Weekly update - August 1, 2025

Don't let the benign nature of my list fool you that either I'm okay with what is going on in our country or that I am unaware. I am painfully aware and shattered and heartbroken and furious and hopeless and helpless all by turns. I try to dredge up little bits of normalcy when I can because it's not healthy to live in the highly anxious and angry state all the time. Here is a little dose of normalcy for you in this moment. 

  • Y. and G. were gone much of this week, returning last night from having gone to the Presbyterian Church USA Youth Triennium. As the title suggests, it happens once every three years and is a national gathering. They both had an amazing time, learned a lot, and met lots of people. Now they are very tired. 
  • When J. and everyone were in Michigan last week, they went blueberry picking and came home with four huge bags of blueberries. I've been spending the week freezing them so we will have them all winter. I've frozen 30 cups so far, and the contents of this bag are frozen and ready for me to bag up. I expect to get at least eight more cups out of it.

  • The other day I happened to see this mushroom. Is it not the most Addams Family-esque mushroom you've ever seen? Even more appropriately it was growing on the muck pile. 

  • Also earlier in the week this is what I saw when I got to the barn that morning. Yes, that's Buddy where he's not supposed to be. He walked right back into the barn when he saw me to take his medicine. Security measures on the pony stall have been strengthened. 

  • As we all suspected they would, the sheep decided to they actually enjoy eating squash plants. I did end up getting seven squashes off of it before it was decimated.

  • J. noticed that the apples on our early ripening tree were ripe. They are actually pretty good apples this year, which is a nice surprise because historically that tree has never grown good apples. H. and R. love to pick fruit. They wanted to pick some of the ripe apples, so J. sent them out with a container. Well, they came back with more than a few. My guess is that there is now over half a bushel of apples in the kitchen. J. will be spending some time making apple cider. These are just a few of what they picked. 


  •  It's sweet corn season, so I ran by my favorite farm stand to get some. I can feel canning season insanity creeping up on me because I saw a sign saying they had large bags (really large) of day old sweet corn for $40. Instead of thinking that's a lot of corn, I instead came home and started looking in my canning books for corn related recipes. 
  • Today P. went to pick up the keys to her and D.'s new apartment. She had taken what she could fit in her car and J. is going to help turn move some more stuff tomorrow. From the pictures it looks like a very nice apartment. 

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