Mountains, pears, and chai tea. (A visit to The Elliott Homestead)

I’m so thankful for the time we’ve been able to spend with the Elliott’s here in beautiful Wenatchee, WA.

It’s been a welcome reprieve to the craziness that has been our life since we moved and re-moved in the Bay Area.

I’m thankful for this restful/working vacation with good friends and good food here on The Elliott Homestead. I say that this is a restful/working vacation because The Elliott Homestead is a working farm, and Shaye wasn’t about to let two extra hands go to waste!

The main project this weekend was building a new enclosure for the pastured meat chickens. Chicken tractors aren’t too realistic here in the mountains, so Frank and Stuart drove posts into the ground and created an enclosure with chicken wire and rocks. Then Frank, Shaye, and I covered the top of the enclosure with deer netting to keep the chickens in and birds of prey out. Toby, their dog, just can’t get enough of the chickens! He watches over them all day long, happy as…well…a dog!

I love how farm work really brings out the PURPOSE for women’s work and men’s work. While the menfolk drove those posts into the ground, Shaye and I sat on the porch and cored pears to make pear butter while watching the children.

Gender stereotypes exists because, well, they make sense—or made more sense in the years when living off the land was the norm. And quite frankly, I’d rather by coring pears than driving posts into the ground. ;)

We’ve all been enjoying the pears, including Georgia. ;) She picked the biggest one out of the box for a snack.

Speaking of food, Shaye and I have made lots of yummy meals while we’ve been here. Well, mostly Shaye, since I’ve been cooking out of her AMAZING new cookbook anyway… But I made at least one Indian meal while we were here, and Shaye made yummy yummy naan to go with! :)

Our first morning here, we had an amazing breakfast of sautéed potatoes, onions, and greens topped with fried-runny-yolked-eggs. Stuart made coffee, freshly ground, of course. Shaye had the wonderful idea to throw together a dinner of purple cabbage topped with sliced raw carrots, ground beef, caramelized onions, and a dressing of olive oil, miso, apple cider vinegar, and honey. And, of course, grape kombucha on the side! ;) She also made a roast in the pressure cooker with grilled vegetables straight from the garden!

Shaye made the most delicious cheese & herb “ugly biscuits.” Stuart ate the most of them. Shaye’s bread is his kryptonite!

Shaye made chai tea concentrate and canned 14 quarts of pears and a gallon of pear butter, AND she made pear cobbler. (Well, whaddaya gonna do with 90 lbs of pears?!)

You can find the recipe for all of these things and more in Shaye’s new cookbook, “From Scratch,” which (at the time of this post) is over 50% off on Amazon for the print version! Check it out here.

Sophie came with us, of course, and she’s been enjoying the mountain view (as have we!).

Oh! And besides being a future chiropractor, Frank is also a professional chicken wrangler! Shaye needed to catch two roosters, so Frank caught them both—at once! Yep. He’s awesome, and he’s mine. ;)

Remember that free antique table I got a few weeks ago? Well, Shaye helped me revamp it by letting me use some of her chalk paint! The color is “celery.” Doesn’t it look so happy? :)

On Sunday, we were able to attend church with the Elliott’s. The most noticeable, unique thing about their church is that there was an abundance of children in the service. In some rows there were three adults and 8 kids! I saw multiple families with 3 or more children. The pastor made it a point to engage the children in the lesson by asking them questions for comprehension. He even called on them by name, showing that he knew them. Throughout the service, you could hear baby and small children noises, and women got up and went to the back to breastfeed.

It was comfortable and beautiful and real. And it was amazing to meet a community that so clearly values its children and sees them as blessings. It was refreshing to see a community that appreciates what children have to offer and treated them as important members of the church body instead of segregating them to a children’s section. I loved the emphasis on family.

Speaking of families, did I mention that the Elliott family is one of my favorites? I’m full of Georgia hugs and kisses, Owen smiles and slobber, Shaye’s bread and comfort food, and Stuart’s intellectual conversations. I thank God for good food and good friends. May you, dear readers, be blessed with such things, as well.