A Good Ole Fashioned Cochon de Lait!

One of the perks of living out in the country and having lots of land is that you get to share it with family and friends without being crowded.  And, you can get away with doing things like roasting a whole pig in your backyard without your neighbors looking at you like you're weird...especially if you invite them over for dinner =)  So, a couple of weeks ago, we invited over a handful of Philip's cousins and their families, our neighbors, and had a good ole fashioned cochon de lait!

  Just so you know, according to the official Cochon de Lait Festival website (didn't you know there is a festival EVERY weekend some where in the great state of Louisiana?!), a cochon de lait is a  "suckling pig (or sucking pig ) is a young pig that has only fed on its mother's milk. The piglet is killed between the ages of two to six weeks, and traditionally it is roasted. The dish is usually reserved for special occasions."  

 The annual Cochon de Lait Festival is in Mansura, LA, the cochon de lait capital of the world!!  You should come down, chere, and pass a good time!  Everyone brought a dish, and we supplied the pig roasting equipment, an ice chest of beer (and lemonade and tea for the children and pregnant women), and coleslaw.  It was fantastic!  We had homemade macaroni, chips and dip, baked beans, breads, and desserts. 

the roasting apparatus

 Phil's Dad is from a family of twelve, and all of those twelve are married with children, so there are lots of cousins to go around!  It was really cool to see a very small handful of the 3rd generation of the LeBlanc clan playing together.  I'd try and give out numbers of grand-kids and great-grand-kids, but I'm sure I won't get the numbers straight....I do know that one of Phil's brothers is the 44th grand-child, because his Mom just told me yesterday when they came to celebrate an early Christmas, the birth of Luke, and that same brother's graduation from college.  So...that should give you some idea of how many great-grands there are...LOTS, and I'm sure there are many more to come!

gotta have the Cajun injector!  (this makes a pretty fabulous smoked chicken, too =)

getting the pig ready for roasting

around 5 hours later, we had roast pig

the 3 year old crowd =)

the 1 1/2 year old crowd =)

the big kids

oh how I LOVE this picture!

taking it off the fire

all cooked!

movie time!!

....and, done.

A Few (too many!) New Projects

Lately, I've been on a bit of a project rampage.  Sewing, knitting, painting, and yes, even putting ear tags on our cows!  

I finally found some time this weekend to continue working on our curtains for the house.  We've been here almost a year, and the only ones that are 100% complete are the living room shades.  But, that's OK....instant gratification is over-rated ;)  Saturday, I managed to sew the second of the four curtain panels for our bedroom windows.  The valances have been done since last February, and I bought the material for the windows several months ago, but I just haven't had a free weekend to work on it since then.  They are looking really nice, even if I don't have any pictures to show for it yet.  Here is what the valence pattern looks like, though:  

The curtains for the bedroom match the darker shade of tan in the leaves (it's hard to see in the picture, though).  I also got the valence for one of the kitchen windows hung, but I still need to finish the curtains for the window to go with it.  Hopefully, it will all be done by the 2 year mark!

For Natalie's birthday, she received a couple of Barbie dolls.  Now, I'm not against the girls playing with Barbie dolls, but I am turned off by they way those dolls are dressed!  One of the dolls she got was a teacher Barbie with a little girl student, and a bunch of classroom stuff to go with them.  I LOVE that, because we home school, so it's cute to watch Natalie pretend to home school the little Barbie girl.  But, when the teacher doll came out of the package, she looked like this...

 scandalous!

 I mean, what teacher actually wears this outfit to school?!  And, exactly what is Mattel trying to teach our daughters about how women should dress?!  I probably shouldn't be surprised, but still!  Anyway, while I appreciated the concept of the doll, the attire just had to go.  So, I thought:  "hey!  I've got a decent amount of scrap fabric laying around...I bet I could make some really cute Barbie clothes for her!"  How hard can it be, right?  Naturally, I hopped onto Google and set out for the perfect Barbie clothes tutorial.  It took some digging, but I managed to find it.  Then, I enlisted the help of my sister-in-law to make a few outfits for me (who is becoming quite the seamstress!), and voila!  Another project on my list of already too many =)  Today, I whipped up a new Barbie skirt and dress:

Ahh!  Much better:  now she is at least halfway on her way to looking less like a Victoria Secret model, and more like a fashionable, yet tastefully dressed teacher =)

 And, the partially finished dress...it still needs velcro in the back, and cap sleeves (the skirt needs velcro, too):

  

The tutorial I used for these cute little numbers come from a really neat craft blog called 'Craftiness is Not an Option'  She has some GREAT stuff on there.  You can click HERE for the link to the tutorials....the Barbie clothes are all the way at the bottom.  I did do a few things differently than what she recommends.  For example, you can see from my skirt picture, I made the waist band a bit thicker than hers, simply because my sewing skills are not that professional, so I needed the extra room for error.  She calls for the band to be 1.25" inches (before it is complete), but I cut it to 2".  And, I added length to the skirt...I did 5" instead of 3.5".  Also, instead of zig-zagging or serging all the edges of the fabric, I just sewed a narrow hem (turned the raw edge 1/4", then turned another 1/4" and sewed down) to give it the finished look.  I'm not good with the zig-zag stitch, and I don't have a serge machine.  That worked out quite nicely, but I had to add an extra 1/2" around for seam allowances.  I also sewed the darts on the bodice of the dress differently than she suggested.  For one thing, I had no idea what a dart was before looking at her pictures (except for those goofy things you throw at a target, that I can NEVER land in the bulls-eye!).  And for another, she has you sewing along side the pins, but that makes me *really* nervous...I've broken too many of my machine's needles by accidentally sewing over pins.  I know there is a way to do it without removing pins and without breaking the needle, but I don't know how.  So, what I did was pinned the bodice on Barbie, then marked where I wanted the darts to go with a pencil:

Then, I took the bodice off, made sure the markings were dark enough, and added a second set of markings about 1/8" to the outside of the first ones:

 Still with me??  Ok...then, I folded the fabric on one of the inside lines, and then sewed down the line that was marked on the outside of it.  Then, I repeated for the opposite dart.  After I sewed it, it looked like this:

front view:

Come to find out, in sewing, a dart is basically there to help shape the bodice of the dress...you learn something new everyday, I guess!  I'm not sure if that is technically correct, but it seemed to work.  It may even be way more complicated than using the pins like the tutorial said to, but it worked for me.  Also, I used a rotary cutter and rotary board to cut all my fabric to size...this made sure it was nice, straight, even, and that all the ends matched up properly.  That skirt is actually my second attempt...I didn't even take a picture of the first one.  When I went to sew the back of the skirt together, the lengths of the skirt completely didn't match up!  And, I tried to sew a snap on it, but I sewed one of them on the wrong side, and it just didn't work properly (please don't ask...).  I tried doing the zig-zag thing on the first skirt, but there were loose ends everywhere, and it looked sloppy.  Plus, it was too short.  Oh well..it was fun to make, anyway, and it was a good test run =)

this photo also shows an example of the narrow hem I used in lieu of the zig-zag/serge technique:

Now, all I need to do is go to the fabric store and get some velcro to finish these pieces off!  I think I may get a batch of fat quarters to make some more outfits.  I have scraps, but it's not really little girl-ish stuff.  I'd like to try and make at least one of each of her items.  Ok...enough Barbie clothes talk!  I know I keep going on about it, but these were so fun to make!  I thought it would be difficult sewing all these little pieces of fabric, but it really wasn't that bad.  The hardest part was pinning the stuff together.  

Alright...on to the next project that I've had fun with recently.  Have you ever heard of 'Painting with a Twist' or 'Corks and Canvas'?  I'm not sure if those places are all around the country, or if they are just in our area, but I was invited to two birthday parties at these places.  Basically, it's a 2 or 3 hour acrylic painting class, and you can drink wine while you paint.  It's really fun to go with a group of girl-friends.  And, while I didn't have the wine, I did have fun painting, and I think I actually learned something!  They have all kinds of different paintings you can choose from, but the birthday girls picked out which paintings we did at the two classes I went to.  The first was Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night.  It was supposed to look like this:

(I realize this isn't *exactly* like Van Gogh's, but it was the sample from the local artist who teaches the class, and it was very good).

When I got there, they gave me this:

And, by the time I left, it looked like this:

Now, keep in mind that I have absolutely NO artistic ability, whatsoever.  I know mine was not the best in the class, but I was pleased.  At the second class I went to, we did a Fleur de Lis with circles.  I didn't get a picture of the teacher's painting (which was really beautiful), but this was the blank canvas:

It's kind of hard to see, but this it has a Fleur de Lis outline on it:

And, this is how mine turned out:

Again, I claim no artistic ability.  So, masterpieces they are most certainly not, but it was a lot of fun making them!  If you ever get a chance to go to one of these classes, I really recommend them.  I think they would be fun no matter what your skill level at painting.  Here's a link to the website:  Corks and Canvas or Painting with a Twist.  I think it's the same franchise company, but don't quote me on that....

Ok, onto the last couple of projects I've been working on.  I've been really getting into knitting lately.  What I love about knitting, besides the therapeutic and relaxing aspect of it, is that I can pick it up for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, and then set it down and come back to it later.  You can't really do that with sewing...when I sew, I have to really make sure that I have a large block of time carved out where I know I won't be interrupted.  Knitting, on the other hand, can be stuffed in my bag to do while waiting for the doctor, or by the bed to work on while laying the kids down for a nap, or even brought outside while I watch the kids play.  I have a lot of different things I want to try and make with knitting, but I'm trying to exhibit self-control here!  Phil makes fun of me for having a bunch of different projects going, but I'm convinced it's normal...right???  Right now, I have 2 knitting projects I'm in the middle of.  One is a baby sweater for Rachel.  I've been working on this for probably 6 months now, and the back is finished, and I'm more than half-way done with the front.  The problem is, I think the yarn is the wrong gauge for the needles.  My stitches are way too tight, and the sweater is kind of stiff.  I think I want to rip it out and try something else with the yarn and properly gauged needles.  I'm also working on a baby blanket from this pattern.  I'm just about finished, so pictures to come soon!  It's a really cool pattern.  I also attempted a pair of leg warmers recently.  I didn't finish them, because I was just trying to figure out how to use double point needles.  Again, the needles were too small for the yarn, so the leg warmers came out really stiff, but they were super simple, cute, and didn't take long to make, either.  I want to make a set with the proper needles for the yarn.  Oh, and I finally finished my set of wool diaper covers that I was working on over the summer!  These are one of my favorite things to knit.  They take an afternoon to make, and the chunky yarn and big needles are fun to work with!  They have buttons on them and everything =)  Can't wait to try these out on the new baby!!!

And, last, but not least, the final project I participated in was to help Phil tag the cows.  Now that we have 9 cows in our herd, and will hopefully increase that number come springtime when a few of the females calve, Phil decided it was time to start tagging them, so we could keep track of who's who, and of what kind of care we give each one.  So, we got to really test out the new cow chute for the first time this weekend.  And let me tell you...I am no cattle farmer!  I'm really just along for the ride.  I love having cows in the yard, the beef they provide, and the milk they will soon provide (when we get our milk cow...hopefully this spring), BUT I really don't enjoy messing with them.  If Phil asks me to, or he needs a second person to help him out, I'll do it, but it is a sheer act of love, because quite frankly, those things intimidate me when they get within a certain distance of me...especially if there is no fence to keep them from charging at me.  Like I said, I love having them in the pasture, and the benefits of beef/milk cows, but up close and personal...I feel so vulnerable around them.  And, according to Phil, they can sense my fear, so that doesn't help.  We have a love/hate relationship, me and those cows =)  But, anyway, this weekend, Phil needed an extra hand, so I went out there and helped him get tags in the cows ears.  Although, I'm not sure how much help I really was...I think all I did was bother the cows (that whole fear sensing thing), and make weird faces while trying to hold the nose pincher things, so the cow would be still, while Phil pierced its ear.  Yes, that was my job...the nose clamp holder.  It was interesting.  I'm hoping that the more I'm around them, the more comfortable I'll get.  But, they stare at me funny!!  On the plus side, when I told Natalie that the way Daddy put the tags in the cows ear was the same way that girls get their ears pierced, she decided she doesn't want to do it anymore =)  Hopefully that will keep her at bay for a few more years...

 one of the calves, unhappily waiting for us to do what we have to do:

Phil demonstrating how I should hold her:

Success!

Sorry...no picture of me in action.  Phil had to act quickly...I wasn't very good at holding the cows.  I was afraid of hurting her.  Go figure. 

"Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!'

About a year ago, my husband convinced me that we needed more property.  We just didn't have enough grass to keep the 4 cows we had at the time!  What we needed was more land!  Well, we now definitely have just that...a whopping 18 acres of it.  So, naturally when we got here with our 4 cows, there was more than enough grass to go around for everyone.  Actually, there was no grass...the previous owners raised horses, who ate the grass down to the dirt.  Plus, it was New Year's Eve when we moved in, so grass was not in season then.  So, we had to supplement with hay.  But, I digress.  

Now that summer has been in full swing for a solid 3+ months, we have more grass than we know what to do with.  I mean, when the kids and I walk out to the barn, or anywhere on our property that is not within the confines of the wooden fence around our house, we walk through belly deep grass.  I think I've lost Andrew and Rachel a few times in the stuff!  So, the other day, my husband tells me what we need to solve said grass overload problem, is more cows!  And, since love is blind, I pretty much let the man do whatever he pleases. 

Some of our cows have calved since we moved here, so we were actually up to 6 cows total:  we have 2 cows each with a female calve, a heifer (who Phil believes to be pregnant!!  I'm hoping for a boy =), and the bull.  But a week or so ago, we added two new cows to our growing herd (one of which I think is also pregnant, but don't quote me on that one), which brings our total up to 8...oh, I forgot one...we have 9, because we are holding a cow for our cousin right now.
  

Actually, I'm really excited about the new cows.  There's something very quaint and soothing about looking out the window, and seeing a pasture full of cows grazing in the yard.  It makes for a very simple, quiet, and country-esque life...which, is great for raising children!  Please note that nowhere did I say EASY...life in the country is hard work, but much like being Catholic, it's really worth it.  I have to admit, it's not exactly my natural tendency to be a farm-type gal.  I'm pretty lazy.  But, it's one of those paradox things that are so hard to explain.  Even though it's not my natural tendency, I really do find so much joy living life in the country, and being a part of a family who raises farm animals and plants gardens.  Now, the sewing, cooking, knitting, and more domestic type stuff....that I love!  The harder, outdoor, rough and rugged work takes more of an act of will on my part.  But, like I said, I just get a lot of joy out of this kind of life, despite my tendency to laziness.  It's strange, I know, but it's the only way I can explain it.  And, the kids really like the cows, too.  Natalie loves to name them, Rachel likes to moo at them from the window, and Andrew....well, Andrew just wants to ride one =)  He told me the other day, "Mom, I really want to ride one of those cows.  Not a horse, though...I just want to ride one of the cows.  Can I?"  Love that kid!  Not to mention the fact that those cows will not only cut back on the amount of money we have to spend on diesel to run the tractor to cut our 18 acres of grass, but they'll also be providing lean, healthy, grass-fed, hormone-free beef for our growing family.  And, there's promise of a milk cow in the future!!!  Now, that is something to be excited about!  I've always wanted to try and milk a cow.  However, we've also been toying around with the idea of getting a milk goat, instead of a milk cow.  We are still doing some research on that to see which one we want, but there will most likely be some kind of fresh milk in the near distant future.  

Here are some pictures of our new farm friends:

 She is my favorite!  Isn't she pretty?:

Philip likes this gal:

The cows we already had are Dexters.  We went with a different breed of cow this go round, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, Dexters have horns, which Phil is not too crazy about...those are some strong animals, so I imagine they can do some pretty serious damage with those pointy weapons of theirs, and while I don't handle them very much, the man I love does, so I really don't want him getting hurt.  Secondly, Dexters are a smaller breed of cattle, so they can't keep up with the grass as well, it takes a lot longer for them to grow to full size, and you don't get as much beef off of one of those cows as you would a full-sized one.  So, we went with a Limousin and a Hereford....I think...I'll have to run that by Phil to make sure I'm correct.  And, please don't ask me which cow is which breed...I have no idea.  The only ones I can correctly identify are the Dexters.  We also went with the red variety this time, because with the intense heat in the summer, we thought it might be more pleasant for the cow to not be such a dark, heat absorbing color, like black.

Also on the home front, Philip finally got the chute for the cows finished.  It looks really great!  He's been working to get the barn turned into a cow friendly place, as opposed to a a horse friendly place, and little by little, it's coming together.  The chute is finished, which means we can run the cows through there if we ever need to tag them, administer medicine, milk them, or do anything that requires them to stand still and not try to hurt us.  He also built some wooden gates to make a holding pen, should we ever need to keep any of them separated from the herd.  

Here are some of them hanging out in the holding pen, waiting to be run through the chute:

One of the new gates, and the kids watching the action:

There they are, lined up in the chute:

One of the Mama cows and her calf:

Phil, letting them out through the head gate (look at me, using all kinds of fancy farm terminology!  just don't ask me what any of it means...I can repeat what Phil tells me, and that's about it ;):

The holding pen area:

Well, I think that is about it for what has been happening around the farm.  Oh, and I use the term 'farm' very loosely....what we have here is hardly considered a farm, but it's easier than saying 'our relatively large piece of land with cows, pigs, and a small overgrown family garden'.
 

On a more serious note, I really want to get some cowbells for our cows!!  How cool would that be?! 

Stocking up for the Winter

Philip spent the better part (or, I guess that would be the worst part, as the better part of Sunday was Mass...or something like that...he spent the majority of the day, Sunday...how's that??) loading up our barn with hay for the cows, so they will have food this winter.  The kids were very excited, because they LOVE playing in the hay.  Although, much to their dismay, they were banned from any jumping, climbing, sliding, or contact of any kind with the hay, because it kind of destroys the bales.  Natalie was expressing her concern over this, so I asked her if she would like it if the cows jumped around in her food...I think she understood ;)  Anyway, here are some photos of our fully stocked barn:

Can you see Natalie up there??

I think we ended up with 22 all together...

Side-view: 

Phil's current work-in-progress...a chute for the cows.  I kind of want to engrave something really cool on that board up there...any suggestions??

The last few lingering bales before being moved to the barn:

All that hay makes our barn look so much more, well, barn-like!  It's fun =)  Thanks, Phil, for taking care of that!  I could tell by how disgusting your laundry was that day that it was no easy task...glad it wasn't me.

Summer Harvest and the Homefront

In my last garden post, I didn't have any pictures of our vegetables, and I promised to come back and put some, so here are just a few pics of what we've been getting from the garden:

 

This was my first real, serious garden, and so far I'm very pleased with the results.  Not everything came out perfectly, and that's ok.  Like the corn...I did something really wrong with the corn!  That stuff just didn't produce worth a darn.  Once full grown, the kernels were all different sizes, some of them were bare in spots, and the ones that were uniform were chewy.  Phil said that maybe my seeds were too old.  I'm going to put my money on that, because I'd hate to think that I can't grow corn!  I love fresh corn on the cob and maque choux (that's a very tasty Cajun dish consisting of smothered corn and tomatoes in butter for those who have never heard of it - so good!).  I'm going to be very sad if I have to give up on the corn thing.  I'll try again with some fresh seeds that I bought this spring.  Why didn't I plant those, you ask?  Well, I had some left over from a few years ago, and I didn't want to waste it (I read online that seeds keep for a few years if you keep them in the fridge)...so much for that plan...I wasted way more than just a few kernels of corn.  That stuff takes forever to grow!  Oh well, so it goes.  Live and learn.  The pigs will eat well this week.  All I know is that we have been enjoying the heck out of some fresh cucumber and tomato salads every night, and I'll be sad when they are done producing.  The okra plants have also been producing very well....slow, but steady.  I've almost filled a gallon-sized freezer bag that I'll use in the winter for gumbo and smothered okra.  I usually get about a hand full of okra pods every few days.  Sometimes we just fry them, and that's really good, too!  I'm also really looking forward to the watermelon and cantaloupe we planted, assuming those produce.  I've got a ton of decent sized cantaloupes on the vine, so hopefully they'll ripen nicely.  Phil actually told me today that he found a wild watermelon vine out in the pasture!  And, I'm almost ready for my next round of planting.  I'll probably do another round of cucumbers and tomatoes (because we are addicted!), maybe some more bell peppers, and later in July I'll be able to start stuff for the fall garden, like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.  I may also do another variety of squash and zucchini if I can make it to the seed store...I'm not sure what variety I planted, but they are kind of funky looking.  Some of them came out half orange and half green, and they were kind of tough...what is that??  Maybe those seeds are bad, too, because they weren't new, either.

On the animal side of life, I think we've finally got our fencing set up the way we want it!  So, Phil has the cows on this rotational grazing schedule (please don't ask me to explain it...I just go out there and dump feed in a bucket when Phil asks me to), so we finally have cows grazing around our pasture!  It's pretty cool.  They are close to the house now, so when we go outside, we can actually see them by the fence, and they stand there and moo at us as if we are supposed to feed them or something.  I thought that's what all the grass was for???  All we need now are a handful more cows to keep up with the grass...they can't eat enough right now to keep it down, which is not a bad problem to have, I suppose.  Little by little we are easing into this more self-sufficient kind of life.  It may not be how I imagined my life to be, but I'm finding that it is better than anything I could have imagined.  I'm glad Phil talked me into it =)  On Monday, we will bring our first grass fed steer to the butcher! (And by "we", I mean someone other than myself).  Which means we'll add steaks, ground beef, roasts, and briskets to our current freezer selection =)  All those trips out there to feed ole T'bone is finally going to pay off!  

Here they are, munching on some grass:

you can see how far down they mow the grass from one section to the next, where we have them partitioned off:

On a totally side note, it seems lately we've been hearing so many stories of hardships and sufferings; people's jobs on the line, family illnesses, the problems in the gulf that hit close to home, and here we are, just so blessed to have a beautiful family and a little piece of heaven on earth where we live.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair, but I know God knows what He's doing, so for now, I'll do my best to foster gratitude for our blessings, and to pray and sacrifice for those who are struggling.  I'm not sure if that's enough, but that's all I know how to do.