The Well Versed Family: Review & Giveaway!

Lately, I’ve been feeling really convicted about teaching the Little Farmhands to memorize scripture.  Here at the Good Old Days farm we focus a lot on being physically healthy, but it is just as important to be spiritually healthy, too!  The Little Farmhands know tons and tons of Bible verses set to music… I know for a fact that the oldest Farmhand knows at least 150 scriptures set to music (We have some great CD’s that I’ll be telling you about later this week!)… but if anyone ever asked them what a certain verse says, they would have to sing the answer.  That’s good and we will continue to learn scripture songs, but they’re ready for the next step!

So for the next week and a half or so we are going to have a Scripture Memory Theme here on the Good Old Days Farm blog!  I’ll be sharing some excellent resources that have really helped our family to imprint scripture in our minds and hearts.  I’ll also share some of our favorite tools and techniques for memorizing as well as suggest some Bible Verses to help you and your family get started!



I’ve known it was important for my children to memorize scripture, but for some reason it never occurred to me that this is something we should do together as a family.  I stumbled across Caroline Boykin’s book “The Well-Versed Family” while looking for resources to help me teach my children.  Just as the subtitle “raising kids of faith through do-able scripture memory” promises, this book makes scripture memory do-able!  It was just what I needed to get started!

Caroline Boykin makes a compelling case in the first half of her book for the need to memorize scripture.  I love the title of the first chapter!  “What’s Down in the Well, Comes Up in the Bucket!”  She gets this title from Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  Poorly guarded and polluted wellsprings (hearts and minds) leave our children defenseless against temptation.  She outlines many benefits to memorizing scripture and shows exactly how memorizing helps us to know God.  You will be inspired and challenged by Boykins’ vision for making Scripture memory a passion rather than just another project or (as she puts it) “a holy hobby”!

The second half of “The Well-Versed Family” is full of practical tips to help children memorize.  Suggestions like coming alongside your child and memorizing the scriptures with them have changed the way our family approaches memorizing!  She also gives suggestions for incentives, review techniques and helping children to understand what the verses actually mean.  She includes memory verse games and activities (such as Bible verse card games and games like “verse scramble” and “I Spy…. a verse!”), 84 scripture memory cards on perforated pages (yay!  Because I always have a hard time knowing which verses to pick to get started!) and 5 simple, but very memorable family devotions explaining how scripture memory relates to real life.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when she talks about visiting her grandparents when she was about 9 years old.  They had a goal to help her and her sister memorize 100 verses from the Bible.  One hundred verses sounds like a lot (and it is more than many people memorize in a lifetime!) but they did it!  Boykin talks about what a wonderful gift those verses were and how now that her grandparents are deceased, those verses continue to bless her. It inspired me to give the same gift to my children! 

“The Well-Versed Family” was easy to read (even for this sometimes sleep-deprived mommy!), but hard to put down.  If you are considering starting (or reviving!) a scripture memory program in your home, I strongly recommend this book!

You can read more about “The Well-Versed Family” (including testimonials about how this book has inspired other families!) by visiting the Well-Versed Family website or preview it on Amazon. 

You can purchase “The Well-Versed Family” at Tate Publishing for $12.99 for the paperback edition and $7.99 for the ebook downloadable edition, or you can purchase it through Amazon for $12.73

Or

Win an autographed copy of “The Well-Versed Family”!
Caroline has donated a copy for one of our blog readers!
To enter, do any (or all) of the following.  If you do more than one, leave a separate comment for each entry:

• Spread the word!  Post about this giveaway on Facebook and leave a comment here telling me
• Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and leave a comment here telling me you did so.
• Blog about this giveaway for 2 entries.  Leave two comments here with the link.
• “Like” the Good Old Days Farm on Facebook, and leave a comment here saying that you follow us there
  
• “Follow” the Good Old Days Farm on Twitter and leave a comment here
  
• “Follow” us through Google Friend Connect (link on right sidebar) and leave a comment here
  
• Subscribe to this blog via email (link on right sidebar) and tell me about it here
  
• Leave a comment suggesting a Bible verse or passage you think would be good for a family to memorize together!  (I will compile all the suggestions and post it for everyone to share so please try to pick a verse that hasn’t already been suggested!)

Giveaway closes at midnight on April 12, 2011.  Open to US Residents Only.  Please be sure to leave a way for me to contact you if you win!
This is not a paid review,  It is my personal opinion based on reading “The Well-Versed Family.”  A big thank you to Caroline Boykin for donating a copy of the book for the review and the giveaway!

Olive Oil & Garlic Salad Dressing

 

 

Now that I have a blog, the most common compliment I receive about my cooking is, “Mmm… This tastes good.  You should put the recipe up on your blog.”  Sometimes Papa the Farmer and I deem a recipe to be blog-worthy and sometimes we decide it’s ok, but not blog-worthy.  We only want to share our best with you!  This salad dressing is definitely blog-worthy!

 

My mother in law gave me the recipe several years ago, and wouldn’t you know it, she didn’t put any measurements in the recipe.  So I don’t really measure either… I just play with the ingredients until it tastes right.  But, since you don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, I’m putting approximate measurements in parenthesis after each ingredient.  Feel free to play around with the amounts.

olive oil (2 cups)

Nutritional Yeast (1/3 cup)

Fresh Parsley (large handful)

Fresh Garlic (an entire head… not just one clove… an entire head.  Just trust me on this!)

Salt (1 1/2 tsp)

Lemon Juice (1/2 cup)

 

Mix it all together in the blender till well blended!

Delicious on salads, but don’t stop there!  Pour it on bread for garlic bread, sandwiches for some extra flavor, rice, vegetables, pasta…

I AM A Farmer’s Wife!

I saw something yesterday afternoon that has me so, so excited!  Last year (back in the days when my mother might have been the only one to read this blog!) Papa the Farmer and one of the Little Farmhands put a peppermint patch in for me down by the front gate. (Isn’t my Little Farmhand cute working so hard like his Papa?)  This was one of our first projects after we decided to open a farm.

Now, I need to tell you… I have never gotten a plant to live.  That’s one of the reasons why this whole farming idea is so crazy.  For example, I was a student teacher in a kindergarten class one time and I was in charge of helping the children to sprout bean seeds in cups to take home for Mother’s Day.  I sprouted 10 extra seeds so that just in case some of the children’s beans didn’t sprout, there would be extras.  Well, all the beans sprouted except 10.  My 10.  I don’t know why mine didn’t sprout because I did all the same things to my beans that the kindergarteners did to their beans, but mine never grew.  All I can say is that it’s a really good thing my Mom wasn’t counting on getting a bean plant for Mother’s Day that year…

But I had grand dreams for this peppermint patch.  After all, peppermint spreads like wildfire.  People who plant peppermint complain that it’s taking over and they can’t kill it if they want to!  So peppermint sounded like a really good idea.  I envisioned a big, luscious bed of peppermint on each side of our gate that would smell wonderful… that I could use to dry and make tea… that the neighbors could come and help themselves to if they wanted some.  And all this, with minimal effort on my part!

Actually, the peppermint patch went pretty well… until I got involved.  Several weeks (ok, maybe it was months!) went by and weeds were growing.  It occurred to me that somebody had better weed that garden right there down by the road and since it’s technically my peppermint patch, the responsibility fell to me. 

Now you have to understand.  This is TEXAS.  It gets really, really, hot here.  If you have never experienced a Texas summer, imagine yourself in a sauna, then turn the heat up a few degrees and lock the door so that you can’t escape and that gives you a pretty good idea of what Texas in July is like!  There was no way I was going to weed that peppermint patch in 108 degree weather, so I went down in the evenings when it got a bit cooler (You know, like, 100 degrees or so) and decided to weed then.  For four nights in a row I would weed until it got too dark to see any longer.

On the fifth morning, Papa the Farmer said to me, “I was just looking at the peppermint patch.  I see you’ve been working hard, but I was just wondering… why did you pull all the peppermint out and leave the weeds?”

After spending hours working in the heat, I just knew I couldn’t have done what he was suggesting.  But when I went down to inspect… sure enough… the peppermint was sitting in the compost and I had a collection of carefully preserved weeds growing at my gate.  In my defense, the weed in question did look amazingly like peppermint… especially in the dark.  So that was the end of my peppermint adventure.  I gave up on that project.

But yesterday I noticed, it has decided to forgive me!  Look at these little baby leaves, coming back!

 

So there, world!  Maybe I do have potential to be a farmer’s wife after all!

This Old Hymnbook

I love old hymnbooks!  I can remember spending hours and hours… sometimes whole afternoons… as a teenager just sitting at the piano and playing old hymns.  If you come visit the Good Old Days Farm, inevitably you will find at least one old hymnbook sitting open on the piano… possibly two or three.

They aren’t all from the same denomination.  Mostly, I pick them up at junk shops. 

I wonder about the people who used to own these hymnbooks.  I imagine them walking into church carrying their Bibles and hymnbooks… standing to sing from it.  Some of my hymnbooks are so old that the original owners surely must be dead by now.  I wonder about their lives… and wonder what they would think if they knew that I still have … and use ….  their hymnbook. 

Take this one, for example.  I found it for $3 in a junkshop in Farmersville, Texas.  (Yes, there really is a Farmersville, Texas!  It’s the next town over from here.)
 
I would say this book has seen better days…  But it has a delightful surprise inside!   A glimpse of the soul of the person who owned it…

The pages are in perfect condition… except two pages.  On two pages, the words of the hymn are underlined in purple ink.  These old hymns have a way of speaking to the soul… and certainly these words spoke to somebody’s soul enough that they underlined them in purple.  What was this person going through when they underlined these particular words?

The words speak to my soul.  If you are going through a dark day, maybe they will speak to your soul, too.

 

Does Jesus Care?

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained
Too deeply for mirth or song,
As the burdens press, and the cares distress,
And the way grows weary and long?

Refrain:
Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares,
His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares.

Does Jesus care when my way is dark
With a nameless dread and fear?
As the daylight fades into deep night shades,
Does He care enough to be near?

Does Jesus care when I’ve tried and failed
To resist some temptation strong;
When for my deep grief there is no relief,
Though my tears flow all the night long?

Does Jesus care when I’ve said “goodbye”
To the dearest on earth to me,
And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks—
Is it aught to Him? Does He see? 

- Frank E. Graeff & J. Lincoln Hall










Near To the Heart of God

There is a place of quiet rest,
Near to the heart of God;
A place where sin cannot molest,
Near to the heart of God. 

Refrain:
O Jesus, blest Redeemer,
Sent from the heart of God;
Hold us, who wait before Thee,
Near to the heart of God.

There is a place of comfort sweet,
Near to the heart of God;
A place where we our Savior meet,
Near to the heart of God. 

 

There is a place of full release,
Near to the heart of God;
A place where all is joy and peace,
Near to the heart of God. 

-C.B. McAfee

(I believe these hymns are now in Public Domain. If you know otherwise, please let me know!)

How to Build a Pole-Bean Teepee (Tutorial)

Somewhere deep inside of me there is a lady who does really unusual things sometimes… and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s a really awesome mother who does fabulous things with her children, or if it’s because she’s a really big kid who never grew up.  I’m pretty sure it’s because she’s a big kid…

Last week I built a teepee for my children… because you know, as a child, I never had a teepee.  If you can’t have a teepee as a child, having one in your 30’s is definitely the next best thing.

Now let me tell you… I have never built anything in my entire life.  So if I can do this, you can do this too!
First, I sent the Little farmhands to gather up the tools:
 

(I really didn’t know which shovel I would need, so bringing them all seemed like it would save time!)

The next step was to take a pick and just sort of chop-chop a circle into the ground.  My circle was a bit oblong and I didn’t bother turning over the soil where I wanted the door to be.  (That’s right… we never did use the shovels!):

 

Next, I put 4 bamboo poles in the “corners” of the teepee.  I just gathered the poles at the top and tied them with twine.

Then I filled in the teepee by adding more bamboo poles and tying those poles up, around the poles that were already there.

(By the way, if you make one of these, make sure you take the stepladder out of the teepee before adding too many poles.  Otherwise you’ll have a stepladder permanently inside your teepee.  Yes, I learned this the hard way.)

 

Then I just wrapped twine around the poles (making sure to leave an opening for the door!).  The idea is that the beans will grow up the sides of the teepee and it will support the beans and provide a really unusual, shady place to hang out during the hot summer months!

 

Oh, but guess what.  When Papa the Farmer came home, we made him close his eyes and we brought him around to the side of the house and then said, “Surprise!  We made a teepee!”

And Papa the Farmer said, “Beans will never grow there!”  And he picked the whole thing up and moved it down into the garden.  It will add an interesting dimension to the garden, but when I think of all that time I spent digging up the ground!  

So maybe I will plant sunflowers there instead.  I think sunflowers will grow there!

Do you have anything unusual that adds dimension and interest to your garden?  I would love to hear about it!  Please don’t be shy!  Leave a comment!

Vegan Ice Cream

As the mother of a family on a vegan and gluten free diet, sometimes I just run out of ideas and I don’t know what to make for mealtime.  This morning was one of those days….
So I asked the Little Farmhands.  A more organized mother would not be polling her offspring for opinions, but that’s what I did.

“Let’s have ice cream!” they said.

Being the ever-so-responsible parent that I am, I said, “Yeah!  That sounds like a great idea!”

And it did sound like a great idea at the time!  But you know that inevitably, today will be the day that a grandparent calls and asks one of them, “So, what did you have for breakfast today?” And they’ll say, “Mama let us eat ice cream.”  And I’ll be jumping up and down in the background waving my arms wildly, yelling in a whisper, “No!!  Don’t tell her that!” 

But I didn’t think of that in the moment, so I said, “Yeah!  That sounds like a great idea!” 

Here’s how we did it….

Earlier this week Papa the Farmer came home with a couple of large brown bags of really brown, squishy bananas. 

We peeled them and laid them out on a cookie tray.  Then we put the whole tray in the freezer and let them freeze.

 

This morning, we pulled out our Champion Juicer. 

(Frugal note here!  If you want to make banana ice cream like this, but you don’t have a juicer, you can probably find a used one comparatively cheaply!  These juicers are top of the line so a lot of people buy them when they make a new year’s resolution to juice more or be healthier or whatever…  Then when the phase fizzles out, you see a lot of Champions on Craigslist and ebay, just looking for a new home!  If you want to be even more frugal, you can just skip the juicer altogether and just chop the bananas up and eat little frozen banana slices.  That’s pretty tasty, too!)

Now, are you ready for our very complicated recipe?

The next thing you do is run the frozen bananas through the juicer.  It comes out looking like this….

 

 Hey!  Who is sticking their finger in that!? 

Get your finger out of there!  Don’t you know I’m posting these pictures online later?!

We wanted to make carob “ice cream” so as we were running the bananas through the juicer we also added a scoop of peanut butter and about a cup of carob powder.

That’s it.

 

It’s important to have good help for the clean up phase. 

I may consider renting out our farm’s Dripper-Licker-Upper for a small fee.  Otherwise you’ll just have to lick up your own drips. 

To redeem myself in the “responsible mother” department, I didn’t just let them eat ice cream for breakfast.  We had air-popped popcorn, too (sprayed with a little olive oil and sea salt!)  After all, corn is technically a grain (not a vegetable).  That’s almost as good as cereal, isn’t it? 

 

We have a Winner!

A big “Thank You”
to all who participated in the Dryerballs Giveaway over this past week! 

It has been so much fun to read 

everybody’s comments!

 

I want to welcome those of you who have found our farm through this giveaway!  I've had so much fun “meeting” all of you!  As spring comes to the farm, I look forward to our posts becoming more about actual farm life and I'm also planning more great giveaways in the very near future!

This morning, our winners were selected via random.org.
And the winning entries are…
 

Entry # 24 - “Luv2Praise”

Entry # 14 - “StrongMamaof5”

Congratulations to you both!  I will be emailing each of you shortly to get the mailing address where you would like Nellie’s All-Naturals to send your dryerballs!