There must be something with the season changes that makes us women go into a nesting mode at this time of year. Either that or the thought of 8 weeks of football practice and starting another year of home school has me scrambling to make life easier on myself. My grande plan of attack is in creating, yet again and hopefully actually using, a menu for our school days. In past years we have used a 4 day 2 week rotating lunch menu that we use during the school year. I usually buy my groceries in bulk at Aldis, normally 1-2 months at a time, so I am used to stocking up. We have designated a big Rubbermaid tote as our "school tote" and keep our school food in there and not for general use. The theory is that the kids can rotate making lunches as I finish working with the others. We have very simple meals. Week 1:
Monday~Baked ham and cheese sandwich, tomato soup, fruit
Tuesday~ Mac and Cheese with hot dogs and a veggie
Wednesday~ Egg and tortilla wrap, summer sausage, yogurt and fruit
Thursday~ Sloppy joes, baked beans, pudding
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Week 2:
Monday~ Cold sandwich, fruit
Tuesday~ Homemade pizza
Wednesday~ Ramen noodles, summer sausage, veggie
Thursday~ Kalua Pork (recipe below), pasta salad
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All of the ingredients can be easily stored in our tote or in the freezer for a couple of months at a time. Eggs are normally aplenty around here, as is pork for the Kalua Pork. We freeze the sloppy joes ahead of time and take out enough to double as lunches (as well as the Kalua pork) on Friday. So, being the plan seems to work so well we decided to come up with a 4 day 2 week rotating supper menu that we could make ahead and freeze. Our school schedule only runs Monday thru Thursday since Rob is home every Friday. The beauty of this plan is that I still have 3 days a week that I can cook whatever I want to but during the school days I don't have to worry about what to cook. If we get tired of the current menu we can always come up with a different 2 week menu. Today was the big cook off day. Our supper menu this time around is as follows (click on the links for the recipes):
Week 1:
Monday~Roast with veggies
Tuesday~ Chicken and Broccoli hotdish (recipe below) with Rice
Wednesday~Cheese and olive stuffed meatloaf (recipe below), Scalloped potatoes
Thursday~ Baked Pork chops, applesauce, veggie
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Week 2:
Monday~ Baked Spaghetti (recipe below) and veggie
Tuesday~ Tator Tot Hotdish, (not your traditional tomato based hot dish, this one has brats, cheese and sour cream~ yummy!) veggie
Wednesday~Still trying to figure out this day
Thursday~ Chili or Taco Soup
We started by thawing pounds and pounds of hamburger and getting out all of the cooking supplies. Trent likes to make the tator tot hotdish so I started him with cutting up brats. 
I boiled a bag of chicken breasts in a pot of water and chicken bouillon cubes then let them cool and cut them up for the start of the Chicken and Broccoli hotdish. Grace and Micah helped layer the cheese.
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Chicken and Broccoli Hotdish
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3#'s Chicken breast, cooked and cut into bite size pieces
1 package of frozen broccoli
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 can milk
1/2 cup mayonnaise
8 slices american cheese
1 pkg dried onion rings
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Layer chicken, broccoli and water chestnuts in a 9x13 pan. Cover with cheese slices. Combine cream of mushroom soup, milk and mayonnaise and pour over hotdish. Cover and bake for 40 mn at 350 degrees. Sprinkle dried onion rings on top and bake uncovered another 10 mn. Serve over white rice.
Cole manned the stove and kept us supplied with browned hamburger so we could make chili, taco soup and sloppy joes.
Grace and Micah sliced olives for our Baked Spaghetti hotdishes. Rather than making a traditional Lasagna I just lay cooked spaghetti noodles in a 9x13 pan, cover with hamburger and spaghetti sauce, then sprinkle with shredded mozzarella, shredded cheddar and Parmesan and then top with black olives. Bake until cooked through.
Cheese and Olive stuffed Meatloaf
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Make your favorite meatloaf recipe~ I always make mine a bit different depending on what I have on hand, but traditionally 2# hamburger, broken up saltines, (or dried bread crumbs or even oatmeal), a couple of eggs, ketchup, chopped onions or dry onion soup mix and seasonings. Roll your meatloaf on a piece of tinfoil into a rectangle and then top with shredded cheddar cheese and black olives. Roll your meatloaf up, jelly roll style, tucking in the ends. Seal the tinfoil around the meatloaf roll and bake in a bread pan. 350 for about 40 minutes or until cooked through, drain grease off after 20 mn.
We froze 3 pans of chicken and broccoli hotdish, 3 pans of baked spaghetti, 3 pans of tator tot hotdish, 2 generous batches of chili, 1 generous batch of taco soup, and 3 gallon bags of sloppy joes. 3 servings of meatloaf is in the plans for tonight to get ready for the freezer. Between the crock pot meals and all the frozen dishes I should have about 6 weeks of school day suppers in the freezer ready to make my life easier. Oh yes, and that Kalua Pork recipe:
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Kalua Pork (A delicious pulled pork sandwich recipe)
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3# pork roast
1 bottle liquid smoke
1/2 cup water
1 tsp salt
1 Tblsp garlic powder
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Cook in a crockpot for 4-8 hours. Pull pork apart and serve on buns. Enjoy!
And since I was freezing so much ahead I made up a double batch of Rhubarb Slushies. Whew! Now what's for supper tonight??
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Good thing Trent knows how to start the skidsteer and hook up the bucket. How do 12 year old boys just know how to do all these things? 
I found a few more helpers to pull some weeds. 
Then when they all mysteriously disappeared I had to drive the skidsteer all by myself and finish loading and hauling the rest of the pieces. 
Oooooohhh! I am liking it! And if it wasn't for having to run into town for football practice and a library trip I could have actually finished this project before Rob got home and caught me using his level. 
Ya know~ I am dreaming up a few more places for a cement patio now that I think about it.
Things like Nubians can and do breed in July and how high a buck really can jump when he is determined. This year we are a bit wiser (we think) and hope to eliminate those issues and breed when we want the goats bred. So in preparation for that besides taller buck pens we have started now to get our does into prime shape for their little upcoming rendezvous with our handsome buck. 
We will have 6 does to breed this fall. One of those does being registered (yippee!), 4 of them being purebred Nubians, and 2 of them high percentage crosses all with amazing udders and only 1 first timer (double yippee!). All except for one of the does is dried up from milk production and they are all on a good alfalfa and extra feed until the special day comes. We separated Asha and Susan to start weaning and drying Susan off. 
I am going to try feeding dry raspberry leaves as a little experiment this year as well. The raspberry leaves are supposed to help all those internal female organs so we can hope for twins and even triplets this year. We shall see how it works. In a couple of weeks I will also give everybody a good worming and feet trimming and then on October 1st put Mr. Cadillac (our first ever registered spotted buck) into the girl pen. 
Then we wait 5 months and see what God chooses to provide. After 4 years of waiting to define our goat plans they are now just a few months away from reality. And hopefully, hopefully, the barn will be totally remodeled and I will even have real stalls and a milking parlor before those little kids are due. Yippee!!
The kids worked hard on lots of informational posters, cards and stories as well. 
I entered 2 little quilts. Micah's frog quilt received first place which tickled me pink because it's hard to get a first in the quilting department. My tear-my-hair-out crazy quilt received third place. They always get me on my binding corners and I realized too late that I sewed the corners wrong on the binding and just did not have the heart to tear it all out by the time I noticed. So I was content to take third.
Now this hay business has been only a dream for years and years ever since we brought home our first little free jersey bull calf and realized we really enjoyed this farming life. All those years we have had to sink any profit we thought we could make right back into buying hay and grain to sustain the animals until the next butcher date as we have not had enough acreage until we bought the farm so we could raise our own crops. 
Now 4 years later we are finally getting our first real crop of hay. The first 2 growing seasons my big brother David planted corn to break up the fields that had not been planted or worked in 20 years. Last year we invested the money into planting two fields into alfalfa only to have a big wind storm come up the next day and blow away nearly all of our seed. 
We got a whole whopping 35 square bales last summer and pastured it off for the rest of the season, hoping and praying that maybe, just maybe, some alfalfa would come back. A bit of the alfalfa came back this spring but not much. We let it grow to see what would come of it and got 4 large round bales off of first crop. The fields still weren't very thick or lush but with all the rain we have had what was there grew fairly well. 
Being we missed the fall planting date before second crop could be cut we decided to just let the field grow so we could at least take some more hay off of it and will hope to be able to invest in planting alfalfa next spring again. We were able to get 150+ square bales off of these two fields~ yippee! 
Cole worked so hard along side Rob to help load all those bales on the wagon as Russell baled. 
They even let Micah, Grace and I ride along. So fun! 
I am a true farm girl at heart. 
Once all that hay is baled it's time to get it all into the haymow. They even let me help with that.
