Weekly Update: 3.22.26
From winter to summer in seven days
It was a wild ride of weather this week. We watched snow fall last Sunday, and by Friday we were sweltering in the upper 80s. Where Monday found me curled up under blankets with a knit stocking cap on, by Thursday I was keeping cool with my feet in the creek. March is indeed a carnival of temperatures.
The week began with our parish’s annual St. Patrick’s Day potluck. The ladies in our family had fun whipping up seasonal treats ahead of time — colcannon, Irish soda bread, Irish potato candy, and an Irish cream trifle. It’s always a good time to feast with our parish family.
The cold gave us a good excuse for a slow start to our week. We stayed busy inside with holiday cooking and indoor projects. We put together a small cup rack for the room we sisters share, as we keep our personal mugs there. We seasoned the cast iron pans Grace had stripped last week. We used the method we landed on several years ago, last time we re-seasoned our pans — using the oven and grapeseed oil. We had the pans in great shape when we moved out here, but two years of camping had led to significant rusting (they had gotten wet, unbeknownst to us). We got our very-large family skillet finished just in time for our annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast — corned beef hash.
For dinner, we whipped up our favorite Irish beef stew recipe. This year, we used our home brewed red Irish ale in the stew, which turned out wonderful. We served it with some homemade Irish soda bread and, of course, more of our Irish ale.
We had another feast day on Thursday — the Solemnity of St. Joseph, in honor of Jesus earthly father. We made a traditional pastry for the day. It is like a fried cream puff filled with pastry cream or sweetened ricotta.
When we weren’t celebrating, we finally got started on our kitchen shelves. Deciding how to put them together was quite the project, but we brainstormed together — Grace, our dad, and I. We have the first unit put together, and the rest will soon follow.
Yesterday, our brothers made significant progress on the exterior siding. They installed a whole layer on what is left of the bunkhouse.
Levi was off this week, so he made a lot of progress on all kinds of projects. He used our brush cutter to clear around our garden area. He relocated one of our exterior shower lines, as we had accidentally placed them too far apart for standard outdoor fixtures. He also worked on sanding the floor boards for his family’s suite of rooms in the bunkhouse.
One of my favorite moments this week was sitting in the creek late in the afternoon on Thursday, sipping hard Mountain Dew and reading aloud — the Catechism of the Catholic Church first, then a book on health. It felt so good to be in the sun, surrounded by the beginnings of spring. It was warm and delightful and a funny way to celebrate the last day of winter. I’m not quite ready for summer’s heat, but I didn’t mind a little taste of it this week.
