Weekly Update: 7.27.24
The orchestra of a summer night
has many different sounds,
with the cicadas and crickets,
the wind in the grass and the flowers,
and the lonely little owl high in a tree.
As my eyes skimmed over the lines of my niece's poem, a smile tugged at the corner's of my lips. Chloe is homeschooled, getting ready to start 6th grade, and I recently started tutoring her in language arts. We had already been doing casual literary discussions over the last few months, as we have both been reading several L.M. Montgomery and Madeline L'Engle books. This July, we decided to make tutoring more official. Since then, it's been one of my favorite time slots of the day. We sit, with tea or sometimes decaf coffee, and we discuss poetry, practice handwriting, go over grammar and spelling lessons, and manage to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. This week, I gave Chloe some free-write journal time. She surprised me by making a lovely descriptive paragraph that I encouraged her to arrange into a poem. She titled it "The Orchestra of a Summer Night", and for an 11-year-old new to creative writing, I thought she did beautifully.
In the bushes and thickets you will see fireflies,
the little torches that light the theater.
High up in the sky the stars are twinkling softly
and singing softer still.
When the dawn sneaks across the sky,
the crickets cease their song.
The grass calms.
The owl sleeps soundly.
The torches at last burn out.
The stars sing one last verse,
and all is silent.
Homeschooling takes incredible commitment and a lot of time, but it is worth every ounce of effort. I grew up that way, and while I've now worked in the public school system and admire so many teachers -- I still think homeschooling is the best route to a well-rounded education. I'm proud of my brother and his wife for their choice to homeschool their kids. It is not easy out here, and I am honored to have the opportunity to lend my services to their efforts.
I've been thinking lately about how many facets our homesteading adventure has. When you consider any one facet by itself, it can appear that our progress is painfully slow. But altogether, I think we are often accomplishing more than we notice ourselves.
Our day starts at 6 a.m., when we fix and eat breakfast, wash dishes, and clean the tent. Handwashing our laundry starts at 7 a.m. Bonnie-Jean and Erin head to the garden around 7:30. Grace and I finish laundry then tutor -- I tutor Chloe, she Eilley Mae (about to start 4th grade).
By 9:30, we are usually in the bunkhouse. This week, Levi, Grace, and I mainly worked on wiring. It has been such a puzzle to install our Romex. Just when I think we finally have it figured out, we realize there is something about our plan that won't quite work. Part of the difficulty is our open-rafter ceiling. With no easy place to stash the wires, we are having to run all the "home runs" (the wires that go back to the breaker box) through the walls. By Wednesday, we had to take a small break and order new drills bits, as the one we had was so dull, it was mainly spinning and smoking. I also had to order round outlet boxes for all of our lights.
While waiting for our new bit to arrive, Grace took the opportunity to spend some time in the garden. Bonnie-Jean and Erin have done a lot of work keeping it up, and we are loving all of the fresh veggies. Our ice chests are stocked with home grown cucumbers, squash, and more peppers than we have been able to eat.
When our dad was off work, he installed the outdoor spigots on the bunkhouse, and he turned on our cold water. Now, we have water right outside the tent and shower house. We had recently been struggling with keeping our hoses clean enough inside, as the water was traveling so far, it wasn't being flushed often enough. Now, we have cold, clean water at our fingertips.
The guys also headed up other outdoor work -- weed trimming, brush hogging, and beekeeping.
Jeremiah and I moved our last viable hive into our bee yard. We also hung up two new swarm traps. Swarm season is over, but we read that we might still catch a small swarm into September. We thought it was worth hanging the traps. We have two empty horizontal hives that we would love to fill before winter. If not, they will be ready for next spring.
While Jeremiah and I were moving bees, Grace was helping Levi with some yardwork near the creek. While they were working, they heard what sounded like a kitten crying. Sure enough, a little looking around revealed a little black-and-white kitten. He was hungry and thirsty, with sores on his face and abdomen. He seemed dehydrated and malnourished. While he was somewhat nervous, once Grace found him, he became very clingy, crying loudly when left alone.
Nearly a week later, the kitten has wrapped Grace around his little paw. She named him Strider, keeping with the Lord of the Rings theme for our cat names. He goes with her everywhere, often tucked into the top of her work apron. At first, Strider was nervous around the construction noises, but by the end of the week, he would curl up near Grace while she worked.
We try to get out of the bunkhouse by 2 p.m. most days, as it starts getting brutally hot in there. We use the hottest part of the day for slower-paced tasks that need to be done -- research for upcoming parts of our build, pool maintenance, pet care, and personal projects (like this blog).
We also do afternoon food prep. To make breakfast easy, we keep our small fridge stocked with slow-cooker baked oatmeal and eggs (boiled, fried, or scrambled). Lunch is most often a protein shake. We cook our dinners from scratch, so there is always a salad or vegetable to prepare, rice to make, and some sort of meat to grill. Several family members struggle with insulin or auto-immune issues, so we make healthy eating a priority.
After dinner, we begin our evening routine. There are pets to bathe/brush, more garden care to be done, and sometimes laundry to bring in from the line. We have one shower for 11 people, so it takes awhile for everyone to get clean. On hot days, we don't even start our shower schedule until after 7 p.m., as the tent is too hot to inhabit.
Once it is cool enough, we turn on our tent air conditioner -- a real luxury -- and after showers, we all settle in. If it is late, we all tend to just fall into bed and sleep. But earlier nights are an opportunity for a little recreation. Some of us read. Some of us work on crochet or other handwork projects. Sometimes we turn on the projector to enjoy a TV show or movie.
It is a full life, and we make progress every day. Sometimes our progress is visible -- like covering a lot of ground with our wiring. And sometimes, it is more invisible -- like helping a child develop a skill or learn something new. Each day, our family is growing, our land is improving, and our bunkhouse is that much closer to being finished. At the end of it all, we fall asleep, listening to the orchestra of a summer night.
