Peaceful Heart FarmCast

We have made some really startling discoveries lately regarding the cost of milking cows and I want to share that with you today. Normande vs Jersey – the cost is the main topic for today. Both are traditional breeds. What's the difference and how does that affect the cost of raising them.

• Homestead Life Updates
• Normande vs Jersey – The Cost
• Skillet Chicken with Neufchatel Spinach Artichoke Sauce

Life is getting back to normal on the homestead. I'm mending nicely and my energy level is back to where I can work all day and not be too tired. I still have to watch myself in the heat and doing too much in one day. While I'm active all day, I want to be cognizant of the strength and energy required to perform those activities. For instance, I might go to the garden for a little while, but not for the hours and hours I would put in before. I do more inside tasks.

Speaking of the garden, putting in less hours is working out well as the garden is winding down. We have finished with the tomatoes. Not because they weren't producing but because I simply have had enough of tomatoes. I planted way too many. If it weren't for the drought we have been experiencing, I would have been even more overwhelmed. Most of the season the tomatoes were small due to lack of water and fertilizer. They were very good tomatoes, just not very big. Instead of a nice 3 ½ inch diameter, they were more like 2 ½ inches in diameter. Pretty small I know. But they were really, really good.

I've canned and canned and canned. Mostly tomato sauce, though I made a few jars of salsa and really like it. I have all of the remaining tomatoes on a shelf inside the house near a window. Those tomatoes will all go into salsa. Barbecue sauce is on the list as well. That concoction is just about ready to be canned. Even though I am using a traditional recipe it calls for more sugar than I want. I can leave out some of the sugar and start my own traditional barbeque sauce line as a much healthier product. IMO

The animals are doing really well. We had a long discussion about where we are going to go with our animals. We currently have sheep, goats, cows, and donkeys. Which do we want to keep and which will go? We haven't talked much about the donkeys, though we have discussed selling two of them as we don't need that many. And after I talk about the sheep, we may not need any at all. That is another discussion.

Currently we have one breeding ram and 6 ewes. This year that combination produced 10 lambs that will go to market next year. We also have three lambs that are ready for market right now. Get your orders in now if you want a half or whole lamb. Again, there are only three.

We had a good long discussion about the sheep a few days ago. They are wonderful animals and very easy to keep and manage. The flock has been genetically improved so they have little to no problems with parasites. That was a big problem for us in the beginning. We lost many animals – especially small lambs – in the first year or two.

The discussion revolved around time management. While they are easy to keep and raise, they also are one more marketing task that we have to take on to sell the lambs and meat each year. In our neck of the woods, lamb is actually quite popular. However, every minute I spend marketing lamb is a minute I don't spend marketing cheese. These are business decisions that have to be considered.

In the end, we decided to phase out our flock of sheep. We will not breed this year and will begin culling the older ewes a little at a time. Likely we will sell the breeding ram, but in the end, all sheep will be gone from our homestead. At least for the time being. We can revisit this after the creamery is completed and we have a good handle on making and marketing our cheese. For right now, the creamery, cheesemaking and marketing are our primary focus.

Unlike the sheep, the goats have a greater role to play in the maintenance of good pasture for our grass-fed operation. Sheep do eat different things than cows initially, but in the end, they both eat all of the grasses. The goats, on the other hand, like to eat woody stems such as small trees, briars, brambles, wild blackberries and so on. But still there will be changes. Again, relating to efficient time management on the homestead.

We chose cashmere goats because I love to knit. It was a great idea to raise them, comb out the cashmere, then send it off to be processed and spun into roving and yarn. Then I was going to knit cute little baby stuff to sell at the market. In the end, I simply don't have that kind of time. There is only so much I can do. This is a great life lesson. You can divide your focus between two things, but neither will ever get your full attention.

The goats require constant hoof maintenance. The cashmere must be combed out at exactly the right time in late winter. There is a pre-cleaning that happens before sending it off to be cleaned, carded and made into roving and/or yarn. I once thought that I would have lots of time in the winter to sit and knit to my heart's content. Didn't happen.

I spend a great deal of time in the winter laying out the marketing plans for the spring, summer and fall. Because once spring has sprung, everything else goes on hold. Cows are being milked, cheese is being made, and trips to the farmer's market are happening a couple of times a week. I better have all of my marketing ducks in a row before the dam bursts.

Back to the goats. We will still have a herd of goats. However, we are going to cull out all of the cashmere goats and eventually bring in some Kiko goats. Kikos were developed in New Zealand based on the needs of the local markets. They needed goats that did not require a lot of parasite control and certainly did not need hoof maintenance. Taking a feral breed and crossing it with domestic breeds, they were able to develop a great meat goat that requires little to no maintenance. That's our kind of animal. We still have to sell the goat meat, but we will keep the herd small.

We haven't managed our goats nearly as well as the sheep. Unauthorized breeding is an ongoing problem with them. There seem to be goat kids popping out at the most inconvenient times. And of course, it makes the herd bigger when we don't take the time to get them to market. Unlike the Kiko goat which was developed for efficient meat production, the cashmere goats take a long time to get to a good size for market. They are bred for their winter undercoat of cashmere with no regard for any other trait.

As I mentioned, we haven't discussed the donkeys and whether we will continue to keep them after the sheep are gone. They were purchased as livestock guardian animals for the sheep. They are also the only thing on the homestead that could properly be called a pet. They are very friendly animals and they crave human interaction.

Likely we will keep them around. We want you guys to come visit us and I wouldn't want you to miss them. AAANNNDDD I would miss them too.

Finally, I get to the cows and this will lead into today's topic. In fact, I'm going to skip right to the topic.

First, a short review of our choice for the Normande breed of cow. Second, how did we end up with a Jersey cow and heifer calf? Lastly, how has this experience changed the way we think about our herd?

I know you've heard me say this before, but I'll say it again. I love our Normande cows. For more particulars about the breed, listen to my podcast "Why Normande Cows". We bought our first girls in the fall of 2011. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would have a milk cow on our homestead. Making cheese, butter and yogurt along with that luscious fresh milk straight from the cow was on the top of my list of things I wanted in my life.

We had plenty of time to research what kind of cow we wanted to have for our traditional family cow. As mentioned above, there are always offspring to deal with when raising animals. In order for a cow to produce milk, she needs to have a calf every year. She will produce milk for about a year before naturally drying up, but proper management requires us to stop milking her and "dry her off" a good three months before she gives birth again. That gives her the resources she needs to remain healthy and grow a healthy calf. So what kind of cow was going to give us a good calf for beef as well as produce a lot of milk for my enjoyment, cheesemaking and so on?

There are quite a few breeds that are listed as "dual breed", meaning they produce lots of milk but also produce calves that grow out with well-marbled meat in a timely manner. Another requirement we had was a good healthy steer that could thrive on pasture and did not need to be grain finished to reach that well-marbled meat in a timely manner goal. Same for the milk. She needs to be able to maintain her weight and condition without being fed the customary 6 pounds of grain a day allowed for organic grass-fed dairies. Commercial dairies will feed their cows up to 30 pounds of grain per day.

The trade off with not feeding grain is less milk. Grain definitely increases milk production. And while I am not opposed to feeding the 6 pounds of non-gmo, non-soy feed, if we need more production, our current model does not require this. Let me explain a little more.

My first concern is the health of the cow. I've seen some pretty skinny milk cows. They were being pasture raised with absolutely no grain. It's a fine goal, but if your cow is starving because so much of her energy is going into milk production that there is little left for her own needs, the goal is flawed. I prefer a system approach.

My system is designed to keep healthy herd, produce enough milk for us to make our traditional, hand-made artisan cheese in sufficient quantity to support the homestead, and produce excellent beef, breeding and replacement stock with the annual calving.

There are several breeds that advertise themselves as fitting those requirements. But the Normande stood out in my mind. Their milk production is on par with the Jersey. The fat and protein components are on par with the Jersey. The largest deciding factor was the composition of the milk as it relates to cheesemaking.

The Normande cow produces a milk with a protein structure that is the most conducive to cheesemaking. In France, Normande milk is prized and even required for some cheeses to carry a specific name. Camembert di Normande comes to mind. Neufchâtel is also made with milk from Normande cows. Neufchatel is a traditional, soft-white, table cheese, originating from the village of Neufchatel-en-Bray in northern Normandy. It is one of France's oldest cheese, dating back as far as 1035. Often, it is heart-shaped. That shape came about during the Hundred Years' War between England and France from 1337 to 1453. Tales are told about the French farm girls falling in love with English soldiers and making these heart-shaped cheese to show their love.

One other characteristic we considered was docility. Cows are very large animals. I wanted a breed that was gentle and easy to work with and the Normande has exceeded my expectations in that area. Far exceeded my expectations.

We love our Normandes so how did we come to own a couple of Jerseys?

I often referred to Jersey cows when talking about the Normande and other dairy breeds. It is the most popular choice for a family milk cow. Typically, they produce lots and lots of milk with higher butterfat and protein levels than other breeds. They are not, however, a dual breed. They are actually quite skinny in their natural state. Boney in fact. While our Normandes are flat across their rump with meat and fat, the Jersey cow's hip bones are really prominent. It is how they are genetically built. Their energy primarily goes into making milk, not meat and fat.

Jersey milk is highly prized for the highest butter fat content. That means you can make lots of butter. Cheese made from Jersey milk will also be higher in fat, and that means more flavor. They are a great milk cow. But again, not a dual breed. Though I do see a lot of marketing going on right now for Jersey beef. And I assure you, that it is only marketing. It is marketing with information put together by the American Jersey Cattle Association researchers. The studies they are conducting include the standard grain diet fed to beef cattle to grow out the Jersey steers. They are simply not going to get the proper level of fat on grass only. I think it might work for the commercial market, but would not be viable for the family homestead. I'm willing to change my mind if I'm wrong. Right now, my mind says that Jerseys are NOT a dual breed.

So how did we end up with a bred Jersey cow? We needed some cash flow and herd shares were one way to provide it. A combination of the A2A2 certification of this cow and her calf along with the possibility of an existing customer base tipped the scale.

When I was first approached, I simply wasn't interested in another cow – and a Jersey to boot. But the idea of offering herd shares was intriguing. After a few days and lots of discussion, Scott and I decided to give it a try. It was a big financial risk but we decided to take the plunge. The current owner was offering herd shares and some of her customers would likely come to us after she stopped offering the service. That would help offset the initial cost of the cow. Additionally, I felt I could work it into my already busy marketing schedule as the herd shares contributed to our cheese centerpiece. Yes, we offer the fresh raw milk, but we also provide cheese, yogurt and butter to our herd share owners.

Fast forward, Butter has her calf. A very beautiful deer-like heifer. Very boney and much smaller than our Normande calves. That's just how they come. We started milking Butter and offering fresh A2A2 milk via our herd shares. The legal contracts are worded to include cheese, butter, yogurt and cream as part of the herd production.

The A2A2 milk is the real draw for both the milk and the cheese. We are in the process of getting our Normande cows tested for the A2A2 beta casein genetic trait. For more info on that, listen to my podcast, "What is A2A2 Milk?" Link in the show description. We are moving our herd genetics to 100% A2A2 beta casein and BB kappa casein. I haven't talked about kappa casein yet. BB kappa casein is the genetic quality that makes the best cheese. That need its own podcast.

First, the docility factor. Jerseys, and indeed most dairy cows, are fairly placid. What I see is that they are placid with humans. The Jersey cows are very aggressive with the other cows. Even Egwene, Butter's calf, is aggressive with her bottle. She pushes and jerks on that bottle with ferocity. It's not a problem for us at all. Just noted. As I said, the Jersey cows are very placid with humans.

Second, that Jersey does produce some really good milk and cream. She also requires feed – expensive feed. While our Normande cows stay fat and healthy on pure grass, even when they are in milk, a Jersey requires feed to maintain body condition when in milk. We feed a little bit of a supplement to our Normandes purely to keep them interested in coming into the milking parlor. Violet in particular is quite fat and she never received any grain supplement until this year when we trained her to put her head into the milking stanchion. The Normande breed has been developed over centuries to thrive on a grass-based diet.

Because we keep Butter's milk separate so our herd share owners can have 100% A2A2 milk, we are able to keep track of which cow is giving how much milk. The results are in. Butter is getting about four pounds or so of non-gmo, non-soy dairy feed supplement. Her milking parlor mate, Violet, gets about two handfuls of sweet feed. Violet produces as much or more milk than Butter. That's right. As much and sometimes more milk from Violet without the expense of lots of special feed. I believe that Butter is quite capable of producing quite a bit more milk than Violet. However, we would have to feed her more grain to accomplish it. We don't need a lot of milk at this time. The herd shares are still building and I'm only making cheese intermittently due to limitations of aging space. We simply don't need the extra milk.

If you run a Jersey dairy, it's probably worth the cost to have more milk. But for us, why spend the money if you don't have to? If we wanted more milk production from our Normandes, we could feed them a dairy supplement. Who knows how much milk they would produce? I do know that the little bit of feed they do get increases their milk production significantly. And perhaps at some time in the future that will be the way to go. As our cheese business takes off, we may want to make more cheese than the original plan outlined. We may have many more herd shares available in the future. In that case, we may feed some grain to produce more milk. But for right now, the grass requires no cash flow. It's free.

The bottom line is we are going to phase out the Jerseys. As soon as I can get at least one of my Normande cows certified as having A2A2 genetics, Butter goes up for sale. We are already talking about selling her calf, Egwene. Perhaps we will wait until we can sell her as a bred heifer. We shall see. In the end, the Normande ladies rule.

You just can't go wrong with skillet chicken and a good cheese sauce!

Perfectly golden brown, tender pan seared chicken breasts are topped with an easy to make, rich and flavorful spinach artichoke sauce. It might remind you of my crab and artichoke dip recipe but much lighter. Recipe link in the show notes.

• 24 oz boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• Salt and black pepper
• 4 Tbsp butter, divided
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 3 ½ cups fresh baby spinach, chopped
• 1 (14 oz) can artichoke quarters, drained and chopped
• 1 ¼ cups milk
• 4 oz Neufchatel cheese, diced into small cubes
• 1/3 cup finely shredded parmesan cheese
• ¼ cup sour cream

1. Pound chicken to an even thickness using the flat side of a meat mallet. Season both sides with salt and pepper.
2. Heat 2 Tbsp butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook until golden brown on bottom, about 5 - 6 minutes.
3. Turn chicken to opposite side. Continue cooking until chicken is golden brown on bottom or center registers 165 on an instant read thermometer, about 5 minutes longer. Transfer chicken to a plate, cover and keep warm.
4. Melt remaining 2 Tbsp butter in skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and flour and cook 30 seconds then add in spinach and artichokes and sauté about 1 minute or until spinach has wilted.
5. Pour in milk and scrape up browned bits from bottom.
6. Add in Neufchatel cheese and parmesan, season with salt and pepper to taste, and cook and stir until mixture has thickened slightly and cheeses have melted.
7. Stir in sour cream then return chicken to skillet.

Quick and easy, this recipe serves 4. Give yourself 15 minutes to prep the ingredients and about 18 minutes for cooking. In just about 33 minutes you've created a masterpiece.

We gave the Jersey breed a chance and ended up back in the same place we started. Normande is the breed for us. I hope you get a chance to visit the farm sometime in the near future. See these beautiful creatures close up and personal. And you'll want to pet the donkeys as well.

We love the homestead life. There is always something new coming along. The variety and number of animals may change according to our needs, but they will always be a central part of our life. Especially the milk cows. They are such peaceful creatures. And our traditional breed Normandes exemplify peace.

Neufchatel cheese originated in Normandy, France. It's a fantastic cheese. And even though the US version of it is a bit watered-down and rectangular rather than heart-shaped, give that skillet chicken with spinach artichoke sauce a try. You'll be glad you did.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Skillet Chicken with Neufchatel Spinach Artichoke Sauce

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Traditional vs Modern Medicine; where do I begin? Some of you are new and I want to welcome you to the show. I hope you enjoy the content and will share with others. For my regulars, you're probably wondering where I have been. I've missed doing the podcast but it became impossible for me to continue because my health took a very bad turn. I just had a bout with a perforated appendix and associated abdominal infection. I'll get to all of that. Today I'm going to contrast traditional medicine with modern medicine. Stay tuned.

• Homestead Life Updates
• Modern Medicine vs the Traditions in Pre-Modern Medicine
• Home Made Yogurt Recipe

Life on the homestead has been chaotic at best. It is starting to settle down now that I am out of the danger zone and on a path back to health. But Scott has had to take up the slack. And then, there are some things that just didn't get done.

Scott has been doing all of the milking without my assistance since about the first of August. That is nearly a month now. His morning chores have lengthened from a couple of hours to 3 plus. That takes a big bite out of his day but he is taking it in stride. You do what you gotta do as they say.

He built the "grow out" cage for the baby quail. I don't think I've even mentioned them. I'm pretty sure that the last you heard was the eggs were still in the incubator, right? I became ill the very day they hatched out. It was also the day that I would normally record the podcast. The quail and I share that anniversary. Their birth date and the start of my appendicitis. Anyway, they were in the brooder for about two weeks. We kept them inside under a light the first week. The light keeps them warm as they have down but no feathers when they are born. Their growth is phenomenal. Within a week they more than double in size and become nearly fully feathered. By the end of the second week, they are tripled in size or more. The brooder space gets really small for them. And the shear amount of waste they create in that small space will stink up the place. At two weeks they are ready to be outside.

Scott built a second story onto the quail cage and put the new ones on top. There are two large sections up there and lots of space for them to roam around in. The laying hens and their roosters are below. There are three sections there with three sets of hens with a rooster. Some of the new babies will become laying hens and the rest will go to freezer camp. We don't have chickens yet, so my plan is to raise up a batch of quail every couple of months. That will provide us with poultry. My freezer has been bare of poultry for a very long time. Occasionally I will buy one of those rotisserie chickens at the grocery store for a treat, but mostly we have been doing without. We have lots of lamb, beef, and goat for our protein source.

What about fish you say? Well, we have fish in the pond but no time to fish. That will come even later. At the moment, we rarely have fish. It's a treat that I just might fix tomorrow night.

I don't have much to say about the animals because we haven't talk much about them. As Scott has not reported any issues, I assume they are all in fine shape and doing their duty. Eating grass and making milk. Soon it will be time to breed the sheep for their spring lambing. Oh, we did separate the ram lambs. I say "we". How funny. Scott did it. Ten lambs were born on the homestead this year. Five of them were boys. They are now happily grazing with the older boys from last year and the herd ram. They have lost most of their cuteness but are still a joy to watch as they live their lives out there in the pasture. Currently I can see them out my living room window.

The garden is a giant weed bed. The tomatoes, celery, sweet potatoes, and eggplant were dying of thirst for the most part. They have survived the ordeal and Scott was able to give them more attention after I was released from the hospital. Even with the drought, we have lots of tomatoes. I think I might have been overwhelmed had I been able to keep them watered. We would have had lots of tomatoes and they would have been big tomatoes. The ones we have now are definitely stunted, maybe 2 ½ to 3" in diameter at best. Many are even smaller but tuning red anyway.

What am I doing with all of those tomatoes you ask? I'm making tomato sauce. It's actually a fairly simple process if you have the right tools – which I just happen to have. I'll give a very brief outline of the process. Perhaps I will make a whole podcast on making tomato sauce at a later time.

The first two steps involve getting the skins and seeds out. I simply cut the tomatoes into quarters or sixths or eighths depending on their size. I throw them into a pot on low heat. The water comes out quickly so there is no need to add water. Once they come to a boil, I let them simmer for 20 minutes or so. Then I let that cool for at least a couple of hours. It makes it easier to work with for the second step.

Now I'm ready to do the separation. This is where the proper tools are required to make it easy. There are lots of ways to do it, but I prefer the least effort and smallest mess. I have a Kitchen Aid mixer and the food mill attachment. I put the pieces together, feed the tomatoes through the mill and voila, tomato juice and pulp are separated. I did some yesterday and it took about 20 minutes to mill nearly 4 gallons.

The next step will begin tomorrow. I need to cook out the liquid until it becomes the consistency that I want for my sauce. Again, an easy process. Put it on the stove on low heat and stir it occasionally. Once it reaches the proper consistency, I ladle it into the jars I have prepared for canning. The jars get sealed and placed in a hot water bath for 15 to 20 minutes depending on the size of the jar. That's it! Homemade tomato sauce. I'll do a whole podcast on the details for those that want to try this for themselves.

I want to keep this podcast as short as possible as my energy level has a strong tendency to drop through the floor without a moment's notice. I still have lots of healing to do. So what happened? And how did I deal with it?

The dilemma between tradition vs modern medicine is a question I come across often. When I first became ill, I worked with what I had available to me at home that I could do without becoming involved in modern medicine. There were two reasons for this. Number one, I've always been able to do this without issue and number two, we have no insurance and modern medicine can be really expensive.

It started on a Saturday and I was in really bad shape on Sunday morning. My self-diagnosis said that I was trying to pass a kidney stone. After all, I had had the experience a few months earlier and I got through it without much trouble. Now I wonder if the earlier episode was really a kidney stone. I'll never know now. The symptoms were so similar.

Initially Scott thought it was a problem with my colon but I was adamant that it had to be another kidney stone and I just needed to get through it. When the fever started, we got out the antibiotics that we keep on hand for just such an emergency. That brought things somewhat under control quite quickly. However, I was still in a great deal of pain and quite weak and unable to do anything. This went on for a week. Then my fever spiked again. Of course, it was Sunday and I didn't want the expense of the weekend emergency room. I did, however, decide that this was now outside of my realm of expertise. The infection and fever were overriding the antibiotics and I knew it was likely I was going to have to have stronger antibiotics at the very least and likely IV antibiotics.

Monday after Scott finished morning chores we went to a clinic in Mount Airy. I got blood tests and a chest x-ray. After getting the results it was off to the ER for further evaluation and treatment. My white blood cell count was extremely high. That led to lots of expensive tests and a very expensive CT along with a move to Winston-Salem and 3 days in the hospital. It was bad. I had a perforated appendix with an associated abscess. Lots of infection. Before modern medicine I likely would have died. It's the old "burst appendix" scenario that has always scared people. There is good reason for that.

I am still very weak and have been told that it may last for 2 months. That is a long time for a farm girl and homesteader. Thankfully, we have wonderful friends and family who have prayed for us and offered real assistance as well. We will get through this difficult time. I'm sure most of you have had similar times. While it is going on I feel like it will never end. But it will end, I will recover and life will go on with many new lessons learned.

For a very long time I have been aware of the wonders of modern medicine. I have studied ancient healing techniques. During the early 2000s I even studied formally and received higher education degrees in Natural Health and Naturopathy. Herbs were my passion for much of that time. I developed my own herbal recipes for general hearth health, immune system support and a sleep aid that was a lifesaver for me for many years. I still use these products as well as others. They have their place in my health and wellbeing. But the awareness of my limitations has always been part of my knowledge base.

Many would say that I waited too long and should have sought medical attention earlier, and that may be true. But I can't see that I would have done anything differently. It seemed harmless at the time. Who would have thought of appendicitis at my age? Well, it is true that it can happen at any age, but it's usually something that happens before age 30. But you know statistical numbers group things into averages. With any "average" there is a high end and a low end, thus we know that, while it is more unusual, it is not unheard of to draw that appendicitis card at any age.

Some of you may frequent Facebook groups that are about one aspect of health or another. Perhaps a specific diet group like Keto. I belong to lots of those groups. I also belong to lots of farm animal groups and some farm business groups. With all of these, there will be a smattering of traditional medicine techniques that are put forth for consideration during appropriate questions and health discussions. And then there are the times when the group responds with "go see your doctor". Or "contact the vet" in the case of animals. Sometimes we simply don't have the skills, tools and experience necessary and must call on professional help.

When and if to use traditional vs modern medicine can be a touchy subject in the homesteading community as most are trying to be as self-sufficient as possible. But I just can't state it enough times, sometimes you need modern medicine to continue living. Your animals need it. All of the traditional home remedies in the world fail to meet the need at some point and embracing the best available technology is the only answer. Inevitably the result is mostly painful. Whether financially or physically.

Here's an example. The fact that the treatment causes some injury is the price we sometimes have to pay to return to health. I thank God every day that I did not have to have emergency surgery. Talk about damage to the body in order to keep it alive. That's the extreme. You are literally cutting flesh to get to the problem. That flesh now has to heal and is added to the original problem.

I got away with a small tube in my side for a couple of weeks and an enormous amount of antibiotics. Did I like the amount of antibiotics I just received and ingested? Heck no. My guts will need lots more healing that my traditional methods will be able to provide. I know about probiotic foods. Homemade yogurt is in my diet for the next few weeks to help my gut bacteria return to normal. We shall see. It may be a couple of months. Who knows? I didn't like it. I was nauseated day after day because of the two strong antibiotics I was on for a full two weeks after the IV antibiotics were stopped. Thankfully, that is finally over. I'm going to go have some yogurt right after I finish this. I like yogurt, but I don't "love" yogurt. I'm pretty sure it is going to get old quickly. But I will persevere and give my body the traditional support that is needed after modern medicine has kept me alive.

How about this week's recipe on how to make your own yogurt? You don't have to have our wonderful raw milk for this. You can make it with any milk from the store that is not ultra-pasteurized. Unfortunately, most organic milk is ultra-pasteurized and will not work. It's still worth it to use conventional milk to have your own yogurt without artificial sweeteners and thickeners.

I make mine in my Corsori multi-function pressure cooker. It has a yogurt setting. I believe it would be similar with the Instant Pot or any other multi-function pressure cooker with a yogurt setting. You don't have to have one. I also have a rather inexpensive yogurt maker. The reason I no longer use it has to do with how much yogurt I make in one batch. The small, inexpensive yogurt maker works for a quart or two. But I make a gallon and a half at a time now. Yogurt will last a very long time in the refrigerator.

So what do you need? Ultimately, what you need is a way to keep the temperature constant between 110 and 115 degrees for anywhere from 4 to 8 hours. That's why all the fancy equipment is sold. It makes it easy. You don't have to baby sit it while it ferments. Just set it and walk away.

You can use the pilot light in your oven. Better still would be to preheat your oven to 120 or so, then turn it off. Wrap your milk with its yogurt culture in towels and use the oven's retained heat to keep the temperature up. Placing a baking stone in there will also help hold the heat.

Another method is to use a thermos. Some of the best cost as much or more than a cheap yogurt maker but, of course, the thermos would have more uses. And you may already have one on hand. No need to purchase anything extra. Come to think of it, I have a thermal cup that I bought to keep my tea hot over long periods of time. It's one of those that you can buy at your local gas/convenience store or truck stop. That cup holds nearly a quart of liquid and will keep it hot, and I mean hot, for hours. That's modern technology for you. You might have one or two of those on hand and, again, no need to purchase anything extra.

The last method I will mention is trying to use a warm part of your kitchen or other place in your house during the summer. This would require experimentation and keeping a consistent temperature would be dicey at best.

Crock pots get too hot. Don't try that. Even the lowest setting is over 150 degrees. That will kill the yogurt bacteria. I've seen people give recipes using a crock pot and maybe they have a special one, but all of mine even on warm are heating way too hot for yogurt culture to survive.

Let's get on to the basics of making yogurt.

• Full fat milk
• A small amount of yogurt with active cultures

• Heat the milk to 180 degrees. This destabilizes the proteins in the milk which makes the yogurt thicken nicely.
• Quickly cool the milk to about 118 degrees.
• Stir in the yogurt with active cultures with a small amount of the milk to make sure it is incorporated well.
• Add the active culture yogurt and milk to the rest of the milk, stir well.
• Set it in your chosen place to keep it warm for 6 to 8 hours.

• If using the multi-function pressure cooker, use the slow cook setting to heat the milk. On my Corsori, I set it to 193 degrees for 1 hour. As soon as the hour is up, I check the temperature which is usually 180 something by then. I immediately take it to the kitchen sink and fill the sink with cold water. It only takes 5 minutes or less to cool it back down. Then once the cultures are stirred in it is a matter of putting the pot back in the device, closing and securing the lid and pressing the "yogurt" button. Mine is automatically set for 8 hours, though I could take it out sooner if desired. It's so easy.
• Using a saucepan on the stove is also an option for heating the milk. In this case, stay nearby to stir often so the milk does not scorch on the bottom of the pan. This requires a little more attention, but it still quick and easy. Once 180 or more degrees is reached, put in the pot in the kitchen sink with cold water to quickly cool it down. Add the yogurt with active cultures and mix well. Now use your desired device or method.
• The longer your yogurt sits, the sharper it will be. It will also be thicker if it cultures longer.
• For thicker, Greek-style, yogurt strain it through butter muslin. Line a colander with the butter muslin and pour in the yogurt. Tie the ends together and hang your makeshift bag somewhere to drain. This will allow some of the whey to be filtered out and will make a much thicker yogurt. The longer it drains, the thicker it will be.

That's it for today's podcast on traditional vs modern medicine. I'm so glad to be back. And I'm so glad you are traveling along with me. We all have great adventures in our lives. Please share your thoughts, your ideas, and your adventures in the comments. What are you doing on your homestead if you have one? What are your plans if you don't have a homestead but want one? What are your plans for making friends with your local homestead community if you don't want one but love that others do because they provide great food and recreation for you and your family?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you're up to it, how about giving some homemade yogurt a try? Or if you'd prefer coming here to learn how, let me know that as well. I'd love to offer some classes in some of the homestead arts.

Lastly, if you'd like to help us out in our time of need, you can donate to this podcast via our website at www.peacefulheartfarm.com/donate. The very best thing you can do is share this podcast with others that you think might enjoy it. That helps us with getting higher rankings in the podcast search algorithms. I appreciate you all so much.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Home Made Yogurt

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We are raising quail for eggs – or are we? Maybe we are raising quail for meat. Or perhaps it is a combination of the two. That's the topic of today's podcast. Settle in and let's get cracking on figuring this out.

But first, it is important for me to take some time to say welcome to each and every new listener and a heartfelt thank you and welcome back to veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast every week. I would not have a show without you. And I'm so excited to share with you what's going on at the farm this week.

• Homestead Life Updates
• Am I Allergic to Quail Eggs?
• Instant Pot Quail

As many of you know, that "To Do" list for the homestead always seems to grow and never shrink. Every day stuff is checked off the list and every day something is likely added to the list. One is never bored here at Peaceful Heart Farm. And there are those wonderful moments of appreciation for this creation. Just this morning I walked outside on my way to drive and hour to the Farmer's Market. I looked around and listened and smelled and felt the peace of our beautiful piece of God's creation. Scott was standing beside me and we shared a moment of bliss as the day was dawning. Ummmm. Peace.

I had a great day at the Wytheville Farmer's Market this morning. The crowd was small but the people were engaging. I had several lovely conversations with neighbors and visitors from across this great country. We had a small band playing and singing. It was fantastic. There is nothing like a small-town farmer's market with lots of good people.

Back here on the homestead, Scott was handling the milking on his own. It takes him much longer to accomplish that morning chore without my help but he gets it done and he does it well. His cleaning skills are exemplary. I know it is trying sometimes with only one person bringing up the cows. Claire likes to plod along while Butter zooms ahead as if going to the races.

I have talked a lot about how busy, busy, and busier we are here on the homestead and, in an effort to streamline the time spent with milking and gain time for other things, we have made a couple of changes. First, we changed the schedule to once-a-day milking. We have filled our capacity for aging cheese and the only reason for milking twice a day is making cheese. Once-a-day milking changes the quality of the milk in a small way but it is enough to change the cheese. So, milking twice a day is required when we are making cheese. The next change was combining two milking sessions.

Up to this point we were doing three. Butter by herself, then Claire and Buttercup together and finally Violet and Cloud together. However, Cloud never had a calf. So in essence, we ended up with Butter milked by herself and Violet milked by herself. Cloud will either not have a calf this year or it will be much later. We don't really know yet. Anyway . . .

We are re-training Violet so she can be milked at the same time with Butter and that is a major undertaking. There are two milking stanchions and that is what allows us to milk two cows at once. Since her indoctrination to the stanchion, Violet has occupied the one on the left. And Cloud has been to her right in the other stanchion. Now we are trying to train Violet to the stanchion on the right. She, like all cows, is quite distressed when anything changes in her routine. Eventually she will get the hang of it, but currently she still goes straight to the left-hand stanchion. The problem is Butter is always already in place there. She always wins the race to the shed. That means Scott has to urges Violet off to the right. At this point she complies with varying degrees of cooperation.

When we first made the change, she tried to exit the milking barn completely. Something was not right, someone was in her spot, and she was getting out of there until everything was back to normal. We chased her around in circles for a few days before she finally gave in and put her head in the stanchion on the right. But over time she has gotten better and better at the new routine. One day she will just start doing it and anything else asked of her will become the oddity. Once the routine is ingrained, cows do it nearly the same day after day after day. They are predictable in that way.

So, the cows are being milked more quickly, only two sessions with the portable milker instead of three. The calves are getting more milk because we have more available for them since we are not saving it for cheese. They are growing quickly. Being bottle-fed calves, they are easy to touch and pet and hug. They constantly push and poke trying to find a bottle, but still, we can handle them and they don't run away. That's important. Even though the Normande breed is a very docile breed, they still need to be handled when young. They need to be taught to lead and so on.

There is not much to say about the goats and sheep. They are out there eating grass and weeds and such. The lambs and kids are growing. Scott handles the pastures very well and there is plenty for all of the animals to graze on. There is a great deal of work that Scott will have to do to get the back fields prepared for them. That microburst storm from two or three weeks ago took down at least 3 dozen trees back there. Many of them are on fences. I think Scott's plan is to clear and repair each fence line as they are needed. Eventually it will all get done as the animals rotate through all of the paddocks one by one.

Is it hot where you are? It's certainly hot here. Day after day after day of intense summer heat. July and August are the hottest months of summer and we are really getting hammered this year. Fortunately, there are also summer thunderstorms and occasionally we are the benefactor of that 50% chance of rain. We hit the jackpot one day where the chance of rain for us was about 10% and we got all 10% of that bit of storm cloud.

That heat and lack of consistent rain is hard on the garden and the orchard. Time is our biggest asset here on the homestead and to water the entire orchard takes quite a few hours. The garden usually takes at least two. We have drip irrigation systems that are non-functioning at this time. That would save time if taking the time to fix it were higher on the priority list.

I'm getting lots of tomatoes. In a couple of days I'm going to start my first batch of tomato sauce. I'm so excited. A lot of my veggies got overrun with weeds and bugs this year but my tomatoes are looking really good. I am picking them before they are completely ripe or I would lose most of them to the raccoons. They are eating them before they are ripe. My solution is to pick them every couple of days and I get anything that has the slightest bit of color change toward ripening. It's not ideal but it works. I have shelves of tomatoes ripening in my beautiful wall of windows in the living room.

My favorite vegetable to grow is crowder peas or cow peas as they are sometimes called. The plants grow prolifically. The Mexican bean beetles don't bother them. They require minimal amounts of fertilization and even the hot, dry weather hasn't taken much of a toll. The only pests I have ever seen on them are the ants farming the aphids. The ants keep the aphid population under control – at least I've never had a problem with the little buggers. The problem is when picking the peas, ants are always crawling all over me and I'm slinging them around to get them off of my arms. Sometimes I look like a scarecrow flapping in the wind, waving my arms around and slinging ants. They are those big black ants and they only bite if they get trapped.

I'm getting so many peas and they are really good. I always pick a few of the small sprouts and snap them like green beans. Just a few. I pick the cow peas when the pod is full but before it dries out. In the end I will dry some to be planted next year, but during the summer, I pick them while still moist and a little green. Usually they get canned in pint jars, though sometimes I will have enough in one batch for quarts. Open a jar, add just a small amount of bacon grease, make sure to have some hot cornbread on the side and you have a little piece of heaven.

The last homestead topic is actually the topic of the day. What to do with the quail? Here is the story.

The answer is likely "yes". Or at the very least I was made very aware that they don't sit well with me.

As you know if you are a regular listener, we started raising quail so we could have the eggs. Coffee and eggs are just about the only thing we buy from the grocery store these days. I do buy other items like flour, sugar and salt but I get those in bulk. Those items last a long time in storage and I buy large quantities for a really good price. I store some coffee but that is only for a real emergency. Fresh ground is what Scott prefers that's why it comes from the local grocery. And of course eggs need to be fairly fresh. Raising laying chickens was the original plan but the time needed to get that set up and maintained was more than we were willing to invest at the present time. That is not to say that it won't happen in the future. I'm sure it will. In the meantime, raising quail seemed the next best option.

The plan was to have six breeding sets. Each breeding set would have 5 hens and a rooster. The required housing was reasonably small. Six small cages and one large cage for growing out new birds. We would also grow out regular batches of quail for the meat. It is a fantastic meat. And quail are just so easy to raise. Well, that was according to all of the information we looked at via YouTube. And in truth, we have found that to be the case. They are really easy to care for, they grow quickly and produce eggs and meat within 8 weeks. It is the ideal situation for us at this time.

We ordered eggs in the spring and received them a couple of months later. There is always a waiting list for quail eggs, so get on the list early. Anyway, we ordered three dozen and received 40 eggs. Twenty-four of those eggs hatched and we still have 23 birds. We lost one to a black snake a few weeks back. It was a small snake and got through the ½" hardware cloth cage sides. I have no idea how this snake killed the bird. It had to have gotten the head in its mouth and smothered it. I can see no other way. But the snake was less than ½" in diameter and the birds head had to be at least ¾" or more by that time. I don't know how it happened, I just know I found the snake in the cage and the bird dead. The other birds are just running around and not defending themselves. It would have been comical if not so tragic.

Bottom line, we lost zero birds from the time they hatched. That is part of what I mean about how "easy" they are to raise. Some baby chicks seem to die within days no matter what you do but these quail are hardy. Make sure they have food and water. Get the snake out of the cage. That's it.

We are getting 6 to 8 eggs a day at this point and we had two wonderful meals of quail from the extra roosters we raised. It took 6 days to save up the 47 eggs that are currently in the incubator.

The incubator is currently at day 10 of 18 with those 47 eggs nestled in there, rocking back and forth in the automatic egg turner every 2 hours. At day 15 I will open the incubator, take out the egg turner and close it back up. Then it does not get touched until 3 days after we hear the first bird chirping. They have enough energy to last 3 days after hatching. Some eggs will continue hatching during that three days. It is important not to disturb the hatching eggs. A sudden change in the humidity and temperature can seal in a baby quail that is trying to get free of the egg. The inner membrane collapses and suffocates it. So no opening the incubator until we are sure all the eggs have hatched that are going to. Last time I did close it back up and left it for three more days. We got one more to hatch but that was it. All in all it was a good hatch and I'm excited to see how our own eggs turn out.

Now that the incubator is up and running, the quail eggs are collected each day and set aside for eating. It takes 4 quail eggs to equal one large chicken egg. Basically, 8 to 12 quail eggs for breakfast along with sausage or bacon and perhaps some grits. Well, I don't eat grits, but Scott does. He needs a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast for all that hot sweaty work he is doing building the creamery.

I loved the eggs but it seems they didn't love me. Or maybe I love them in my mind but my body said "no way". When I first started eating them, I did feel a little queasy later in the day. I chalked it up to them being too rich and decided to eat less of them at one sitting. No problem, right? I can always get by on fewer calories.

Between the time that I first became queasy after eating quail eggs and the time I decided to eat fewer in a given meal was about a week. About half way through those days I was sick for about 12 hours. I mean really sick. It seemed obvious to me that it was something I ate. If it was a virus or something, I think it would have lasted at least 24 hours. At this time, I assumed it was something that I had eaten the day before, not suspecting the quail eggs I had eaten a few hours earlier. I threw out a whole salami because that was the only thing new that I had consumed the previous day. I used Scott as a guinea pig to test out some other foods. He didn't get sick.

In the end, I missed my farmer's market debut in Independence, VA as I was still recovering from the effects of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea from the day before. All of those issues stopped within 4 hours or so from their beginning, but it does leave you pretty weak for a period of time. I didn't want my first day at the market to be a disaster so I postponed that market appearance for another week.

I had quail eggs again on Tuesday. Only six this time but the same thing happened again that had happened just five days earlier. I was sick as a dog. My experience was slightly milder but no less debilitating. Bummer, at this point I was sure it was the quail eggs. So now what?

Well, if my body doesn't like them, I'm giving them up. And not just quail eggs. All eggs. We will still raise quail for eggs but we won't need so many because I'm not eating them. My mind right now is thinking that we will raise a lot more for meat. Chicken is a rarity in our household because we don't raise any and I don't shop much at the grocery. We have beef, lamb, and goat. The poultry is nice and I will sometimes pick up a rotisserie chicken while picking up eggs and coffee. But the future holds more quail for us.

And that leads me to today's recipe.

The reason that I go for the Instant Pot rather than oven roasted is the heat. It is really hot outside and to roast quail requires a 500-degree oven. That's right 500 degrees. It's a short time but just the thought of preheating an oven to 500 degrees makes me sweat.

As with all Instant Pot recipes, this one is quite simple. (By the way, I actually have a Cosori but it works the same. Instant Pot is to multi-function pressure cookers as Xerox is to copy machines.) The prep time for this recipe is 12 minutes, cook time is 23 minutes. Another advantage to Instant Pot cooking. Quick and easy.

• 2 whole quails, 4 to 5 oz each
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 1 bunch fresh thyme
• 2 Tablespoon cooking oil of your choice
• ½ cup chicken broth
• 3 ½ oz bacon, chopped
• ½ small onion, finely chopped
• 1/8 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf

1. Season quail with salt and pepper
2. Stuff cavity of quail with fresh thyme
3. Place oil in Instant Pot and select "Sauté". Add the bacon, onion, dried herbs, bay leaf, and cook for about 3 minutes.
4. Place quail in the pot, breast-side down and cook for about 4-5 minutes or until browned, then flip breast-side up.
5. Select "Cancel" and add the broth to the pot.
6. Secure the lid and cook using "Manual" and "High Pressure" for about 7-9 minutes.
7. Select "Cancel" if needed and carefully do a "Quick Release".
8. Remove the lid, transfer quail onto a plate. Remove the herb sprigs from cavity.
9. Strain liquid into a bowl.
10. Return broth to Instant Pot and select "Sauté". Cook for about 3 – 4 minutes.
11. Add the quail back to the broth for about 2 minutes, basting with the broth/sauce.
12. Remove from Instant Pot and serve with the sauce.

That's it for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed catching up with us on the homestead. Sometimes we plan and plan and then God steps in and alters our path. Oh well, I trust him and will roll with the punches. I'll be having quail meat rather than quail eggs. Scott will continue to enjoy both.

I hope you are having fun with friends and family this summer as we continue on with the dog days. Kids will be back in school soon and the cycle will move on to fall. I'm already ahead of myself. Summer is not my favorite season. It has its beauty and advantages, but I really like moderation. But isn't it the contrast that gives us appreciation of moderation? Something to think about.

And remember, don't heat up that kitchen with the oven. Use your Instant Pot. You'll be glad you did.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. And even more importantly, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Instant Pot Quail

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Today at the farmer's market speaking from one herbalist to another, I was reminded that activated charcoal is a simple treatment to use. That will be my topic for today. It has been years and years since I've been sick with anything and even longer since I've had any kind of stomach or gastrointestinal illness. Activated charcoal can help.

But first, welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back veteran homestead-loving regulars. That you so much for stopping by the FarmCast. I appreciate you all so much. First up on the agenda, I'm so excited to share with you all the great activity going on at the farm this week.

• Homestead Life Updates
• Stomach Virus – Traditional Remedy
• Ginger Tea with Honey and Lemon

We have 47 quail eggs in the incubator. These little guys are a joy to raise. They are so hardy. We started with 24 hatchlings and still have 23. The only one we lost was due to a snake. With baby chicks, almost always you lose one or two – or more – due to failure to thrive or some early disease. Not so with quail. We had them outside before they were 2 weeks old. Almost fully feathered, they were fine with the temps in the 70s during the day and high 50s and low 60s at night. They are hardy birds.

In less than three weeks we will have new babies.

The concrete block walls to the milking parlor are complete. There is a video on Facebook with a short tour of that part of the building. Scott has spent quite a bit of time today moving the milking parlor equipment into the area. For the longest time it has been stored just waiting for this moment. Who knows when the actual installation will happen, but it is exciting to see the first portion of the creamery coming into being? In addition to the milking parlor equipment installation, it still needs a roof. There is still so much to do.

The cows are moooving along nicely and munching down on all that grass. If you've never been around cows you are missing the perfect example of peace in action. One of the reasons that I wanted a milk cow in the first place is the sense of peace that comes from working with them and there is no closer relationship that when you are milking them. They are truly beautiful creatures. Smelly but beautiful.

We still have one more bull calf available. You can call us at 276-694-4369 to get more information on these guys. There are two to choose from, but we are only selling one. The last one we will keep for beef. He will take a couple of years to grow out, but these Normande cows make some great steaks and roasts.

Speaking of beef, we have a limited quantity of beef available. This will be the last for a while so get in touch with us now if you are interested in a quarter or a half.

The lambs and goat kids are frolicking in the grass and growing like weeds. It is amazing how fast they grow. The lambs and kids are nearly the height of their mothers already. Watching them get down on their knees to nurse is comical. Well, it doesn't look like so much fun for mom, but they seem to patiently endure. They are all old enough to be weaned and we will separate them in the next couple of weeks. It is important to get the boys out for sure. Otherwise, we end up with unauthorized breeding and we can't have that. No we can't have that.

Let's talk about the garden. The tomatoes are coming on strong. I have lots of them sitting on shelves ripening. I would prefer to pick them when they are already ripe but the raccoons make that impossible. Every night they go out into the garden and pick a few and take a bite or two out of them. Then they get another one and take a bite or two out of that one and so on. These guys are grabbing them before they even get all the way red. I wonder if they would like fried green tomatoes. No matter. I've taken things into hand and am just circumventing their intrusiveness and picking the tomatoes as soon as they show any sign of ripening. The plan is to make lots and lots of tomato sauce. I made some last year for the first time. It was much easier than I thought and I look forward to making more this year. I use tomatoes in stews. I use a lot of tomatoes in stews. Up to four quarts in a 4-gallon batch. If I use tomato sauce instead, I think I can use 2 pints instead. Much less storage space for the tomatoes.

Last night we shelled Mississippi Silver Crowder peas. There is a large bowl ready to be cooked and eaten. There will also be some left over to be canned. I love growing these. The plants are resistant to everything and they put on lots and lots of pea pods. The pods are 7-8 inches long with about 20 peas per pod. They shell easily and they taste of good. They can be dried and cooked similar to black-eyed peas, but I prefer these to be green and I like to add a few snapped green pods. Again, these are very easy to grow and produce very well.

We had a neighbor come over and pick some blackberries a few days ago. I simply do not have time to pick them and process them. Blackberries are a lot of work. I don't like the seeds and always take the extra steps necessary to get the seeds out. It's not really hard, but it is time consuming. Besides the issue of time, I still have tons of blackberry jam and blackberry syrup from last year. Our blackberries are always prolific. We grow several varieties of thorn-less and the berries are large and juicy.

I'm probably leaving out a bunch of other stuff that is happening here, but I'm going to close off the farm updates for this time.

Oops I almost forgot to mention the Farmer's Market. Come see us at the Wytheville Farmer's market on Saturday mornings 8 am to noon. Starting this Friday you will also find us at the Independence Farmer's market from 9 am to 1 pm. I'll have lamb, beef and goat as well as lots of information on herd shares. Who knows, maybe even some cheese samples.

I was going to start at the Independence Farmer's market this past Friday, but I had an incident that has not happened in many, many, many moons. I had a stomach virus or perhaps it was that salami. I don't know. It was one or the other. In any case, I was sick as a dog for a good 12 hours. Let me tell that story and provide some info on the perfect remedy.

And as I mentioned earlier, while at the Wytheville Farmer's market I spoke with another herbalist and she reminded me of activated charcoal when having issues with stomach upset. In the heat of the sickness I was trying to think of what to do and I was so sick I couldn't remember what I had on hand to deal with it. When she promptly said "activated charcoal", it was one of those face-palm moments. Of course, I have tons of it on hand for exactly that purpose. Number one, I'm almost never sick and number two, my head hurt so bad I couldn't think straight.

I did act on the headache. My sinuses were inflamed and I don't know why. I was sure that a massive head cold was about to take me out for days. Well, I took out my trusty echinacea and goldenseal formula and dripped some directly into my nasal passage. It burns. Only a couple of drops but POOF, gone. No more sinus issues. If I could only have thought so quickly about the activated charcoal. It's a matter of what I use more often and what I have never had the occasion to use. Now I've had the occasion to use it but didn't but it's unlikely I will forget next time. Let me give you the goods on activated charcoal.

Charcoal isn't just for your backyard grill. Even though charcoal makes most of us think of glowing embers and yummy barbecued kabobs or steak, it has stomach soothing medicinal properties too. The CDC reports that 19 to 21 million Americans will get the stomach flu, and charcoal might just help you get back on your feet faster.

What's often referred to as stomach flu, stomach bugs, or even food poisoning can be caused by bacterial infections or viruses. This inflammation of your gastrointestinal tract might be referred to as gastroenteritis or norovirus, but in either case the symptoms include nausea, vomiting, and/or diarrhea. The illness comes on quickly and can have you off your feet from one to three days. Common treatment recommendations include drinking fluids, getting rest, and following the BRAT (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) diet. None of those are on my eating list so an old Native American remedy would have been a much better option.

Activated charcoal is made with a variety of burned materials including bamboo, wood, coal, or coconut shells. This treatment was used by Native Americans hundreds of years ago, and there's even some record of it being used by Egyptians. Activated charcoal is processed at high temperatures and results in a black powder that is incredibly effective at absorbing a variety of substances. Charcoal is "activated" when a high temperature is used in combination with an activating agent that expand its surface area. This is what gives activated charcoal its incredible absorbing powers.

Most commonly used to treat poisoning and drug overdoses, activated charcoal is now gaining attention as a remedy for stomach bugs that cause nausea and vomiting. The theory is that activated charcoal can absorb the bacteria responsible for causing stomach flu (the same way it is used to absorb poisons). You can also have a virus that can cause the same sort of tummy troubles, and activated charcoal may help with the symptoms.

You can buy activated charcoal online in capsules or powder. If you feel the nauseating symptoms of a stomach bug coming on, or if you are actively vomiting, you can put the powder in some applesauce, if you have capsules you can open them up. A common recommendation is 500 to 1,000 mg, two to three times per day. It is recommended that you take other supplements at different time as the charcoal can absorb good nutrients as well as the bad stuff. If you notice any worsening symptoms after taking the supplement stop taking and call your doctor.

It's important to note that activated charcoal should be bought from pharmacies and health food stores, it is not the same as regular charcoal. Activated charcoal, unlike regular charcoal, is food grade and safe to take internally.

You can give it to children, but check with your pediatrician beforehand. If you get the okay, start with ¼ of a capsule (about 200 mg) in some applesauce and repeat no more than 2 times a day. If you or your child continue to have abdominal pain or persistent fever, you must see your doctor. Home remedies are great but they are not the be-all, end-all for medical treatment.

Activated charcoal is safe for most adults when used short-term. Side effects of activated charcoal include constipation and black stools. More serious, but rare, side effects are a slowing or blockage of the intestinal tract, regurgitation into the lungs, and dehydration.

Pregnancy and breast-feeding: Activated charcoal might be safe when used short-term if you are pregnant or breast-feeding, but consult with your healthcare professional before using if you are pregnant. Don't use activated charcoal if you have any kind of intestinal obstruction. Also, if you have a condition that slows the passage of food through your intestine (reduced peristalsis), don't use activated charcoal, unless you are being monitored by your healthcare provider.

Activated charcoal absorbs substances in the stomach and intestines. Taking activated charcoal along with medications taken by mouth can decrease how much medicine your body absorbs, and decrease the effectiveness of your medication. To prevent this interaction, take activated charcoal at least one hour after medications you take by mouth.

Activated charcoal is sometimes used to prevent poisons from being absorbed into the body. Taking alcohol with activated charcoal might decrease how well activated charcoal works to prevent poison absorption.

Ipecac is taken by mouth to cause vomiting after suspected poisoning. It is also used to treat bronchitis associated with croup in children, Amoebic dysentery (a severe diarrhea), and cancer. Ipecac is also used as an expectorant to thin mucous and make coughing easier. Small doses are used to improve appetite.

Activated charcoal can bind up syrup of ipecac in the stomach. This decreases the effectiveness of syrup of ipecac.

For lesser stomach issues there are lots of teas that can help.

Ginger tea has been used for thousands of years as a cure for nausea and digestive problems. It offers a variety of health benefits and healing compounds to alleviate upset stomach. Many people reach for the ginger ale when feeling symptoms of stomach pain or nausea, but ginger tea contains higher concentrations of the compounds that alleviate these digestive issues; making it the better choice for feeling better faster.

This tea is made using fresh ginger root and packs a punch when it comes to healing symptoms of upset stomach. Ginger is a natural remedy for nausea and is often used to treat morning sickness in pregnant women and motion sickness caused by planes and boats.

In fact, a Thai study examined pregnant women with symptoms of morning sickness and found that 28 out of the 32 individuals saw an improvement in nausea when given a daily dose of 1 milligram of ginger root. As a rule of thumb, one cup of ginger tea contains about 250 milligrams of ginger so aim to drink two to four cups of this tea to alleviate feelings of nausea.

• 1" Fresh ginger root, grated
• ½ Lemon
• Honey, to taste
• 2 cups water

• Grater
• Glass container or teapot
• Strainer

1. Peel one-inch piece of fresh ginger root and grate into a glass container with a filter.
2. Thinly slice lemon and add it to the container with the ginger.
3. Add honey.
4. Pour boiling hot water into the container and steep for five minutes.
5. Strain and serve hot.

Are you keeping up with all the stuff going on at the homestead? It's a lot to handle but we love it. The cows, sheep, goats, donkeys and quail are a barnyard variety that keeps us in a constant state of wonder and amusement. These guys are a hoot. We love sharing it all with you. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and come see us at the Farmer's markets in Wytheville and Independence. Or heck, come see us on the farm. Tuesday mornings and Saturday afternoons. We'd love to share some of this more directly.

Get some activated charcoal and keep it on hand for that occasional stomach upset. It doesn't to bad. There is no expiration date. It is the porous form that absorbs the toxins and that doesn't change once created.

And remember that mild upsets can be alleviated with a little ginger tea.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

WITH HYPERLINKS

Ginger Tea with Honey and Lemon

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The Traditional Family Cow is the topic of today's podcast. She has just about been pushed out of existence. Lots of us are trying to revive this wonderful, quality food source.

I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to you veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast every week. I appreciate you all so much. I'm so excited to share with you what's going on at the farm this week.

• Homestead Life Updates
• The Traditional Family Cow
• Crab & Artichoke Dip Recipe

The cows are doing great. Every day, twice a day, I walk out there and find them grazing peacefully on the grass. I circle around behind them and start calling out, "let's go, let's go" and they all start toward the milking shed. They walk pretty slow. Sometimes inside I'm all raring to go and I want to push them a little faster—as if the milking machine would go any faster—and they never really cooperate. They move pretty much at their own pace no matter now anxious I might be. Scott has Butter already up in the shed hooked up to the portable milker. So these guys are just mozying along at a slow pace on their way to the lounging area. That's where they will hang out until Scott gets done milking Butter. No need to hurry. I'll take a lesson from them and endeavor to maintain my inner peace. It's a nice daily ritual.

Lambert does not come running anymore. We weaned him off the bottle about a week ago. I still feel like I'm missing something when I go out to the field. Shouldn't I be doing something else before bringing in the cows? Oh well, it will pass. And every once in a while, he still comes running up looking for a bottle and I can give him a little petting.

The donkeys sure love their petting. All four of them got their hooves trimmed a few days ago. Daisy and Sweet Pea just stand their placidly—for the most part. They do shimmy a little bit every now and then. But Johnny and Cocoa still dance around a lot. They try to lay over all of their weight on Scott while he is holding up one of their hooves. Or they jerk that hoof around while he is trying to hold it. Cocoa had a little mishap when she did that. The grinding tool that Scott uses to file their hooves nicked her. We put some pine tar on it to keep the flies out and it looked to be a small enough scrape to heal in a few days.

We weaned the one boy kid from his mom a couple of days ago. He's merged in with the other boy goats. We have six in there now and four sheep. One ram and 3 lambs that will go to the processor soon. Let us know if you are interested. I know I always talk about Wytheville, but if you are in the Winston-Salem or Greensboro, NC area we can help you there too. Pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested.

I still haven't got the onions out of the garden. Perhaps this week I can get to that. The tomatoes are looking really good as are the black, red, and white beans and the Mississippi Silver crowder peas. Yum, yum.

I wonder how the blueberries are doing. The birds are probably having a field day out there. It has been more than 4 or 5 days I think since I picked them last. I canned eight 24-oz jars of blueberry pie filling and froze two quarts of fresh blueberries that will go in pancakes and yogurt. More yum, yum.

Let's get on to the topic of the day.

In a previous podcast I talked about The Tradition of Dairying. I gave a brief history and finished up with the growth of the large dairies in the 20th century. Today I want to follow up on that and talk more specifically about small dairy farms and the family cow.

What was happening to the family cow while commercial dairying was being conformed to the 20th century model of food as commodity? Along with small farms of every sort, she was being priced out of existence. If you talk to old-timers you will hear the statement, "it doesn't pay to keep a cow." American food is cheap, or at least appears to be. Starting early in the 20th century, an elaborate system of subsidies has kept food prices artificially low, part of a cheap food policy that brands food as a commodity and the cheaper, the better. Quality is an afterthought if it comes up at all.

This policy has been continued by every administration. Perhaps you are familiar with farm subsidies, payments to farmers designed to assist them in producing their products at predictable levels. Among the less frequently recognize effects of subsidies is that by covering part of a farmer's costs, he or she is then able to accept a lower price for the crops or milk, so you pay less for food. Pointed out even less frequently is the government assistance that goes to processors. Everything from special university research projects to tax-deferred production plants may be paid for wholly or in part by tax dollars. Highway costs are shared by all taxpayers but benefit truckers—and the food industry—disproportionately. This is sometimes referred to as corporate welfare. These are some of the hidden costs of cheap food. In reality, you are paying more for your food from the grocery store than you may have realized. It's just harder to see it because it is in the form of taxes. It is you and I, the taxpayers, that are paying the money in the form of taxes that then goes to the farmer, the processor and the transportation industry all via subsidies.

With food costs comparatively low, even the formidable efficiency of the cow is hard put to offer an obvious fiscal advantage. Milk prices are low because dairy farmers, even taking rapidly diminishing subsidies into account, are paid at a rate that barely covers costs and they cannot market their milk freely. They must sell to consortiums under fixed contracts that are government regulated. And processors have certainly made milk conveniently available to markets. If a plot had been hatched to eliminate small farmers, place milk production and distribution in the hands of a few, and permit almost everybody to forget what milk was meant to taste like, a better plan could not have been devised. Consider also that in terms of buying power, American wages were high during the first 60 years of the 20th century and our dollars still buy more food than in any other westernized country. So keeping a cow does indeed cost more than buying milk at the store.

Most people considering getting a family cow are no longer motivated by the old-timer view that the object of a cow is to "pay", reasonable as this may be. Quality dairy products and the desire for a more centered way of life are what people now want. Cost is secondary.

Pasteurization has its detractors and I am among them, but there is no doubt that milk distribution as we know it today would otherwise be impossible. The creation of the current distribution network ensured the destruction of the small, local dairy farm.

Pasteurization destroys all bacteria including benign strains and it destroys enzymes, besides physically altering milk protein. In addition, by the 1950s virtually all milk was also homogenized. 'Pasteurized and homogenized', which appear on every container of milk, are not really related at all. They came about for different reasons. "Homogenized" means the milk is subjected to pressure and agitation which knocks apart the butterfat globule and stops it from doing what cream would naturally do: rise to the surface. This, too, was presented to you, the consumer, as a great advance but first and foremost it served the distributor. Back in those days everybody wanted cream, but after its pasteurization treatment with heat the cream was lumpy and unimpressive. Homogenization offer the advantage of distributing the cream evenly throughout the milk.

The advantage for distributors was less charming. Once pasteurization made it possible to sell milk two or even three weeks after it left the farm there emerged a problem with a sort of sludge settling to the bottom of the bottle. This sludge largely consisted of dead bacteria and the macrophages that consumed them, and the longer the bottled milk sat, the more evident the sludge. With homogenization it becomes invisible along with the cream. Don't let me put you off store-bought milk all together. Worst things are in ketchup and peanut butter.

This might seem reason enough to get a cow herd share with us, but wait. There is more. Now we have BGH, bovine growth hormone, to consider. Consumers have expressed virtually unanimous objection to the fact that milk may now legally contain BGH which is passed into the milk as a result of the cow's daily injection. The history of milk distribution does not offer much reassurance that your concerns will end the practice. Antibiotics, contrary to widespread belief, are never fed to dairy cattle; nonetheless, they sometimes do find their way into milk following teat treatment.

Does the future seem uncertain to you? One of the best ways to take charge of your own future that of your family is to raise and grow your own food. This is a life-affirming choice of action and one that may well offer better odds than going about armed to the teeth. Inasmuch as this is hardly a new idea, many schemes for self-sustaining food systems have been devised and revived from traditional methods. One method involves growing algae in vats on the roof. Another promotes earthworms and other insects as ideal basic food. There are systems for backyard fish ponds capable of growing many pounds of fish called tilapia by adding manure and other waste to their water. Some people advocate growing family size patches of soybeans along with other vegetables to provide food security. All of these approaches offer food security of a sort, along with major problems. Algae tastes awful, insects don't appeal to the Western palette, tilapia are nourishing but boring. An all-vegetable diet is seriously boring and is extremely labor-intensive. I recommend the cow.

If the biggest animal you've ever known personally was a golden retriever, the cow may seem like a giant step into the unknown. We can help with that. With a herd share we will do all the work and you still get the benefit of raising your own food.

An overarching truth about the traditional family cow is that she drives your small farm economy. By living on a constantly renewing resource, grass, she is able to support herself and her calf and still provide milk for you. And a cow does this on a free resource made of water and sunshine. Through her sovereign ability to convert grass, which otherwise has no value, to milk and meat, which does have value, the cow produces a wealth of nutrition.

Dip into this rich and creamy snack and a favorite bottle of wine. Use your slow cooker to make this recipe—it's a perfect fit for a relaxed "friends" night.

This recipe is keto-friendly if you leave off the crackers and dip your bacon in it.

Prep: 20 min. Cook: 2 hours

3-1/2 cups.

• 3 cups fresh baby spinach
• 1 can (14 ounces) water-packed artichoke hearts, rinsed, drained and chopped
• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups shredded Peaceful Heart Gold cheese (or substitute Harvarti)
• 1 can (6 ounces) lump crabmeat, drained
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• Assorted crackers (or bacon if you go keto)

1. In a large saucepan, bring 1/2 in. of water to a boil. Add spinach; cover and boil for 3-5 minutes or until wilted. Drain.
2. In a 1-1/2-qt. slow cooker, combine the artichokes, cheeses, crabmeat, sour cream, salt, pepper and spinach. Cover and cook on low for 2-3 hours or until cheeses are melted. Serve with crackers—or BACON.

1/4 cup (calculated without crackers): 158 calories, 12g fat (8g saturated fat), 50mg cholesterol, 279mg sodium, 3g carbohydrate (1g sugars, 0 fiber), 9g protein.

Peaceful Heart Gold matches well with sugary fruits like figs, raisins, walnuts, hearty, rustic bread, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and light-bodied Pinot Noir wine.

Just as it accommodates spices and other flavors, Peaceful Heart Gold's creamy-smooth, tangy flavor complements a wide variety of foods. You can shred it on a pizza instead of—or in addition to—mozzarella. It melts beautifully over burgers and in casseroles, and is fabulous in a grilled cheese.

That's it for today's farm updates and thoughts on the family cow. If you're interested in that herd share, get in touch with me via email (give email address). You can also contact me through the website. www.peacefulheartfarm.com and go to the contact page. Call us at the farm at 276-694-4369. We'd love to talk with you in person. And give that recipe a try then go to the recipe page and provide your feedback in the comments. Let others know how you did with it and any modifications you made.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please go to Apple Podcasts and write a review. And don't forget to subscribe. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Crab and Artichoke Dip

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© Copyrighted

It has been a wild and crazy few days and there are more to come. Today's podcast will be short. We do not have internet and won't have it for 5 more days for a total of 8 days.

If you are new, welcome. Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope you'll engage and comment as we go along. And as always, welcome back to the veteran traditional homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast every week. I appreciate you all so much. I have so much to share about the farm this week that it is the topic of the day.

• Homestead Life Updates
• The Storm
• No Recipe

I'm wanted to start out with the ordinary, the usual. The animals, the garden, the orchard, the creamery, the cheesemaking. I wanted to speak in general terms and fill in details later in the main body of this podcast. However, I can't really cover it even in general terms without the overlay of the wake of the storm we had three days ago. It is coloring everything at the moment and will continue to do so for quite a while into the future.

I'll start with describing the storm and the initial damage and the move into how it affects the animals, the orchard, the creamery, and the cheesemaking.

It was late afternoon on Tuesday. The second day of several days of predicted storms was upon us a couple of hours before evening milking. The wind picked up and the trees were whipped about like twigs. It was strong. It was sudden. The rain began to pelt down in sheets. I don't know if I have ever seen it rain so hard. Well perhaps some of the rains in Florida could match it. Anyone driving would have had to pull over. There was no way to see even a few feet in front of you.

The torrent of rain and small hail went on for quite a while. We were late getting started with evening milking and even so, it was still raining steadily as we proceeded with the evening. We didn't get far.

There are two directions to bring the cows up to the milking shed. Scott created what he calls a "travel lane" in several places around the farm. It runs along the edge of the front fields to a wooded area. From there we can get the animals across the driveway with the nifty gate set up that makes a path across. The lane proceeds down the side of the two fields on the other side, past the creamery in progress to the milking shed. That lane also continues past the orchard and across the creek bottom to the fields in the back. So the cows can get to the milking shed (and later the milking barn when it is finished) from either direction.

Scott's first task is to get the milking shed set up for the cows. Then he comes down the travel lane and ideally meets me in the middle. Ideally means, I've finished my first task of feeding Lambert (he's just over two months old and gets a bottle in the morning and in the evening) and gotten the cows to the driveway crossing. At the very least, I would have them moving in the right direction. Scott joins me, takes Butter with a lead rope and I bring along the rest of the motley crew.

For my task, I head straight up the driveway to where the gates can be opened across the driveway. It is the quickest route to the front pastures where they are all currenting residing. This particular evening, I ran into the first problem. A very large tree was directly in front of me across the driveway. I'd say it was nearly a foot in diameter in front of me and larger at the base. The top branches were laying on top of the tool shed just to my left. I checked briefly but could not tell if the roof was damaged. (Later, Scott said it wasn't.) My biggest concern at this point was that, not only could I not get to the gates to open them across the driveway, that tree was laying directly across the travel lane to my right. I would get the cows across the driveway, but not very far up the lane. I yelled for Scott.

He came up to assess the situation and immediately went for the chainsaw. I circled around behind the shed, went out to the pasture to feed Lambert and bring the cows up. I was hoping that Scott would have a path cleared by then. But realistically, it was going to take a little while to get that tree cut up enough to get the cows through. Chin up, let's get ready anyway. That was my thought.

It was still raining. Not heavily at this point, but steadily. As I brought the cows up, I could hear Scott with the chainsaw. I could see he was working on the upper part of the tree first. The part that was across the driveway. That made sense. However, the chain saw was giving him issues. It wouldn't stay running. He persevered, got the tree cut up into 3 or 4 pieces on the driveway side, left them laying there and moved into the travel lane. The plan was to cut the part in the travel lane into a few pieces and roll them to the side, just enough out of the way to get the cows through. All of the debris could be removed later. Tomorrow. But the chainsaw really started acting up. The tree originated in the field to the left and was pushed over with the roots sticking up in the air. The part of the tree trunk in the travel lane was the larger diameter portion of the tree nearer the base, more than a foot wide.

Plan B gets set into motion. Let's take them across the driveway and into the field instead of the travel lane. Hopefully we could move them all the way down the field to a gate that came out into the travel lane coming up from the other end, at the corner of the orchard. We would then drive them up the travel lane from that direction. I hurried into the field to open the gate.

As I approached the gate, low and behold, another tree lay across the travel lane smashing the orchard fence. These were big trees. They were living trees. It was hit and miss with which ones toppled over. I have no idea why these two trees fell and the others didn't. The entire travel lane is lined with many trees of the same size and relative condition.

I immediately turn around and head back to the way I came, heading off Scott and the cows. Back into the travel lane they went. Maybe a half hour or 45 minutes has passed and now it is pouring rain. We are drenched, the chainsaw is faulty and we are stuck. We decide to take a break. We left the cows in the travel lane, closed in where they couldn't go back across the road or into the next field. Then we trudge back to the house to wait a little bit for the rain to subside at least a little.

On the second try, Scott chose to work on the smaller diameter tree that had crushed the orchard fence on the lower end of the travel lane. He was able to keep the chainsaw running enough to get a section cut out of the middle wide enough for the cows to pass, maybe 6 feet or so. Whew. We finally got the cows to the milking shed and things proceeded nicely from there. Only a couple of hours later than usual. Scott finished up with cleaning the equipment shortly after 10:00 pm.

Dinner was really late and we got right up again at 6:00 for the morning chores and milking – and to assess the extent of the damage.

There are still trees down everywhere. We will have plenty of firewood this winter. The tree with the bat house came down. The bat house is smashed.

There are a bunch of trees across the path from Field 10 to Field 14. The boys have been hanging out back there. The rams and bucks were in Field #10, but the Steers and bulls were trapped in #14. Either the chainsaw gets repaired and the trees cut apart and moved – OR the fence has to be cut.

On Wednesday Scott took the chainsaw into town to be repaired. On Saturday he finds out it is going to be a week or more because they had to order a part. Big sigh. That means the fence will have to be cut. We need to get the boys out of there. One of them has an appointment at the meat processing plant on Tuesday. And another has an appointment with Butter and Cloud.

Being creative, Scott cut the fence between two trees, moved the steers and bulls out to field #11 and temporarily repaired the fence with some old downed branches and small trees. That should hold them for the moment. Well perhaps not the goats. We shall see. However, they may get through but they can also get back by the same path.

Those were Scott's most pressing issues. Mine was the internet. At the start of the storm there was a lightning strike that took out the DSL modem, my monitors, and later my network card. I'm sitting there minding my own business when the first peals of thunder can be heard. A mere five minutes or so later, a flash and an immediate boom outside produced a pop and the smell of burning circuits just to the right of me. This is not the first time we have lost a modem to lightning. That brief light and sound show let me know I should have stopped at the first sound of thunder and unplugged the phoneline from the modem.

I have a spare modem and wireless router from the last incident, so I hooked them up. No luck with the DSL. I have the home network working via the router, but the modem for the DSL and the internet do not connect.

I opened a ticket with our internet provider late Tuesday afternoon and was assured it would be resolved by 2:00 or so on Thursday. Around five pm on Thursday, I called and received a new automated message. That's when I learned there was an issue in the area that would be resolved by Friday 7:00 am. Great, I could live with that. I even got a call at 8:00 on Friday morning that the issue was resolved. Wrong! At least for us it was not resolved. We are three days without internet at this point.

I call again and find out that my original appointment for resolution had been moved to a different date and time. Wednesday next week. I spent another hour on the phone trying to get it escalated. I need my internet connection to publish my newsletter and this podcast. The agent was polite and helpful but no luck. The repair schedulers wouldn't budge. And they wouldn't give me the contact information for the local office so I could try and plead my case to the actual repairman. In the end, I'm still stuck with no internet for another 4 or 5 days.

I'm recording this and have no idea how I am going to get it published. It requires hours and hours of online time to get the audio post created, the recipe created, and to connect all of the details to the various podcast distribution sites. I have contacted a neighbor that has offered assistance with internet, but I need to save that favor for uploading the podcast after getting all of the background work done at a public Wi-Fi location.

It has been a rough week on the homestead. Around here we like to be prepared for just about anything. One saying we repeat often is two is one and one is none. We only have one source for internet and when it is out, we have none. There is no decent cell phone signal here, so that cannot be a backup. Maybe you guys have some ideas on how we can come up with a backup internet system. Let me know.

On to the normal farm updates.

Please let your friends and loved ones know about our herd share program. Raw milk, yogurt, raw milk cream and butter, and raw milk cheese. These are all available via our herd share program. If you are near Winston-Salem or Greensboro, North Carolina, we can serve your needs as well. Contact me and I'll get you started on the path to healthy dairy consumption.

Go to www.peacefulheartfarm.com and select "Herd Shares" from the menu. You can also call us at 276-694-4369 or send an email to melanie at peacefulheartfarm . com.

The cows are providing A2A2 milk. Check out my previous podcasts on A2A2 milk and Why We Drink Raw Milk. Click on the links in the show notes or go to our website and select "podcast" from the menu to find and listen to those podcasts.

The breeding schedule for the cows is starting. We are still working out the details of learning how to do artificial insemination. That project is currently delayed because we want to get "sexed" semen. I have no idea how they do it, but they have narrowed the likelihood of having bulls with "sexed" semen. It worked with Butter. We bought her just 11 days before she calved and she had been artificially inseminated with "sexed" semen. It worked. She had a lovely heifer.

We really need some Normande heifers. The problem is the supplier for the Normande semen tells us it may be several weeks before we can get what we are looking for, hence, Butter is going to be bred with the Normande bull that we have on hand. It is important that we have calves in late March to early April so milk for herd shares and cheesemaking is available well before the first week of May. Who knows, maybe she will have another lovely little heifer. With the others we will take no chances.

The sheep and goats are all healthy and lively. With the storm I was worried about trees falling on them and injuring them, but all are safe and sound.

The quail, born just 7 weeks ago have started laying eggs. We tried some yesterday. They were delicious. It takes 4 quail eggs to make one chicken egg sized portion. Additionally, we have scheduled thinning out the roosters. There are three cages full of quail. About half in each cage are male. We will thin that down to one rooster to five hens. At least that is the end goal. We shall see how close we get to that number.

In a few weeks I will begin gathering their eggs over a weeks' time in preparation for incubating the second batch. Likely the second batch will fill out our breeding stock. Six sets of six birds. Again, one rooster and five hens in each of six cages. So far it has been easy.

We lost one bird to a snake a week or so ago. I think I forgot to mention that. It was necessary for me to enlist Scott's excellent help to get that snake out of the cage. A small black snake was in one of the cages and one of the birds was dead. I have no idea how it killed the bird. There was no way it was going to be able to eat it. Anyway, Scott grabbed it with some pruning shears, pulled it out of the cage and – snip – that was the end of that snake. Normally we would leave a black snake alone as they eat mice and a relatively harmless. However, this one was small enough to get in the cage. He had to go. Earlier, a much larger one was perched on one of the braces at the back of the cage. He got relocated and we haven't seen him since. His head and body were far too wide to get through the ½" hardware cloth cage.

I'm excited to see how this quail project progresses. It's a new adventure and so far has been a really fun one. They didn't seem to be affected at all by that storm. Scott did a great job on their shelters.

The garden is producing peas. The potatoes have been dug. The early onions are ready. The tomato plants are loading up. We are going to do very well there, I think.

The dried beans are blooming and producing lots of bean pods. Those we will let grow and grow and then leave them on the plant until they dry out. That comes much later.

The Mississippi Silver cow peas are coming along nicely. We eat those before they are dry. If you are not familiar, they are like black eyed peas without the eye – an little more rounded. Black eyed peas are somewhat oval. Anyway, we pick those after the peas have formed in the pod but before they dry out. We also pick a few that do not have the peas filled in. Those get snapped and put in with the shelled peas. It's a wonderful dish.

We are getting blueberries out of the orchard and the blackberries will be ready in a week or so. Yum, yum. I'm going to can both the blueberries and blackberries. I'm going to try my hand at making pie filling. It will be so handy to be able to pull out a jar and pour it into the pie shell and toss it into the oven. Your mouth is probably watering right now. I know mine is.

Finally, the update on the creamery. With all of this craziness going on, Scott has been hard pressed to make any progress there. But he is persistent and the walls are rising.

He also makes cheese once a week, as do I. It's a lot to fit into our days and weeks, but we make it happen.

It's as great life. Busy, busy, busy all the time. No time for boredom. No time for getting caught up in social media scandals or endless watching of television. It took us three days to watch the movie Sherlock – the one with Robert Downy Jr and Jude Law. An hour – sometimes less – and we are off to sleep.

I apologize for not providing a recipe this week. Due to the issues we are currently having with internet access, I have opted to leave that part out of this week's episode. It requires an additional hour and a half of internet time when our high-speed connection is functioning. As I mentioned earlier, my plan is to only impose a little on my neighbor for uploading the completed project. The hours and hours of prework will be done at a public Wi-Fi location. Wish me luck.

That's it for this week's adventures on the homestead. Next week all will return to normal, right? Not likely. I'm sure there will be some new adventure that will arise. As I've said many times, we never get bored here. Life comes at us fast and furious sometimes as we kayak this river. We just move along with the current and try not to get too battered by the rocks in the rapids.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

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Is a peaceful heart and peaceful mind possible in this wacky world? I'm waxing philosophical today. I hope you find this podcast educational and entertaining at the very least.

As always, I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast every week. I truly appreciate you all so much.

• Homestead Life Updates
• Peaceful Heart – Peaceful Mind
• Parmesan Peas

Herd Shares – When you purchase part of our herd you will benefit from fresh milk and yogurt in the summer with cheese and butter available year-round. Your cows graze each and every day on lush green pasture and freshly baled hay in the winter. They live a life a peace and tranquility in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Plan a trip to the farm to visit them and see how we care for and manage them. Go to www.peacefulheartfarm.com/virginia-herd-shares for more information.

We have only three lambs this year. Speak up now and claim a half or a whole or forever hold your peace. Well at least until next year.

Same with the beef. This may be your last chance for beef raise on our homestead. We are streamlining our cattle operation to be strictly dairy. In the future, you'll have to purchase a young calf and raise it up for beef on your own.

Choices, choices, choices. We are constantly faced with hard choices these days.

Should we get more Jersey cows or stick with the Normandes? New opportunities seem to continually present themselves. I'm leaning more towards sticking with the Normandes. Sure, Butter, the Jersey, is giving more milk, but we can breed for higher milk production. It is the temperament of the Normande that is so compelling. And the dual milk/beef characteristics. We have the option of selling every single calf we birth on the farm. But we can also keep one as needed for our own use as beef. Normande beef is superb. Yeah, I'm leaning toward keeping the Normandes central and the two Jersey girls will be the cream on top. (That's a dairy pun.) Corny, I know.

Choices again. As we move forward at the farmer's market, the interest in lamb is increasing. That's another dilemma. I only have so much time in a day. At this point, my days are consumed with milking, making cheese and marketing milk and cheese. Scott and I have discussed significantly reducing the other animal populations. Specifically, the goats and sheep. It's another task in my already overcrowded schedule to market those specialty meats. Who knew we would be faced with these kinds of choices? We love all of our animals. However, I have 10 lambs to sell next year. Will I have the time to do it effectively? Or will we fall into the trap that so many other small farmers do? Will we end up selling them at a loss just to make room for more that get sold at a loss again? Not likely. We are aware of the dilemma and are addressing it. But there it is. The choice is always before us of what we do with our time.

How much garden is the right amount of garden? If I don't have a garden at all, then I must spend money at the market to make up the difference. Part of the choice of living the homestead life is the simplicity and living on less. It becomes like drinking water, a necessary part of your life. Else you go back to the rat race of spending the hours you currently use to garden with working for someone else. Nah, I think I'll pass on that. Yeah, the garden will likely endure.

Not much in the way of updates there. We continually have choices to make, but for right now we have Normande cows, goats, sheep, donkey's and quail – and a very large garden and orchard. Those will remain as they are and we will power through. Oh yeah, we can't forget the bees. But we do. They are going fine on their own. One day we will rob some honey. But not today.

I'll bet you guys have similar choices. Should you move to the country and build a homestead or create peace in your life right where you are and visit us every chance you get? Either will bring peace to your life. It's always your choice is it not?

How does one get a peaceful heart? That's a deep subject. I've worked on it for years and I continue to work on it. Maintaining peace, both inner and outer, is a full-time job – a lifetime job. There are techniques that help. Different choices can be made that will help. Self-discipline with your thoughts and mind helps. There are lots of things that can be done.

Here at Peaceful Heart Farm, we are constantly reminded of the desire for peace because of our name. What you think about becomes your life. We think about peace a lot. Living in the environment we do helps also. But it is not required. Not everyone can live the life we do – or even desires to live as we do. Having peaceful surroundings is not a prerequisite for experiencing peace. I must say, for us, it certainly helps. Whenever you get tired of the rat race and just want to escape to the country, you might have to make plans, drive a certain distance, hope that it is as you remembered, and so on. For Scott and me it is a matter of waking up in the morning and going outside to do morning chores and we are immersed in it – for the most part. We have awakened to disasters – animals we love may be ill and die. We lost Dora earlier this year. That was not pleasant and it disturbed my peace. But we move on.

One technique that I believe helps more than any other is maintaining a positive attitude. Looking on the bright side is another way to put it. I know it sounds trite and it is. The reason it is trite is it is ancient wisdom that works remarkably well. The idea has been passed down through the ages. Maintaining a positive attitude has endured because it works.

With practice, it becomes more and more a daily routine. Something happens, you choose to the see the positive. I know, I know, it's easy to get caught up in the negative. And truly there are some experiences that have no easily identifiable up-side. The loss of a loved one comes to mind. Sure, you can intellectually tell yourself over and over that they are in a better place. They are no longer in pain. The suffering is over and so on. But that does not take away the deep grief that grips your heart for quite a long time. But these are the exception to the rule. Most of our negative ideas about anything in our daily life are interpretations that we put on events. These interpretations are based on our beliefs, perception of the facts and past experiences. Yes. They are choices we are making. And you can get out of it.

A key phrase I put in there is "perception of the facts". Likely you believe that facts are facts. (And there is truth in that.) Yet there is so much that we accept as fact that in reality is based in false perceptions. Our senses can fool us but we believe them anyway. It can become a kind of mind-reading that we believe to be fact. We make our belief that something is true into absolute knowledge that something is true. Confirmation bias is the common way of identifying the resulting misinformation.

Let's say you are sure someone frowned at you because they don't like you. Or you assume they are judging your weight, or your appearance, or your whatever. It is an illusion. One hundred percent of the time, it is an illusion. Truly, you have no idea what they think of you. In fact, they may not have even be truly aware of their surroundings and therefore are not thinking of you at all. Here's an example.

Many years ago, I was standing in line at a grocery store. At the young age of 20 something, I had very little self-awareness. My thoughts ran wild and I lived in my own little world, often completely unaware of those around me. Surrounded by people, I would be in my own bubble of thoughts, floating along like a bit of flotsam on a river. Rolling along merrily without a care in the world – or at least completely unaware of what I cared about.

So, I'm in the grocery store checkout line and behind me a lady accidentally bumped into me. As a natural reaction, you would turn around, right? Just to see who it was. I turned around to look at her. I will never forget her reaction. She apologized profusely. Over and over she apologized. I frightened the bejesus out of her because of the look on my face. She said I looked so angry that she thought I was about to hit her. I apologized to her. To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking but it had absolutely nothing to do with her. Who knows what negative idea was roaming around in my head that day?

Two things came to my awareness from that experience. Number one, I saw that I needed to pay attention to my thoughts and how I displayed them on my face. Open anger at the world displayed in an unconscious manner was not how I wanted to live my life. It was not how I wanted others to know me. And number two, I began to wonder how many times I had assumed I knew what someone was thinking based on the expression on their face as they looked at me – or looked in my direction. What if they were not even looking at me but at someone else, or simply staring blindly in my direction. What if I was the farthest thing from their thoughts? How many times had I judged myself based on an inaccurate perception? And today, I recognize how self-centered that idea actually is. In reality, the most normal thing in the world is for every person to be spending so much thought energy on worrying about what someone else thinks of them to even consider making a judgement about what to think of the person in their field of vision.

One positive effect of that experience was that I purposefully trained myself to automatically smile at everyone I meet. It made an amazing difference in my life. I wanted to reflect to others that they are loved. No matter what they are thinking inside their very busy head. I wanted them to know that they are loved and that life is worth smiling about. Not everyone responds positively, but most do. Perhaps I made a small difference in their life. I can hope.

To make the transition to living a peaceful life, you have to stop thinking it's somebody else's fault. You have to stop thinking it is anyone else's fault. There is no fault. Your life is a continuously playing video in your head. Whatever you think and believe shapes your reality. Think on something long enough and believe it hard enough and it becomes your reality. The good, the bad and the ugly. Take a care. The risks you take, the actions you perform, and your everyday experience of reality shape your life.

If you spend your time judging everything negatively, your life will continually reflect that negativity back to you. Here's an example. A small one. Let's say you are having a wonderful day. You are optimistic. Life is going along as you planned and you are content and peaceful. Now you stub your toe. Not enough to break anything, but hard enough to make you yelp. Perhaps you will take a moment to sit down and examine the damage. No blood, but perhaps a bruise will arise later. In this circumstance, the pain will dissipate fairly rapidly.

Now imagine you have that angry face that I just described. You are not even aware of the negativity that is boiling just under the surface. And you stub your toe in the same way. What is the result? Perhaps you start cursing to high heavens. Perhaps you scream loudly. You sit down and cradle your foot and begin to examine your toe. You howl and moan and curse because of the pain, your stupidity for not watching where you were going. Maybe someone left something in your path, you weren't paying attention, and it caused you pain. But in your mind, it is the fault of the person who left it in your path. The pain, the wrath, the unhappiness, the negativity, the lack of peace can last a long time. Perhaps you feel a momentary jolt of happiness. Someone else did you wrong and that makes you right or righteous. But this is a very, very short-lived and fleeting experience. You may not even be aware of it, yet it is there. That brief experience – that split second of feeling good about yourself because you are better than someone else or they were wrong and you were right. Petty, egoic ideas that so often run wild in our minds.

That guy is fat. Her dress is rumpled. This other person is really stupid and slow and so on. He or she is a loser. Who left that tricycle in the walkway right where someone might trip on it? The more you make these kinds of judgements, the more you are going to separate yourself, the less peace you will have. And yes. You will feel good for an instant, a split second, because you'll feel good about yourself. You will think, "I'm better than that" or "I'm better than them." But later you are going to feel lonely. Later you are going to continue to see negativity everywhere. Your world is constantly reflecting your own negativity about yourself back at you. It is a never-ending cycle until YOU change. Not the other person. YOU.

Reality is neutral. Reality has no judgements. Reality simply is. To a tree or a chair or that door you stubbed your toe on, there is no concept of right or wrong. There is no good or bad. You are born. You embark on a journey of sensory experiences. There are lights, colors and sounds. And how you choose to interpret that is up to you. How you interpret them IS your life. You have that choice.

Peace and happiness are choices. Love is a choice. If you believe it's a choice, then you can start working on it. You can affect your life. Life is peace because you choose to remain peaceful. Because reality is neutral, I can't tell you how to find peace. It is your own conditionings, judgements and out of control thoughts that create the experience of unhappiness. You have to fix it for yourself.

Start with believing it is possible. Just because you are miserable today, does not mean that you must be miserable for the rest of your life. Perhaps you have dreams that seem out of reach. You may believe you will never get what you want in life. Sure enough. You will never get what you want in life. Your life will continually reflect that negativity back to you. "See, I knew I would never get that job," you say. While all the while you unconsciously presented yourself as a loser to the interviewer. After all, in order for you to fulfill your vision of negativity, the pieces must be in place. On the other hand, if you went to the interview with confidence (even if you were faking it), your chances of landing the job just improved 10-fold or a 100-fold.

Let's say you are looking for your dream property to live your idyllic life in the country. You have a specific budget in mind. There are specific activities you want to do on your homestead so infrastructure to support that ideal need to be in place. And then there are the optional things that you would like to have but they are not absolutely required. Once you have that idea in place, you set out on your journey to find the perfect place. You may look at fifty or a hundred or more properties. It's easy to become discouraged. This one is the right price but no buildings. This one has buildings but they are not usable. The perfect one comes up and someone underbids you and steals it right out from under your nose. These things can lead to greater negativity and more feelings of "I'll never get what I want." The cards are stacked against me. And so on.

But you have to believe it's possible. For much of my life, I was miserable and now I'm happy. I'm content. For the most part, I'm peaceful. And it's not just the homestead. I got most of the way there before moving here permanently. I think that on the outside, it didn't look like it. There were so many challenges. Listen to my podcast "Our Virginia Life" where I talk about the crazy path we took to get here.

How did I develop greater peace before the homestead? One thing was getting older. I just realized that life is short the time to live is now. Each step toward my ideal is where peace and happiness exist and nowhere else. I can see the future when I reflect, but I don't focus there exclusively else I miss the wonder of today.

Confucius has a great saying. "Every man has two lives and the second starts when he realizes he has just one." It's your unlimited desires that are clouding your peace and happiness. Have desires, of course. But be mindful of your life as it exists today. Marvel at it. Fill your mind with the wonder of this moment. Isn't it truly amazing that you even made it this far?

Change is gradual. It's ongoing. It's very personal. You have to decide it's a priority. In everything that happens you can look at the bright side of things. Literally train yourself to think positively. There are always at least two ways you can see everything. As I mentioned earlier, there are some things that create acute suffering. Let's put those aside for the moment and focus on every day experiences. You have the ability to slowly work through every negative judgement that you have until you see the positive in it. As you practice, it becomes second nature to you.

What you want to have is a clear mind. You want to let go of thoughts. Here's an idea that you may not have noticed. Happy thoughts disappear out of your head automatically. It's very easy to let go of them. On the other hand, negative thoughts linger. They play themselves out over and over and over. Normal daily experiences will trigger them and the record starts playing again. Over and over and over. We don't let go.

When you develop the skill to interpret the positive in everything – and you learn to do it quickly, you let it go. You let it go quickly and easily and you are on to the next joyful and positive thought. How do you do that? The usual stuff you have likely heard throughout your life. Get out in the sun. Spend more time in nature. Learn to smile more. Learn to hug more. Create outward representations of happiness. These actions are feedback loops. You are literally choosing to experience happiness and your world reflects it. Reality still contains every single aspect of negativity also. All you have to do is look for it. Reality contains it all, but it is your mind that is judging it all.

Watch your mind. Watch your mind all day long as often as you think of it. Do not judge it. Do not try to control it. This is literally what it means to meditate 24/7. Watch your own thoughts like you would watch anything else in the outside world. Ask yourself, "why am I having that thought?" "Does that serve me anymore?" "Is that conditioning from when I was 10 years old?"

Beware of "why am I having that thought? Is there something wrong with me? Should I be thinking something else?" And so on. That's not the same thing. That kind of thinking is a disease that keeps you from being happy. Let's say your mind is just running and running, imagining what you are going to say to this person or that person when next you Meet. Perhaps you start rehearsing what you will say to that person – you may even rehearse speaking to them about how your mind is running on and on imagining what you are going to say to them. This is kind of thinking indicates a habitual thought pattern. You may think it is out of your control. It is not.

This line of thinking comes from the desire to sound smart. Not the desire to be smart. The desire to sound smart whether you know what you are talking about or not. It is a skill that was perfected at an earlier time in your life. That practiced skill hardwires you to always rehearse things to ensure you always sound smart. Literally, it's a disease that keeps you from being happy. When you can see it – when you can realize that truth, when you understand it, your mind will naturally calm down. When you get there, you will stop rehearsing as much, though it will still be a trained habit. It will still clutter your mind from time to time. Keep at it. Note it. Be happy you noted it and it disappears.

You don't have to live out in the country on a lovely homestead to be peaceful and happy. I won't deny it makes it much easier for me. It makes it much easier to maintain, though there are still many things that can disturb my peace. Scott and I chasing escaped goats comes to mind. We often disagree on the best approach to getting those guys back inside a fence. Afterwards, I choose to love him and he choose to love me – even though we both may have treated the other poorly during the crisis. Peace in our hearts is regained – re-established.

Maybe someday peace will never elude us. I don't know. Would we be bored then?

Peas are not exactly peace but close. Especially peas straight out of the garden. And don't forget that wonderful cheese. You can use frozen peas if you need to. However, this time of year, fresh peas make all the difference in the world. Here's what you need.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 small shallots, sliced
• 1-pound fresh peas, (14 oz bag of frozen, thawed)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• black pepper to taste

1. Melt the butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the shallots and a pinch of the salt and cook until soft and translucent, about 4 minutes.
2. Stir in the peas and remaining salt and cook until the peas are soft but still bright green, 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Add the lemon juice and toss.
4. Remove from heat and stir in the Parmesan and black pepper. Serve hot.

That's it. Let that flavor of fresh peas bring peace to your tongue and tummy.

Life is about choice. We choose happiness. We choose peace. We choose love. I hope my words helped you gained some insight into how you can add just a little more peace to your life. And you'll certainly want to add those lovely fresh peas to your life. Visit us at the Wytheville Farmer's Market. We have dairy not peas, but others will be there with their lovingly grown products. Visit us and visit them. We look forward to meeting you.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Parmesan Peas

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The Tradition of Father's Day is the topic for today. It's two weeks away for those of us here in the US.

But first, let me take a minute to say welcome to every new listener and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by to listen to the FarmCast every week. I appreciate you all so much. I'm so excited to share with you what's going on at the farm this week. And a fantastic recipe for grilling on Father's Day.

• Homestead Life Updates
• The Tradition of Father's Day
• Gourmet Chevon Burgers

Our homestead life is humming along. Yes, I'm still way behind on taming the weeds in the garden, the beans still need to be planted. And to top it off, harvesting is beginning. I've already picked green peas for shelling and snow peas. I froze four packages and had plenty left over for several meals. Now the shelling peas need to be picked again. This time there will be lots and lots and lots of them. I may freeze some and can some. We'll see. Freezer space is at a premium right now. The potatoes are ready to be dug up and dried and I have plenty of spring onions available to add fresh to any dish.

Happy and good lamb news. We had a late arrival a few days ago. That brings our total to 10 lambs this year and zero loses. We've never had that kind of success rate. Mother nature usually has her way with at least one or two. We have been truly blessed this year.

The herd shares are going gangbusters. Only a couple of slots left there. And so many are interested in the cheese. During the summer we offer milk, yogurt, butter and cream, while winter will provide lots of cheese and butter. My schedule may change in that area due to the requests of the herd share owners. Many want the cheese now in lieu of the milk. Next month their wishes will become reality.

The quail are growing like crazy. Scott devised a way to alter their feeding trays so they don't waste so much. That's working out fine. The roosters are beginning to crow. It's not a like a chicken at all. When I go and visit them and care for them, they are all standing in a row in front of the door looking out. They are so cute and funny.

Scott is moving along with the creamery walls. And that's about it for the homestead updates. Let's get to the topic of the day.

Last month we looked at the tradition of Mother's Day. Today we look at the tradition of Father's Day. And more importantly, why children need fathers (or at the very least father-figures) in their lives. Today retailers and marketers, in an effort to make a quick buck, have completely changed the original meaning of Father's Day. A holiday that was created to honor dad and enumerate his special qualities is now used as a marketing tool. Such is the way of life in our very affluent country.

Let's take a look at the roots and history of Father's Day.

A customary day for the celebration of fatherhood in Catholic Europe is known to date back to at least the Middle Ages, and it is observed on March 19, as the feast day of Saint Joseph, who is referred to as the fatherly Nutritor Domini ("Nourisher of the Lord") in Catholicism and "the putative father of Jesus" in southern European traditions. This celebration was brought to the Americas by the Spanish and Portuguese, and in many countries Father's Day is still celebrated on March 19. The Catholic Church actively supported the custom of a celebration of fatherhood on St. Joseph's day from either the last years of the 14th century or from the early 15th century.

Father's Day was not celebrated in the US, outside Catholic traditions, until the 20th century. As a civic celebration in the US, it was inaugurated in the early 20th century to complement Mother's Day by celebrating fathers and male parenting.

There are two stories of when the first Father's Day was celebrated in the United States. According to some accounts, the first Father's Day was celebrated in Washington state on June 19, 1910. A woman by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd came up with the idea of honoring and celebrating her father while listening to a Mother's Day sermon at church in 1909. She felt as though mothers were getting all the acclaim while fathers were equally deserving of a day of praise (Likely she would be displeased that Mother's Day still gets the lion's share of attention).

Sonora's dad was quite a man. William Smart, a veteran of the Civil War, was left a widower when his wife died while giving birth to their sixth child. He went on to raise the six children by himself on their small farm in Washington. To show her appreciation for all the hard work and love William gave to her and her siblings, Sonora thought there should be a day to pay homage to him and other dads like him. She initially suggested June 5th, the anniversary of her father's death to be the designated day to celebrate Father's Day, but due to some bad planning, the celebration in Spokane, Washington was deferred to the third Sunday in June.

The other story of the first Father's Day in America happened all the way on the other side of the country in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. Grace Golden Clayton suggested to the minister of the local Methodist church that they hold services to celebrate fathers after a deadly mine explosion killed 361 men.

While Father's Day was celebrated locally in several communities across the country, unofficial support to make the celebration a national holiday began almost immediately. William Jennings Bryant was one of its staunchest proponents. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that Father's Day become a national holiday. But no official action was taken.

In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson, through an executive order, designated the third Sunday in June as the official day to celebrate Father's Day. However, it wasn't until 1972, during the Nixon administration, that Father's Day was officially recognized as a national holiday.

It took a while, but we got there. Fathers are celebrated in our country every year on the 3rd Sunday in June.

Other countries also picked up on the idea of Father's Day. It is, after all, quite profitable. While many followed suit by celebrating it on the third Sunday in June, some decided to honor dad on different dates. So, to make sure you know when to pay your respects to dear old dad wherever you may be, here's a list of the two most prominent dates and associated countries where Father's Day is celebrated around the world.

• March 19– The religious celebration, is observed in Angola, Belgium, Bolivia, Croatia, Honduras, Italy, Lichtenstein, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.
• Third Sunday in June– The US version, is also observed in Antigua, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Trinidad, Turkey, United Kingdom, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

A few made the list twice. Once for the religious celebration and the second for the secular celebration.

This is a topic I'm very interested in these days. In a time where men are often demonized at every turn for the smallest infraction, I feel the need to reiterate the facts and truth of the importance of men and father's in the family. It is my opinion that way too many children are born today without a father's loving presence. It has become common place for modern feminists to think they can "do it all" and they don't need a man. It may be the biggest lie being perpetrated out there. I've spoken of this before and likely will again. It is detrimental to the health of women, their children and their relationships with the loving fathers of their children.

It's simply ridiculous to think that the full-time job of parenting and a full-time job providing financial income can be done at the same time. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to do both simultaneously and do them well. The reason there was a separation of a wife and husband's duties was not to somehow suppress the intelligence and creativity of women. Nope. It was simply the best arrangement for the best outcome of family cohesion and stability. There was never anything stopping women from having careers. In fact, many did have careers. It was a choice then and is still a choice now to be a wife and mother. And in today's environment, having a career is still quite feasible after the little ones reach their teens and begin experimenting with adulthood. Moms will sometimes have lots more time to pursue whatever they desire.

The children are raised by someone else and jobs often become drudgery for working mothers today. According to an article a few years ago in the Huffington Post, woman are unhappier today than ever before. It's no wonder. We have to make choices. No one can "do it all". We all make choices. And sometimes the choice is simply a matter of timing. Kids now, career later. Do it all in a linear fashion as opposed to lumping it all into a limited 24-hour day.

The traditional family evolved over time and has sustained itself over time because it works. It works to ensure that society moves forward in an orderly fashion. Sure, there are all kinds of fancy family configurations in our world today and all have value. All families have value. Having said that, it does not change the scientifically proven fact that children do best in a stable household with both a father and a mother. The special family configurations seem to be getting all the attention these days, which is great. I'm just bringing a bit of attention back to our traditional family structure. It's what this podcast is all about.

It is my opinion that the traditional family structure is being neglected and pushed aside. There are many reasons, but my current pet peeve is for the welfare state that encourages single motherhood and discourages fathers from being part of their children's lives. Money and other resources are severely cut back if a man is present in the household. As I said, it encourages single motherhood. This makes the life of mother and children much more difficult than it would be with a man in the picture. But for many growing up in the second and third generation of welfare, they know no other life. They know no other way to survive. My heart goes out to them.

Anyone can father a child, but being a dad takes a lifetime. Fathers play a role in every child's life that cannot be filled by others or state provided financial benefits. The role of the father can have a large impact on a child and help shape him or her into the person they become.

Fathers, just like mothers, are integral in the development of a child's emotional well-being. Traditionally, children look to their fathers to lay down the rules and enforce them. They also look to their fathers to provide a feeling of physical and emotional security. Children naturally want to make their fathers proud. An involved father can promote inner strength and personal growth. Studies have shown that when fathers are affectionate and supportive, it greatly affects a child's cognitive and social development. It also instills an overall sense of well-being and self-confidence. Fathers are important to your children's emotional development.

Fathers not only influence who we are inside, but how we have relationships with people as we grow. The way a father treats his child will influence what that child looks for in other people. Friends, lovers, and spouses will all be chosen based on how he or she perceived the meaning of the relationship with his or her father. The patterns a father sets in the relationships with his children will dictate how they relate to and interact with other people.

Young girls depend on their fathers for security and emotional support. A father shows his daughter what a good relationship with a man is like. If a father is loving and gentle, his daughter will look for those qualities in men when she's old enough to begin dating. If a father is strong and valiant, she will relate closely to men of the same character.

Unlike girls, who model their relationships with others based on their father's character, boys will model themselves after their father's character. Boys will seek approval from their fathers from a very young age. As human beings, we grow up and mature by imitating the behavior of those around us; that's how we learn to function in the world. If a father is caring and treats people with respect, the young boy will grow up much the same. When a father is absent, young boys look to other male figures to set the "rules" for how to behave and survive in the world.

Enter social media and online father-figure personalities. Enter the gangs. Enter the unsavory characters that can lead naïve youngsters astray. Again, mothers need to be at home with their children and they need to have stable relationships with the father of their children. A two-parent household consisting of a man and a woman is the ideal situation. Fathers are just as important as mothers. The online community is filled with great people that can be role models. But why have a substitute? Why not continue the tradition that has worked for as long as there have been humans? Have we thought deeply about what we are leaving behind?

That online community is also filled with evil people who wish to do harm to others – often targeting children and young adults. The primary job of a parent, I would argue, is to protect our children – to keep them safe from harm. We need to be there for them. Fathers need to be there for them.

As you celebrate your father on the third Sunday of June, ask him to show you how to grill a delicious, grass-fed burger. Tell him you love him and how much you appreciate him.

This recipe calls for ground goat. It's a great alternative to the same old hamburger. Goat, or chevon as it is widely known, is a staple red meat for much of the world outside the US. However, you can use whatever ground meat you prefer. The instructions call for using a cast iron skillet with lots of butter or oil. However, the grill works just as well.

• 1-pound goat burger, grass-fed is preferable
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon sea salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon rosemary leaves, dried
• 1 teaspoon thyme leaves, dried
• 1 teaspoon cilantro, dried
• 1 teaspoon cumin, ground
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 6 tablespoons vegetable oil or butter, divided

1. Place the goat-burger in a mixing bowl, add Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, cilantro, and cumin. Mix well.
2. In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium to high heat. Add the onion, lower the heat, and sauté for about 2 minutes until nicely browned and caramelized.
3. Add onions to burger mixture. Mix well. Shape into 4 patties. In a cast iron skillet heat the remaining olive oil or butter over medium-to-high heat.
4. Cook the patties in oil or butter until medium to medium-well, about 8 - 10 minutes on each side.

NOTE 1: Don't skimp on the oil when using goat. Grass-fed chevon burger is very lean and needs the fat to help retain moisture and to prevent sticking.

NOTE 2: As an alternative, you can use your gas grill.

That's it for today's Peaceful Heart FarmCast. If you are keeping up with the activities on the homestead, let me know what questions you have about what we do and why.

As you move closer to the celebration of Father's Day in a couple of weeks, why not contemplate why this structural tradition has been in place for as long as it has? And there is nothing better than smiling across the table at your dad while chomping on a delicious gourmet, grilled, grass-fed burger with all the trimmings.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Gourmet Grilled Chevon Burgers

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The consumption of dairy products has been a mainstay for as long as mankind has been able to capture and milk animals of all kinds. Sheep, goats, cows, bison, water buffalo, donkeys and horses. All are still milked to this day. There may be others. These are the ones of which I am aware. I want to talk about this tradition that has helped our species thrive and develop over the centuries and millennia.

But first, I want to take that blessed moment to say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to you veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the homestead every week. I appreciate you all so much. I'm so excited to share with you what's going on in our neck of the woods this week.

• Homestead Life Updates
• Why We Drink Raw Milk
• Traditional Kefir Recipe

Oh my gosh, is it hot where you are? Whew!! We've been experiencing a real heat wave here. Temperatures that are normal for late July and August. Thank goodness that we will be back to normal for next week. Highs in the high 70's and low 80's. Today is great. The 90-degree days drained the energy right out of me. I expect that in the middle of summer. But come on, it's still 3 weeks until the summer solstice.

Speaking of draining energy. The garden is burning up. Well is would be if we weren't diligently watering every day. The orchard too. And the weeds are still progressively taking over. This time of year I'm really pressed for time. Milking twice a day. Making cheese. Going to the Farmer's Market and on and on. As I've said before, the garden gets pushed down the list of priorities.

This too shall change in the future. It takes a lot to get a business off the ground. Once we are more established, we can let up a little bit, I think.

A little progress has been made on the creamery. It is still creeping along compared to the plan that Scott originally made, but it is what it is and we persevere. It's the journey that is important. It's the system that we are setting in place that is important. Goals come and go, but the system remains.

We still have a couple of baby bulls for sale. If you are looking to improve the beef and dairy genetics of your herd, the Normande cow is a good bet. Visit our website at www.peacefulheartfarm.com and go to the contact page and let us know of your interest. We also have a 1-year-old and a proven 2-year-old bull that are available. As we move to AI for our very small herd, we no longer need bulls. One less thing to keep up with.

We have our ground beef on sale $6.00 for one pound, $250 for 50 pounds and $500 for 100 pounds. We also have a few – very few – lambs available. Again, go to the website and let us know of your interest in a whole or half lamb. $380 for a whole lamb and $200 for a half. www.peacefulheartfarm.com

Alright that's it for homestead updates. Let's get on to the topic at hand.

I'm going to talk about why we consume dairy products; the benefits. Our dairy products come straight from our grass-fed cows with no alteration from their live state. It's all about the nutrition. Traditional foods raised using traditional methods produces that traditional robust health of days gone by. I'll get to the specific health benefits in a moment.

If you've been told that drinking raw milk is dangerous, you'll be surprised to know that you've been misled. The truth about raw milk? An extensive look into research and claims made by the FDA and CDC related to raw milk being dangerous have been found to be completely unwarranted. It actually benefits your body in many ways, and although it might have earned a reputation among some for being dangerous, you shouldn't miss out on all this amazing superfood has to offer because raw milk benefits are truly impressive.

What is "raw milk" exactly? It's milk that comes from grass-fed cows, is unpasteurized and unhomogenized. This means raw milk contains all of its natural enzymes, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals — making it what many refer to as a "complete food." Eggs fall into the "complete food" category also. Everything needed for growth and health is contained in the package. No need for sterilization or added sugar.

But can't raw milk cause problems due to the risk of consuming bacteria? The risk of this happening is very, very low. In fact, according to medical researcher Dr. Ted Beals, M.D., you are 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw milk. Reference in the show notes. You can get sick from consuming any food. Your risk of illness from raw milk is quite small. The CDC reports that there are an estimated 48 million foodborne illnesses diagnosed each year. Yes, your heard that right. 48 million. Of these 48 million illnesses, only about 42 (about 0.0005 percent!) each year are due to consumption of fresh, unprocessed (raw) milk.

Dr. Chris Kesser did a thorough investigation to get the true impact of raw milk illness and death (as the CDC makes it sound inevitable). He found that your chances of becoming hospitalized from a bacterial illness caused by raw milk is three times less than your chance of dying in a plane crash.

The statistics indicate that most accusations and concerns over raw milk have been overstated, and because of that its health benefits remain underrated. Raw milk benefits are numerous and can help address a large number of nutritional deficiencies that millions of people, especially those eating the standard American diet, are currently experiencing. For instance, raw milk benefits allergies and skin, all while containing beneficial nutrients available in a living product.

Studies now suggest that children who drink raw milk are 50 percent less likely to develop allergies and 41 percent less likely to develop asthma compared to children who don't. A study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology involved 8,000 children with various diets, and one of the conclusions that researchers made was that by drinking raw milk, children experienced "naturally immunizing" effects.

As documented on the Real Milk.com website, many other studies carried out over the past century have shown that raw milk benefits and supports children's growth and development in other ways too. Examples are: increased immunity against infections, dental health boosted and support for skeletal growth. Again, reference in the show notes.

You might be wondering: How can raw milk reduce allergies, and isn't dairy tied to high rates of intolerance or sensitivities? Nutrients like probiotics, vitamin D and immunoglobulins (antibodies) found in raw milk naturally boost the immune system and reduce the risk of allergies in both children and adults. Enzymes found in raw milk help with digestion but are often reduced or destroyed during pasteurization. Without those enzymes, lactose intolerance is much more likely.

Dairy might have a bad reputation when it comes to causing or worsening acne and skin inflammation, but this is far from the case with raw milk. As I've said, the benefits of raw milk are numerous, but surprisingly one of the most common reasons that people consume it is to benefit their skin. The success stories of people consuming raw milk to improve conditions such as psoriasis, eczema and acne are very widely reported.

Raw milk benefits the skin for the following reasons:

• It contains healthy fats: Because raw milk contains large amounts of healthy saturated fats and omega-3 fats, it supports skin hydration.
• It supplies probiotics: Probiotics in raw milk can kill off or balance bad bacteria in your gut, which can dramatically affect the health of your skin. Research shows that inflammation and unbalanced gut flora contribute to skin issues such as acne and eczema.

According to the USDA, nearly 300 calories a day in the average American's diet (out of a total 2,076 calories) can be attributed to added sugars or sweeteners. In comparison, nutrient-rich foods like raw dairy, fruits and vegetables only contribute about 424 calories.

One serving of raw milk contains about 400 milligrams of calcium, 50 milligrams of magnesium and 500 milligrams of potassium. These minerals are vitally important for cellular function, hydration, building bone density, blood circulation, detoxification, muscle health and metabolism.

Probiotics are microorganisms that line your gut and support nutrient absorption. They also help protect you from foreign invaders like E. coli and parasites. The best way to include probiotics in your diet is to get them in their most natural state, which includes raw milk products, such as cheese, kefir and yogurt. Real, raw and organic probiotic yogurt, cheeses and kefir have been consumed by some of the healthiest populations living around the world for thousands of years. Some disorders probiotic foods are known to help with include:

• Diarrhea
• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Skin infections
• Weakened immune system
• Urinary track infections
• Vaginal yeast infection

In addition to pasteurization, conventional milk also usually undergoes a homogenization process. Homogenization is a high-pressure process that breaks down fat into tiny particles — however, fat subjected to high heat and pressure becomes oxidized and rancid. Many low-fat dairy products also have thickening agents added to make up for lost texture. Raw milk needs no added thickeners or shelf-stabilizers and also doesn't contain added sugar or flavors.

Most foods have some levels of natural sugar, including raw dairy, which has the type called lactose. The natural sugar in dairy is balanced with other nutrients and therefore not a concern (even healthy for you in moderation).

Raw milk is truly one of the most nutrient-dense foods in the world and has a nutritional profile unlike any other food. I understand if you've been cautious in the past about drinking raw milk because of all the negative media it might have earned. Let me help ease your mind. As a species we have been drinking this luscious, delectable beverage for thousands upon thousands of years. Today more and more people are drinking raw milk. We are slowly getting back to wholesome, unadulterated food that has served us for millennia. Over 10 million Americans now drink raw milk on a regular basis. They do so because of the benefits which include:

• Healthier skin, hair and nails
• Nutrient absorption
• Stronger immune system
• Reduced allergies
• Increased bone density
• Neurological support
• Weight loss
• Help building lean muscle mass
• Better digestion

What exactly makes raw milk such an incredible superfood? Let's take a look at its unique nutritional profile, and it will become clear.

Because raw milk comes from cows or goats grazing on grass, research studies have shown that it contains a higher level of heart-healthy, fat-soluble vitamins than milk that comes from factory-farm cows. These vitamins support the brain and nervous system and are crucial for development, focus and brain function. Fat-soluble vitamins also support bone density and help naturally balance hormones.

In addition to being high in anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids, raw milk from grass-fed animals is a rich source of butyrate, a short chain fatty acid that's widely known to control health issues related to inflammation, slow metabolism and stress resistance. Additionally, raw, grass-fed milk is packed with conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which according to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has been tied to cancer prevention, healthier cholesterol levels and can even help reduce body fat.

Raw milk is one of the highest sources of minerals and electrolytes, of which many people need more.

By far, the best-tasting curds and whey protein come from our raw milk. CHEESE. Also, whey protein is fantastic for anyone who's looking to burn fat and build or retain lean muscle. Whey is high in the following enzymes: alpha-lactalbumin, beta-lactoglobulin, bovine serum albumin and immunoglobulin.

Probiotics are only found in small amounts in raw milk, but when you ferment raw milk to make foods like kefir, yogurt or cheese, the good bacteria dramatically increase. In fact, there are no other foods in the world as naturally high in probiotics as cultured dairy products.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to raw milk benefits.

Let's compare. Dairy products have gotten a bad rap over the years, but this is actually mostly due to the pasteurization process. When milk is pasteurized, it destroys many of the nutrients that make raw milk beneficial. Why is pasteurization even performed in the first place then? Because it exposes milk to very high temperatures, it can also kill harmful bacteria that are possibly able to make their way into the milk. However, as I mentioned before, it's very rare for these types of bacteria to be found in milk to begin with. There are other options to ensure the bad bacteria doesn't get into the milk in the first place.

Key nutrients and enzymes are greatly reduced during the pasteurization process. If you consider the fact that many of these nutrients are not only reduced, but altered from their original states, you can understand that some of these nutrients are completely unavailable for your body to use and can be very difficult to digest for many people.

Allergies and lactose intolerance are higher with pasteurization as well. Another major negative of pasteurization is that it destroys the digestive enzymes needed to break down and absorb certain nutrients. In the previously mentioned study, researchers found lactase (the enzyme in dairy) levels are greatly reduced with pasteurization, which is one explanation as to why so many people are lactose-intolerant. A survey conducted by the Weston A. Price Foundation found that of 700 families interviewed, amazingly about 80 percent of those diagnosed with lactose intolerance stopped having symptoms when they switched to raw milk.

To put things into perspective, according to medical studies, the following nutrients in raw milk are 100% fully active and during pasteurization they are altered or destroyed:

Vitamin A, 35% reduction; Vitamin C, 25-77% reduction; Vitamin E, 14% reduction; Iron 66% reduction; Zinc, 70% reduction; B-Complex Vitamins, 38% reduction; Calcium, 21% reduction; Enzymes, 100% destroyed; Immunoglobulins, damaged; Whey Protein, denatured.

Again, all of these nutrients are 100% active in raw, unpasteurized milk. Pasteurized milk is a lesser product. As I mentioned earlier, they end up adding stuff to a product that was perfect before pasteurization – unless contaminated by careless practices.

Want to have the freedom to consume raw milk? Join our herd share program. Own part of our cow herd and enjoy the benefits that we do every day. During the summer we have fresh milk, yogurt, butter and sometimes a bit of cream, while in the winter we have aged cheese and more butter.

The way it works is that you buy into our herd of dairy cows. We will care for them for you and we will gather the milk benefits for you. We will even process those benefits into fermented products such as yogurt and cheese. For a full share in the herd it is $60.00. A half share is $30.00 and you can also choose multiple shares. One and a half is $90. Two is $120.00 and so on. Once you own part of the herd, you simply pay us a maintenance and service/processing fee on a monthly basis. A full share is $44.00 per month, a half is $22.00 per month, 1 and a half is $66.00 per month, 2 shares is $88.00 per month and so on.

What you can expect to receive from your cows is milk, yogurt, cheese, and sometimes butter and cream. Every week I will let you know what is available and you choose how you want to receive it. Choose 1 item from the full share list or two items from the half share list.

We milk the cows seasonally which means your cows will provide you with milk and yogurt from the first week of May through the last week of October on a weekly basis. For the other six months we will continue to store and manage your cheese and butter. You can pick up your share twice monthly at the Farmer's Market in Wytheville or from the farm.

That's it. For more information, go to www.peacefulheartfarm.com/virginia-herd-shares. And feel free to call or email me with your questions.

Kefir is a fermented milk drink similar to a thin yogurt that is made from kefir grains, a specific type of mesophilic symbiotic culture. The drink originated in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and Russia, where it is prepared by inoculating cow, goat, or sheep milk with kefir grains. These instructions will be for cow's milk kefir.

Milk kefir is not only easy to make, it is a delicious, probiotic-rich, versatile beverage your whole family can enjoy. This recipe uses the direct starter culture. You will not have to maintain kefir grains. Perhaps you can learn that a little later.

• Glass or plastic container
• Plastic, wood, or stainless-steel stirring utensil
• Coffee filter or cloth
• Rubber band to secure the cover

• 1-quart raw cow milk (Needs to be very fresh. Don't wait as the competition between beneficial bacteria is quite fierce. 😊)
• 1-packet of Direct-Set Kefir Starter Culture (Google it to find a source you like. Remember "starter" culture, not kefir grains.)

1. Pour 1-quart milk into a glass or plastic container
2. If milk is refrigerated liquid, heat to room temperature or 70º-75ºF
3. Add 1 packet kefir starter culture and stir gently until the culture is fully dissolved.
4. Cover the container with a coffee filter or cloth, secured with a rubber band, and place in a warm spot, 72º-74ºF, for 12-16 hours.
5. Cover finished kefir with a tight lid and store in the refrigerator.
6. The culturing process is complete when the milk thickens to the consistency of buttermilk or heavy cream.

Kefir made with a direct-set style starter culture can often be re-cultured anywhere from 2 to 7 times. The exact number of successive batches will depend on the freshness of the kefir and hygienic practices employed. Be sure to re-culture within 7 days. Longer periods between batches may not result in successful batches.

1. Pour 1-quart milk into a glass or plastic container
2. If using a refrigerated kefir, heat to room temperature or 70º-75ºF
3. Add ¼ cup prepared kefir from the previous batch and stir gently.
4. Cover the container with a coffee filter or cloth, secured with a rubber band, and place in a warm spot, 72º-74ºF, for 12-16 hours.
5. Cover finished kefir with a tight lid and store in the refrigerator.

You now have a healthy probiotic drink. Enjoy!

The homestead keeps on keeping on. Things are moving so quickly these days. There are not enough hours in the day to do all the tasks that need doing. Every once in a while, we stop and "smell the roses" so-to-speak. It's up to us to make that happen. When you have your own homestead, you are fully in charge of your life. It's a wonderful thing.

We love our milk. It is produced from cows that have been grass-fed and raised in humane conditions. We drink our milk unpasteurized and it retains all of its natural nutrients and benefits.

Raw milk benefits include improved immunity, healthier skin, reduced allergies, healthier growth and development, lower risk for nutrient deficiencies, and much more. Your mileage may vary.

Real milk has been consumed safely for many centuries. We have a limited number of herd shares available. If you want the benefits I've described here, see me at the Wytheville Farmer's Market or come to the farm during our store hours and talk with me about your needs and the needs of your family.

You can use your wonderful milk to make that kefir and provide even more healthy benefits to your family.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts, SUBSCRIBE and give me a 5-star rating and review. Also, please share it with any friends or family who might be interested in this type of content.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for stopping by the homestead and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

• Ted Beals
• CDC: Raw Milk Questions and Answers
• Raw Milk Reality: Is Raw Milk Dangerous?
• The protective effect of farm milk consumption on childhood asthma and atopy: The GABRIELA study
• NIH: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of pasteurization on milk vitamins, and evidence for raw milk consumption and other health-related outcomes.
• ABSTRACTS ON THE EFFECT OF PASTEURIZATION ON THE NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF MILK
• What's in Raw Milk?
• Influence of thermal and other manufacturing stresses on retinol isomerization in milk and dairy products.
• ORG: Conjugated Linoleic Acid
• Effect of processing on contents and relationships of mineral elements of milk

Traditional Kefir

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