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A crispy roast chicken is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to feed a family. If you’re like me, you need a hands-off type of dinner that you can go-to on a regular basis, and this chicken never fails in that department. The seasonings and coordinating vegetables are interchangeable, so you can make this go any direction you like, based on what your family loves or what you have in your pantry. Save yourself an extra meal prep for the week and go ahead and cook 2 chickens at once if you like- then serve one and cut the other up for tacos, salads, sandwiches, or whatever you like 🙂

This recipe is so simple, and it’s easy to customize. I change it up and marinate my chicken for a few hours (1/4 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup olive oil, 6 cloves garlic, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 tablespoon cumin, a handful of salt, 1 bunch of cilantro- all pulsed through the blender) before roasting over carrots and onions. I hold back about 1/2 cup of that marinade and pour it over rice, then squeeze a couple of limes on top. It makes the best low-involvement dinner, and everyone always wants seconds.

You can take this chicken and cut it up into chunks for chicken pot pie, slice it and serve over salads, chop it and coat in barbecue sauce for sandwiches, or roast with the lid on for steamed shreddable chicken for enchiladas. The possibilities are endless, and once it goes in the oven you have over an hour of time back on your hands.

Once dinner is over, be sure to save the carcass and put it back in your dutch oven- because all you have to do is cover it in water, add a splash of apple cider vinegar, a little more salt and some black peppercorns- and you’re ready to let it simmer overnight for bone broth. I keep my broth in a 250*F oven overnight, then strain it into a large bowl in the morning before pouring it up into jars. This way we get a few quarts of bone broth every time I make a chicken- and it’s much easier to wash that dutch oven after it’s simmered in broth all night long. I use bone broth in lots of ways- cooking potatoes for mashed potatoes, cooking rice, making sauces or soups, even drinking it to enjoy the health benefits. The point is that one night of a cooked chicken can feed your family far beyond just one meal.

Have you tried roasting a chicken? If it’s not on your regular meal plan for your family, I’d encourage you to add it! It’s cheaper to buy whole chicken vs. cut breasts, and it uses the whole animal, which as a farmer, is one of the best ways for us to respect the sacrifice of that bird. I hope you’ll give this recipe a try!

We’ve made it! We had a pretty mild winter, and while it’s been slow to show its face, spring has finally sprung at Seven Wonders. We have long winters here, and the high desert means we get very cold temps through the nights well into the summer. Our growing season is just 67 days…which means while the rest of the world is getting their gardens planted, we’re just barely waking up from under the snow.

I’m not the world’s most passionate gardener- and it takes a lot of passion to grow things where we live. I’d rather spend my time with the animals, prepping our soil for gardening and hay growing with their amazing contributions. So for us, spring looks like digging through all the spent hay and manure that’s accumulated through the winter, and preparing our animals for the two major events on our farm: calving for the younger cows, and butchering for the older ones. The circle of life holds us close here, and it’s both brutal and beautiful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

For prepping our pastures, Mike uses our skid steer (we have a Kubota SSV 65) to scoop the manure from our compost heap and around the main pen where they hang out, and deposits it around our pasture. Then a neighbor who has an apparatus for dragging manure comes and drags it through our pastures, breaking up the manure that’s been left there throughout the winter as well. It’s amazing how this process feeds our otherwise pitiful rocky soil and prepares it for growing hay.

For the cows, I make sure each of our cows who are preparing for spring calving is set up for success. The milk cows are dried off 2 months before calving, meaning we slowly stop milking them (usually over a week, I just take less each day until they’ve run dry). For both beef and milk cows, we make sure they have access to minerals and have been dewormed with our herbal dewormer (I love molly’s herbals from mollysherbals.com). I check my calving kits (which are mostly just gloves, lubricant, and old towels), and I make sure I have a gallon of molasses on-hand for mamas after birth (I give 16 oz. molasses per 5 gallons of water as soon as I see them after calving- often the morning after because I wake up to a happy calf and its mama).

I try to keep 3 cows to calve in spring (between May and June) and 3 cows to calve in fall (usually September to October). This typically lets me have milk throughout the year, so long as cows are bred on time. If (like this year) we have issues with breeding timing, I have found that I can buy quality cows from a nearby dairy to get me through our dry periods, and once my main cows calve, I sell the short term cows as trained hand-milk cows to local homesteaders. I love this option so much that I’ve actually started a milk cow business! So far I’ve sold 7 milk cows to local homesteaders, and I’m planning on selling at least a dozen more before the end of the year. By doing this I help a dairyman who loves his cows avoid sending those that don’t fit the mold of the dairy industry to the auction, and I train and place them with families who are looking for well-bred, gentle dairy cows for their families and communities. It’s been a beautiful way to fill a need, and it fills my spirit and helps our family financially. What a blessing.

The hardest part of this season is butchering. We have a mobile butcher come to our farm twice a year, and we try to harvest 2-3 cows each time. The mobile butcher is a blessing to me- they come and cull my cows right here on the farm, and they can dispatch them at a distance; meaning my cows can be peacefully grazing in our pasture one second, and be gone the next. They never suffer or know stress. We harvest every bit of our cows that we can, and what isn’t turned into food (or supplements like collagen and tallow) for us becomes food for our soil. We can nourish our entire farm, and a lot of our community, with their contributions. It’s sad for me to say goodbye to these beautiful creatures we’ve cared for, but I’m so grateful for all the ways their sacrifice extends their life through connection to so many new living things.

We’re in our fourth year on the farm now, and it’s the time when we realize we’re in this for the long haul. Not because we subscribe to someone else’s farming method, but because we’re finding our own. So many common “homestead” things don’t work for us, but we’re carving out a road for ourselves. It’s amazing how this works. I’m laughing at my notes from all the homesteading books I read in the years before the farm- so little of what I thought would be our method has actually transpired. But in the space of that has been enormous self-discovery. We’ve become braver. We’ve become innovators and ingenues. My beliefs and ideals have been challenged, but I think we’ve all come through stronger in what we believe and stand for than I ever could have imagined. It’s hard to be this close to our food- and yet it’s the only way I want to live, for now and forever. We can do hard things! And hard things done in great love are always worth doing.

xoxo~ Lauren

January has arrived and filled our farm with all the cozy vibes that come with lots of fresh-fallen snow, animals happily hunkered down in their straw beds, and never-ending outdoor fun for the children and the dogs.

Personally, I love the turning of the calendar year. I keep a farm journal with a section for each specific species of animal, tracking their breeding, feeding, birthing, milk production (or meat/egg production) and all our farm projects. It makes it easy for me to make good decisions for our farm this way- because otherwise this can quickly become an extremely expensive hobby vs a farm that pays for itself. We found a new hay supplier after drowning in hay costs for the last two years, and I’m excited to see how our cost savings affect our bottom line in this new year.

I also love using this season to reflect and reset my priorities. My children are early risers (most of them before 6:00 am) and so rather than having early morning time to myself, I spend my mornings chatting with them by the fire about their goals and dreams, and tell them what Mike and I are dreaming of.

In 2023 my word for the year was healing. I had two major surgeries and truly needed to focus on rebuilding my body after years of inflammation and depletion. Thankfully, the farm allowed me to do that. I spent time with friends doing cold plunges in the river, ate more protein and gut healing foods, nourished my spirit by reading with my children, and even found my energy levels back to normal- to the point that I wrote a cookbook!

All that healing has left me feeling so blessed- but also helped me recognize the areas that need tending to in my every day life. We can’t spend our entire lives on a healing journey, you guys. Sure, healing can be part of our journey, but other things have to happen. And so this year, my word for 2024 is anchored. The definition is “rooted in a source of security or stability.” For me, this looks like truly setting down rooted routines so that my children know what to expect day to day.

This is hard for me! As I prayed over the way I spend my time each day, and as I discussed this with my husband, I realized I leave him out a good bit too. Mike travels a lot for work, and it’s easy for me to identify our home as my office and my territory; for us to split up duties and just operate in silos. And that’s not what I want for myself, for Mike, or for my family. So we made a commitment to incorporate more intentional togetherness this year.

Here’s how some of that breaks down:

• Regular Bible and bedtime WITH my husband (I’m the worst about staying up all night doing projects) we started this in December and it’s so life-giving. We read a Psalm and a chapter of another book (right now we’re in Ecclesiastes, before we read Proverbs) each night. Then we head to bed together. Anything I haven’t finished just has to wait for tomorrow.
• Reading together with kids at bedtime (we’ve gotten into the bad habit of dad and the kids watching football while mom does dishes and makes bread- now Mike is doing dishes when he’s home, and kids are doing dishes when he’s not, so I can make bread and be done at a decent time for reading)
• Organized daily cleaning routines instead of mom cleaning all night long, we’ve split chores into days of the week, so the house is clean by our Shabbat on Saturday, and the kids are helping me do these after school each day
• Homeschool routines since my kids are early risers, and since it’s so cold here, we’re tackling schoolwork until the sun comes over the mountain behind our farm, so we can milk in the warmth of the sunshine (when it will be 20*F instead of 5*F)
• Dedicated time with my teenager I call this “Coffee with Cora.” Cora makes great coffee and we get to talk about whatever’s on her mind. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to have together time with teens.
• Continued wellness routines For me this looks like weekly cold plunges, daily vitamins and supplements, 2-3 meals a day (which is a struggle for me- but I’m working on it), journal time, and time in nature every day- some with and some without my children.

I started working on these routines in December when I stepped away from social media- not on purpose, but just out of necessity. I found that with a wide-spread age group of children at home, and managing the farm primarily by myself, and focusing on my marriage with a husband who’s job keeps him on the road, it’s hard to be all the things to other people. Home has to win first.

And as I started letting go of the things that were not the most necessary of my focuses, I found that honestly, without good routines, it was still hard for me to take care of everything without staying up all night, every night. I’m pleased to report though, that with solid routines in place, the days go much smoother, and not surprisingly, I get so much more done.

Below you’ll find an example of our daily routine as it stands now, after about a month of working at it, plus you can follow the link to my free editable weekly household cleaning routine.

Weekly Chore Template

I hope your 2024 is off to a blessed start. It’s never too late to start fresh.

I love home-centered learning. I can remember attending a homeschooling conference where a speaker said, “you’ll never find success if your reason for homeschooling is simply to not do something the world is doing. You have to anchor your why in what you are doing.”

This really struck me. We don’t homeschool because of all the issues with compulsory schooling- although I certainly see enough issues to make me to stick with homeschooling even on the hardest days. We homeschool because we love spending time with our children, and we want them to live a life rooted in beauty and goodness that can be seen through a lifetime of learning. Homeschooling has allowed me to read more, explore more, and bond more with my children than any other activity we’ve done together.

But with seven children, four of them school-aged and 2 more ready for preschool learning, I have to be extremely intentional with our time together. Personally, I subscribe to an eclectic learning style that tends to be a blend of the Classical, Charlotte Mason, and Unschooling homeschool methods. For us, that looks like following a spine from Classical Conversations, using books and hands on learning to support what material we’re discovering, and allowing for deviations from our focuses as my children’s interests lead us in different directions.

Example:

We begin with history, and follow a 3-year cycle.

Year 1 we study ancient history and world civilizations. In this year we also study biology, botany, and zoology using unit studies and nature study. We will also look to fine arts and study ancient, gothic, and renaissance art, as well as world geography.

Year 2 we study medieval to modern world history. This is hugely expansive, and so as we repeat the cycles, I go into more depth the 2nd and 3rd rotations. In cycle 2 we also study ecology, astronomy, and physical science. In fine arts we look at Baroque, Neoclassical, and Romantic periods, and we go further into world geography and the changes in the geopolitical environment through modern history.

Year 3 we study US history. In science we look at anatomy, chemistry, and biblical cosmology vs. the secular scientific study of origins of the universe. In fine arts we study modern art and look at modern composers, paying special attention to artists and composers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. (I work hard to find rich and diverse sources for our history, art, and literature studies- while I do this with each cycle, I find it to be far easier when studying the modern era.)

My favorite resources for these are Story of the World for history, The Good and Beautiful for science unit studies (all except Biblical cosmology), book lists from The Peaceful Press, Stories of Color, and Heritage Mom Blog (all on instagram).

We make all this happen in a pretty orderly fashion. Each day, every child does math and reading/language arts. For math, I use Saxon math for all grades, and for reading/language arts I use IEW- the Institute for Excellence in Writing. We also read stories from The Golden Children’s Bible that correspond to our weekly Torah portions. (We follow the torah portions outlined at virtualhousechurch.com)

After we’ve done math, language arts, and Bible time, we rotate through a loop:

Monday: History- we read a chapter from Story of the World, identify the locations in that chapter on an atlas, review places we learned about previously, and do a hands-on activity. We may also do a notebooking page, do some research if the kids have questions, or make an addition to our history timeline chart.

Tuesday: Science- we do a lesson and experiment from one of our Good and Beautiful unit studies, sketch or draw from what we’ve studied, and read picture books that relate to the story. We recently bought a Yoto Player for our children- it’s an audiobook player for children with no screens and no ads- and it has options to buy science focused audio-stories. We are enjoying the Brain Bots studies of the human body on the Yoto as we sketch our way through the systems of the body.

Wednesday: Fine Arts- we read folk tales and fables or works from authors in the period of history we’re studying. I include our family poetry tea time on these days, as well as an artist study and a composer study. We spend the entire Wednesday listening to good books, drawing or painting like a famous artist, and listening to good music. We spent the first portion of this year listening to indigenous American fables and folk tales, and we’re beginning to listen to early American folk music and hymns.

Thursday: Nature Study- we loosely follow the guides from Treehouse Schoolhouse. I simply choose a lesson from the current season that best fits what’s happening on our farm and the other things we’re studying, and we follow that lesson. This might look like a nature walk on our property, a sketch or collage in response to what we’ve seen, and a notebooking page with lots of facts we’ve discovered, or even a cooking project with something from the farm.

We don’t do school on Fridays, because we’re preparing for Shabbat on Saturday. Our Fridays are spent cooking meals for the weekend, cleaning the house, and tackling small projects around the house. I consider all of this to be life-learning: we pay bills, clean out the fridge and assess what we have and what we need, write the menu and the grocery list for the next week, get laundry folded and put away, and finalize the big projects we need to tackle on Sunday. This lets us enjoy a full day of rest on Sundays, and it keeps my children in a mindset of working hard and planning with the reward of rest always ahead of them.

I do have a high schooler in my homeschool now- and her work is much more intense than what is outlined here. She’s studying traditional logic, Spanish (from an old textbook of mine), AP US History, Physical Science, Algebra 1, and American Literature and composition. She can do much of her study independently, and I just plan to spend 15-30 minutes with her on math and composition. Otherwise I’m available to her for discussion and reviewing her work throughout the day, and she studies in the same room with us as I read and review with her younger siblings.

My goal as I teach each of my children is not to ensure they have every single fact we study memorized, but that they have an impression of the big picture on their minds. As we repeat each cycle, more details imprint on them, and their own curiosity often directs us to learn more. I also tend to find that when we follow their interests, our discoveries are more likely to stay with them- so I encourage my children to ask questions and I try to offer them opportunities to research and create presentations for the family based on their findings.

Our days aren’t perfect and smooth-flowing, but they are definitely guided and predictable. And because they know what we’ll do each day, it’s easier for me to keep us on a general track week to week, month to month, and year to year, even when we have to make shifts due to family circumstances.

Maintaining a starter is almost always the challenge that stops potential home bakers from tackling sourdough. There are so many posts on the internet encouraging homemakers and home cooks alike to develop a level of maintenance and care for their starter that rivals what some people do for their children or their dogs.

But friends, it really isn’t that complicated.

A sourdough starter is a living culture of yeast and bacteria- it wants to be alive! It’s true that like all living things, it needs to be fed and cared for…but I don’t believe that it’s nearly as complicated as the interwebs would have us believe. The real trick is taking the time up front to allow your starter to mature and become accustomed to your environment. This means the difference maker is you, and your own stick-to-it-iveness.

Making your own starter

To make your own sourdough starter, I recommend beginning with 20g of flour and 20g of water. Mix this combination together and store it in a jar with a loose fitting lid- I prefer a Weck jar with a glass lid resting on top, but you can use a mason jar with just the metal lid resting on top. In the morning retain 20g of this slurry, discarding the rest into your trash (not your drain!). Now feed 40g flour and 40g water to your 20g of starter, mix into a slurry, and allow it to rest in its jar with a loose fitting lid.

In the morning, retain 30g of the original starter and discard the rest. Feed 50g of flour and 50g of water and mix thoroughly, add back to your jar and cover with its lid. Repeat this process every day for two weeks, or until you begin to see your starter thicken into a rich, bubbly pancake batter texture. I find that taking 2-3 weeks to develop this starter is well worth it- because the microbes in this mixture are not only active, they’re also trained to your specific home environment and routine.

I live at 6500 feet elevation in the high desert of Utah. My starter took a great deal of time to get comfortable in this harsh environment, but now that it’s adapted, it needs no special treatment or procedures to stay active and happy. If you can maintain a strong and consistent routine in the beginning, you will grow all the right microbes to keep your starter going in a way that best serves YOU.

Here’s the schedule:

Day one: 20g flour, 20g water, mixed together and added to your jar

Day two: keep 20g of yesterday’s mixture, discard the rest. Add 40g flour and 40g water to what you retained of your starter. Keep in your jar, lightly covered with lid.

Day three: keep 30g of your starter and discard the rest. Add 50g flour and 50g water to your starter. Mix well and store in your jar, lightly covered with lid.

Day four-fifteen (or longer): keep 30g of your starter and discard the rest. Add 50g flour and 50g water to your retained starter. Mix well and store in your jar, lightly covered with the lid. Continue this routine daily until your starter thickens into a bubbly rising starter, doubling in size in the first 12 hours after feeding. It may take up to 3-4 weeks! Don’t stop!

There are many blogs that will tell you to feed twice a day or use special flours- I’d tell you to use the flour you plan to use the most for baking- because those are the microbes you want to harvest to fuel your starter. And I never feed twice a day because that’s a little high-maintenance for me. Nope, I prefer to feed at night before I put kids to bed, so I can follow up with my baking after they’re in bed and still get to bed myself.

My Feeding Schedule

I prepare my dough and feed my starter at the same time- meaning whenever I feed my starter, I go ahead and bake for my family. My feeding schedule allows me to retain enough starter for a complete feeding, while also preparing recipes using 200g of starter. For me this looks like one 100g starter sandwich loaf and one 100g artisan loaf (or batch of cinnamon rolls, or pizza dough, or…the list continues).

Here’s what that looks like:

Feeding the starter: 70g starter, 115g flour, 115g water

I combine my starter, flour, and water in a bowl and then wash my jar for a fresh start every time. Then I add my newly fed starter back to my clean jar and mark its starting level with a rubber band. Now I can clearly see its rise and fall.

After I’ve measured out my starter, I also measure out 100g into one mixing bowl and 100g of starter into another bowl. I use these as the base for whatever bread I need for family meals in the next two days. This is usually sandwich bread and some sort of breakfast item like bagels or babka, or dinner rolls or pizza dough.

By following this schedule, I can keep my starter on the counter and plan on feeding it every other day when I prepare my loaves. If I didn’t want to bake two separate recipes (or if I needed some other amount of starter) I can pour whatever starter I’m not using into a jar for the fridge as discard. I don’t have discard much, but when I do it goes to the fridge into my discard jar. Eventually I have enough to make my browned butter discard cookies, which are SO delicious and so simple to make ahead and freeze.

One of my favorite contributions to our homestead is offsetting our costs at the grocery store. Aside from raising our own meat (a HUGE cost savings!) we’ve also gotten to a place where I can produce all of the dairy and bread we consume. That’s a huge savings for a family our size.

Sourdough breadmaking isn’t just limited to beautifully-scored artisan loaves; it can also be used for making sandwich bread, pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, tortillas, and so much more. And like sourdough, cheesemaking is an old skill that requires a great deal of patience and practice, but it’s actually not as difficult as one might imagine. In fact, once you’ve made one or two simple cheeses, you can be well on your way to replacing all (or at least a good bit of) the dairy your family consumes.

I’m excited to finally be able to teach these beautiful homesteading arts- stay tuned for my Sourdough for Everyone class, debuting in December 2023, and my cheesemaking class coming in Spring 2024. These will be offered as a fully online video course, with a PDF companion loaded with recipes, techniques, full supply lists, and my own notes from experience.

I believe so whole-heartedly that anyone can learn these skills. These courses are not intended to show expertise in a narrow and perfection-minded way- instead they’re designed to help you build your confidence so that YOU can customize your own recipes and routines to fit your lifestyle. Because I know you can do it if you have the desire and the work ethic to practice.

I hope you’ll join me for one (or more)!

One of the best ways to support your local farmer AND know the quality of your meat is to order a whole or half cow from your local butcher or directly from the farm itself. When you place your order, you’ll most likely be given a list of cuts to choose from. While every cow has a variety of steaks and roasts to choose from, it’s also important to remember that 50-60% of your order will be made of ground beef. But that doesn’t limit your options! Here are my favorite cuts to request when we harvest our own beef:

From the chuck/front sections of the cow, I prefer flat iron steak and chuck roasts in 3 lb cuts. This lets me have a variety of steaks for fajitas as well as roasts for slow cooking. This portion of the cow also includes brisket which I ask to be cut in half.

Next is the rib and short plate section of the cow, where we get ribeyes, prime rib, rib roasts, short ribs and back ribs, and skirt steaks. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to get all these cuts from one cow, but choose a few options and talk with your butcher about how much you’re working with and what your priorities are. I actually forego the short ribs and request beef bacon instead, and I’m never sorry. Because our family likes steaks and we tend to have plentiful cuts of chuck for roasts, I skip the prime rib and ribeye roasts and go with ribeye steaks, beef bacon, and skirt steak.

Up next is the loin, sirloin and flank sections of the cow. From these cuts we have lots of options, but my favorites are New York steaks (also called strip steak), filet mignon, whole tenderloin, tri-tip steak and roast, sirloin steaks, flank steaks, and flap steaks (which my butcher calls ranchera- used for the best carne asada!) You should actually be able to request all of these cuts, with the exception of having to choose either a whole tenderloin or several filet mignon cuts (bc filets are just cut versions of the whole tenderloin).

Last is the round or rear section of the cow. This includes your rump roast, top and bottom round roasts, London broil, and round steaks. I prefer to have several cuts of round steak for making beef jerky, and I forgo several round roasts in favor of London broil. Round roasts and London broil make amazing lunch meat! And rump roast is another excellent cut for the slow cooker.

When it comes to ground beef, you can also request for your butcher to make hamburger patties, Polish or Italian sausage, or even beef chorizo or breakfast sausage. Don’t be afraid to ask your butcher what he recommends or prefers himself when there’s an abundance of ground beef. I’ve tried so many delicious options that I’ll never miss an opportunity to try a new sausage blend or seasoned hamburger patty option. These make for quick and flavorful dinners with limited prep from me.

The joy of farm fresh beef in a quantity as large as a whole or half cow also means learning new cooking skills and bringing a level of variety to your table that’s atypical for the modern table. Be sure to stay tuned for my recipes and tips for cooking each of the cuts of beef in a way you and your family can enjoy, any night of the week.