Weekly Update: 11.9.2025
The first week of November will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s the time of year I first saw my beloved Missouri Ozarks, and I will never forget the wonder I felt during those long first drives through our curving, undulating roadways lined with copper-leaved hardwoods. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I couldn’t get enough of the Ozarks’ autumn vibrance, the brilliant change unfolding before my eyes.
This remembering of wonder provided a balm to an otherwise difficult week. Several family members struggled with personal losses and troubles, leaving many of us feeling raw and rather weary. As is always the case, though, the beauty of the earth seeped in around our hardships, providing much needed solace.
It was a gift to spend so much time outside, as the sunshine and warm weather were rather idyllic. Grace and I spent the first couple days of the week finishing up the repair of my mom’s antique bed. As I mentioned last week, the bed was handmade in Arkansas for my great-grandparents as a wedding gift in the late 1930s. Family lore says it was created on a hand lathe by a family member, though the name of that person has been lost.
The bed is designed to be used with a boxspring, but my folks haven’t used one of those in years, preferring all-in-one hybrid mattresses. After a bit of research, we decided to create a simple slatted platform to fit the antique bed. It was a simple two-by-four affair with slats made up of one-by-fours leftover from our interior siding.
While Grace and I worked on the platform, Bonnie-Jean detailed the bed. She cleaned it, filled scratches, and rubbed the whole thing down with furniture oil. Her efforts gave new life to the old wood.
Before setting up the new, antique bed, we took the opportunity to give our folks’ space a good fall cleaning. After removing their old bed, we deep dusted the walls, cleaned the inside and outside of the windows, and mopped the floor. We hung up some twinkle lights as well. Finally, we set up the antique bed, which proved to be much trickier than we expected. I had been confused by the odd array of bolts and extra washers that had been sent out with the bedframe. As we struggled to put the bed together, however, we quickly figured out how it had been made to work — the washers were being used as spacers for metal rungs that don’t quite fit. Thankfully, both of my brothers were off work by then, and they made what would have been a rather daunting task a lot easier.
Setting up the bed was a bit of a process, but the end result was so pretty — and more than that, seeing the bed brought back so many memories. My mom grew up sleeping on it at her grandma’s house. When she and my dad were first married, they found the bed stored in my great-grandma’s garage, and they had gotten her permission to refinish it. After they fixed it up, they used it for a while before moving and giving it back to my grandma. My grandma had it during my childhood, and I often slept on it while visiting her house. There is so much history tied up with that bed, we feel very blessed to have it set up in the bunkhouse.
Along with finishing up the bed, we worked on our deck this week. One day when my dad was home, Grace and I helped him attach our deck to the house. We opted to run a ledger board along the edge of the house as well as the deck. We situated the deck planks across the small expanse. These planks are perpendicular to the older decking, but we like this look. It also saved us from having to run new joists between the house and the deck.
While Grace and I were busy with other things, Bonnie-Jean worked on winterizing our garden. She spent a day draining and cleaning our drip system before our first hard freeze, which is expected this weekend. Disconnecting the various components was quite the process, but she did a great job.
On Saturday, several of us worked on exterior siding. Our dad and niece worked on a small landing for the storage loft in we sister’s room. It will allow us to put the ladder against a different wall than we originally planned. Levi spent the day getting firewood, preparing for the upcoming cold.
The rest of our time this week was filled with the daily tasks of cooking and cleaning. I also spent some time working on building plans and ordering a few supplies we couldn’t find in Springfield last week. Even on days we were busy indoors, I found my eyes drifting out to gaze at the autumn landscape. The brilliant gold of our pecans in particular demand attention, but the softer shades of the oaks and sycamores provide a backdrop of equal beauty.
Throughout the week, one of my nieces would dart into the house, pressing leaves of particular appeal for our Thanksgiving table later this month. Despite our busyness, we have found ourselves making time to use the oven more, baking up pumpkin breads and apple crisps for no particular reason. We made the effort to take more walks to the spring, soaking ourselves in the fall colors while we have the chance.
As I close out another week by finding words to express our experience, I find myself reciting a familiar refrain. No matter how hard life gets, the solace of beauty always calls us back to the goodness of God. That beauty comes in many forms — a dazzling golden leaf, children laughing in the sunshine, music picked by hand or streamed over a speaker, home baked bread, wind playing with clothes on a line, a loving word, the sound of leaves crunching under walking feet. This homesteading life isn’t easy — especially homesteading in community. And yet, this life has a unique beauty that I wouldn’t trade for any other path. This year and every year since, I’m still thankful my family moved to the Missouri Ozarks all those Novembers ago.