Page from My Journal: Chronicling A Day in the Life of A Reader

Hello! My name is Jenna and I am 16 years old; a twin to the oldest of 8 children. I have 5 sisters and 2 brothers and we are all homeschooled by our two wonderful Christian parents! We reside on a small 3 1/2 acre farm where we have some goats, a cow, a horse, pigs, chickens, cats and a dog. I enjoy making dairy products (butter, kefir, cheese, buttermilk, yogurt etc.) from the milk that we get and learning more about agriculture! Some of my other interests include reading, sewing, cooking/baking, crocheting and herbs. I am a Christian and pray that the Lord will use me to further His Kingdom in all that I do - I am so thankful for His strength and saving grace!

6:45am - I woke up late. I seem to be doing that a lot lately, but instead of getting upset at myself, I am trying to remember that my body must need more rest than I'm allowing. Downstairs, I clean the milk equipment and prepare to go outside for chores.

7:00am - Barn chores! I milk the goats and take care of that, then head back to the barn to milk the cow. One of her quarters is hard so Josh makes a peppermint/garlic balm to put on her udder. We are done and all cleaned up by 8:45am, so I sit down to eat a quick breakfast of granola.

9:00am - I help get Anna, Natalie and Laura dressed and ready for the day. They are so cute and have been letting me get them dressed in some cute jumpers which I also think are adorable. :) Then we help Dad, Josh and Caleb get on the road to pick up a new-to-us refrigerator and dishwasher.

9:30am - After a week of letting the weeds take over the garden, I finally get out there and weed around my 30 plants of cucumbers!! I planted sooooo many of them because I plan on making some Lacto-Fermented pickles and preserving some sweet and dill pickles too. Yummy!

10:45am - I am out in the garden for over an hour and Grace kindly helps me give all the weeds to the hogs...they love them. :) Momma made some more granola and I help her finish it. I also start culturing some buttermilk.

11:00am - The Fair is coming up very quickly, so I start working on my hog notebook...I get 1/3 of it completed.

12:15pm - Laura needs some one-on-one attention, so I take a break and play with her for a little bit. We go to the barn to see the animals, read some books, and then I push her on the swing.

12:45pm - We eat lunch together - the boys are still gone so it was just us girls which made things a bit more quiet!

1:00pm - I take a quick shower to get all of the dirt from the garden off of me. After that, I run around the house tidying up the kitchen, dining room and living room.

1:45pm - Mom brings me into town for my weekly volunteer work at a local food pantry. It is run by a Christian couple and we pray and do devotions before we start. Yesterday we talked about forgiveness, which I was able to apply later that day (the Lord is so faithful to bring encouragement while I try to apply what I learn!!).

6:45pm - I come home from the food pantry exhausted. :) It was a good exhausted though, because I was able to serve about 100 families there and hopefully bless them and be a testimony while I was at it! Most of the time I was bagging everyone's groceries, although I did a little bit of stocking shelves and helping people through their shopping.

7:00pm - Barn chores again. Lucy's (the cow) udder is much better and everything goes smoothly.

8:30pm - I visit for a few minutes with a family who stopped in to get the Algebra book that we used last year and then I finish chores.

9:00pm - After washing a few milk supplies, I get ready for bed. Then I read Psalm 19 - I love the last verse (14) that says: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer." That is my prayer: that everything I say and think will be acceptable in my Saviour's sight. I know that whenever I am bossy to my younger sister(s) or get annoyed at my little brother it is not acceptable in His sight, but through the Lord's grace and help, I will say encouraging things to them instead!