Weekly Update: 10.19.25
Yesterday was the feast of St. Luke — the day the Church commemorates the great evangelist. St. Luke is thought to be the only gentile author of scripture, writing the gospel that bears his name as well as the Acts of the Apostles. And so, with windows open to fill the house with the cool evening air of fall, my sisters, sister-in-law, nieces, and I gathered around a kitchen table filled with raisins, spices, sugar, and puff pastry — the ingredients for Banbury cakes.
It was a sweet end to a long week that vacillated between the monotonous and the chaotic. We continued to spend a lot of our time on the tedious job of cleaning out our tent — sorting through boxes from storage, donating items and posting other items to Facebook Marketplace.
In the afternoons, we made progress on our exterior siding. We’ve been working on the tall side of the bunkhouse, which is time consuming since it is the highest off of the ground and requires the most ladder work. Jeremiah does all the climbing, while we sisters hold the ladder and cut boards for him. On Thursday, our dad climbed up to work on installing a flood light.
Along with siding, we stayed busy working on several other projects. I finally started cutting boards for our kitchen shelving. Our sister-in-law, Erin, white-washed corner trim for our living area. Bonnie-Jean washed all of our winter coats and insulated bibs, making sure everything is ready for the cold weather. Grace did some extra cooking this week while looking after her growing puppy. We’ve all been working on some deep cleaning in the bunkhouse — which is a constant struggle with so many people and dogs in a relatively small space.
Our dad planned to spend his days off brush hogging the very overgrown “cleared” part of our land. This has been a goal all year, but we’ve had nothing but problems with our little 1952 Ferguson TO30. After months of effort, our dad finally got it running a couple weeks ago. On Wednesday this week, he started mowing. I couldn’t believe how much progress he made in just an hour.
Then —dad had a small accident. The breaks on the tractor gave out, and he ran it down the hill and into the ditch created by our wet weather creek.
The accident happened quickly, when Grace and I had both stepped into the bunkhouse for just a minute. Thankfully, our dad was all right. The tractor, however, wasn’t. The wheels were leaking fluid — presumably gear oil due to broken seals. After the fact, we wondered if the seals were already leaking, and that’s what caused the breaks to slip in the first place.
Getting the Ferguson out of the ditch was an adventure in itself. We had to pull the implement out first. Dad used his 4-wheel-drive SUV for this task. Next, we had to remove a stump from the creek bed to be able to back the tractor out.
After doing some research, our dad decided he will try to fix the tractor himself. Whoever is home those days will help him, as it will be quite the job — requiring the removal of the wheels, among other tricky tasks.
It was disappointing to be so close to clearing our fields only to have our tractor once again out of commission. And yet, we were all so thankful that our dad hadn’t been hurt when the breaks gave out. We have steep hills around our place, and it could have happened in worse areas. Also, we are thankful the breaks gave out when our dad was using the tractor, as he has the most experience driving tractors and knew how to keep it from flipping — which could have happened if someone else had been driving it.
It was a tiring week, which made the rainy Saturday indoors yesterday all the more of a blessing. We hung up some of the decor we unpacked over the last several days — old tools and farm implements we’ve had for years. We did some cleaning. Grace made a pot of soup, and I baked some sourdough pan rolls.
When we were all done for the day, we made Banbury cakes.
We rolled out puff pastry and filled it with spiced raisins and butter, listening while we worked to the melodic sound of rain falling on our metal roof. Banbury cakes (sometimes called Banbury tarts) are a traditional autumn treat in parts of England, and they have become associated with St. Luke’s feast day over time. The pastries couldn’t have been more perfect for this year’s delightfully rainy autumn day — filling the house with the sweet aroma of spices while they baked.
Last night, we sat down to a warm comforting dinner, and we read aloud a bit about St. Luke’s feast day. Finally, we prayed the Magnificat (Mary’s Song) — a canticle preserved in St. Luke’s gospel, and we feasted on our cakes. It was our first time observing the day, and it felt like such a gift. We always have reasons to give thanks, but holidays — literally, holy-days — give us an intentional reminder of goodness. They help us stop, remember an event, a truth, or a person from the cloud of witnesses who makes a difference in our lives. I’m thankful for Luke’s life, and I’m thankful that we stopped to remember him yesterday. The practice helped us shape even our chaotic, monotonous lives around joy and gratitude — and even that shaping was itself another gift to be thankful for. From ancient times, the harvest season has always been a time of gratitude, and this year is no different.
