Sunday, January 18, 2009

Square Dance!

We had so much fun at our friend Neil's square dance birthday party today! We hadn't been to a square dance before, so it was a very neat experience. Below are the pictures that best capture the enjoyable afternoon with our friends:

Sullivan and Sheridan...
Elliott...Sullivan, Harrison, and Sheridan...
All of the following pictures include either Oliver (plaid shirt and jeans; the tallest boy in most of the pictures), me (yellow western shirt and denim skirt), or both of us...It was such a fun event and we hope we can go square dancing again soon!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Pioneer Challenge

The Alexander family has embarked on a new adventure: The Pioneer Challenge, in which we are trying to see how long we can go without buying groceries! We canned and froze a good amount of produce from the summer so we'll be eating that, along with the "reject" chickens. We are keeping a short list of the few items we may have to purchase throughout the duration of this challenge.

Occasionally, our customers have asked if we only eat food off of the farm. We actually can't afford to eat a lot of our farm products because it is worth so much more to us to sell them to our customers. Often, customers will comment about how wonderful the hams or sausage or other items are, and we are thrilled to know it's delicious because we haven't ever tried it!

We are on Day 3 of this new challenge and, so far, we've actually been eating better than usual! Last night we had baked chickens, butter beans, and buttermilk biscuits, tonight I'm planning to use the leftover chicken in chicken & dumplins and frying some of our okra, and tomorrow I'm hoping to make a brunswick stew. Also, we have french toast, homemade cinnamon raisin bread, and rice pudding for breakfasts, and our wheat bread for lunch. It will be fun to see how long we can continue!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Congratulations to the Wilson Family!

Our good friends, the Wilsons, are featured in the video below, which was just named The Virginian Pilot's #1 video of 2008!

A much higher quality view of this video can be found at its original location by clicking here.