Weekly Update: 8.16.25
The heat seemed to return in full force this week, blanketing our homestead and suffocating our motivation. We persevered by getting outside at first light each day and accomplishing what we could before the temperature became unbearable.
In truth, this week felt very much like a repeat of the last couple weeks.
In the mornings, we worked in the garden. We harvested our first ornamental gourds and mini-pumpkins early in week. I read an online tutorial on how best to clean them so that they would last into the autumn months. Per the instructions, I filled our sink with lukewarm water and added a little bleach, dish soap, and peppermint essential oil. I soaked the gourds for 30 minutes, gently turning them occasionally. Then, I laid them out on a towel to dry. The process seemed straight forward, and the website seemed reputable. By morning, however, white spots had appeared all over the gourds where something (peppermint oil? bleach?) had eaten away the rind. The gourds were so damaged, we had to discard almost all of them. It was sad, but we now know how not to preserve our decorative harvests!
Whenever I got done in the garden each morning, I helped Jeremiah work on our exterior siding. We made steady progress, though it is slow going.
In the afternoons, we had good intentions to keep cleaning out the tent by moving items into the bunkhouse. Instead, we stayed busy preserving vegetables from the garden, which has turned into much more of a project than we expected. This week, we canned pickled peppers and pickled okra. We made several batches of refrigerator pickled pattypan squash. We grated and froze summer squash for baking recipes. We froze okra. We diced dozens of bell peppers to dehydrate. We sorted and ate uncountable fresh tomatoes. We finally harvested enough of our sister-in-law Erin’s noodle beans to fry some up with dinner one night. The garden abundance is a good problem to have — if only we didn’t have so much else we need to get done!
After church on Sunday, we finally got into the beer we brewed this spring. Some of us sipped on hard cider while others enjoyed the Irish red ale. It was a long awaited treat, which tasted all the better for the effort we put into it.
Midweek, my niece came down with a cold she apparently picked up at church. By the end of the week, both of my sisters were feeling under the weather. We had various ideas about what we wanted to accomplish next week, but now all of our plans feel more tentative than normal. It feels like we have just bounced back after our last summer bug, so it’s disappointing to be dealing with another germ so soon. Still, our niece’s cold didn’t last long, so it’s likely the adults won’t fair badly either. It promises to be another hot week, so we’ll just take it one day at a time and do what we can.
