After last week’s abounding productivity, I was looking forward to seeing what we would accomplish this week. Instead of making headway on all that needs to be done on our homestead, we had sick people. Grace got sick Sunday night with some sort of stomach bug, and she ran a low fever most of the week. Bonnie-Jean dealt with migraines for days. Our brother Levi’s family complained of congestion and coughs — though whether they have bad allergies or a small cold has been hard to decide.
While we battled malaise in the house, we seemed to alternate between rain, wind, and mainly cool temperatures outside. The weather made working on our shelving pretty impossible, as we don’t have a covered area under which to spray our spar urethane. I considered working on some small construction projects, but with so many people not feeling well, I stayed plenty busy just cooking, cleaning, and getting caught up on homestead bookwork.
We did tackle a few smaller projects this week. Bonnie-Jean and I processed the very last of our peppers from the garden. Bonnie finished packing up our drip system. We rearranged our storm shelter and made space to store our produce over the winter, as it stays cooler than in the house. Grace also moved all of our paint and caulking down there from where it has been stored under the house. Our brother Jeremiah continued digging holes for our porch cover piers.
On a couple occasions, Grace helped our dad work on our car’s HVAC. It stopped working a couple weeks ago, and our dad decided to change the blower motor. They also worked on the blend door actuator. In the process, he and Grace found some kind of nest on the grate above the blower motor. Dad did more research, and yesterday, they fixed the issue. With our first hard frost this morning, I know we will very much appreciate our heater on the way to Mass.
As I’ve mentioned before, our healthy eating habits require a lot of cooking and baking from scratch. I made several batches of whole wheat slow-rise sourdough bread and buns for various meals. We’ve been keeping the fridge stocked with easy breakfasts and lunches, including oven baked omelets and homemade yogurt. I roasted a turkey to use as our lunch meat during the next week. Grace has perfected her recipe for sugar-free cranberry sauce (using monk fruit and erythritol), which has been just delicious on turkey wraps.
On Saturday, Levi cleaned out our chimney, making it ready for the first fire of the season whenever we need it. It has been a bit cold in the bunkhouse a few times this week, though usually by afternoon the passive solar heat coming in our windows warms us up. His kids helped stack firewood on our porch wood rack, which will make starting a fire convenient whenever we need one.
As the week drew to a close, I hoped we were past most of our germs. Sadly, as of this morning, we have a few more sore throats and headaches. Still, those of us who are well are hopeful that we can make some progress next week. We have warmer weather in the forecast, so Lord willing, we will get back to work on our shelving. I would love to have our upper shelving installed before Thanksgiving. As always, all we can do is our best while trusting God with our progress. We are doing our best to enjoy the season along the way — November is beautiful this year.
