From the Field to the Loft

On Friday afternoon, I thought of one of Aesop's fables entitled the Ant and the Grasshopper that I used to read as a boy.  It taught of the virtues of hard work and expending effort now to plan for needs in the future.  I think that story is a good one.  The reason I was thinking of that fable was our task for the afternoon - picking up hay!

Right now, despite the heat and lack of rainfall, the cows and goats still have grass to eat.  That could quickly change if we don't get rain soon.  As insurance, I stopped mowing a portion of the yard so we will have some extra grass if the pasture peters out.  Putting in hard work now and planning now for the winter when there is no grass is always the smart play.

We have purchase hay from the same family down the road for a decade and a half now, and I got a call from out neighbor down the road that they'd be baling hay.  If we show up and pick up bales behind the baler, the price per bale is $8. If we pick it up from their barn after they collected it, the price is $9 per bale.  I told her we'd be picking up behind the baler.  They asked if we could be there shortly after lunch.

I checked the air in the tires of the old trailer.  I was doing the math on it, and I think my grandpa bought that thing in 1976, so it's 50 years old!  I also killed a couple of big wasp nests inside the trailer with some gas.  We hooked up the truck and drove a mile and a half down the road.  We drove down the long driveway and directly into the pasture.  They were busy baling.  The American Flag on the back of the baler was a nice touch.  God Bless America!

The hay had been cut and fluffed the previous day and today the baler was working, leaving square bales lying all over the field.

Tricia is the driver.  Her job description is to drive between the rows of hay and stop when the bales are lined up with the back of the trailer.

The rows are pretty close together so she has to be watchful.

When she stops, my job is to lift the bales into the trailer, stacking them up high and tight.  As I lift each bale I holler the current count of bales and Tricia repeats, so we keep accurate count.

It didn't take long before the trailer was full.  Then we started loading up the truck.  When we had 75 bales in, we called it a day.  The old truck had quite a load and I didn't want to risk breaking the springs.

We paid our neighbors (75 bales @ $8 per bale = $600) and visited with them for a bit.  We started off buying the hay from the Grandpa long ago.  He's passed away and now the daughter and grandson run the operation.  I told Danielle that her Daddy would be proud of them, keeping the family tradition going.  When we pulled out, the center part of the field was wide open.  It once was filled with square bales.  Now they're loaded up and heading a mile and a half east where we'll unload them.

That was hot, hard work, but the fun isn't done yet.  Our young men, Russ and Benjamin, volunteered to help us get the bales stored away in the hayloft in the barn.  This is old-fashioned, manual work!  We have a pulley and a rope on a 4x4.  The rope has a bungee cord on it.  Tricia and Russ unload the hay bales from the truck and trailer and hook them to the bungee cord.

Benjamin and I are up in the loft.  Benjamin pulls the hay up by tugging on the rope.  Each bale weighs around 50 pounds.  I guess I'll stop right here and tell you how good God is.  You are looking at a miracle.  Two years ago Benjamin broke his back and both bones in both legs.  He has titanium rods in both legs and in his back.  Yet here he is, doing work that lots of people can't do.  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!!

As he pulls each bale up, I unhook it from the bungee cord and slide it down and stack it in the loft.  We both must be very careful to not bang our heads (it always happens!) on the rafters and to not fall through the hole in the floor where the ladder leads up.  That would be tragic.  I need to build a trap door.

We counted the bales, reminding each other when 25% of the bales were in the barn and so on and so forth.  When we finished up, we drank cold water and cooled off.  It always feels good to have this behind us.

The hay is in the barn!  There is something to be said about the satisfaction you get in having family together, working toward a common goal with good teamwork and completing the job.  The hay will sit here until December probably before we start feeding hay to the animals.  The ant works all summer in the fields gathering food for the winter months.  The grasshopper, on the other hand, sings and fiddles and dances all summer and makes fun of the ant for working.  But winter is coming.  We remind ourselves that we want to be like the ant and not the grasshopper.

Once the job is done, the ant also has the satisfaction of seeing a beautiful view looking out the opened doors of the hayloft at the top of the barn.

If the Good Lord is willing, we'll be doing the same thing next year at this same time.

A Ride to the Farm

(L to R: Benjamin, Tricia, Emery, Kristian, Russ, Mom & Dad)

Since most of the family was in for Christmas, we decided to load up and drove to the farm in Oberlin in the late afternoon after lunch.  It was a remarkably beautiful day, and we drove around and visited and brought up many good memories.  The farm is leased out to a farmer who grows rice and crawfish.  Dad still goes out every day and checks on the wells and changes the oil.

There have been lots of changes in farming over the past decade or so.  Many of the irrigation well engines are being converted from diesel power to electric.  Also, our farm borders the northern area of rice growing region in Louisiana.  Because of that the land isn't as flat as rice land further south.  An effort is being made to laser level the land and take out levees, resulting in larger, flatter cuts within the fields.  An instrument is used to level and large tractors with dirt buckets move mass quantities of dirt with precision.  When done, the land is as flat as a pool table.  This makes irrigation very efficient as you can pump exactly 3 inches of water across the entire field.  In old days, you may have 3 inches of water on one end and 9 inches on the other.

The size and cost of equipment will blow your mind.  It enables fewer people to work more acres, but it also means that your capital investment is very high, which presents serious problems when commodity prices are low.  One other change that we marveled at was that a farm just to the north of our land that we rented to farm was planted in pine trees and they've grown.  Fields that we planted soybeans and rice on are now forest land.  It's totally unrecognizable.  Time sure flies.  Nothing stays the same, it seems.

We passed by the old graveyard with the huge live oak where we'd park in the shade and eat our lunch each day while listening to Paul Harvey.  We drove down gravel roads where Louisiana iris grew wild in the ditches.  In the photo above directly behind us toward the woods was our first crawfish pond.  My grandpa bought me some traps and an aluminum boat that I would pull way back in the early 1980's before farm-raised crawfish (versus Atchafalaya Basin crawfish) took off.  We were early pioneers in the crawfish industry, catching and selling crawfish locally for boils.  Now the boats are primarily motorized and manned by labor brought in from foreign countries to run.

What memories!  As we rode around and talked, and so many sentences began with "Hey, remember in that field we..."  Some of the old landmarks are gone and much of the technology has changed, but our love for the land has not.  The farm is part of me and love for agriculture and all things pastoral and dealing with seeds and dirt flows in my veins and remains a integral part of who I am.

A Trip to Corpus Christi

We were out of pocket for a couple of days last week and didn't get to post Thursday night.  We don't have cows or goats in milk so it seemed like the perfect time to take a little trip.  Dad and Mom graciously agreed to come check on the animals and feed and water them, gather eggs, and generally make sure everything was okay on our little farm.  We left Thursday morning on a 6 hour drive to Tricia's hometown to visit her Mom and brothers that live there.  We stopped for lunch west of Houston at one of the two Czech BBQ joints we like to stop at - Mikeska's and Pracek's, and stopped on the way back at Bucc-ee's, of course, which is famous for it's clean bathrooms and snacks.

Tricia grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas.  It's really not a bad drive, west on I-10 through Houston and then south on 59, then south on 77 right into Corpus.  There's always lots of wind off the gulf and driving into Corpus, there are numerous windmills generating electricity.  It's wild to watch all those turbines spinning.  Corpus Christi is beautiful city sitting right on the bay.  It's now home to the USS Lexington, a naval air station and they just got a brand new harbor bridge.  You can see it in the distance in the photo below when the boys and I drove out to Cole park and walked out on the pier.

Corpus Christi was also the home of Farah Fawcett.  Who can forget Farah?!  The famous singer Selena was also from Corpus.  Freddy Fender, a singer I really liked from my youth lived in Corpus Christi as well.  He sang, "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and "I'll be there before the next teardrop falls."  But the most important thing in Corpus is Tricia's Mom.  She's 88 and in great health and Tricia tries to go visit as often as she can.  This time, Russ and Benjamin and I accompanied her for the visit and I'm glad we did.  We enjoyed visiting with Mrs. Garcia and two of Tricia's brothers, Albert and David, as well as Albert's wife Janice and their kids, Michael and Celeste.

We laughed, played games and visited and had great fun.  In our neck of the woods, cooler weather is also called "gumbo weather," and we eat a lot of chicken and sausage gumbo and shrimp and okra gumbo.  In the Hispanic culture, there's another dish that's eaten, and we were introduced to menudo.  Tricia's brother, Albert is a good cook, and worked hard in the kitchen to make menudo.  Menudo is a soup made with chili powder, cumin and other spices along with hominy and tripe.  Tripe is the stomach lining of a cow.  In Mexican-American culture (as well as Cajun culture), when an animal is butchered, nothing is wasted.  Menudo is good and spicy and we enjoyed it!

We drove by the T-heads and watched the shrimp boats come in and admired the beautiful water.  Corpus Christi, despite being on the coast, has a water emergency.  They're running out of it, and water rationing is in effect!  They do get less than half the rainfall we do, averaging only 31.7 inches a year.  The reservoirs are low, but that's not the primary reason for the shortfall.  Industry is gobbling up most of the available water usage.  There is talk of water desalination plant construction, but the cost is high and prohibitive.  What are they going to do?  It reminds me of a line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, that says, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink."

Russ & Benjamin

We like to work on projects while we're there.  Russ is a plumber and was able to take the reins and help install a new washing machine to replace a 1992 model that had worn out.  Actually, it was still working, but the selector switch had broken and parts are no longer available.  I'd say Mrs. Garcia got her money's worth out of it - 34 years!  Wow.  We talked about the fact that my brother still has an old International Harvester deep freezer that my grandmother had that still works.  To the best of our knowledge, that thing was manufactured in the late 40's or early 50's!  Things used to be made to last.  Unfortunately, in a disposable society, those days are gone.  Back to the washing machine, we made a quick trip to Home Depot for some new water lines and had the new or gently used washer in place in no time.

While at Home Depot, we picked up some paint for our next project.  We repainted Mrs. Garcia's shed.  We first applied some Ospho to eat away at some rust spots and then we put two coats of exterior paint on the shed.  It was like Mark Twain's "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" where Tom fooled Huck into painting the fence.  In this case, however, it WAS a privilege to do so.  The three of us tackled the project and had great fun in "quality control," pointing out spots that each other had missed, teasing and harassing each other relentlessly.  We actually ran out of daylight and painted the first coat by the lights from the head lamps of our SUV!  The next morning when the dew burned off, we quickly got the second coat on.  While not professional painters, by any stretch of the imagination, the finished product looked good!

The Painters (Benjamin and Russ)

Fueled by several cups of strong coffee along with egg, potato and chorizo taquitos for breakfast, we were adequately caffeinated and energized and got the second and final coat on in surprising speed.  We'll see how our work holds up to the test of time.

 

The painters and Mrs. Garcia

Tricia's mom was pleased with the completed work, but we were more pleased to be able to do something for her.  I snapped this photo of Tricia and her Mom in front of the freshly painted shed.

Mrs. Garcia and my bride

At half past 11 AM on Saturday, we loaded up and said farewell to Mrs. Garcia and Tricia's brother, Albert.  I tried my best to get Mrs. Garcia to come and stay with us for a while, but she said, "Maybe later."  We'll keep trying.  Hopefully, we can get her to come visit us soon.  Now, we're back home and have a lot of projects here on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm we'll be discussing with you in the upcoming days.  Happy New Year to all of you!  What type of projects do you have going on?  We'd be interested in hearing about them.

Going Down Memory Lane

Oh since around 2020, we haven't watched much TV at all.  I can't tell you the last time I sat down and watched the news, or a sit-com, or any other television program.  I just don't like the content.  They lost me.  It seems like every show is editorializing, every commercial is trying to push some type of agenda.  Even sports programs have become unwatchable with all the virtue signaling.  I don't know.  Maybe it's just me?  Anyway, I've found more productive things to do with my time, and haven't even missed it.

Perhaps, and this may be wishful thinking, many people are longing for 'normal' TV where the idea is to entertain without trying to push the limits of societal norms and indoctrinate viewers.  Why do I say that?  Well, I tip my hat to Chevrolet.  I was made aware of Chevrolet's "Going Down Memory Lane" Christmas Commercial 2025, and I want to share it with you:

Wow!  That really got me.  A family takes a holiday road trip in their old Suburban and remember their past experiences.  Things aren't always a perfect or care-free or happy as we remember, but times are good and filled with laughter amidst tears and joy intermixed with sorrow.  Even when things seem bad, at least we've got each other - togetherness, a family that leans on one another and carries each other through difficult times, and ages gracefully together.  When we do that, we arrive at our destination.

Watching this commercial made my eyes get a little... damp.  It especially hit home where it flashed to the back seat of the Suburban as the children grew and then there's only an empty seat.  And the dogs.  Dogs named Willie and Waylon, no less!  Whew!  Anyway, I don't know if this advertisement will sell any vehicles, but it sold me.  It reminded me that wholesome, family-oriented commercials can still be made.  Ones that you don't mute or go to the bathroom when they come on.  Well done, Chevrolet!  Keep 'em comin'!!!

Hay Day Part II

In our post from last week, you might have watched as we moved 75 bales of Alicia Bermuda hay from our neighbor's barn into our garage.  We didn't want it to rain on the hay and we didn't have the manpower to hoist the bales up into the barn.  Although the words were not spoken aloud, there was some concern about the hay spontaneously combusting and burning down the house.  Fortunately, that didn't happen!

Since I'm still on a limitation for lifting heavy things as I recover from my surgery, my brother-in-law and sister offered to come help finish up the job and brought 3 of their 6 boys and Russ came over, too.  Dad and Mom came, and we used Dad's truck to load up the hay.  His truck is bigger than our red Toyota so we could fit more bales in it..  So Saturday morning after everyone was in from the teal pond, we met at 10 AM and got ready to work.  Loading the hay went very fast!  

We were able to get 17 bales max in the Toyota.  I wish we would have counted how many we were able to load Dad's Ford with.  He pulled away from the garage so we could throw more on top.  I say "we," but I didn't do much at all.  Tricia was cooking a lunch for the work crew and making homemade ice cream for the feed once the job was completed.

We had moved the cattle trailer earlier and rolled the round bales into one line in order to provide access to the gate to drive the truck laden with hay out to the barn.  It was a bluebird day, with low humidity and mild temperatures and the sun shone brightly through the trees.

The nosy cows (Rosie, Elsie, and LuLu) gathered round to inspect all the hoopla that was going on at the barn.  Shortly thereafter all 7 of the goats showed up as well.  It was too much!  I ran the goats into the barn.  They are just trouble - like a bunch of bad kids, just getting in the way and onto everyone's nerves.

Dad backed his truck up to the barn and we opened the doors to the loft and installed the pulley on the 4x4.  The hay bales are attached to the rope by bungee cord and then the rope is pulled through the pulley and each bale is hoisted up into the loft for stacking.

You can get an idea of the process from this shot from inside of the loft.  Once the bales were swung inside, the bales are slid on the floor to the back of the loft and stacked.  The 2x12's on the floor are worn smooth from pushing the bales on the floor year after year.

The bales are stacked 3 across and four high.  As more and more hay was brought up into the barn, the shorter the distance the hay had to be pushed as the loft filled up with hay that will sustain the livestock over the winter until the spring grass comes in.

Finally, the last bale was pulled up into the loft.  We figured we'd get a photo of the bale.  That's the one were were looking for to finish up the job!  The aroma of the fresh cured hay filled the barn.  It's a scent I associate with the anticipation of fall.

Top: Brett, Landry, Graham, Russ.  Bottom: Dad & Hayes

It really didn't take long at all with all the help.  We went inside, circled up, held hands and prayed.  Then we had nachos with ground meat and beans, cheese peppers, onions, lettuce, and sour cream with lots of visiting, telling stories and laughing, followed up by finishing off a cannister of homemade vanilla ice cream made with LuLu's heavy cream.  (It was her contribution for getting the hay for her to get her through the winter.)  We took one more photo with all the working hands:

L to R: Me, Landry, Brett, Jenny, Graham, Dad, Hayes & Russ.  Not pictured: Mom and Tricia who were photographers

Despite the work, we all had a wonderful time.  When you are laughing and cutting up and enjoying one another, time passes quickly.  I'll say this, I have been blessed by God to have an incredible family that supports you in your time of need, who prays for you without ceasing, who will drop everything and rush over to provide manual labor or encouragement when needed.  Thanking the Good Lord for all the blessings in our lives.  We are not worthy of all the blessings He's bestowed upon us.  Never, ever, ever, take family for granted.  Enjoy every precious moment you get to spend with them!

A Christmas Tradition

My bride grew up in South Texas.  Corpus Christi, to be specific.  In her family, they had a Christmas tradition - making tamales.  One of the first times I visited, we made them.  Everyone lined up in the kitchen with a job to do.  I didn't know a thing about tamales other than how to eat them, but I'm always anxious to learn.

Although we don't make them every single year, we try to make them as often as possible.  This afternoon, as a family (Tricia, me, Russ & Benjamin) spent the afternoon making them.  Laura Lee wasn't here, but I assume she'll be involved in helping us eat them.  I'll show you what we did.

First, Tricia mixed up the masa with spices and broth and stirred it all together.  It smells really good!  That's a lot of masa - 10 cups.

For the meat, we used beef (a chuck roast, shredded) and chicken (thighs, deboned and shredded).  The meat was heavily seasoned and then broth poured in to keep it from drying out.

The corn husks are put into a sink full of warm water to soften them up a bit.  They need to be soft in order to roll up the tamales.

Normally in the past, to spread the masa on the corn husk, we'd use a butter knife or a big, flat spoon.  This year, we were trying out a new tool - a Masa spreader, made in Corpus Christi.  You simply scoop up roughly half a cup of masa on the edge...

And the nifty gadget smoothly and evenly spreads the masa onto the corn husk.

Tricia's assessment is that it makes the task of making tamales go by quicker.  I was spreading masa and she was adding the meat and rolling them and stacking, and she said she couldn't keep up with me.  As you can see, you add roughly a tablespoon of meat to the center of the corn husk.

Then you roll them up and bend the end of the corn husk over.  Then we stack the tamales in dozens.

When we were done, we had made 13 dozen!  We put a bunch in the freezer to freeze and we'll be cooking and eating some this week.

The masa spreader is going to take some practice.  I was probably putting the masa on too thin, so our meat ran out before the masa did.  Not to fear.  We devised a way to use up the extra masa.  We made some "refried bean and cheese" tamales!  A vegetarian option, I guess, even though we aren't even remotely vegetarians.

We had a good time together, laughing and visiting while we worked.  We'll have a good time together eating them, too!  It's a nice tradition.

An Update on Benjamin

First, thank you, friends for the outpouring of love and support and prayer cover.  It sustains us.  We are humbled by your words of encouragement.  God is so Good.  He is on His Throne and is in control.  Since Sunday night, we have seen nothing short of a miracle.  I want to give you a quick update so that you know how to pray for Benjamin.  While on that topic, have you ever prayed to the Almighty and your words were formulated perfectly?  The prayer eloquent and profound?  To be perfectly honest with you, that's not how my prayers go most of the time.  I was telling Tricia that in the past five days my prayers can be mostly be described as moans followed by the words, "Oh God!"  I can't even put together what I'm trying to communicate to God in an intelligible sentence or plea but Romans 8:26-28 explains this situation in detail.  

Since we've last talked, he's undergone three surgeries.  The doctors feel that there will be no more.  After we left the ICU tonight and headed home, we received a call from the hospital from his ICU nurse at 10:30 PM.  It is normally not a good thing to get a call from the ICU late at night.  They have moved him out of the ICU and into a regular room!  The nurse wanted us to know.

They removed the IV's and oxygen today.  He still has the drain from his spinal surgery in.  He is still catheterized.  They tried to remove it, but he cannot feel the sensation to urinate, so they put it back in.  They think that this could be due to swelling from the surgery and trauma.

Prayer Request #1: Urinate
Prayer Request #2: (Appropriately) - that he could #2 (have a BM)

Prayer Request #3: Pain levels to decrease - his legs, back and pelvis injuries result in pain that the medicine is unable to touch for a while.

Prayer Request #4: The selection of an in-patient rehab hospital for intensive physical and occupational therapy.

They have already begun to work on therapy and everyone is encouraging him to push through the pain. After surgeries on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, on Thursday, they put a brace on him and sat him up in bed!  Only one day after pelvic surgery and two days after spinal laminectomy.  Unreal!

But they weren't done.  Using his upper body strength to push himself up, they stood him up on a walker.  Now his right leg is non-load bearing, but both bones in both lower legs are broken with rods in them and he's standing on them with all the weight on his left.  I'm cringing thinking about it as I type this.

Today, they removed a lot of the bandages on his legs and cleaned the incision areas.  After a liquid diet of only broth because his jaws hurt from the skull fractures, they wanted him to begin with solids to get more protein so he has energy to rehabilitate.  He didn't want to, but ate scrambled eggs and hash browns with Tony Chachere's.  He likes the spice!

Physical therapy came by today, had him "log-roll" to the side and sat him on the side of the bed.

They had him stand on a walker, pivot around on his load-bearing leg...

And he sat in a chair!  They gave him some homework of lifting his arms and moving his fingers.  He has numbness in his right hand and fingers with "pins and needles" sensation.  Please pray for this to diminish.  His right lower leg and foot is a lot slower than his left one, but this is the leg that had the compound fracture.  Please pray that his right leg and foot will heal.  His homework is to continue to move his feet and toes, "pumping the pedal," and trying to bend the knees.  He is working hard to do whatever they tell him.  The doctors and nurses have been outstanding.  Benjamin has been telling them "Thank you" for all that they are doing and saying, "Yes ma'am and Yes sir."  One of the nurses last night told him, "You don't have to call me sir.  I'm only 3 years older than you."

I think we are making fantastic progress.  We know that he has a long road ahead of him, but he has made great strides in a very short amount of time.  So many of you are praying and for that we are so appreciative to have caring, wonderful, faithful friends. We leave this in God's hands and trust Him with the outcome.  Benjamin will have a strong testimony.  Perhaps we will emerge on the other side of this having learned something through the hardship and pain, the fear and the doubt, and will give Him the glory.  Thank you again, family and friends.  We can't say enough how much you mean to us!

Psalm 18:1-6

1“I love You, Lord, my strength.”
2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my savior,
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
And I am saved from my enemies.
4 The ropes of death encompassed me,
And the torrents of destruction terrified me.
5 The ropes of Sheol surrounded me;
The snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice from His temple,
And my cry for help before Him came into His ears.

What a fitting Psalm!

Dad's Old Oak Tree Talk

Tonight's post is a little bit different from anything we've ever put up on the blog.  I've opened a YouTube channel and will periodically post videos.  Probably not many of me, though!  I don't like the way I sound on audio or look on video, ha ha!  

The post tonight is one I think you'll enjoy.  I certainly did.  I am extremely proud of it.  It is a family treasure, to be truthful.  Grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and sit down for a 12 minute video.  A little background on how this came about:  A gentleman at my Dad's church teaches a Sunday School class that's comprised of 5th and 6th grade young men.  This teacher asked many of the men of the church to put together a talk to tell the young men about their occupations and how their faith plays a role in their careers.  My Mom and my brother talked Dad into videotaping his presentation under the old live oak at the old Sonnier homeplace in Oberlin, Louisiana.  This is my Dad's talk:

I'm proud of my Dad (and Mom) for raising me and giving me a love for the Lord and a love for the land.

What to do With a Bunch of Sweet Potatoes

We have a lot of sweet potatoes from this year's harvest in the garden.  We've been baking a lot of them and making Thai curry sweet potato lentil soup and a Sweet Potato, kale and coconut milk soup.  During the holidays, we like to do something else with them I'll show you today.  My wife is Mexican-American and grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas.  

A tradition she brought to us was making sweet potato empanadas.  She uses a recipe from her mother that's been passed down.  For this dish, we wanted to use up some of our largest sweet potatoes.  I peeled and cut them up.

Tricia cooked them and then mashed them with a potato masher until it had a smooth consistency.  She added allspice and molasses to the sweet potatoes.

She made her normal dough for making flour tortillas, but then added some cinnamon to the dough, rolled them out and then we started loading the sweet potato filling onto the dough.

Then you fold the dough over and crimp the edges.  We also come back with a fork to "seal" the edges a little later.

The holiday baking is a true family affair.  We had an assembly line going in the kitchen with Tricia rolling out the dough and filling with sweet potato filling, Russ folding over and sealing the empanadas and arranging on the baking tray.  Benjamin rested up for his job.

Benjamin, well rested and exuberant was now ready for his job.  He brushed an egg wash onto the empanadas.

It is hard to estimate to get the amount of dough needed for the amount of sweet potato filling, but that's okay.  Leftover tortilla dough is not wasted!  We sprinkle cinnamon and sugar and bake just the dough.

We couldn't wait for the buzzer on the oven to go off, announcing the empanadas were done!  We pulled the golden brown pastries out of the oven and placed on a cooling rack.

And this is where my job comes into play.  I'm the official "taster" of the warm batch of empanadas.  I broke one in half and enjoyed the nice fragrance.  Then I took a bite!

Yeah, this one is delicious.  The entire batch of empanadas didn't last but a couple of days.  That's too bad.  However, empanadas aren't really just limited to a Christmas baking thing.  We have a bunch more sweet potatoes.  We'll have to make another batch of these again soon.