
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Cold Weather Seeds
With this insanely cold winter we’re having, I’ve been even more excited than usual to get back to gardening. Gardening around here (zone 6) usually starts with my birthday. My birthday is St....
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Disney Wild Africa Trek
While we were in Disney World, we decided it was time to do something we’d never done before. The Wild Africa Trek! Indigo and Jade were too young, so while we were doing it, they went off and toured...
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Happy Birthday, Emery!
Emery celebrated his 14th birthday! Since he is usually the one who bakes our breakfast birthday cakes, he decided he would rather enjoy donuts. Emery is such an amazing young man. He told me that he...
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Building Forts in the Woods
My children tend to be very creative and make use of existing materials when they want to build something. So what do we have in abundance around here? Dozens and dozens of empty coconut oil buckets....
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Happy Birthday, Jim!
Jim and I met at The University of Virginia, so Thomas Jefferson is very important to us. Here is an interesting fact – Thomas Jefferson was born on Jim’s birthday (April 13) and died on Jade’s...
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Gardening Isn’t Just for Summer
In the past I’ve had a greenhouse. But to be perfectly honest, I always found it a lot of work and I never enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed gardening the rest of the year. Right now we just have our...
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Footprints
Since we did our handprints in the concrete at the soaproom, Mom wanted us to put our footprints on the barn’s porch. (Mom also suggested we do butt prints on the porch of the house, but Dad said no....
View ArticleColorful Bedrooms
When they painted our bedrooms, we were that much closer to living in our bedrooms. We still needed carpet, lights, switches, trim, doors, and a whole lot more, but the rooms were very colorful. Which...
View ArticleMeet The Goats – Valley
Our dairy goats are not only foundational to Goat Milk Stuff, but they are a big part of our family as well. Each of them has a personality and during this series we’re hoping you’ll get to know more...
View ArticleMeet The Goats – Ivy
Our dairy goats are not only foundational to Goat Milk Stuff, but they are a big part of our family as well. Each of them has a personality and during this series we’re hoping you’ll get to know more...
View ArticleDry Ice
The other day, we had a delivery (Graeter’s ice cream, yumm!!) that included some dry ice. After making sure the kids understood that they couldn’t touch the dry ice, they were allowed to do what they...
View ArticleAsk A Jonas – Emery’s Thoughts On Being Barn Manager
We get asked lots of questions when we’re doing farm tours, selling soap at craft fairs, or simply running errands. Since most of those answers are heard only by the person who asked, we decided to...
View ArticleGoat Collars
We mentioned the new goat collars in the post about our goat photoshoot, but we didn’t explain why the collars all look different, and why that’s important. When we were talking about getting collars...
View ArticleEmery Crowing
I’m not a big fan of our chickens in general, but I really don’t like roosters. Our biggest rooster is a Barred Rock and he is particularly annoying. He likes to run, as fast as he can, towards...
View ArticleAsk A Jonas – Emery’s Thoughts on the Goats Eating Things
We get asked lots of questions when we’re doing farm tours, selling soap at craft fairs, or simply running errands. Since most of those answers are heard only by the person who asked, we decided to...
View ArticleAsk A Jonas – Do The Kids Like Their Unique Names?
We get asked lots of questions when we’re doing farm tours, selling soap at craft fairs, or simply running errands. Since most of those answers are heard only by the person who asked, we decided to...
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Kids Decorating the Christmas Tree
This year, when we went to get our family Christmas Tree, Mom had the brilliant idea of getting a tree for the front porch of the soaproom. The only problem was that we didn’t have any ornaments for...
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Ask a Jonas – Emery’s Favorite Job
We get asked lots of questions when we’re doing farm tours, selling soap at craft fairs, or simply running errands. Since most of those answers are heard only by the person who asked, we decided to...
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Visiting Clifty Falls State Park
A month or two ago, Mom decided that we’d never been to Clifty Falls State Park, and we had a free day, and by golly, we were going to finally go to Clifty Falls. Going to this park has been on Mom’s...
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Having Fun in the Snow
During the month of February, we received a good amount of snow. While on my way back to the house, I found Emery and Greyden hard at work shoveling. Turns out they decided to make an “igloo”! They...
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Taping Boxes and Making Forts
Here at Goat Milk Stuff, we go through lots of mailing boxes. Normally, when we run out of prepared boxes, we’ll get everyone together and have a big box taping party. But the other day, some of the...
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Ask a Jonas – Emery & Lotion Sticks
We get asked lots of questions when we’re doing farm tours, selling soap at craft fairs, or simply running errands. Since most of those answers are heard only by the person who asked, we decided to...
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Healthy Field, Healthy Goats!
I’m not a big fan of chemicals. They have their place and are useful in certain applications. But in general, I think that as a society we rely too heavily on them. We work hard on the farm to avoid...
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What Do We Do In Our Spare Time?
We get asked all the time, “What do you do in your spare time?” And without fail, everyone’s answer to that question is, “I read”. We read outside, on the couch, (in any position we find comfortable,)...
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Emery’s Flower Garden
Ever since he was young, Emery has always enjoyed flowers. Throughout the years he has had different flower gardens. When we moved from Charlestown to Scottsburg, he transported many of the flowers,...
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The Cross Country Season
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the boys winning the title of Homeschool Cross Country Champions. That was only the final highlight of a fantastic season. This season, the team spent hours...
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Happy Birthday Emery!
Emery turned fifteen last week! Hewitt put all of the candles on his cake – and made sure to put them as far apart as he could. Because, you know, if you don’t blow out all of your candles in one blow...
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Newsies
Everyone in our family absolutely LOVES musicals. While we were visiting New York City, we had the opportunity to see three broadway musicals, including Newsies. My siblings and I absolutely love the...
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Baby Goats Visiting the Nursing Home
Remember when we brought some baby goats to the nursing home? We did it again! Emery, Fletcher, Greyden, Hewitt, Indigo, Jade, and Dad brought two or three of our youngest babies to visit. The...
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5K Color Run
Exercise is something important to our family so we can stay healthy. All of the boys run cross country and track. Last Saturday we all participated in a 5K Color Run, to help raise money to fight...
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Do You Take Advantage of Opportunities?
I love the fact that because of Goat Milk Stuff, we’ve been able to take the family on many adventures to many cities. We’ve been on television in St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Los...
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Why We Don’t Like Johnson Grass
Here at Goat Milk Stuff we try very hard to feed our goats the best food available. This is the main reason we grow our own hay. Although many people erroneously believe that goats can (and will) eat...
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Harvesting Jewelweed
We try to keep everything we do as natural as possible here on the farm. That includes the food we (and all of our animals) eat as well as all of the items we make. One of our most popular specialty...
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Processing Jewelweed
Last week I talked about how we harvested jewelweed to be used in our jewelweed soap and jewelweed salve. Once Greyden and Emery collect all of the jewelweed, it’s time to process it. Jade does...
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