It's a RUFF life making Dog Biscuits!

Deb Spencer, aka 6635 StudeBaker of “History in the Baking”, is truly to blame.

Back in 2018, just before Thanksgiving, she came to Market with a wild idea – “so Jennifer, wouldn’t it be wonderful if your children took over making the dog biscuits on the Market? I’m happy to share my recipe and cookie cutters?!”

To which I wanted to reply, "Deb, that’s crazy talk– sure the children love to bake, but for US only! When I bake for our CSA members, what’s the children’s first question when they see me pull out the pizza pans? “Is this for us or for people?”, knowing they aren’t allowed to help unless it’s something only we are actually eating ;-)

Plus, at the time of Deb’s suggestion, our oldest was 7, Baby #5 was due that Spring, and with all the general craziness on our farm, there’s only so much Mommy can handle! Instead of that, of course I told her we’d love to!

Fast forward a few months, and the children were committed to working on Dog Biscuits for selling on the Market, specifically to save up so they could buy sheep and start a dye garden!

They had been enthralled as we read a series on Laura Ingalls’ great grandmother growing up as a little girl in Scotland, and all the talk about raising the sheep, then shearing, carding, waulking, spinning, dying and weaving the wool (if you ever enjoyed the Little House books and haven’t checked out the more recent series’ on the females going back in Laura’s family, oh are you missing out! We found them at the Troy and Piqua libraries!)

Now we have some incredible women on the Market who truly know what they’re doing when it comes to working with wool, from raising the sheep (Keba of Innisfree on the Stillwater and Brette of Grumpy Goat Experiment) to spinning the wool (both Keba and Deb) and creating beautiful woolen goods (all of the above as well as Lucy of Rosy Toes Designs), and of course the children know this is a weak spot for both Mommy and Daddy, as we’ve talked about adding sheep to our menagerie since we married.

My husband even built a gorgeous spinning wheel that I keep looking at and telling Keba someday we’ll make time for her to help me cultivate the knack for it (my first efforts were not pretty, folks) – but he also made the girls drop spindles for Christmas… a much simpler concept that still allows us to practice spinning and creating a beautiful yarn!

My little farmers have always wanted to be shepherds – they love bringing the cows in from the pasture, and who wouldn’t want lambs (especially when one of our girls is Mary)? They’ve even loved when we’ve accompanied my husband when he’s had a sheep shearing job – it is a grueling procedure but fascinating to watch!

The children also love helping in the kitchen (bring on the practical math applications!) and relished the idea that they would be able to make something to sell on their own. Down to doing the dishes and cleaning the counter (oh, if only the incentive of getting to play in the water would last til they were teenagers)! And we already know we have the perfect number of kitchen helpers for our cozy space – the two youngest sit on the counter, with the older two standing beside and the middle one in front of me… hard to picture but it’s our routine anyway, and plenty of jobs for all – many hands make light work, right? The more the merrier!

And oh is it “fun” math to both keep track of their ingredient costs and their sales, as well as practice their fractions and measurements! Plus hand-writing practice for neatly writing out the tags. And what child doesn’t love using cookie cutters? Molly, the two-year old when we started, may have been best at snitching samples and enjoying the crunch, but thank goodness I can tell myself they’re just crackers – organic ingredients, homemade chicken broth, wheat germ, brewer’s yeast, olive oil, flour – my goodness they’re healthy! And now our current youngest Anna is two, and has graduated to Master Taster and Stirrer!

And now the thought of adding to our current small flock of Icelandics is so exciting for the whole family – as is coming up with more "Icelandic"ish names, to join Thorbjorn, Thora, Greta, Gretl… naming the animals is such a fun aspect of farm life! For the cows the children come up with some logical progression of names so each line is obvious… Rose Red’s babies all have color names, Iris’ are I names, Tatiana’s line is Slavic names (she’s a shorthorn, and I CANNOT wait to have a “Vlad the Impaler” bull calf), we have a flower line, a fairy tale line, etc… (and yes, THEY may remember but Mommy has to write everything down, and Daddy smiles while he shakes his head).They can’t wait til Snow White has babies so they can name them after the Seven Dwarves – oh so fun!

To think our last name happens to lend itself perfectly to being makers of a tasty dog treat was just too much to overlook – we truly do have a Ruff life, and I mean that in the most wonderful way possible :-) Even if we don’t even own a dog!

So I’m happy to say we again will offer our infamous Ruff dog biscuits at the Holiday Night Market TOMORROW!

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