Dairy free toffee

OK, I have now made 3 batches of dairy free (coconut oil) toffee. My first was using an unfamiliar recipe (something like 1 cup earth balance where I used coconut oil, 1 cup white sugar, and I added almonds) which was a wee bit over cooked cause it wasn't doing what I expected it to. What happened is there was way too much oil, which separated and the bottom had the toffee only I didn't figure it out till almost too late. Soooo...these next two times I used my "tried and true" Tight Wad Gazette recipe - 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 butter which I used coconut oil. First batch of this still had the same thing - way too much oil, which I poured most of off before finishing, and then at 7 minutes it started smoking like it is supposed to! The third one I tried using 1/4 oil, which was too little to start so I poured more back in, and towards end poured back off. It is a little weird cooking with coconut oil, but I am figuring it out! I also put both batches in same 8x8 pan (which I rubbed coconut oil on bottom) added 1/2 cup almond slivers to each, and put chocolate chips on top to melt and spread. Can't wait to taste these! They look at little different, one might be softer than the other, but I think they will both taste good!

Patrick’s Gate

One spring, I was working in my kitchen, and I happened to look out the window towards the lean-to where the sheep and goats were. They were grazing in the back fields, but could come to the lean-to for shelter and water. When I looked out, I saw the strangest sight. Our two horned ram, Patrick, had a ten foot gate hooked on his horn and he was flailing it around, smashing it against the Russian olive shrub outside their pen, trying to get it off his head. I ran out as fast as I could, and when he saw me coming, he held still. He sensed that I was there to help him, and knew standing still would be the best thing to do. I had to twist the gate which was vertical at that time, to be horizontal so I could slide it off of his horn. He must have been trying to rub between his horn and his face, which is how he ended up getting it caught on his horn and then picked it off of its rods that it sits on. What a sight to remember!

Bubba

Bubba
One stormy warm spring night, my 19 year old daughter Marie and I went to do a couple errands and then were planning to go to Walmart. We went to the Trumansburg library, and then on to Interlaken to deliver flowers to a member of our church. They didn’t answer their door, so we left the flowers and went to the son’s house nearby to let them know and to ask how to get to Walmart from their house. They gave us directions and said they would call his parents to let them know we left the flowers. We headed down the road, with Marie driving, as I was tired. We turned from one highway to another in the village of Lodi, and Marie started speeding up as we were going out of the village. It was raining a little harder so the roads were wet, and as she speeded up, we started to hydroplane, right towards a pickup truck driving the opposite direction. I hollered “Marie!” and she tried to steer the other direction to avoid the truck, and we went spinning off the side of the road, swiped a fence post and skidded into a corn field about 50 feet. When we came to a stop, we breathed a sigh of relief as we talked about all the possibilities that could of happened and didn’t, such as head on, or rolling, either of which could have resulted in death or a trip to the hospital. The man in the pickup truck came back to check on us, to make sure we were all right. A couple other people stopped also. I got out and tried to push while Marie tried to drive out, but the tires were in such bad shape that there was no traction, part of the reason we were where we were.
I called AAA, and was on hold for almost 15 minutes before getting someone, and told them where we were, approximately. While on that call, one guy creeped Marie out, but I told her she needed to talk to him as I was still on hold, and that if he did anything I would hang up and call 911. AAA told us it would be at the most one and half hours before the tow truck got to us. Marie called home and extracted a promise from each of her two sisters not to tell their father what she told them, and she told them we were in a corn field, waiting to be pulled out. So, as the sky got darker, fewer people noticed us, and we started telling about the books we were reading. Marie had just been reading an Ann Rule book that day. She is a true crime writer and can be scary in a situation like we were in to think about. I tried to get our minds off of her book by telling about the book I was reading, “My Name is Mary Sutter.” At some point we locked the doors, and felt a little bit more secure, but then we were remembering a show we watched the night before where a man hit a metal bat into a guy’s truck window and beat him to death, so we didn’t feel totally secure. Every once in a while, the sky would light up so bright it hurt our eyes, but showed us that no one was around us. It was a little terrifying when that happened, but fortunately neither of us is afraid of lightening.
When it became totally dark, a car started to pass us, and then shone a big spot light on us. It was a Seneca County Sheriff, and it was amazing he noticed us in the dark. He kept that spotlight on us almost the rest of the time, and it was blindly bright. We had to put our visors down to tolerate it. He came to see if we were all right, and we said yes, and that we had called AAA and that we had been there one and half hours already. He said that was unacceptable, and told me to call them back up and cancel the tow truck and he would call a tow truck and AAA would reimburse us. I called AAA back, and was on hold a shorter time, and they contacted the tow truck, which was out of Stanley, around the lake from us! The sheriff then talked to the AAA operator and told them he called us a tow truck and that they were going to pay the bill. So we sat and waited for another half hour or so. Marie realized she needed to go to the bathroom, but there was no way we could figure out how to do that without the spotlight shining on us and/or the sheriff checking on us.
The tow truck finally arrived, from Romulus, and checked on the car, and hooked it up to winch it out. Winching is very slow, especially when you are standing there in flip flops and short shorts like Marie was doing. The guy steering the car was the smaller of the two, and Marie and I about died laughing when the big guy called him Bubba. They got the car onto the side of the road, and looked it over. They pulled off one piece of plastic that protected the windshield washer reservoir that looked like it might be able to be put back on, and said it looked like it would be fine, just be prepared for clunking sounds till the mud was all off. I drove the car to Trumansburg, after making one stop because of a noise. Marie got out and pushed something back under, then we went to the car wash to wash off as much of the mud as we could before going home. I wrote a note for my husband that said “So, Marie and I are ok, the car is almost ok except the bumper, will tell you more later.” He saw it the next morning and didn’t get all upset like he usually does about most things. I told Marie that I didn’t really want to go to Walmart anyway, and she said that is why we were in the corn field!

Noah’s Ark

The other day my girls and I brought some animals to the Fall Harvest Festival so Ithaca city kids could see what farm animals look, feel and sound like. We loaded up one goat, one ewe (with four horns,) two ducks and three bantam chickens onto the truck. My oldest daughter Marie caught and loaded up the Jacob ewe, Athena, while my youngest daughter Rosemary and Rosemary’s friend Devon (with middle daughter Sarajane’s help catching) caught and loaded up the two ducks and three chickens onto the truck, while I loaded up the goat doe, Aryla. We all loaded in except Sarajane to head to town. We had an uneventful ride in, and unloading was a challenge because the ewe did not want to go backwards out of her crate. Marie ended up dragging her out, and her leg got caught in the bottom of the crate, but she got her untangled from that. Once unloaded, everyone loved seeing the animals and petting the goat and sheep. One little boy, who was probably around eighteen months old, called the goat a “dog.” When it was time to load the animals back up, we put the ewe in backwards to make it easier to get her out. We headed up Route 96 out of town, and all of the sudden we heard a loud “pop.” I said”What was that!” It almost sounded like something hit us but I couldn’t see anything. I then started to see steam coming out of the hood so I pulled over to the side of the road and turned the truck off. The girls and I piled out, watching the steam pouring out, and the girls were worried that if it was on fire, the animals would burn up. I told them to just wait and see. The girls weren’t happy with my answer. Then I called Triple A, who said they could only take 2 riders. So, I tried to think who I knew that had a vehicle that could get the animals and some of the girls home. I called my friend Lorraine, and asked her if she could possibly come pick up two of the girls, one goat, one sheep, and a crate of ducks and chicks. She said she was picking up her son and then would go home and get her truck and be there in a half hour. So we unloaded the animals to be ready for the various directions we were going. I then called my husband and told him to pick me up in Ithaca where the truck was being towed. All the while, traffic is pouring by, and once the animals were out, they were rubber necking to see the animals. The tow truck arrived with two guys, so I called my friend to ask if she had room for 3 girls and not just two and she said they will be squished but she could do that. So I left the three girls, one goat, one sheep, and a crateful of poultry on the side of the road, while I went in the tow truck. When I finally arrived home, the girls and animals were all back in place. Thank goodness for friends with trucks and only light rain!

Unschooling to charter high school

My middle daughter,Sarajane, has started her second year of a new charter school, and we just went to a parent-teacher conference. The teacher/crew leader is a brand new teacher and we were talking about how I had homeschooled (unschooling) and told him some of the things we had done through the years. He was really surprised as he was impressed with how well my daughter has been doing in school. I told him how her first year had gone, that she had a difficult time adjusting to a totally new routine having never gone to school before: getting up early, going class to class, etc. and that by the end of the year she was tutoring the other students. I felt the same confidence that I did when this same daughter at five years old, brought out a paper where she had copied the alphabet off of an alphabet poster we had on our wall - having never having talked about writing, maybe we talked about the pictures, but she did it on her own. My oldest daughter had gone to most of kindergarten so this was my first experience with one learning the alphabet on her own. It really does work!

"My friend Mohammed"

This post came on my local homeschool list and I asked for permission to share it. I thought it was wonderful!
" My homeschooled daughter made a decision to go to public school in the tenth grade.
She made many good friends including one of her best friends Mohammed.
The following year the school brought in a Muslim group that's focus is to educate about the difference between Muslims and Jihadists terrorists.
When the presenter asked the audience what is their first thought when they hear Muslim, kids shouted out "9-11" "Al Qaida" "terrorist".
My daughter stood up in front of 800 students and teachers and shouted out " my friend Mohammed!!!!"

“Achilles”

One Friday afternoon in the spring, around 3PM, my daughter Marie called me at work. She said she found one of her ewes, Chortle (who has markings that looks like she is chortling) hanging around close to the lean-to instead of out with the flock grazing. Then she looked around for Chortle’s ram lamb. When she found him, he was not able to walk due to his front leg being either broken or pulled out of joint for some unknown reason. Chortle was staying near her baby, being a good mother. Marie asked me what she should do, and I told her to call ARC, the local vet clinic, and see if we could bring him in. They said no because he wasn’t a dog or cat, but that they would have the vet call her when she could.
When I got home, I told her we would go see if the emergency room doctor for the local hospital, who lives around the corner was home. We talked with his wife, who told us he had already gone to work, and we didn’t think he would appreciate us bringing a lamb to the emergency room. We then went to the emergency room nurse who lives two doors down, and she wasn’t home either. So, we went back to our house. By that time, Marie said that she thought maybe she could fix it herself, but that we had to buy a piece of PVC pipe because she had read about how to do it on the internet. As we were in the driveway, the vet called, so Marie talked with her. The vet asked her if she wanted advice or for her to come out, and Marie said she guessed she wanted advice. So the vet told her what she needed to do and what to watch for in the ram lamb (temperature of lamb, temperature of leg, not too tight or loose wrapping.)
We then went to Stover Lumber and asked for a short piece of PVC pipe. We took one piece out to the car to see if it was wide enough for the lamb’s leg. It wasn’t, so we found another piece that was the right diameter and ended up even being the right length. It cost 69 cents. We then went to our next door neighbor Tom, who has every tool you can think of, and asked him if he could cut the pipe lengthwise for us. Then we would have a “U” shaped piece of PVC to lay the lamb’s leg in which we would wrap. He got out a hand saw and started to cut only one side. I realized he didn’t quite understand what I had asked for and told him he needed to cut both sides. He said that would make it easier, and cut it in half.
We took the cut PVC pipe home, and prepared for the procedure. Rosemary, my youngest daughter, got a towel to wrap around the lamb’s back legs. She held the back end, while Sarajane, my middle daughter, held his head still and I held the top of the lamb’s broken/disjointed leg. Marie started to pull on his leg gently and said that she was afraid she might pull too hard. As she was pulling, she said “I won’t pull too hard” - it was a lot harder than she thought. The lamb lay perfectly still and didn’t even make a peep. Marie said if it had been a goat, he would have been screaming. We all heard and felt a “snap” when the leg went back into place. Then Marie laid a piece of thick cotton cloth inside the PVC pipe, and laid the lamb’s leg in it and wrapped it with pink vet wrap up and down his leg. We took him back to his mom, and he didn’t use his leg for a few days. After a while, he used the PVC pipe as a crutch to move around so he didn’t look like he was limping so badly. By the end of three weeks, Marie decided to take his cast off and see how it looked and acted. When she first took it off, he wouldn’t use his leg, but she was able to bend it a little and felt it would be all right. After a day or so, he started using it a little more. A week later, Marie came and told me that you couldn’t even tell he had been injured and that he was walking normal. I told her she should call him Achilles, after the Greek god, as his weakness is his leg, though Achilles weakness was his heel.