Welcome Monday!

Greetings farm followers! Hopefully everyone is doing well. We have had a few days of cool weather considering it is the end of August here in SC. We are loving it and so are all the animals. We moved the young rams over into the pasture with Titan our current herd sire and sure enough one of his sons saw fit to challenge him last night. The running speed and the forceful hits amaze me. I am surprised they do not knock themselves out. I was seeing stars just watching them. But after a few hits junior gave up and went back to the group quietly. This is the first time they have been physically in contact with our Anatolian shepherd Anna. Anna of course thought that they were her new playmates but after some stern scolding she mellowed out and this morning seems to be doing better. Theo our special little ram is not exactly sure how to handle her but the others are learning fast. Little Bull seems to care less for the new pasture mates as he already knows he is the King over there. Hopefully everyone will adjust until we can find new homes for them all. Some will go to freezer camp others I pray become herd sires one day.

My father-in-law is making progress every day! I am so encouraged by the strength the Lord continues to give him. God is so very gracious and long suffering. He and my mother-in-law are doing their best to remain independent. Hopefully their success will continue. My husband and I are waiting patiently for what God has for us to do next. Our number two prayer right now is that all of our precious animals will find loving, stable homes. Pray that God will raise up just the right folks to take them on.

Saturday I attended my son and daughter-in-law’s Gender Reveal party for our 20th grandchild. This will be our son’s fifth child (all boys) and our daughter-in-law’s third child. I was commissioned to make “cake pops”. Not an easy task when you do not use artificial ANYTHING! My sister was visiting from Pennsylvania and she and I worked for many hours making 50 cake pops for the party. 25 blue and 25 pink! They turned out good considering our first attempt but if I make them again in the future I will be looking for a better cake and icing recipe. The cake was very bland and the icing just did not dry as I would have liked. Everyone enjoyed them and there were not many left so at least were were successful. Oh and the new grandbaby due in January is a GIRL!

Well farm followers thank you for reading my ongoing story of life. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to ask. And if you or anyone are looking for sheep, a milk cow, chickens, turkeys or ducks please let us know. Please feel free to pass this on. Have a wonderful rest of August will hopefully write again to welcome September!

Happy Friday!

Good morning you precious farm followers! Thank you so much for stopping by and reading my little place on the web. I have two more jars of fruit fermenting in water. They are still in the brewing stage getting ready to become another batch of yeast water. This time they are filled with bing cherries! Not sure what bread they will become but I am sure by past experience they will be wonderful!

Today sometime I will be listing my animals for sale with prices and descriptions for each one. We are praying for wonderful safe homes for each and everyone of them. Our sheep, turkeys and our ducks are rare and endangered breeds. Hopefully some conservationist like us will be interested. We will list them on the Livestock Conservancy market page as well. As this new normal eventually becomes a reality I am sure God will continue to give direction and comfort. My father in law is doing fairly well considering all that his body has endured these past 7 weeks. God indeed is merciful to us and we trust He will continue to be.

Well Happy Friday to you all. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question. I am always ready to give an answer…

Elizabeth

Good morning!! New day!

Today is a new day here on Didaskalos Farm and though our life is beginning to take a slightly newer direction, my heart is still drawn to the love of the farm. God has put it in my heart and I cherish it! Jesus is the Bread of Life and that has such a magnitude of meaning. Bread in itself has been nourishing mankind for millennia. When I discovered Einkorn over five years ago I began the journey of transitioning my baking exclusively with this ancient grain. I have learned so much but never do I feel I cannot learn even more. God’s creation amazes me every minute of the day. If we just stop to ponder all the natural processes in this world we cannot be anything but truly blown away mentally by the AWESOMENESS of it all.

Today I am baking two french boules (round loaves) of einkorn bread. Now normally I use either an organically grown yeast from a company called Bioreal or my own sourdough starter to make a levain. However, today I am using yeast water that I made from fresh figs that I picked from our tree. Wild yeast really is what it is just like sourdough. The process is very simple and I learned about it from a bread blog last year. You start with clean, cool water. Nothing chlorinated please! Side note: We are privileged to have a 700 ft drilled well here that gives us delicious artisan well water. You cut up selected fruit or herbs, or plant material of your choosing and fill a mason jar 3/4 full cap it and let that ferment for 5-7 days. I cut up about six very ripe figs and set my jars in a dark place to begin their transition. My fermentation process however did not take but three days and my water was bursting with bubbles. I mixed up two levains yesterday and let them spend sometime together so they could begin the process of rising my bread today! So today is putting everything together day! Lord willing by the end of the day I will have produced two wonderfully risen round loaves of einkorn bread! Hopefully we can entice some of our farm followers to purchase these soon to be beauties and experience true organic goodness! Thanks for reading!! Have a wonderful day!

New Chapter begins...

Greetings to all you lovely farm followers. We have been livestock farming on a small scale for over 15 years now. I, Farmer Elizabeth also bake the full spectrum with ancient grains chiefly einkorn. God has a perfect plan for every one of His children’s lives so when sudden changes occur we are not totally taken off guard. This is such the situation that is upon us. My husband Farmer Craig is the only living child of his parents. Several weeks ago my father in law suffered a massive cardiac arrest. The paramedics by God’s grace were able to resuscitate my father in law and he then was transported to the nearest ICU. He spent 17 days in the hospital in Ohio (long story) my husband flew there immediately and spent those long days and nights with his parents. Thankfully my father in law is back in SC currently in a Hospital Rehab situation soon to be discharged to home. All this being said it is abundantly clear that they (my in-laws) will no longer be able to care for themselves full time. After much prayerful consideration, many tears on my side we have come to the decision to set aside our farm life at this time. What does that mean? It means finding wonderfully suited homes for all my livestock. We will begin the process by September 1st. Our Jersey calf Zoe will reach her four month milestone and can be weaned off her momma’s milk. Also we will be selling our current organically run farm . Though we are not certified organic we are more organic than many who are certified. So we can confidently transfer ownership with that being a truth. A lot to take in and even more to do. So feel free to message the farm with any questions. I will do my best to answer in a timely fashion. Pray us for us and we seek direction from our Lord He sets our path and we follow Him.

Welcome Summer!

Good day to all of you dear sweet farm followers! It has been a busy few months around here! We have a new A2/A2 mid sized Jersey calf growing like a weed! Her momma makes some rich milk for sure. Summer Thyme we believe lacerated her left rear teat with her dew claw several weeks back. At first we thought the poor calf (Zoe) was the guilty party but after reading some trusted organic Vet books the type of injury indicated dew claw. It is fly season! When she came in for milking one morning I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I said, Lord, this is beyond me! After He calmed my spirit down He gave me the courage to get to work cleaning it up and start the process of healing. Apparently it happened during the night so suturing it was out of the question. The swelling I understand would just cause the sutures to tear out. It was extremely painful for her so we quickly gave her some arnica and garlic tincture.That combination did the trick and she was a bit more comfortable. We then began rubbing some herbal infused olive oil on that quarter. We unfortunately could not milk her in that quarter at all without a potential injury to ourselves so we did the best we could. We are weeks down the road now and the laceration is completely healed but we do have some mastitis in that quarter. Thank God it is mild since the milk strains perfectly her CMT is barely reading a + 2 We are milking her twice daily and using some products from a company out of Pennsylvania called Synergy Animal Products. We expect a full recovery. Thankfully cows have an udder that keeps each quarter somewhat self contained. So mastitis in one quarter does not transfer to the other three unless you are sloppy and do not keep clean equipment. We milk that quarter totally separately and discard the milk. I cannot say enough about proper handling of raw milk. Milk as aseptically as you possibly can. Keep your cows clean and where they bed down as clean as you can. I have made myself a mini lab and I can now test my own milk for aerobic bacteria and coliforms. We do not sell raw milk as a certified dairy but we do want to make sure that our milk is a healthy and safe as possible. We work hard on our soil and do our best to strengthen our animals immune systems so they themselves can fight off any potential infections.

We have acquired some Narragansett turkeys! Yay! Three hens and two Toms. As well as three poults! We also have some Beltsville Small White turkey eggs in an incubator hopefully will hatch the first week of July. Also have some Silver Appleyard ducks eggs in another incubator due the hatch the second week of July. All of these poultry/water fowl breeds are very endangered. We hope to raise a few for our Thanksgiving table this year. Busy time here on the farm.

Last but not least we finally have a bee hive that survived the winter. It is getting so big we have to split it. I am so excited. we take a completely hands off approach to beekeeping. We check on them periodically but we use no treatments to keep them alive. We have plenty of pollinator friendly plants for them to thrive on and thankfully most of our neighbors garden organically. Lord willing we will be selling this farm before years end and relocating in the area to a place with much more pasture land and a lot less HOUSE. This beautiful old place just is too big for us. We need to downsize for sure and that is our prayer. We have a few sheep to sell so if any one is interested in a few Gulf Coast native sheep please email the farm. Enjoy your summer!