Fall arrived this week — at last. After months of grueling heat, we reveled in open windows and cool mornings. It’s been amazing to be able to use our oven without making our living space downright miserable. The first golden leaves are beginning to speckle the trees, and it finally feels good to work outside.
The week started sweetly with my niece Bridget Rose’s baptism. It was such a blessing to see her be welcomed into the Church. I was honored to be named her godmother — a historic role dedicated to helping a child’s parents raise him or her in the Lord. Our Parish gave her a sweet little reception afterward, which made our whole family feel incredibly loved.
Despite the lovely weather, I didn’t spend all that much time outdoors this week. Instead, we’ve been doing some fall deep cleaning — giving everything a nice refresh before we decorate the bunkhouse with pumpkins and autumn leaves. We decided to move my electric piano into a different room, which led to Grace and I spending almost an entire day rearranging the furniture. We keep trying different iterations of our belongings, tucking away building supplies and camouflaging unfinished aspects of our space. When our dad got in from work at 9 p.m. that night and asked what we were doing, I smiled and explained I had wanted to move the piano. It’s rather like the scenario laid out in Laura Numeroff’s infamous If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
While I’ve been a bit housebound, Grace spent most of her mornings in the garden, bringing in a small harvest each day. Things are slowing down, but we are still getting a couple zucchini and a few tomatoes daily. Most of our fall crops didn’t survive the late September heat, but we did get some radishes this week.
Early in the week, Bonnie-Jean’s German Shepherd puppy Carmel finally found her forever home. Her new owner met us in Bolivar to pick her up, and Carmel willingly jumped in her truck, excited for the treats awaiting her there. Her new family named her Astrid, and we can already tell how much they love her. They’ve been sending us update pictures with her new human and dog friends, and we are thrilled to see what a good fit she is for them.
Jeremiah got his first deer of the season on Wednesday evening. I was battling a headache, so I was mostly a support person — offering drinks, finding batteries for flashlights — until I tapped out. Bonnie-Jean, Grace, and our niece Chloe were up late helping with the initial dressing of the animal. On Thursday, Grace and I helped Jeremiah cut up the meat. This time, we opted to set a little aside for stew and jerky, then turn the rest into burger.
Jeremiah also turned several pounds into some breakfast sausage — mixing in fresh herbs like sage and thyme as well as black and red pepper.
With this big influx of meat, we have been struggling with our freezer space. After some discussion, we decided to purchase a bigger freezer to have out on our porch. We read some articles on how to set up a freezer outside. The freezer will arrive next week, and we are excited to figure out how to make our outdoor spaces work for our needs.
Bonnie-Jean started the arduous process of cleaning our storm shelter this week. During the hot summer, the humid space has grown more and more dank as mildew sprouted all over the place. After some family discussion and research, we ordered some mildew-resistant masonry paint. We’ve cleaned the shelter with vinegar before, but this time we took apart our built-in benches so that we could clean everywhere thoroughly. On Friday, Bonnie-Jean scrubbed the whole place twice with straight vinegar, then mopped with vinegar and multi-purpose cleaner. Our little niece Eilley Mae helped out, scrubbing right along with her. We hope to paint in there next week.
Along with our projects, we’ve had a few other happenings on our homestead this week. Our nieces and nephew started their homeschooling year, and each of us aunties is tutoring a subject. I’m helping the kids with math, Grace with English, and Bonnie-Jean with science. A little intentional time sitting down with the kids has brightened all of our days, even if it has made us a tad more busy.
For meatless Friday this week, we dined on beans and cornbread. This traditional Catholic fast from meat is suffering for some in our family, while others of us love this southern comfort food. The pinto beans are healthy on their own, and we made both sugar-free/gluten-free and regular cornbread. It was a late night of cleaning and deer processing, and we were all very tired. We ate while we finished up various tasks. It tickles me how much the kids in our family love this meal, as it was a staple in my house growing up and in my mom’s family of origin as well. I especially got a kick out of the fact that my nieces used the leftover cornbread to make “cornbread and milk”. My Memaw always enjoyed this Arkansas treat, and she taught me to love it. She would take a piece of cornbread and crumble it up in a cup, pour milk over the top, and eat it like cereal. I like this best with sweet cornbread, and I’ve shared it with my nieces over the years. I love that it’s a tradition we are passing on to the next generation.
In the last months, I’ve thought a lot about tradition. Being around kids so much makes you see how your actions carry on long after you are gone. Things you do that seem insignificant are reflected in their habits, choices, and sometimes their personalities. That’s one reason we’ve chosen this lifestyle. We want the younger generations in our family to have the skills to live close to the earth, to grow and hunt their own food, to love beauty and simplicity. And more than that, we want them to know they can live lives that really do center on loving God and the people around them. Living in community is hard, but you can grow in your ability to find compromises and get along. Life on our homestead is messy — both in the relational and housekeeping sense — but even difficult situations can be brought into order. I tend to think the process is sanctifying, whichever way you mean it. Those skills — be they tidying up a room or working through a conflict — are traditions worth passing on, along with a taste for cornbread and milk.