2021 – Archived Blogs – All Is Right On The Homestead

Well 2020 is history now. It certainly was quite the year. We’ve been under stay-at-home orders for 42 weeks now and we are still counting as the numbers are spiking just about everywhere. All the same it was a good year up here on our little hill, and I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to look back and celebrate all of the good things that happened last year with this first post of the year. The most important thing to Colleen and me through everything is that we are still healthy as are the kids. Of course, we still have a roof over our head and food on the table so not much else really matters. We didn’t get to see the kids as much as would have liked over the course of the year, but that was understandable given the way of the world these days. I honestly do not see things getting better anytime soon, and in fact I wholly expect things to get much worse. I suppose I could go into detail about economic models, media and political spin, an ineffective government, and virus mutations, but there really is no point. What will happen, will happen and Colleen and I will just take things one day at a time.

Everything seemed to start out just fine last January. We had a mild winter and even had a few things that we planted in the fall overwinter well. Alex who works for a tree service company, dropped a huge load of large logs in our front yard that his crew had cut from a tree job they had in the area in the middle of January. I spent a good part of the spring, summer, and fall cutting and splitting the wood for firewood and there is still quite a bit of it on the ground. It’s probably a good thing because with me teaching online from home this fall and winter, and probably through the spring, we are burning three times the usual amount of wood to heat the house. Even with heavy burning this year there is probably a good bit of next winter’s firewood still waiting to be cut and split.

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We didn’t see our first real snow fall until late last February and just to make things interesting that’s about the same time we started hearing about this new deadly virus in the world. Colleen and I didn’t pay the whole thing much heed at the time. The virus was on the other side of the world and everything around here seemed to be going along rather normally for us. The girls seemed to be doing okay and not minding the winter too terribly much. As the girls weren’t even a year old at that point, they kept laying eggs right through the winter, and we rather enjoyed the luxury of having fresh eggs and plenty of them on hand. The virus numbers started creeping up around the world and Colleen and I got the distinct feeling that things were going to get dicey so we made the conscious decision to start really building up our larder. Since Colleen cooks most everything from scratch that meant making sure we had plenty of the basic ingredients like flour and sugar, an ample supply of canned goods, and some the other basic necessities like paper towels and TP. By the end of the month store shelves were getting thin and it seems our instincts we definitely working in our favor.

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March was the month when everything changed. We had our usual gathering of the clan for St. Patrick’s Day and Colleen fixed a traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner, but it was right about the time that the virus numbers started to spike in the United States and the country started shutting down. Friday, March 13th was the last day Colleen and I would go to school for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year. Of course, the schools were not prepared for a cold stop and everyone spent the rest of the school year doing what they could with online learning. Colleen and I still had lots to do up here on our hill. There were gardens that needed work to get them ready for spring planting which was right at the top of our list. In early March we even made our first real attempt at planting potatoes. Of course, by the end of March we had the peas, Swiss chard, and a few other cool weather crops in the ground. The celery we had planted in the fall had overwintered very well and we were even harvesting a little fresh celery at that point. The days were getting longer too and the girls really started laying eggs so we were sharing our bounty with the kids and neighbors.

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Colleen and I settled into our work at home, school routines by the time April showed up on the calendar. On top of our schoolwork we spent a great deal of time getting things ready for a long run of staying at home. Fortunately, Colleen and I like keeping to ourselves up here on our hill so staying at home didn’t bother us in the least. I split a lot of firewood in my spare time and Colleen started really paying attention to our larder and needed supplies. People started to really panic and store shelves went from thin to empty. Colleen’s tracking of what was and wasn’t on our larder shelves really started paying dividends early too. It didn’t take us too long to establish a routine of leaving the house just once a week to get essentials. Even then the last few weekends in April turned out to be more of a scavenger hunt to see what we could find. Sometimes we’d have to go a week or two before we could find what we needed, but fortunately while we might have run low on things, we never ran out of anything.

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Our gardens started coming in during late April so we always had fresh produce which was a huge plus. Interestingly enough Colleen and I started finding that apart from TP, paper towels, cleaning supplies, bottled water, and eggs, most of the stuff that was missing from the grocery store shelves was pre-made food. Pre-made food makes up a very, very small part of our meals so ingredients to cook meals started appearing more frequently, and finding food never really proved difficult for us. Of course, when we did find something we needed we bought twice as much and put it in our larder. Back in mid April the school districts had decided that schools would stay closed for the rest of the school year. My school had three chickens that lived in the courtyard and they needed a new temporary home so Colleen and I ended up with three more chickens in our pen. The girls are still here. The biggest issue we ran into during April was when Alex’s Explorer died and this time it was beyond reasonable repair. Fortunately, Alex’s boss gave him access to a company vehicle. Alex would spend the next few months saving his money and looking for a new car or truck.

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Meat had started to become scarce during April, but when it started showing up again in early May Colleen and I headed down to Costco and bought several bulk packages of hamburger and chicken. Anticipating things weren’t going to get better and suspecting once flu season and the holidays got here later in the year, things would get very bad, we canned the meat to add to our larder. Colleen even checked into dry canning for cereals, pastas, and grains over the course of the month. By the end of May, our larder was well stocked with plenty of pasta, rice, oats, and probably a few other things I can’t remember right now. By that point we had made the decision that we were going to be ready for the long haul and whatever happened to come down the road. Of course, I was still splitting and stacking firewood and we were tending to our gardens. Colleen and I did finally decide we needed more shelf space in the basement with the way we were building up our larder stocks so towards the end of the month we ran down to Lowe’s and got a couple of big utility shelving units and set them up in the basement.

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With June came the end of our school year and a much needed break from our work at home schedule. Now, over the winter or maybe in early spring a storm blew through and a dead branch fell out of the oak tree over our pool. It was a good size branch and it destroyed a section of the frame and tore the liner all to heck. I never figured swimming pools would be in short supply, but they sure were last year. I got online and ordered a 15 foot diameter and 4 foot deep pool to replace the old one. I thought I was ordering the pool from Target, but it turned out I had ordered the pool from China. The pool was supposed to have a two week delivery window, but two weeks came and went and we still didn’t have a pool. The pool finally did show up at the end of the month, but it wasn’t the pool I ordered. We got a 5 foot pool that held 8 inches of water. Fortunately, I paid for the pool using PayPal so when the pool showed up it didn’t take me long to get online to try and get my money back. That was just the start of that adventure. June ended up being a good month though. Colleen got a couple of wash tubs and a washboard and I ran some clotheslines between a few trees in the backyard and Colleen started doing the laundry by hand at home. Oddly enough, Colleen found that she enjoyed doing the laundry by hand and the clothes were getting cleaner and smelled fresher. Towards the end of June we also harvested our potato garden. I had planted 3 pounds of seed potatoes in a 5 foot by 5 foot raised bed garden and we ended up getting close to 20 pounds of potatoes for our troubles. It’s a sure bet we’ll be planting potatoes again in the spring.

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July came and went. We had to nix our usual 4th of July gathering of the clan. Alex had saved enough money and bought himself a nice used crossover. Colleen started her annual raking of the half-acre. I kept splitting and stacking firewood and Colleen and I started moving it up to the winter ready racks up by the house. By the time we got done filling the racks we had almost four cords of wood stacked, covered, and ready to go. Colleen and I did get adventurous in July and one day we headed off to check out a local produce stand, Perkins Orchard by name. The stand has been around since the 1970’s and is pretty big for what it is. Perkins Orchard is also an hour closer to us than the farmers market and much less crowded. Perkins turned out to be even more than we expected. They had everything we wanted and several things we didn’t know we needed. It only took us that first trip to realize that Perkins Orchard would be our first stop before we headed to the market to finish our grocery shopping. We got to be so regular over the course of the summer and fall we know a good many of the staff on a first name basis and they call us Mom and Pops.

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School was supposed to start in mid July for me. I teach at a year-round school, but the school district pushed that into mid August and then late August. My school district came right out and said that we would be remote for at least the first quarter. Halfway through the first quarter, they changed that to at least through the second quarter. As of right now I know we will be starting the third quarter online and I’m really expecting the district to keep us online for the whole third quarter too. I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if the whole school year ends up being online. Anyway, Colleen had started taking an interest in developing a real herb garden at the beginning of summer. She had spent a good bit of time searching and researching on the internet. We ended up growing some very nice oregano, some basil, peppermint, and sage. She has some Echinacea, cone flower, she tried to grow too, but she only had limited success with that so far, but it’s still going strong in Colleen’s winter greenhouse on the second floor porch. It was a good start and she harvested and dried enough oregano and basil to carry her through the winter. She used the peppermint to make an organic flea spray for Buttercup. Colleen has her eyes on those herbs again for this spring as well as some lemon balm and elderberry. I guess elderberry isn’t technically and herb, but it does have medicinal value. August was also the month Colleen and I reverted back to living in an empty nest. Alex decided to get his own apartment. Not having Alex around to help with some of the outside chores did take a little getting used to on my part though.

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September found me learning how to teach school online. It isn’t quite as easy as it might seem, but I managed to come up with a structure that seems to be working well. I had a good bit of input and help from the kids. I guess an old dog can learn new tricks. I will say I had a whole lot less trouble adapting than some other teachers, but then I’ve been working with computers since 1969. I even managed to get a nice set up working on Canvas, the learning platform our school district uses for online work. I like it so much I am now in the process of trying to figure out how I can bring it into the physical classroom when we finally do head back to school. Colleen’s school district is requiring her to be at school even though the kids aren’t there. Fortunately, she is a TA and doesn’t have much to do online, she is the gatekeeper for the school. Nobody gets into the school without going through her. She checks everyone’s temperature and completes all of the necessary documentation for any teacher or member of the staff that wants to enter the building. Fortunately she never has to get closer than six feet to anyone and everyone has to wear a mask. Her district just started putting elementary and middle school kids back into the classroom, but had to back off of that before Christmas break because of the shortage of substitute teachers to cover for high risk teachers who couldn’t be in the classroom. Just to make things worse, it seems the number of virus cases for students and staff tripled in the weeks leading up the Christmas break. We did have an interesting little twist of fate pop up in September. Colleen’s Honda died. Actually it didn’t really die it just wouldn’t start so Colleen started driving the Trail Blazer back and forth to school. Now, we’ve had the Trail Blazer for more than a year and Colleen had never driven it. She said it was too big. As it turns out after a week or so of driving the Trail Blazer she has fallen in love with it. She particularly likes being above everyone else’s head lights especially in bad weather. We eventually did get the Honda fixed, but it looks like I’ll be the one driving it now when I start back to school.

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October turned out to be a long month. There were no real breaks from school, the weather started to cool off, and we had like three weekends in a row where the remnants of a hurricane blew over our heads. Colleen and I started our Christmas shopping early this year since we were home and planned on doing our shopping online. The pool company in China finally said they would refund our money if we sent the pool back to them so we tried except it would have cost $400 to mail a small inflatable pool back. That wasn’t going to happen. I got in touch with PayPal again, explained the situation, and within a day PayPal told me to keep the pool I had and refunded all of our money. With the fall harvest coming in during October, Colleen and I did a good bit of canning when we could. We ended up canning pumpkin butter, apple sauce, and pears, most all of which ended up in our larder. Any other free time Colleen had got devoted to three Christmas projects, a photo album for each of the older kids, custom handmade masks for everyone, and Christmas baskets of our canned goods and Colleen’s baking. Colleen actually didn’t do the baking until the week before Christmas though.

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The girls started molting in late October and by early November they weren’t laying eggs. Colleen had gotten used to an ample supply of fresh eggs so it took a bit of getting used to not having fresh eggs on our part. We had water glassed a good many eggs over the summer so there were plenty for baking, but with the holidays fast approaching even those were dwindling quickly. By early November, we had most of our Christmas shopping done and my darling wife was turning into a “wrap” artist. She might not have dropped any new tracks on the music scene, but the things she did with ribbons, bows, paper, and string were incredible. Thanksgiving saw a major departure from tradition for us up here on the hill. Al and Alysia came the weekend before Thanksgiving for an intimate get together. We took them to Perkins Orchard in the morning and they were blown away by the place and are willing to make to hour and a half drive to visit again. There was no big sit down dinner for us this Thanksgiving. Colleen and I decided a buffet style meal would better suit the times and let the kids come and go as they pleased. The day after Thanksgiving we got our tree from Perkins Orchard and by far and away it has been the best tree we have ever gotten. It is still up today and has yet to shed a needle!

On December 1st Colleen told me that all of our Christmas presents were wrapped and we were ready for Christmas. Unfortunately, very few of our decorations save the Christmas tree had been put up at that point. We spent every day from then until just a few days before Christmas doing some decorating or another. Colleen and I stayed away from the stores and mall this year so we weren’t able to indulge ourselves with our traditional sloppy cheese steak sandwiches and heart attack fries that we would enjoy at the food court in the mall so Colleen learned how to make cheese steak sandwiches and we had them at home with chili cheese fries. The odds are good we’ll be enjoying them more often at home now. Christmas went the way of Thanksgiving and Colleen opted for a brunch buffet. Al and Alysia suspected they might have had been exposed to the virus so they canceled all of their holiday plans. Colleen and I drove over to their place the weekend before Christmas to drop off their presents. We had a short quick visit, but everyone stayed the prerequisite six feet away from each other. The rest of the kids made it to the house in shifts on Christmas Day. Lily was finally old enough to enjoy tearing paper and was the star of the show. By 4 o’clock Christmas afternoon everyone had left and Colleen and I just sat there in front of the fire amazed we had pulled off another amazing Christmas.

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So here we are on the first weekend in January. Colleen and I start back to school tomorrow, but Colleen has a few days where she can work from home. By all accounts we had a great year up here on our little hill. We’re not ones for going out so the 40 plus weeks of stay-at-home really haven’t been a big deal to us. We are wholly expecting things to get worse before they get better too, so we are getting ready to do the whole thing again. I personally think the politicians and media are trying to spin this whole thing into a lot better circumstances than those that really exist. Even if Colleen and I have to keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last year, we’re good with it. We are healthy, have a roof over our heads, and have plenty of food whether it be in our larder or grown in our gardens. I have all the credits I need to renew my teaching license in the spring and we only have three or four more years to go before we can retire, and yes, we are looking for a place with a good bit more land and a smaller house into which we can retire. We know everything will fall into place exactly when it should so for now we are very thankful for everything we have because all we have to do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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January 10, 2021: Week #43, The Promise Of Snow Goes Nowhere!

The first full week of January and week 43 of the “Great American Stay-At-Home” are in the bag. It was a full week of school for Colleen and me, but Colleen got to work from home for three of the five days last week. The weather was pretty good all week except for Friday. Actually the weather forecast provided us with a couple of good laughs through the week. When the week started there was the prediction of 1 to 3 inches of snow for Friday evening. During the first part of the week that prediction seemed to change every couple of hours. By Thursday the prediction was changing every 20 minutes which Colleen and I found quite amusing. Friday morning showed up, the temperatures were hovering around the freezing mark, and the expected rain was falling. As it turned out the anticipated cold front didn’t move through quite when planned, it never got cold enough for the rain to change over to snow, and apart from a few late night flurries on Friday we didn’t get any snow. We don’t get much snow in these parts anyway, but having been raised in New England, Colleen and I rather do enjoy the rare snow we do get, besides it never lasts very long around here anyway.

Colleen and I were really struggling to get rolling last Sunday. It was the last day of our Christmas break and the break had passed just too quickly. We did finally get moving and carried ourselves down to the market for our weekly essentials. We did treat ourselves to some corned beef from the deli so Colleen could make some Ruben sandwiches, but that was about the highlight of our day. I spent my afternoon on the computer getting things ready for school. Colleen made a pot of pea soup after lunch and spent the rest of the day putting away Christmas decorations. By the time dinner rolled around, neither of us had much spunk left so we just sat in our recliners and watched the fire burn down until it was time to head to bed.

The school week as a whole was actually rather quiet. I had all of my lesson plans and material ready to go on Sunday, but everything got scuttled Monday morning when we started a week’s worth of mid year benchmark testing. Of course, math is a biggie for benchmark tests and since I primarily teach math to 9th graders, the testing got all of my kids. I suppose given the current situation with school being remote there may be some useful information in the benchmark tests results, but I sure would have rather had the time to work with the kids. As it turned out just a bit more than half my kids actually finished the test over the course of the week so now I have to figure out how to work the testing into the upcoming week’s schedule. At least at the end of each day I got to enjoy a cigar on the back porch and watch the sunset.

Colleen’s week was pretty much a bunch of online training save for Wednesday and Friday when she needed to go into school. Her school is on a semester schedule so they are getting ready for first semester final exams. Our state requires the EOC exams, End of Course, be taken in person. Fortunately there are only four courses that have EOC’s and that means only a few hundred kids will be showing up on any given day to Colleen’s school this coming week. Thankfully it’s not the whole student body. When Colleen would finish her work each day last week she got back to packing up Christmas and by Tuesday the tree was down and most everything else was put away. The living room is now barren and empty, and I suppose like every other year it will take us a little while to readjust.

Our week wasn’t without a few highlights though. The girls have started laying eggs again and we are getting one or two eggs pretty much every day now. We still have some eggs we water glassed last summer, but having fresh eggs again is a real treat. Colleen and I ordered our seeds for our spring planting last week too and they should be arriving before too long. I’ve been finding time to read up on the vegetables we are planning on growing this year, and with the new soil meter I got for Christmas and a little extra planning, we are quite optimistic that this will be a great year for our gardens. Thursday evening held an especially big surprise for me. The school board for my district held a special meeting and decided to keep everything online for the rest of the school year. It was a tough call, but I really think they did the right thing for the sake of consistency. The district in which Colleen works is still wandering around in limbo with the kids and teachers not sure when, or even if, they will go back to school, and if they do go back to school how long they will be there before they have to go back online.

Yesterday Colleen and I were up early and got treated to a beautiful sunrise with a crescent moon hanging over a wildly colorful horizon. The temperatures were just around freezing and with no snow on the ground we decided we would get out early in the morning and get our errands out of the way. The errands didn’t take us very long and we were home before lunch. After we got home and everything got put away, Colleen spent the afternoon working on a new set of curtains for the family room and I got in front of my computers to get my schoolwork done. By dinner time I had my grading done and my lesson plans were ready to go for the next two weeks. Today I can spend my time getting class work and assignments ready for the kids.

Buttercup let us sleep a bit later than usual this morning. Now that Colleen and I are up and moving we’ll go about our business getting ready for the upcoming week. We have a bright and sunny day at hand though. The temperatures are still near freezing, but we might see 50 degrees by later this afternoon. We have a lovely fire burning in the fireplace, the girls are out of their coop, and we’ve had our breakfast. Colleen wants to finish working on the curtains today and I have my usual schoolwork. It should be a wonderful day up here on our little hill even if the rest of the world is still trying to find some direction in the midst of all the chaos. Colleen and I see no point to in worrying about things we cannot directly affect or change. It just seems like too many people are talking and no one is listening and we refuse to be a part of that. Colleen and I will keep taking one day at a time, keep our affairs in order, and help others where we can. It’s kind of a simple formula and it suits our simple life just fine. We do know one thing for sure though and that is no matter what happens during the day, at the end of each day we can look around and feel good about our day because all is right on the homestead.

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January 17, 2021: Week #44, The Calmest Week We’ve Had In A While!

Another week has passed and Colleen and I are quite content to stay close to home. The weather ran the gambit last week from bright and sunny to cold biting rain. We even had a short snow squall thrown into the mix yesterday afternoon. The snow lasted all of 10 minutes and didn’t amount to much more than being pretty to look at through the front window. The temperatures stayed seasonably chilly all week, but a good fire in the fireplace chased the morning chill from the house and kept us warm and toasty. It looks like things are going from bad to worse out in the real world with a limited supply of vaccine, a mutating virus, and uncertainty as to whether or not the vaccine will be effective on the new mutant strains. Of course if you listen to the news and the politicians they’d have you believe they have a plan to stem the tide. Personally, I think 2021 just told 2020 to hold its beer. Tomorrow is a federal holiday and Colleen and I are enjoying a long weekend this weekend and while there is plenty to do around here we are taking our time for a change.

As things turned out, last Sunday was a pretty slow day for Colleen and me. I had all of my usual writing and schoolwork that needed doing, but once Colleen got moving she found her way to the kitchen and had the house smelling divine. By the time noon had rolled around Colleen had a big pot of homemade minestrone soup simmering on the stove. I’m sure it isn’t too much of a stretch figure out what we had for lunch. Colleen makes a fabulous minestrone soup too! Once the soup was finished Colleen put together a good old fashion Yankee Pot Roast. Three or four hours in the oven and the pot roast gets so tender it starts to fall apart when it sees a fork. When our kids were growing up, they refer to pot roast as “Soft Meat”. Unfortunately, none of our kids were here Sunday evening to enjoy dinner with us.

Colleen had to head into school first thing Monday morning and every morning thereafter for the rest of the week. Her school is on a semester schedule so there were kids showing up to take their final exams in person. North Carolina requires that students take their mandated state final exams in person. Fortunately, the whole student body didn’t have to show up at one time and all Colleen had to do was check their temperatures before the kids went into the building. I teach at a year-round school so my kids were just finishing up their second quarter and fortunately, the mid-year benchmark testing was finished the week before so there wasn’t anything special about my week of online school. I will be finalizing my second quarter grades this weekend though.

It was a full week of school, but not without couple of note worthy pluses during the week. The girls have started laying eggs again and we are getting two eggs a day more often than not. Once the days get longer and temperatures warm up we should start seeing even more eggs. Once the girls start really laying in earnest, Colleen and I will start water glassing the extra eggs a whole lot earlier this year than we did last year. Colleen found some time to finish making and then hung some heavy curtains in front of the sliding glass doors to help keep the heat in the house. The mailman brought us a real treat on Wednesday when we got out first shipment of seeds for our gardens this year. We got a starter kit for Shiitake mushrooms too. We’ve never grown mushrooms before so it will be an adventure for us. And just to make our long weekend even better, Colleen stopped at the market in her way home Friday so we wouldn’t have to leave our little hill at all on our long weekend this weekend.

With nowhere to go and a couple of extra days this weekend, Colleen and I were in no particular hurry to get moving yesterday. Once the fire was lit and we had finished our morning coffee Colleen decided she wanted to make some bread so we could have grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. It wasn’t very long before there was dough rising on the hearth and shortly after that there was fresh bread coming out of the oven to cool on the countertop. I spent most of my day on and off of the computers, but I did find some time to take a nap after lunch. Mother Nature threw a surprise 10 minute snow squall at us later in the afternoon that looked nice, but didn’t amount to anything. We went back to the fresh baked bread for dinner and had our hamburgers on toast. Overall Colleen and I did get a few things accomplished on the day, but we sure didn’t kill ourselves to get any of it done.

The sun is up, we have beautiful blue skies today, and we did have a awesome sunrise too. I suppose I’ll be on and off the computers again today. The more I can finish today will be all the less I’ll have to do on Tuesday. The world is still upside down and things seem to be getting worse and just to make things more interesting we get to throw politics into the mix for the coming week. It seems like everyone has their nose in somebody else’s business, everybody thinks they have the right answer while everyone else is wrong, and no one is listening to anyone else. I suppose in time this too shall pass though. Colleen and I are about as ready as anyone for whatever comes our way. We’re just going to sit tight up here on our little hill, use good common sense, and not worry about tomorrow. We’ll just keep taking one day at a time, and we are always thankful for each and every day. It’s a great feeling that after 44 weeks that there isn’t any place Colleen and I would rather be than right here at home. All we have to do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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January 24, 2021: Week #45, It Looks Like Crazy Is Back In Town.

Last week was a bit of a strange week for Colleen and me. Colleen and I both had Monday off from school, Colleen had Tuesday off as well, but I had a teacher’s workday with no classes. Colleen did have to go to school on Wednesday even though everything went back to all online in her district. I don’t have classes on Wednesdays so Thursday and Friday ended up being the only regular school days of the week for us. We really had pretty good weather all week too. The mornings were cool, but things would warm up nicely in the afternoons. We did see a little bit of rain on Thursday morning, but it cleared out around noon and the sun even made a few spotty appearances through the clouds. Friday actually warmed up into the 50’s with plenty of sunshine, and yesterday wasn’t quite that warm, but it was still a beautiful day. Today looks to be much the same as yesterday with perhaps a few more clouds. We’re closing in on February now, we haven’t seen much more than a flurry of snow all winter, and the next two weeks look like they will stay too warm for snow. We have gotten late season snowstorms in the past so I’m not ruling out any snow for this year quite yet.

With last Monday being a holiday, Colleen and I weren’t in any great rush to get anything done on Sunday. The second quarter at my school had ended on Friday leading into last weekend so I ended up finalizing my 2nd quarter grades over the course of the entire weekend. It’s not like teachers really get days off anyway. It seems as though I’m always grading, making lesson plans, or putting together class work and assignments whenever I’m not in class. Colleen did have a hankering to do a little cooking last Sunday and whipped up a big pot of her gumbo and then made some pan seared salmon for dinner. After dinner we just kicked back and watched the fire burn in the fireplace.

If finding motivation on Sunday was tough, it was almost impossible to find on Monday. I found my way to the back porch with my coffee first thing in the morning and stayed there for quite a while and let the deer grazing in the backyard entertain me. I finally did get moving and managed to finish up all of my grading and finalize all of my grade books. Unfortunately, that took me right up until dinner time and any hopes I had of getting outside and working in the gardens fell by the wayside. Colleen spent her day up in her workroom making more masks. Despite what the government and media are saying, things look like they will get a whole lot worse before they get better. Fortunately, Colleen and I having been using good old common sense to stay healthy and virus free, and we plan on doing that for quite some time to come.

I got really lucky on Tuesday and didn’t have any meetings for school even though it was a teacher’s workday. I was able to get a good bit of all of my other schoolwork sewed up for the rest of the week. Colleen decided Tuesday morning would be a great day to do laundry. There was supposed to be plenty of sunshine and a light breeze so she would be able to hang the laundry out on the line. Colleen got ready to go and then couldn’t find her keys. She must have spent a good hour looking for her keys to no avail. She finally just took my keys and headed down to the laundromat. Of course, once she got back home and had the laundry on the line Colleen tore the house apart. She finally did find her keys which were caught on something in the bottom of her school bag. The rest of the day Colleen just hid in her workroom working on more masks.

Colleen had to go into school on Wednesday morning and I had a department meeting first thing in the morning. With everything being online in Colleen’s district now it was a very slow day for her with just a skeleton crew of the staff and a few teachers actually showing up at school. Once my meeting finished I spent the rest of my day doing schoolwork except for my club meeting in the early afternoon. I was still elbow deep in schoolwork when Colleen got home. We got the first shipment of garden seeds about a week ago and we’ve been talking about getting our gardens in order for the spring so Colleen took advantage of her time after dinner to start doing a little research on growing her herbs. She had good luck with a few herbs from last year and she has some oregano and sage overwintering in her greenhouse on the second floor porch, but she has a few like lemon balm and thyme she’d like to grow from seeds this year.

Thursday was a regular school day for both Colleen and me. We got a little bit of rain in the morning, but so little the girls didn’t even noticed and just ran around and scratched in their pen all day. Colleen had a bit of a rush of people at school as kids and parents started showing up to get supplies and books for the second semester. My morning was okay, but after lunch I had a four hour run in front of the computer screen between classes, my office hours, and a meeting. Needless to say, I sure didn’t feel like doing much of anything after dinner, but I did the schoolwork I could and ended up leaving the needed class work for one class until Friday morning. I had no problem falling asleep on Thursday night.

Friday morning showed up, Colleen headed off to school, I took care of the morning chores, and then I started scrambling to get the work done that I couldn’t finish on Thursday night. I did get everything done though and the day passed easily. Colleen stopped at the market on her way home from school so we wouldn’t have to go out by this weekend and got home right about when I finished with my last class of the day. Once I finished with my classes, I closed my computers and headed outside to work in the gardens before dinner. I finally reached that point of being tired of being trapped in front of computer screens. I managed to get our four fallow raised bed gardens cleaned out, weeded, and tined. Colleen and I enjoyed some decadent chili cheese dogs and chili cheese fries for dinner and didn’t do a dang thing after dinner.

Yesterday Colleen and I actually slept in a bit. We were still up before the sun, but not two or three hours like usual. I decided right out of the gate I would spend the day working outside and Colleen said she wanted to get some baking done. We both enjoyed a second cup of coffee before we started moving, but once we got going we kept going for the whole day. I used up the last of last fall’s compost to help fill in one of our raised bed gardens. It still needs more garden soil, but it has a nice layer of chicken dropping enriched compost in it now. The other gardens need compost as well and our compost bin has plenty, but it needs to be screened to get the bigger pieces of green material out of it. I spent the rest of my morning and a big part of the afternoon running compost through a classifying screen. I filled a wheelbarrow with good rich compost and added it to another raised bed garden. Colleen was definitely in a baking frame of mind yesterday and she made a couple of loaves of an oatmeal-rye bread and a Boston Cream Pie. She also made a very nice swordfish dinner for us. Knowing I would be swamped with schoolwork today, after I finished my after dinner cigar I sat down in front of the computers and did some grading.

I slept late again this morning and didn’t find my way out to the back porch until after sunup. It really is a beautiful morning. Colleen was already up and moving around in the kitchen by the time I made it downstairs. It’s going to be a busy day for us though. I have more than enough schoolwork to keep me busy all day and Colleen will stay busy getting ready for the upcoming week. The world is still upside down and the media is still trying to put an upbeat spin on things for the new president. I guess they are out of practice because it looks like they are trying to make the good stuff up. I don’t think anyone really knows what is coming down the road though. Colleen and I don’t pay the media much mind though. We’re relying on the ever so rare commodity in this country of common sense to stay safe and healthy. We get up each morning, greet the new day like an old friend, and at night we go to bed with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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January 31, 2021: Week #46, Now The Weather Is Acting Crazy Too!

It might be hard to believe, but last week was week 46 of stay-at-home and we’re still counting. If you filter out all of the media and political attempts to paint a bright and sunny picture, you’ll begin to realize that we might be back to something reasonable resembling pre-COVID status by January 2022 if we are lucky. This stuff is just going to have to run its course. Fortunately, Colleen and I prefer to stay close to home anyway so we’re doing just fine. The weather on the other hand last week was anything but fine. We got a good soaking of rain to start the week, we had a little sunshine on Wednesday, woke up to a couple of inches of snow on Thursday, and after a lovely, but cold day yesterday, we have freezing rain this morning. At least the temperatures are supposed to get over freezing later today and stay there through tomorrow so ice won’t build up on everything. I say that, but it is the weather about which I am talking so who knows?

Last Sunday turned out to be just one of those get ready for the upcoming week kind of days. Colleen spent a good part of the day in the kitchen and I was on the computer doing schoolwork for most of the day. Colleen ended up making a batch of muffins and a pan full of white chicken lasagna on the day. Alex and Steven paid Colleen and me a surprise visit in the afternoon. We hadn’t seen any of the kids since Christmas so it was a real treat. I think Buttercup was the most excited of all of us though. She really does miss having Alex around the house. The boys didn’t stay too long and left before dinner. Like always, Colleen cooked up a special Sunday dinner and last Sunday she put together a lovely lamb chop meal for dinner. I hadn’t done any schoolwork on Saturday so after dinner I got right back on the computer and stayed there well into the evening.

Monday was just a rainy school day. I hadn’t quite finished all of my schoolwork on Sunday night so I was scampering to get it done Monday morning. Tuesday pretty much played out the same way. Wednesday I don’t have classes, just meetings, so things weren’t quite so crazy, but all of a sudden the rain that had been forecast for Wednesday night got changed to snow. At first we were only supposed to get a dusting, but that dusting turned into a couple of inches by Wednesday evening, and by the time Colleen and I headed off to bed the local school districts started announcing the physical schools would be closed on Thursday, and yes the snow did show up. Of course, with most everything school related being online right now, the kids didn’t get a snow day.

Thursday morning Colleen and I woke up to a couple of inches of snow on the ground making everything around here look like a winter wonderland. Colleen didn’t have to go to school, but I had classes. My kids were not too thrilled to have to be in school either, but it is what it is these days. Like any traditional snow day Colleen decided baking some fresh bread was the order of the day and it wasn’t too late into the morning before there was a bowl of dough sitting on the hearth to rise. The snow was mostly gone by Friday morning, Colleen headed into school, and I had my usual online classes. Colleen did stop at the market on her way home Friday afternoon which kept us from having to leave the house again this weekend. We both had a good laugh though when she got home and we realized I haven’t left the house since January 9^th, but staying home on a weekend and not having errands to run is proving to be a real treat for us.

Yesterday was cold, but it was sunny. For the first time in a couple of months that Colleen and I could remember anyway, we actually felt like we were more or less caught up with things up here on the hill. Our “To-Do” list is still a mile long, but there was nothing pressing or urgent that needed doing. After enjoying a gorgeous sunrise on the back porch with my hot coffee, I ended up doing a little schoolwork, but in reality spent most of my day planning our spring gardens. Colleen did a little bit of this and a little bit of that which included some vacuuming around the house and dry canning bread crumbs for our larder. Colleen had run into a sale on breadcrumbs on Friday when she stopped at the market. We kept the fire burning hard all day yesterday and in between our activities we also found plenty of time to relax too.

This morning we woke up to a nasty, cold, and biting freezing rain. The temperatures aren’t even supposed to make it out of the 30’s today. I looked out from the front porch earlier this morning and the ice was already starting to build up on our gardens. To make things even worse, the freezing rain and rain is supposed to last into tomorrow night. Weather notwithstanding, today is just another get ready for next week Sunday for us. Colleen will be in the kitchen and I will be on my computers. It seems strange that today is the last day of January too. All the same, Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time. The world is going to do what it will, but up here on our little hill everything is going along just fine. There really is no better feeling than being able to look around and knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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February 07, 2021: Week #47,Just A Week Of Lousy Weather And Cold Temperatures!

It was a wonky week of weather last week around here. We had more than our share of rainy mornings, but the temperatures stayed pretty close to freezing so other than a few rogue snowflakes all we saw was the rain. Mother Nature keeps teasing us with snow in the forecasts, but by time the weather gets here, it’s not cold enough for much more than a bitter and biting rain. We did have a couple of nice days thrown into the mix though and fortunately, yesterday was one of those days so Colleen and I got a chance to get outside in the morning and get some work done. Unfortunately, even though the daylight hours are getting longer, there still isn’t enough daylight to get outside and do anything after school. It is what it is, but the spring is closing in quickly as we are now a week into February.

Last Sunday Colleen and I woke up to some really lousy weather, a mix of freezing rain and rain. The day warmed up just enough to turn everything to rain, but the air had one heck of bite to it and we burnt our fire hard all day long. The state finally got its computer software up and running and I spent a good part of my day getting my grade books brought up to date. Colleen found her way into the kitchen like usual and made one of her super-frittatas and then for dinner made us a special meal of country fried steak. For a good old New England raised Irish kid, I’ll put Colleen’s country fried steak up against anybody’s, anywhere, in the country. I do know me one thing though, with spring heading our way in just over a month I desperately need to figure out how to free up more time on the weekends. All of this schoolwork is eating me alive.

Our school week went as well as can be expected. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary reared its head. Colleen headed to school in the dark of the mornings and I would wait for sunrise so I could let the girls out for the day before I started my online classes. Colleen’s school district voted to start bringing the kids back to school, right after President’s Day for Colleen’s school. The state as a whole seems to be leaning that way too. Of course, in their infinite wisdom, the state has not moved teachers up on the pecking order to get vaccinated. At lot of teachers are not happy about that at all. Personally, I’m not too sure it would make a difference. The current vaccine is for the 2020 version of the virus and there is no guarantee that it is effective for the various mutations starting to become dominant. I’m thinking if it was effective, why would big pharma be hustling to develop new vaccines. This does not look like it is going to play out well. My school district is still looking at finishing out the year online though so that is a good thing.

Colleen and I did hit a few bumps in the road during the week. Probably the biggest of those were Colleen’s dentist appointment on Tuesday and the crack in the Trail Blazer’s windshield. Colleen’s dentist appointment was probably long overdue and it ended up leaving her sore for a few days. The Trail Blazer doesn’t have a bad crack in the windshield and we thought we could get it patched they way they do now, but the crack goes right to the edge of the glass so the windshield needs to be replaced. There were a few other incidental things during the week, but nothing that chewed up any big chunks of time or money to resolve. Still through it all, I did find enough time on a couple of evenings to get a little garden planning done and I have everything set up to start some Swiss chard in little peat pots in the house this weekend so come mid to late March they’ll be ready to go into our gardens.

Friday morning started out on an interesting note. It had rained all of Thursday night so the chicken pen was slick as all get out. Of course, with it being on the side of a hill, footing can get might tricky at times. The hill and the slick clay got me, my feet slid out from underneath me, and I landed on my tail in the mud and whatever else was on the ground in the pen. Fortunately, I fell in such a way that the only thing hurt was my pride. I did have to change britches though before I sat down on the dining room chairs for my classes. Just to make the morning even more interesting, Colleen’s iPad locked up on her first thing in the morning. Colleen and technology just don’t get along so she spent the day trying to figure out how to use her cell phone and her laptop computer. I was able to get her iPad working again once she got home, but she either accidentally changed her iCloud password or forget it so we can’t easily reset everything because she can’t get to the email account she used initially to set everything up and running. The only drawback to that is that Colleen cannot update her apps at the moment. I eventually got tired of fiddling with the iPad so once I put it down, I just put my feet up on the hearth and watched our fire burn for the rest of Friday evening. I suppose I’ll figure everything out sooner or later.

Yesterday started out with a beautiful morning, but Mother Nature being Mother Nature looks like she has some messy weather heading our way. We have burned three times more wood to heat the house this year than we anticipated because I am home everyday teaching classes online. Our winter ready racks are empty so we needed to get more firewood readily accessible to see us through until spring. Fortunately, we have plenty of seasoned firewood, but unfortunately a good bit of it isn’t split yet and what was split was in pile at the bottom of our hill by the log splitter. Colleen and I spent most all of yesterday morning hauling firewood up the hill and stacking it by the basement door so we could get to it easily. I guess we moved about a half cord of wood. That was all that was split on the ground. We are hopeful it will carry us through to March, but I have a feeling I will be splitting more wood over the President’s Day long weekend.

The rest of yesterday was a pretty typical Saturday for us. Colleen found some time in the kitchen make a pot of corn chowder and bake some fresh bread. I got all of my grading done and my grade books up to date for the week. I did find some time yesterday afternoon to bring some garden soil into the house so it could warm up and I put some Swiss chard seeds into some warm water so they will be ready to plant today. Colleen and I haven’t had much luck with starting our vegetable garden in the house before, but I’ve been doing a little extra reading lately and we’re game to give it a shot again this year. If we are lucky, we should have 20 nice chard plants by the time mid to late March rolls around. That will be more than enough for our garden with some leftover to give to the kids for their gardens.

The rain that moved into the area last night has hung around until this morning making for a dreary start to the day. Right around sunrise we even had a mix of snow, sleet, and rain all at the same time. It doesn’t look like it will get very warm around here today, but we have a dandy fire going in our fireplace and the house is quite comfortable. Colleen will spend some time in the kitchen today and I will work on my schoolwork. A little later I will plant the chard too. The politicians and media are still trying to paint a rosy picture of things out in the real world, but reading between the lines doesn’t give me the optimism they want me to have. Virus mutations are growing rapidly, vaccinated people are getting sick, the government is making futile attempts to spur the economy, and nothing is any different than it was several months ago. Colleen and I are doing just fine though. We’re taking one day at a time and relying on our own common sense to keep us safe and healthy. We greet each new day like an old friend, take care of our business, and head to bed every night with a peace of mind that comes from knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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February 14, 2021: Week #48, More Lousy Weather And Preparing For The Kids To Be Back In School!

We just finished week 48 of stay at home and last week, though not terribly difficult, was a rough one for the weather. Oh, we saw a little sun from time to time, but we saw more rain and temperatures at or below freezing which made everything just wet and nasty. Just like today, last Sunday was wet and with the exception of a brief respite on Sunday afternoon that carried into Monday. Things did start to clear up in the middle of the week and we had an absolutely lovely Wednesday afternoon. That was short lived though and the clouds came back on Thursday and the rain started on Thursday night. The rain did give us a break on Friday afternoon but come Friday night the freezing rain started, and yesterday morning everything was covered with a shiny coating of ice. The temperatures did get a degree or two above freezing yesterday afternoon, the wind picked up, and we got showered with ice chunks from the tree branches. This morning it might be a degree or two above freezing again so there isn’t any ice, but the cold damp air certainly has a nasty bite to it. The worst part of it all is that it is suppose to continue into tomorrow. That’s not exactly the best way to start the week. Fortunately, Colleen and I have tomorrow off from school.

Despite the lousy morning weather last Sunday, the afternoon ended up turning out pretty well weather wise. Somehow Colleen and I had gotten a good bit of work accomplished on Friday and Saturday so Sunday actually seemed more relaxed than usual. Colleen did a little baking and cooking. I wrote and finished up my schoolwork without killing myself. The fire in the fireplace kept the first floor very comfortable all day long, but Colleen and I did realize that we would need to split firewood at some point during the week because Mother Nature was getting ready to make things messy later in the week. The real trick was being able to find some time between our school schedule and the impending bad weather.

Apart from some wonky weather and cold temperatures, the school week didn’t go badly for Colleen and me. Wednesday actually turned out to be a nice day. I got to put the peat pots I had planted with Swiss chard out in the afternoon sunshine even though nothing has sprouted yet. Colleen had an auto glass repair company replace the windshield in the Trail Blazer on Wednesday and she even stopped at the market on the way home. Colleen did have a crazy day at school on Friday. The district superintendent of schools, a bunch of political dignitaries, and the local media showed up in the morning to spin the decision to put kids back into school starting this coming week. Personally, I can’t help but wonder how long it will last. At least for the time being my school district is still planning on staying online until the end of the school year, but that could change in the blink of an eye so I guess I’ll just play it by ear.

The rain did let up Friday around lunchtime. And even though the temperature was sitting on the freezing mark, it gave Colleen and me a window of opportunity. Colleen got home at her usual time while I was still in my last class of the day. I told her the rain wouldn’t start again until after dinner so she headed upstairs, changed into work clothes, and after my class finished we headed down to the log splitter to split and stack firewood. We have plenty of seasoned firewood on the ground to see us through the winter, but with me being home every day, we’ve burnt almost everything I had split last summer which is way more than we had planned. Colleen and I spent a good hour and a half down at the wood pile so we’ll be fine until the weather breaks again. It was getting on toward sunset so we put the girls to roost before we came back inside for dinner. The rain started shortly after we had sat down to a wonderful Friday night meal of chili cheese dogs and chili cheese fries and then sat and watched the fire burn for the evening. The small simple things in life are always the best!

Yesterday Colleen and I woke up to a coating of ice on everything. Fortunately, we had no plans to go anywhere or for that matter even do anything outside. Just a side note here, I haven’t needed to leave our little homestead since January 9^th. Fortunately, there is more than enough to keep me busy around here. Colleen did some baking and cooking on the day. I got caught up on my schoolwork. Neither of us was moving too quickly, but, then again, we knew we had this coming Monday off from school. We actually got quite a bit accomplished on the day and found some time to sit, relax, and enjoy the fire in the fireplace. I even managed to get my grade books updated after dinner before I closed up the house for the night and headed to bed. Either my schoolwork is getting easier or I’m doing a better job of staying on top of it.

This morning’s temperature is still only a degree or two above freezing and the damp, biting cold has seeped its way into my old joints once again. The world is still upside down and sinking quickly despite the spin the media and politicians are trying their best to put on things. I know it is human nature to attempt to control the fates, but sometimes you just have to ride things out. Colleen and I are doing just fine through all this mess though. We help out others where we can, but mostly just take care of our own business not depending on anyone else to bail us out. We take things one day at a time and use a good bit of common sense to keep ourselves safe. We don’t have a complaint in the world either because even with everything being a mess the gardens are waiting patiently for spring. We couldn’t be more thankful for the things we have, but mostly we are thankful for being able to look around up here on our little hill and know that all is right on the homestead.

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February 21, 2021: Week #49, Really Lousy Weather And A Change In Plans

Well, week 49 of the Great American Stay At Home has passed and we are quickly closing in on the one year mark. The last time I was in my school proper was March 13th of 2020. For a change we are starting today with plenty of sunshine. Last Sunday we were dealing with freezing rain and that was just a precursor to a wacky week of weather for us. The freezing rain turned into a cold biting rain on Monday. Tuesday, the sun started fighting back the clouds and by Wednesday we were enjoying a sunny and near 60 degree afternoon. That all changed on Wednesday night when the bottom fell out of the temperatures and freezing rain moved into the area again. The forecast was bad enough that local school districts canceled school on Thursday. Friday morning the temperatures had climbed to just above freezing, but we still had rain falling. Yesterday the sun came back out and while still chilly, we had an absolutely beautiful day. It looks like we are in for a repeat of that today too.

The weather last Sunday kept Colleen and me in the house all day. Monday was President’s Day and a teacher workday for Colleen and me so things were more relaxed than usual. I had my usual schoolwork for the upcoming week and Colleen spent time in the kitchen. I did find time to set up the grow light for the Swiss chard we are trying to start from seed in the house this year, and I ordered a new small greenhouse for our on the back porch. We haven’t had much success starting plants in the house over the past few years, but we’re still trying and we’ll figure it out sooner or later. I don’t care how much reading anyone does, when it comes to gardening, there is no substitute for getting your hands dirty, and it always seems there is more to learn with each new gardening season.

Colleen and I took advantage of having Monday off from school. The weekend’s rain finally started letting up after lunch, but it was still a gray day. Even the girls stayed under their coop for most of the day. Colleen headed down to the laundromat first thing in the morning so she could get that chore out of the way. I spent most of my day working on and off on schoolwork. The day as a whole wasn’t rushed, but Colleen and I did manage to get a good many small things accomplished. Sadly, I also learned that one of the kids at my school and their family lost everything in a house fire. Given the current circumstances in the world, news like that really breaks my heart. There is a GoFundMe page set up for the family and my school is collecting things to help the family as best they can. One thing I really love about the school where I teach is that there is a strong sense of family there.

Colleen had Tuesday off from school, but I was back in front of the computers for my online classes. I did get sort of a break when the school had an online assembly to listen to a guest speaker during one of my classes. The real highlight of the day though was when Amazon delivered our new greenhouse. I was able to get it put together during lunch and since the sun had finally come out, I set it up outside on the back porch. It really isn’t all that big, but it’s the perfect size for the back porch and just maybe this year Colleen and I can get an early jump on our spring gardens. I figure it will be another week or two before we actually start planting outside and with the greenhouse we can start the things early that don’t get planted until mid to late April. It’s all just another step in our journey that will hopefully lead us to retiring in a multi-acre plot of land where we can really start growing a really substantial garden.

Wednesday was the first day back to school for the high school kids in Colleen’s district. Let’s just say the turnout was a lot less than for what the district had planned. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men… I don’t have online classes on Wednesday and I only had one meeting in the morning. Wednesday was actually a very nice day, but the forecast was calling for more freezing rain, and a lot of it, to move in our area on Wednesday night. Colleen decided to stop at the market on the way home and after I finished my schoolwork I headed down back to split more firewood. When Colleen got home and after she put the groceries away, the both of us headed down back to stack the firewood I had split. Fortunately, the bad weather didn’t get here until later in the night so we got all the wood stacked and after dinner we didn’t have any trouble getting the girls into their coop for the night and getting everything secured. The forecast was bad enough however that before we went to bed both Colleen’s school district and mine had canceled school for Thursday, yes, even online classes.

Colleen and I woke up to a mess on Thursday morning. The freezing rain had started coating everything and it just kept coming. By mid morning the tree branches were starting to strain under the weight of the ice. Fortunately, we didn’t lose our electricity. Al and Alysia who live about an hour west of us weren’t quite so lucky and did lose power. The kids ended up having to improvise a space heater with a ceramic flower pot and candles. It’s an old DIY trick, but it worked and apart from the inconvenience of no electricity, the kids fared just fine. I kept the fire burning hard here all day and Colleen even made a pot of soup and baked some fresh bread. Temperatures did warm up enough so that all we had was rain during the afternoon, but all the same it was just a wet, messy, and miserable day outside. I did find out Thursday that the school board in my district changed their mind and wants to return the high school kids back to the classroom in April.

Friday morning the temperatures dropped to just below freezing again. Colleen left for school earlier than usual so she could take her time as there were some icy spots on the roads. She got to school safely and fewer kids showed up on Friday than did on Wednesday. I had a day full of online classes, but for the most part the day passed easily. My kids were all a buzz about going back to school, but almost to a kid, none of them want to be back in the classroom yet. I can’t say as I blame them either. Colleen got home from school at her regular time and for the first time in while I got to head out to the porch to enjoy a cigar after my classes finished for the day. Colleen and I were both worn out from the crazy week so for dinner we enjoyed a bowl of her homemade soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on her homemade bread.

Yesterday was cold, but there was plenty of sunshine and I got to enjoy a beautiful sunrise first thing in the morning. Colleen and I did put a fire in the fireplace to start the day, but let it burn down so we could go to Lowe’s. It was the first time I had been off the hill in six weeks. We were hoping to find some elderberry bushes at Lowe’s, but their garden center is still sparse so all we got was some garden soil for our raised bed gardens. I relit the fire in the fireplace when we got home, Colleen found her way into the kitchen, and I headed outside to prune our pear tree. After lunch I headed down back and spent a couple of hours splitting more firewood. I sure am glad we have plenty of un-split wood on the ground because there is more rain in the forecast for the coming week. At least yesterday was a beautiful day outside. I guess Colleen and I will get to stacking firewood later today.

The sun is out again this morning. The deer have made their way through the backyard and there is a fire burning in the fireplace. I have my usual schoolwork to do and Colleen will probably be in the kitchen later this morning. There is more rain in the forecast for the upcoming week, but I will be most interested in what my district’s back to school plans are. There are seven identified mutations of the virus out there now and reports are starting to come in saying the “miracle” vaccine isn’t nearly as effective on the mutations. I’ve always been skeptical. No matter what happens in the world Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time like always. Common sense is still our best course of action. We are doing well and still looking forward to each new day. The world may still be a mess, but up here on our little hill, all we need do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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February 28, 2021: Week #50, 50 Long Weeks, But February Is Over And We Have A Pool Again

I don’t think many of us would have thought that 50 weeks ago the world would have changed so dramatically, but here we are 50 weeks into this mess. For the most part it was just another school week for Colleen and me. We had just a beautiful weekend with warm temperatures and sunshine last weekend, but Mother Nature being Mother Nature had to stir the kettle. Gray skies and a little rain greeted Colleen and me Monday morning, but somehow the skies cleared up by the afternoon and the little sunshine we did have blossomed on Tuesday and stuck around until Thursday. The gray came back on Friday, Friday night we got a good soaking, and while there wasn’t much in the way of rain yesterday everything stayed pretty wet.

Somehow I managed to get most of my schoolwork sewed up before last Sunday so I got to enjoy a little bit of the lovely weather. Colleen found a bunch of old apples in the refrigerator while she was cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen in the morning so she made a wonderful apple cobbler so the apples wouldn’t go to waste. After lunch we found time to head down back and stack the firewood I had split on Saturday. There is still plenty more firewood to be split, but I am hoping that before too long I can start filling the winter ready racks for next winter instead of playing catch up to keep us in firewood this year. With having had to stay home and teach online all winter, we have burnt three times more wood than usual this year just to keep the house heated all day long.

Monday through Friday ended up being a run of the mill school week for both Colleen and me. The cohort with Colleen’s one on one kid was at school last week so Colleen didn’t have to be the gate keeper checking everyone who came into to the building. I did have a faculty meeting on Monday afternoon so our administration could get us caught up on the district’s intent to start putting kids into the classroom right after our spring break. Wednesday was an early release day for me and after a little training in the afternoon I got to enjoy what was left of a sunny day out on our back porch. For the most part the week was pretty uneventful though. Colleen and I did get excited in the middle of the week though because it looks like 85 percent of the chard I planted in little peat pots has sprouted. They spend most of the time under our grow light now, but I do try to get them outside into the greenhouse when the sun is shining.

Colleen stopped at the market on her way home Friday afternoon. She started doing that once Perkins Orchard closed for the winter right before Christmas. If we don’t have anything else we need, Colleen’s Friday Market stops help eliminate the need to leave the house on Saturdays. That had a lot to do with me not leaving the hill from January 9th until the Saturday before yesterday. Fortunately, I don’t mind being at home one bit. For that matter, Colleen doesn’t mind being at home either and when we do leave, it is only because we need essentials. Buttercup seems quite content to spend her time at home on the loveseat too. Yesterday was a different story though and even with the market run out of the way, Colleen and I did have errands to run, but at least we didn’t need to stop at the market. Colleen and I do have to laugh when we talk about running errands though. We go out so infrequently that when we do leave the hill it almost seems like a trip to Disney World.

Colleen and I were up early yesterday. Most of the pouring rain that ran through the area on Friday night had stopped, everything was still soaking wet though. We only had one cup of coffee before we were on our way and headed out the front door. We figured the sooner we got started, the sooner we could get back home. Our first stop was Tractor Supply Company for chicken feed and dog food. Walmart is just down the road from TSC so we planned on stopping there as well. We really didn’t need to go to Walmart, but we were there and we were hoping they would have swimming pools out for the summer. Well, as luck would have it, the summer pool supplies were out and on the shelves at Walmart, but they only had one pool left. Talk about good timing. That one pool is now securely stored in our basement.

Colleen and I were so exited once we had the pool in the Trail Blazer, we almost forgot we had to go back into Walmart to do the rest of our shopping. There really wasn’t much else we needed, but we headed back into the store anyway. Colleen did find a couple of garden ornaments she just had to have. We made a quick stop after that at Home Depot to check for elderberry bushes, but came up empty there and then we headed home. From that point on, yesterday was just a matter of getting stuff out away and getting caught up on things around the house. As busy as things stay around here during the week, another three day weekend would have been very nice. Fortunately our spring break is only about a month away now.

Steven showed up in the middle of the afternoon. He had been working all morning, but he needed to borrow my log splitter to finish off a load of firewood he sold and that needed to be delivered. Firewood is one of the side products from his tree service company. Alex showed up after Steven left and Alex helped me move the pool to the basement. Alex visited for a bit, but then headed over to Steven’s place to help him with the firewood. It had been a few weeks since we had seen either boy, but both looked good and were in good spirits. Colleen and I didn’t do much for the rest of the day and after the girls were locked into their coop for the night and the sun had set, we called it a day. I guess we must have been pretty tired yesterday evening because Steven returned the log splitter before sundown and neither Colleen nor I even realized he was here.

Well, today has surprised me a bit. It was a gray morning to start, but now that it is starting to warm up a little bit the gray has turned into a thick fog that is blanketing everything. With any luck we might have a little sunshine later that will burn off the fog. Colleen and I will spend the day cleaning up around the house and getting ready for the upcoming week. Colleen goes back to being a gate keeper this week and I just have my online classes. The politicians are still trying to convince everyone they have the current situation under control, which they don’t, and the media is still trying to make the world seem all rosy and headed in the right direction, which from what I read isn’t happening either. No matter, it is what it is. Colleen and I just keep relying on common sense and take everything one day at a time. We sure don’t know where things are going, but we do know that up here on our little hill, all is right on the homestead.

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March 07, 2021: Week #51, The Rain Finally Stopped And We Are Ready For Spring To Start!

Here we are getting ready to start the 52^nd week of the Great American Stay At Home. In all honesty, apart from teaching my classes online from the dining room table and Colleen having to play gate keeper at her school by checking people’s temperatures, we really haven’t noticed too much of a difference from our normal routine. Of course, we do wear our masks when we have to leave the hill and we keep our trips out into public to only when we need essentials, but that part is not much different than what we normally used to do. The politicians and media are still trying to sell the concept of herd immunity thanks to the “Miracle Vaccines”, but what they don’t tell you is that you aren’t immune from anything. The vaccines only mitigate the symptoms of the virus thus making everyone an asymptomatic carrier. Of course, with the rise of the more virulent mutations, the vaccines are proving less and less effective too. It kind of makes me wonder if the powers that be are looking for herd immunity or herd mentality. I guess the best that can be said is that everything is still upside down in most of the world, but no matter what is really happening, everyone can rest assured that the sun will be coming up over the eastern horizon each morning to start a new day.

Up here on our little hill, last week started with another gray and wet Sunday. It seemed that Mother Nature wanted to exact some toll from us. Monday started out wet and rainy too, but after that the rain seemed to just disappear from the forecast. Granted there was a cold front behind all of the rain and our nighttime temperatures dropped back to below freezing again, but there was plenty of sunshine through the week and right into today. It has been so wet this winter that last week was the first time all year we had more than two days in a row without any rain. Things started to finally dry out around here by yesterday and it looks like we have another bright and sunny day today, albeit still a little on the cool side. We don’t mind the cool temperatures so much though when the sun is shining.

Our school week went well enough. Colleen stopped at the laundromat on her way home Monday to get the laundry out of the way. I don’t have classes on Wednesdays and last week Colleen got to stay home for a teacher’s workday. We did have a little excitement on Wednesday morning when the flapper on one of our toilets didn’t shut right, causing the toilet to keep running and ultimately causing our always sketchy septic system to start backing up into the basement. Fortunately, we caught it in time and were able to clean things up before it got too messy in the basement. Everything did stink for a while, but we didn’t have any damage to anything. Thankfully, that was all the excitement we had on Wednesday. Thursday I missed a phone call from Alex first thing in the morning. Of course, Alex never calls so I won’t even begin to say where my mind went, but those were 5 tense minutes until he called me back. As it turned out, his crew was doing a tree job in the area and he just wanted to know if we needed another load of logs for firewood. We still have quite a bit of un-split wood on the ground so I had to pass on the offer this time around. Friday ran pretty well and Colleen stopped at the market on her way home. For the week as a whole, the sunny days were a real treat though, and afforded me a little time in the afternoons to enjoy a cigar on in the back porch, and I even got to take my computer out back to hold my office hours outside one day. All considered it was a good school week.

Yesterday was a very busy day for us up here on the hill. Colleen started a small fire in the fireplace when she got up to chase away the morning chill. We enjoyed our morning coffee in front of the fire and when it burnt down we hit the ground running. We headed out to Tractor Supply Company and Walmart. Colleen needed a new pair of muck boots and I needed some stuff for my computer. We did pick up a few other sundry things too. We got back before lunch and after lunch I headed down back to clean out the chicken pen and change the bedding in the hen coop. Colleen took advantage of the day’s sunshine to clean out her lily garden where the hyacinths are getting ready to bloom. Once the chickens were set to go, the next thing on my list was to split more firewood. I spent the hour and a half or so before dinner down at the log splitter. In betwixt and between all of those things we had going I even managed to update my grade books for the week. We had pizza for dinner for the first time since last May I think, and even though it was store bought, ready to cook pizza instead of takeout, it was a real treat for both of us. Once I start going back to school on a daily basis, I suppose I’ll be stopping at the pizza place again for Friday night dinners.

We have plenty of sunshine this morning. The fire is going and Colleen is already in the kitchen baking fresh bread for the week. I still have some schoolwork that needs to be done, but I am hopeful I can find some time this afternoon to do one or two things on our “To-Do” list. For the most part it should be a pretty typical Sunday. The daylight hours are getting longer and spring is right around the corner so Colleen and I are getting excited to start planting our gardens. I still have a few weeks of online classes left and then we have our spring break before I have to get back into the classroom. I have no idea what that will be like, but it will be interesting. I guess what will happen, will happen so I’m not worried about it in the least. I do know that whatever happens at school or even next week around here or in the world for that matter, at the end of each day Colleen and I can catch our breath, look around at things up here on our little hill, and be thankful because just like yesterday and today, tomorrow when we look around we will be quite happy in knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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March 14, 2021: Week #52, A Year And Still Counting! The Sun Came Out Though!

Well, we have officially concluded one year of the Great American Stay At Home. Apart from teaching classes online, not much was really very different for us up here on our little hill. Last week, however, we had an absolutely beautiful week giving us our first prolonged taste of spring this year. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time we had a run of nine sunny days in a row, if I count last weekend. Heck, toward the end of the week the temperatures even got up close to 80 degrees. Just to make things even better, the daylight hours gave us plenty of time to at least enjoy the sunshine after school during the week. Of course, we did move the clocks forward an hour last night so the sun won’t set until near 7:30 in the evening. It is worth noting that the girls are really enjoying the warmer temperatures and longer day light hours too. They are laying three or four eggs a day now. Unfortunately though, the rain is forecast to return during the upcoming week. It is what it is though and the water and warmer temperatures will be good for the gardens.

Not too much exciting happened last Sunday, in fact it was a calm day by all measures. We put a fire in the fireplace to start the day and chase the morning chill from the house, but we let it burn down by mid afternoon. I did my usual writing and schoolwork which chewed up most of my day. Colleen spent a good bit of her day in the kitchen getting meals ready for the week and baking fresh bread. I did find some time for a cigar in the afternoon sunshine on the back porch. Colleen whipped up a turkey stew with dumplings for dinner which was fabulous and after dinner I got a wild hair and decided to change up some of my class work for my kids so I ended up staying downstairs later than usual.

Our school week seemed to pass too slowly last week, and Colleen even had Friday off for a teacher workday. I’m not sure if it was the beautiful weather, the fact we’ve been under Stay At Home for a year, or our spring break is just a few short weeks away, but the week really was a struggle. I was able to get a little garden therapy squeezed into my day on Wednesday when I repotted half of our Swiss chard into big peat pots. For the most part, even though the week seemed to drag, it wasn’t a bad week. Colleen said fewer and fewer kids showed up to school each day. I’m not too sure what that says for the state trying to get all of the kids back into the classroom while still having the online class option available if the kids want it. Right now, I’m scheduled to start back in the classroom the week after spring break, but most of my kids say they are staying online. Either way it will prove to be interesting.

Colleen made the best of her day off on Friday. She said she wanted to sit and read until about 9:30 in the morning, but when my second class of the day was getting ready to start at 10:30, Colleen was still in the recliner reading. I guess it was a good book. She finally did find some motivation and headed outside to work in her lily garden. It seems the chipmunks had burrowed into the middle of the garden and while Colleen finds chipmunks cute, they quickly lose their appeal when they start messing around in her gardens. Colleen did a little internet research on how to deter the little critters, and the next thing I knew she was carrying a jar of garlic and red pepper flakes out to her garden. She even transplanted some rogue daffodils from around the property into the garden. All three things seem to bother chipmunks. So far, Colleen’s efforts appear to be working as the garden hasn’t been bothered since she doctored it up. By the time my classes ended on Friday, I was worn out and just headed upstairs to take a nap before dinner. Not much else came of the day other than dinner.

Yesterday started out with cloudy skies, but there wasn’t any rain in the forecast. Colleen and I got outside early with gardening on our mind. While Colleen cleaned up the porches to get them ready for all of her potted plants, I got to work in our vegetable gardens. When all was said and done yesterday, I had our beets, turnips, onion starts, and peas planted out in the front gardens. Since our Swiss chard is now big enough and strong enough to stay outside in the greenhouse, Colleen planted lemon balm, basil, dill, and English thyme in some small peat pots and put those under our grow light in the house. I finished up my planting by putting our horseradish in the two big, tall pots out on the back porch. Colleen and I finished off the last of the leftover turkey stew and dumplings for dinner, and I spent my evening after dinner getting my grade books for school caught up for the week.

We have another beautiful day on our hands today. After spending the better part of yesterday outside, today Colleen and I will play catch up. I have my usual schoolwork to get ready for the week and Colleen will be in the kitchen. One year ago we had a gathering of the clan for our family’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage meal. This year we will have corned beef and cabbage again, but it will just be Colleen and me at the dinner table. Spring is now just a week away and our spring break starts in two weeks. The world is still upside down. Up here on our little hill none of that matters much though. Colleen and I live our lives one day at a time and thankfully smile when we look around because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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March 21, 2021: Week #53, Spring Has Sprung!

Spring is here! Still, we finished week 53 of the Great American Stay at Home and are heading into Week 54. Winter sure did not go down without a fight though. Most of the week was pretty mild, but it was wet on Wednesday and Thursday and Thursday’s line of storm held a bit of a punch. We got lucky up here on our hill Thursday evening when the worst of everything came through the area. The skies got very dark, the thunder rumbled, lightning dance in the tree tops, and for about an hour the skies just opened up. That was it for us though. We even had a bit of a sunset view with the remnants of the storm still hanging overhead. The next county over from us had a tornado touched down and tear things up, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the destruction the storms leveled on some of the southern states. Once the line of storms passed by us, the temperatures dropped, and hopefully Friday night was the last time we will see freezing temperatures this spring. Today things are bright and sunny and it looks like we are heading up to 60 degrees or so.

Our run of beautiful, spring like weather continued right into last Sunday. Having spent most all of last Saturday outside, Colleen and I did have to play catch up for our upcoming school week. Colleen found some time to start moving some of her plants from their second floor porch winter home back down to the back porch. The oregano and sage overwintered well and her cone flowers and peppermint have already started their new spring growth. The biggest surprise was Colleen’s white agave plant which seems to have grown a foot since it was on the back porch last summer. Like usual, my morning was spent writing and my afternoon was spent in front of the computers doing schoolwork. We didn’t have our usual gathering of the clan for St. Patrick’s Day this year, but Colleen did make corned beef and cabbage for our Sunday evening dinner. Maybe next year we can resume our annual gathering of the clan.

The school week passed without much fanfare. The local school districts did keep the kids home on Thursday, making it a remote learning day, in anticipation of the severe weather that was headed this way. With spring break only a week away now, last week did seem to last forever. I think everyone is looking forward to their break. Being as we are in Daylight Savings Time, there is now plenty of daylight after school finishes in the afternoon. I got a chance to get out of the house and look around on one of the nicer afternoons and was pleasantly surprised to see our red bud tree starting to bloom. Of course, Colleen’s daffodils and hyacinths are all blooming as well. The girls are doing much better, too, now that we have longer daylight hours. The six girls are laying just about two dozen eggs a week now and before long Colleen and I will start water glassing our extra eggs to save them for next winter.

By Friday afternoon all of the nasty weather had cleared out of the area and apart from a chilly breeze and dropping temperatures, there was plenty of sunshine back in the skies. Colleen stopped at the market on her way home from school so we wouldn’t have to leave the hill on Saturday. Friday evening did find both Colleen and me pretty well worn out from the week, not that we had planned to a whole lot for the evening anyway. I found time after dinner to enjoy a cigar on the back porch and realized that a good many of the trees along the wood line had buds on them. Spring is definitely in the air. I did take a look at our “To-Do” list Friday evening too. Even though we’ve stayed close to home, trying to keep up with things has been a challenge for us especially since I’ve had so much to do to make my online classes work. I’m not so sure our spring break will bring us much rest, but at least we will be busy doing something other than schoolwork. I actually have to go back to school proper this Wednesday and then some of the kids will be coming back right after spring break. I’m not sure how that will work out, but we shall see.

Yesterday was a low key Saturday for Colleen and me. It started out in usual fashion with our leisurely cups of coffee and a little breakfast. After that, I headed out to the front gardens and Colleen found her way into the kitchen. The squirrels had done a little digging in our newly planted gardens. The damage didn’t appear to be too bad, but it’s still too early to tell. I may need to do a little replanting once everything starts to sprout and I can really tell which seeds got disturbed. Our peas have started to sprout though, but just barely, and with a little warmer weather here in the forecast it won’t be too long before they start climbing up toward the trellis. Colleen spent the morning baking so there is a fresh batch of muffins for the week and a couple of loaves of fresh bread. Colleen kept going through yesterday afternoon, but I was pretty worthless and ended up taking a long nap, waking up just in time for dinner.

I guess I must have really needed my rest because even after my nap yesterday, this morning I slept a good hour after sunup which is very unusual for me. It looks like I got up to a beautiful spring day too. There are blue skies overhead and plenty of sunshine. Colleen wants to do a little more cooking today and of course, I do have my schoolwork to get done. Fortunately, there isn’t too much schoolwork to do today. Colleen and I will start our spring break next weekend so we are looking forward to that. I guess the biggest thing going on this week will be my return to school after being out of the classroom for more than a year; and no, I haven’t been vaccinated, nor do I plan to be. Colleen and I will keep taking everything one day at a time and doing what is required to stay safe and healthy. Despite everything going on in the world, things couldn’t be better up here on our little hill. Colleen and I look around every day and smile thankfully because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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March 28, 2021: Week #54: We Are So Ready For Our Spring Break!

Last week we started the 2nd year of the Great American Stay at Home much in the same way we started the first year and that was looking forward to our spring break. Usually I get three weeks off for spring break because I teach at a year round school, but I only get one week this year because the district collapsed the schedule for online classes. Last week was pretty much a typical early spring week though. We had some rain, some thunderstorms, a few beautiful days, and temperatures that ran anywhere between 40 and 80 degrees. The trees that had started with buds last weekend either flowered or started putting on leaves. The roughest part of the weather came Thursday evening when the line of strong storms and tornadoes that had torn up the south finally reached us. Fortunately, all we got was the rain and thunderstorms. Yesterday was nice enough until the rains showed up again in the late afternoon. Today will be okay too, but there is more rain in the forecast for later this afternoon again.

With the last week of school before spring break at hand, there really wasn’t a lot to get done last Sunday. My lesson plans were already in place so all I really had to do was update my grade books. Mostly though, I tried to catch up on some much needed rest and relaxation. Colleen had a good bit more ambition than I did on the day and started her day off making a big pot of minestrone soup for our lunches during the week. Of course, there were all of the usual routine chores like getting meals ready, taking care of the girls, and collecting eggs. Colleen also made a delicious swordfish and roasted veggie dinner for us. On the whole, last Sunday was one of the most relaxed days Colleen and I had had in quite a while. Even the girls seemed to be enjoying the day and between six chickens we got five eggs on the day.

The school week turned out just fine for Colleen and me even though the week was a bit disjointed. Monday and Tuesday I taught classes online from home like I had been doing all year, but starting on Wednesday teachers in my district had to start reporting to the school proper. Fortunately, there weren’t any kids at school. They don’t come back until after spring break so I was still teaching online, just from my classroom. Colleen got to stay home Wednesday because her school had a teacher workday. She spent a good bit of the day reading, but she did manage to get down to the market and get our weekly market run out of the way. Things were a little chaotic on Thursday and Friday morning as Colleen and I are trying to reacquaint ourselves with the dynamics of both of us leaving the house in the mornings. Buttercup spent her first full day alone in the house in over a year on Thursday and was she ever glad when Colleen finally got home.

Colleen left out of here on the tail end of a raging thunderstorm on Friday morning. It was the last of the severe line of storms that had ravaged its way across the country. By the time I got ready to let the girls out of their coop for the day and then leave for school, the storm had passed. The sun came out around lunchtime and, in fact, with it being the last day before spring break, the school day proved to be a slow one. Colleen always gets home before I do by virtue of the hours her school keeps, but I did manage to sneak out of school a few minutes early and even got enjoy the beautiful afternoon with a cigar and a little scotch on the back porch before dinner once I got home. I suppose I could have done something around the house in the late afternoon, but I decided I would do nothing to celebrate the start of our week at home.

Yesterday morning was foggy as all get out and the forecast was calling for storms in the afternoon again. I figured I had better get moving before the rains hit so I headed out to the front gardens, planted our second run of radishes, and weeded everything. Getting my hands dirty proved to be some great therapy for me so I finished the gardens and then headed to the back porch to start some seeds in peat pots for our greenhouse. I planted a bunch of fennel and eggplant as well as transplanted our Swiss chard into bigger peat pots. With any luck I’ll be able to move the chard to the garden by the end of April. Colleen spent her day cleaning up, first outside by where she washes clothes and then in the basement. It was a busy day for us, but it certainly wasn’t a rushed day.

We had another wave of thunderstorms move through the area last night and into the early morning hours. The thunder ended up waking me up around 4 o’clock this morning. This morning it is breezy, but comfortable with temperatures over 60 degrees. We are supposed to get more storms later this afternoon though. For the first time in a very long time, I have no plans for today. I do know what won’t get done today and that is schoolwork. If the rain holds off long enough I’m hoping to break out the grill for dinner tonight. I’m sure Colleen and I will check something off of our “To-Do” list today, but what that will be, I could not say. No matter what comes of today it will not be rushed again. Colleen and I have been really looking forward to our spring break. We have no specific plans for the week and won’t be going anywhere out the ordinary. The world is still far too crazy for our liking. We’ll take one day at a time and just keep being as thankful as ever because we know that whatever happens, up here on our little hill all is right in the homestead.

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April 04, 2021: Week #55: And Just Like That Spring Break Is Gone

That’s a wrap on week 55 of the Great American Stay At Home, it was spring break week too for Colleen and me, and we had a dandy week. In fact, from a weather standpoint it was one of the nicest spring breaks in recent memory. March flipped into April in the middle of the week and in a blink of an eye a quarter of this year is now in our rearview mirror. Wednesday was the only day the sun didn’t shine and we did see a little rain last Sunday too, but we sure did get a whole lot of rain in a short window of time on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday nights brought us what was hopefully our last freezing temperatures of this spring, but the days warmed up nicely for the most part. Things should warm up even more for this coming week. The week also afforded Colleen and me some much needed extra rest so with any luck we will make it into our summer break at the beginning of June without finding ourselves in a state of total exhaustion. I do wish my school district hadn’t compressed the school year though. I miss my three week spring break. Oh well, these have been trying times and it really was a small concession given the circumstances.

Colleen and I quickly settled into our spring break on Sunday finding motivation a bit difficult to come by in the morning. The morning was a little gray, but I was excited to see the trees down on the wood line starting to turn their spring buds into leaves. Colleen read for a good bit of the morning while I set about my usual Sunday writing. I finished up just before lunch and by that time Colleen had found her way upstairs to do some housework. Not a lot else got accomplished on the day. The brief afternoon rains sort of put the kibosh on our plans to grill dinner, but it didn’t bother us too much because we had a whole week of spring break still in front of us. I guess looking back we never did find a while lot of motivation on the day. I even ended up taking a quick nap after dinner.

Monday morning greeted us with a beautiful sunrise. The day started a little cooler than they had been, but it was more than warm enough for Colleen to head down back and do the laundry after her breakfast and coffee. I headed out to the front of the house and took down our Christmas lights and garland. I don’t think they’ve ever stayed up this long before, but between school and the weather this past winter and spring, the opportunity to get out there and get the job done just didn’t present itself. On the bright side and with a funny note, we weren’t the last house in the neighborhood to take down our outside Christmas decorations. After lunch I headed down to the compost bin and started screening the compost pile. With gardening season virtually on top of us I wanted to have a good pile of useable compost ready and waiting. Colleen spent her afternoon in the basement putting away the Christmas lights and garland. In the process she also cleaned up another section of the basement. We’ve been working on cleaning basement for a couple of years now and figure it will get done by the time we retire.

Tuesday was bright and sunny. The girls were out early, I headed back down to the compost pile to finish the job I started on Monday, and Colleen headed upstairs to clean and reorganize her workroom. With the warmer weather starting to settle into the area, Colleen is starting to get into spring cleaning mode. After lunch I decided to try and start blowing the leaves off of the front yard. I had just left them where they lay last fall because I just didn’t have the time to get the job done. I won’t let that happen again if I can avoid it. Usually, I can get the front of the house blown and cleaned up in a couple of hours. Tuesday I was out there for a good three hours trying to move layers of matted leaves and I only got about one third of the yard done. Between Colleen’s cleaning and my yard work, dinner was late Tuesday evening. We had plans to grill, but scrubbed those plans when we realized the time had gotten away from us.

Wednesday’s weather forecast called for some nasty storms starting in the afternoon. It was payday though so Colleen paid the bills, I started working on our taxes, and then right after lunch we headed down to Costco to get a few bulk items which were running low in our basement stores. We managed to beat the rain home so we didn’t get wet. We weren’t home too long when the skies really opened up. We got an inch and a half of rain in just under two hours. Of course, with that much rain that quickly, our septic system started acting sketchy again so Colleen and I had to keep an eye on things for the better part of the afternoon. All’s well that ends well though, and once the rain stopped, everything pretty much went back to normal.

Thursday started out a little chilly, but I figured it was a good morning to split firewood. I spent the better part of the morning with the log splitter. Colleen dove into more housework. I’m not too sure how long I spent splitting wood, but I finally decided I had had my fill right before lunch. I checked our gardens before I came back into the house and was pleasantly surprised to see our vegetable gardens had weathered the storm well, a good many of Colleen’s flower garden plants had started to push through the leaves, and one of her azalea bushes was in full bloom. The afternoon was quiet for the most part. I ended up moving all of our seedlings into the house in anticipation of the night’s freezing temperatures. Colleen made some lobster ravioli we had picked up at Costco as a treat for dinner and we even had a glass of wine with our dinner. The lobster ravioli was good, but not great as we had hoped so I don’t think we’ll get anymore from Costco.

Friday morning started out even chillier than Thursday, in fact it was below freezing. Even though it was supposed to warm up during the day I really didn’t feel like working outside, so to start the day I got in front of my computers to finalize my quarter grades for school. In hindsight I’m glad I did because it took me until 9 o’clock Friday night to get everything sewed up. At least I was able to listen to the baseball game while I worked through the afternoon. I did make a trip out to the back porch for a break or two during the day and got very excited to see the dogwood trees in bloom which means the white bass are running in the river! Sadly, I didn’t get to go fishing all week. Colleen headed into the kitchen once she finished her breakfast and morning coffee. With school starting up again next week Colleen wanted to make sure we had plenty of muffins to get us through the week. Colleen also backed some old fashion pound cake. It didn’t turn out quite the way she expected and was not as good as her marbled pound cake, but it is still quite good and will disappear quickly like all of Colleen’s baked treats. On the day I really didn’t feel like I got a lot accomplished, but I guess getting my quarter grades out of the way really was a big thing.

Yesterday the temperatures started the day below freezing like they did on Friday, but I was more inclined to get outside as soon as I could. It was just me and the log splitter again yesterday morning. I finished up all of the big un-quartered rounds that were down by the log splitter. I texted Steven and Alex hoping they could come over to cut and move more wood from the top of the hill, but they were both working yesterday. The wood at the top of the hill is way too big for me to move without manually quartering everything with a maul first. Colleen took advantage of the day by heading up to her workroom and rewriting and organizing her recipes in her cookbooks. I more or less took the afternoon off. I did get some lesson planning done for next week and I got all of our seedlings back into the greenhouse out on the back porch, but mostly I just relaxed in anticipation of going back to school on Monday. By dinner time Colleen had another one of her cookbooks finished and after dinner we both did very little.

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning and things are starting to warm up nicely. I’m thinking I won’t do much today other than get ready for school tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’ll finally be able to grill today too. Colleen still has a few days of spring break left to start next week and with warm temperatures and sunshine on tap, she mentioned something about heading out to her gardens. I sure can’t say things are getting any better out in the world. The virus numbers are headed back up and new report says more than 50 percent of people are having ill effects from their second vaccine shot. My oldest daughter Alysia calls it the COVID hangover. The media and politicians are still trying to sell the public that they have a handle on things, but I don’t believe them. My guess from all of my reading, and it’s been a lot of reading, is that we are still looking at another 12 to 18 months. Colleen and I will keep taking things one day at a time and exercising all the extra precautions we can. Whatever happens will happen, but in the end this too shall pass. Colleen and I are still doing just fine and looking forward to each new day. At the end of each day, no matter what happens, we can look around and we know that all is right on the homestead.

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April 11, 2021: Week #56: Spring Always Brings Changes And This Year There A Lot Of Them

We just finished Week 56 of The Great American Stay at Home and it was a week of change and a week of spring weather. The kids started coming back to school, we had a few heavy thunderstorms move through the area dropping a good bit of rain, temperatures got into the 80’s on a couple of days, flowers are blooming, and the trees have green leaves on them again. The worst of the storms moved through on Thursday night, we had another round on Friday night, and last night we had another line of less severe storms. Colleen’s spring break lasted until Wednesday and even though I had to go to school all week, the kids didn’t show up until Thursday. Of course life threw us a few unexpected curve balls through the course of the week, but Colleen and I just took things as they came one step at a time.

Last Sunday was Easter and in past years that meant a family gathering to enjoy a big meal together. This year, like last year, there was no family gathering. It was a beautiful day though. Alysia and Louis each called to check in and see how things were going. Steven, Anna Maria, and Lily stopped by for a quick visit after church. All of the kids are doing well. Lily is growing up fast, but she is definitely a two year old and she spent her short visit here exploring Grammy and Pepere’s house. After the kids left I grilled some lamb chops and Colleen and I enjoyed a lovely, but subdued Easter dinner. I had finished most of my schoolwork on Saturday so apart from the little bit I had left to do, the day was mostly quiet and relaxing for Colleen and me. I did find a little time to spend in the gardens, but need more. I wish I could say the same for today, but it definitely is not the case.

After having taught online for more than a year, getting back into the classroom was anything but routine for me. I should catch my stride before too long though. Colleen was still on spring break and with the beautiful weather she wasted no time getting outside to start cleaning last fall’s leaves out of her gardens. The warm day chased her back inside right after lunch and she decided to put together a special dinner. Colleen made some tuna steaks with shrimp on a bed of orzo and vegetables. It really was a treat after being at school all day. I got to enjoy a gorgeous sunset after dinner and I did get excited after dinner when I checked on our seedlings in the greenhouse. The Swiss chard is almost ready to transplant and the eggplant and fennel which I had planted last weekend were starting to sprout.

Colleen had Tuesday off again and after I headed into school she was out in her gardens. Cleaning out her gardens will take her a couple of weeks, but she certainly didn’t waste her time outside and got the gardens around the driveway cleaned up nicely. The garden at the front end of the driveway looks particularly nice with the early season bushes flowering and her perennials starting to push up through the ground. Colleen usually prunes her hydrangea in the middle of the garden during the dead of winter, but she didn’t get to it this year so she’s just going to let it go and see what comes of it. The creeping phlox on the terracing below the garden are in bloom too and are starting to hang over the terraces making for a very nice display.

Colleen had Wednesday off too and spent the day getting ready for school. I spent my day at school getting my classroom ready for the kids that were due back on Thursday. It’s a little sad looking at my classroom. Instead of desks clustered together like they should be, all of the desks are spaced 6 feet apart to insure adequate social distancing for the kids that want to come back to school. Fortunately, I didn’t have a lot of other work that needed doing so the day passed easily for me. I actually did leave school a little early on Wednesday and spent a little time on the back porch relaxing before dinner. After dinner Colleen and I just made sure everything was ready to go for Thursday since it would be the first morning in a very long time both of us would be leaving the house for school in a very long time.

Colleen and I managed to get out of the house Thursday morning without too much trouble. It was the first day back for some of my kids, and at Colleen’s school it was the first day back for all of the kids that wanted to come back to her school. As it turned out, Colleen’s one on one kid didn’t show up for school so Colleen had a slow, but easy day. I had a few kids show up on their wrong cohort day, but it was good to finally see some kids in person. My day went well though, I even got to relax a bit on the back porch when I got home before dinner. Clouds started to move into the area around sunset and then things started be fun after dark and into the early Friday morning.

Sometime late Thursday night or in the wee hours of Friday morning a loud thundering crash shook the house and woke Colleen up. I slept through the whole thing. Friday morning we woke up to find the huge old oak tree on the ground behind where our pool usually sits. The tree was dying and the trunk snapped during the storm that blew through the area. Fortunately, the pool wasn’t set up yet and the tree missed Colleen’s clotheslines. At least we have a new supply of firewood to replace what we burned this past winter, but there is a lot of cutting, splitting, and stacking to be done. I’m even going to take a few of the bigger limbs, 6 to 8 inches in diameter, to use to grow mushrooms. As it turns out, shiitake mushrooms do exceptionally well in oak.

Friday went well enough in school, but when I headed out after school to head home, my car wouldn’t start. I called Colleen and AAA. Colleen and the tow truck driver both got lost although Colleen got to the school before the tow truck. I called a little after 4 in the afternoon and Colleen and I didn’t get home until well after 7 o’clock that evening. I’m not exactly sure what is wrong with the car, but I’m hoping the shop can fix it or I’ll be looking for a new vehicle. Fortunately, the rain didn’t start falling until after the tow truck picked up the car and Colleen and I were following the tow truck to the shop. Friday definitely turned out to be an adventure all the way around and Colleen and I were wiped out by the time we got home. We did catch a bit of luck when the rain let up as we got home so Colleen didn’t get soaked putting the girls to roost for the night. Even poor Buttercup got caught up in the day and didn’t get her dinner until almost 8:00.

Yesterday morning was just a beautiful spring morning. Everything was green and lush and the azaleas were blooming. The rain was gone and the sun was shining. Colleen and I had plans to head to Perkins Orchard and then to do our weekly market run. We hadn’t been to Perkins Orchard since the weekend before Christmas when they were getting ready to close for the winter. Colleen and I didn’t miss a step at Perkins filling up our quarter bushel bag with fresh produce for the upcoming week. We didn’t have a long market list, but still managed to fill a buggy with things that were on sale. We got home right at lunchtime and after lunch I took a quick nap before I got in front of my computers to do schoolwork. Colleen put all of the groceries away and then brought the floor fans up from the basement. The space heaters will be heading down into the basement before too much longer. Colleen and I did find the time to grill and enjoy dinner though, so yesterday was a great day.

The sun is shining this morning, but Colleen and I are really looking for our motivation. I have a bunch of schoolwork and Colleen has a bunch of stuff to do in the kitchen. We really could have used a longer spring break, but summer break will be here before we know it. Things sure don’t look like they are getting any better out in the real world. Colleen and I don’t expect things to get better for another 12 to 18 months anyway. We’ll just keep exercising extra caution, live our life up here on our little hill, and take things one day at a time. We don’t worry about tomorrow because it will get here soon enough and there is plenty to keep us occupied today. No matter what happens though, Colleen and I can just look around and know that all is right on the homestead.

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April 18, 2021: Week #57: A Beautiful Week And Things Just Keep Getting Better Up Here On The Hill

It was just another week of the Great American Stay at Home, Week 57 in fact. By all measures it was a beautiful weather week too. We had plenty of sunshine, mild temperatures, and the only rain we got, which wasn’t much, stole through the area one night in the middle of the week. It was my first full week of having at least some kids back in my classroom. I never had more than six kids in the room though. I quietly celebrated my 62nd birthday on Wednesday. The dang virus is still raging, some places even are starting to go back into a lockdown, and just to make things interesting, they are now saying a third vaccine shot will be needed. For Colleen and me there is no place we’d rather be in the middle of this mess than up here on our little hill.

Last Sunday was just plain beautiful, note the theme for the week here. Colleen and I went about our usual Sunday activities to get ready for the new week. That just means, I was in front of the computers doing schoolwork and Colleen was in her kitchen. We did have a visit from Louis and one of his Army buddies. They showed up in the middle of the afternoon. Louis promised me he would stack all of the firewood I had split and just thrown into a pile, and true to his word that is just exactly what Louis and his friend did while they were here. One of Louis favorite dishes that Colleen makes is her quesadilla pie, and in the way of saying thank you for his help, Colleen made sure she sent Louis and his friend back home with a quesadilla pie. One of the pies will last Colleen and me two meals, but later that evening when I talked to Louis, the two guys had wiped the pie out in one sitting.

Monday and Tuesday were usual school days with a twist. We had to have the Honda towed to the shop the Friday evening before last weekend. The only way I had to get to school was by catching a ride with Colleen. Colleen leaves for school around 5:30 in the morning, but I don’t have to be at school until 8:30. Needless to say I was at school a couple of hours early both mornings, but I did use that time to take care of extra schoolwork I needed to do. Colleen gets home from school in the early to mid part of the afternoon so it was no big deal for her to come and get me after school. I used to have to be at school at the same time as Colleen when we were at the same school, but now that I teach at a different school I have gotten used to my slow leisurely mornings. I really appreciate my time on the back porch with my morning coffee before I need to go to school now. We did have a big surprise on Monday afternoon. When Colleen got home after school, Steven was in the backyard cutting up the old oak tree that had come down in a storm the week before.

Wednesday was my birthday and Colleen and I both sort of had the day off from school. It was an asynchronous day for her school and it was Wellness Wednesday for my school. We did have some schoolwork to do at home and I did have my online club meeting in the afternoon, but there wasn’t much else beyond that. We did get to pick up the Honda from the shop in the morning. The guys finally found the problem which was a short in the ignition switch. I figure in a 25 year old car, switches going bad are relatively minor problems. The whole day turned out really well overall and I even found some time in the afternoon to get out and work in the gardens. The young potato plants had gotten tall enough that I was able to mound up more dirt around them. Last year I really didn’t have a strategy for growing potatoes and we did well, but this year after a little reading I planted the potatoes in trenches and will mound the dirt up around the plants as they grow.

Thursday and Friday saw everything get back to some sort of normal around here. The Honda was running again so Colleen didn’t have to take me into school. I had a few kids in my classes and everything seemed to go fairly well. The warm sunny weather has everything growing like crazy. The trees are covered with leaves again, the azalea bushes are in full bloom, and our Swiss chard got large enough and is healthy enough that it was time to start thinking about moving them into the garden. Things went so well t getting back to normal that as the week came to a close, I was even able to stop and get some takeout pizza for dinner on my way home from school Friday afternoon.

Yesterday was a busy day around here and Colleen and I started early. Before we left the house yesterday morning to run our few weekly errands, Colleen had a load of laundry done and on the line and I had my grading for the week finished. Our errands were our usual run to Perkins Orchard for our weekly fresh produce and then a stop at the market. Colleen and I were very excited to see the first fresh strawberries of the year at Perkins Orchard. We got home a little before lunchtime so we grabbed some leftovers for lunch and then tackled the afternoon. Colleen put the groceries away, straightened up her kitchen, and did another load of laundry. I headed out to the gardens for the afternoon and then spent the late afternoon and early evening doing schoolwork. By the time the sun set and the girls were locked in their coop for the night, Colleen and I were more than ready for a good night’s sleep.

Colleen was up with the sun this morning, but it was a good hour after sunrise before I came toddling downstairs. The girls were already out in their pen and Colleen was reading in the living room. I just got my coffee and headed out to the back porch. It’s another beautiful day, but Colleen and I have all of our usual “get ready for next week” activities to get done. I’ll need to do some major lesson plan overhauls to accommodate benchmark testing that I just found out about on Friday afternoon. Colleen will be cooking and baking. With any luck we’ll be grilling for dinner this evening too. We are down to seven weeks left in the school year and are Colleen and I ever looking forward to our summer break. There are still a million things we need to around the house, but we’ll take things one at a time and everything will eventually get done I suppose. There certainly isn’t any sense to worrying about tomorrow especially given the chaos in the world these days. I’ve been saying this virus will be a two to three year run and it sure looks like things are headed that way. Colleen and I are doing well though and quite content to stay close to home up here on our little hill. We live our life one day at a time and at the end of each day we can go to bed thankfully knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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April 25, 2021: Week #58: Glad To Be Safe Up Here On Our Hill While The World Watches This Dang Virus Surge Again

We just finished our 58^th week of the Great American Stay at Home and I may have to give up counting before too long. Despite virus cases surging again and vaccination levels plateauing, it seems like more and more states are opening things up in attempt to make life seem more normal. Colleen and I are highly skeptical of the whole ordeal and we will continue to stay close to home and exercise extreme caution whenever we are forced to leave our hill for necessities or our jobs. Fortunately, we are quite comfortable to stay put right here at home with no desire to go anywhere. In fact, we are quite content to live quietly, taking care of things around the house until we can slide into retirement in three or four years. Once we retire though we want to find ourselves a nice piece of secluded land with a small house and then just more or less just disappear.

Mother Nature wasn’t quite ready to give up on winter last week, and while we had plenty of sunshine for most of the week, temperatures dropped to near freezing in the early morning hours even setting a record or two around here. The only real rain we had showed up yesterday afternoon and lasted until the wee hours of this morning. Right now we have plenty of sunshine, mild temperatures, and a forecast of things really warming up for the coming week. In fact the temperatures may even touch 90 degrees next week. I suspect between the rain yesterday and the warm sunny days coming our way, the gardens are about to explode. There is still a lot to be done in the gardens with the warm weather plants needing to be started in our greenhouse. So far, all is going well in our gardens though. We should be getting radishes before too long, the celery is already to the point where we can harvest some, we are picking asparagus, the potatoes are flourishing, and the peas have just about reached the chicken wire trellises.

The school week wasn’t too bad for either Colleen or me and the evenings were nice enough so I could relax on the back porch after dinner. Since the school year is starting to wind down, I’m starting to get hit with a bunch of end of the year benchmark tests. It kind of makes teaching regular classes more challenging because there is a lack of continuity, but it is what it is. There are only six more weeks of school left. There are still more benchmark tests coming, AP testing starts in mid May, and the last week or two of school are chewed up with final exams. I did find out last week that my school is going to go back to its normal year round schedule for next year, but there will still be the option of in person or online school. Fortunately, I will no longer have to be doing both in person and online teaching simultaneously. There will be a completely different set of teachers for the online kids. Of course, all of this is contingent on the status of the virus and its future impact on the community.

I hadn’t slept well at all on Wednesday or Thursday nights so by the time I got home Friday after school I was pretty wiped out. Colleen had dinner waiting when I got home for which I was most grateful. I knew we were expecting rain yesterday so after dinner on Friday I mustered up what little energy I had left and headed out to the garden to mound up our potato plants with more dirt. Last year I wasn’t quite so organized or meticulous about planting potatoes and we had a really nice harvest. This year after some winter reading, I decided to try growing potatoes in shallow trenches and building the dirt up around the plants as they grew. So far it seems to be working out well. The plants themselves look great and with any luck we might be able to double the harvest we had last year.

I slept late yesterday morning so Colleen and I got a late start on our weekly errands. Colleen was up a good hour or two before me and had the morning chores done before I ever got downstairs. Once we did get moving though, it was our usual run to Perkins Orchard with a stop at the market on the way home. We got lucky and beat the rain home so we were able to get everything into the house without getting wet. I spent the afternoon grading schoolwork while Colleen put the groceries away and straightened up her kitchen. The rain gave us a break in the middle of the afternoon and Colleen brought the girls their treats and collected the eggs. We did have one surprise egg in the nesting boxes. It seems one of the girls laid an egg not much bigger than a large quail egg. I suspect it has to do with the girls from school starting to get up there in age.

Colleen ended up shuffling the week’s menu around a little yesterday and she made chicken Creole for dinner. I’m not a huge fan of chicken as a rule, but I will eat chicken Creole. It was especially good last night because there were plenty of fresh veggies we had picked up earlier in the day from Perkins Orchard. Things were pretty quiet after dinner. The rain was still falling and I updated my grade books for the week. Around sunset it was still raining and Colleen headed down back to lock the girls in their coop for the night. The pen is on the side of a hill and it gets very slippery when it gets wet. It seems that a couple of the girls were being a might uncooperative last night and in the process of corralling them into the coop, Colleen lost her footing and ended up on the ground. When my wet, muddy, and slightly sore wife came back upstairs, she was not a happy camper.

The sun is out again this morning and with a good stiff breeze things should start to dry out after yesterday’s rains. It is really an absolutely gorgeous day! I have my usual schoolwork to do today, and Colleen will be in the kitchen for a good part of the day. It’s kind of hard to believe we are already in the last week of April. The world is still anything but sane despite what the media and politicians are trying to sell. Colleen and I are still exercising extreme caution anytime we leave the hill, but we will continue to take everything one day at a time. We have no complaints about the way our life is going. We look forward to each new day even knowing there is far too much on our “To-Do” list to get all of it accomplished in any one day. Of course, we always do seem to add two new things to the list for every one thing we remove. At the end of each day we can and do thankfully take stock of our day and head to bed knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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May 02, 2021: Week #59: April Is Gone And The School Year Is Almost Over

We just finished Week 59 of the Great American Stay at Home and I’m still counting. It looks like a lot of governors are getting antsy and starting to really ease up on restrictions. Of course, the virus count is still climbing in some areas and vaccination rates are flattening out. I just hope people are smart enough to continue to exercise necessary precautions. With the weather starting to get nice, at least more people will be heading outside. Speaking of weather, Colleen and I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather we had all last week. It looks like Mother Nature has finally let winter slide away in these parts. It is kind of hard to believe we are through April and into May already though. Time and tide stand still for no man.

Colleen and I both had a full week of school last week. All the same the beautiful weather and longer daylight hours afforded us some time outside in the late afternoon and evenings. Colleen stopped at the laundromat on Monday afternoon on her way home from school and the afternoon was so nice she even decided to hang some of the clothes out on the line once she got home. Surprisingly, the clothes pretty much dried before sunset when she collected everything from the line. Of course, with the dry weather, that also means Colleen is watering the gardens in the late afternoon. I don’t have to go into school on Wednesdays, but last Wednesday we had a two and a half hour online training session first thing in the morning. I didn’t feel like sitting in the house all morning so I set up shop out on the back porch. A number of other teachers who realized I was on the back porch were quite amused and even a bit jealous.

Friday rolled around and both Colleen and I were looking at a busy weekend. It’s not that all our weekends aren’t busy, but this weekend was shaping up to be busier than most. I had hoped to burn some leaves and other yard debris when I got home from school on Friday evening, but the drier than usual conditions and a healthy breeze changed my mind. I ended up bringing my computer out to the back porch and was quite content to grade schoolwork while I watched the sunset through the now heavily leaved trees. I surprised myself and got all of my grading done in plenty of time to join some of my college friends on a Zoom chat. The Zoom chat was a great way to spend a Friday evening and even though my friends and I were only together for four short years in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s they are still some of my very best and dearest friends.

I ended up sleeping late on Saturday morning which frustrated me to no end. I sure did have to hit the ground running once I got up though. Colleen and I headed out the front door not long after I got up. I drank my morning coffee from my travel mug in the front seat of the Trail Blazer. Our first stop, like always, was at Perkins Orchard to get our weekly supply of fresh produce. It is a real convenience for Colleen to be able to buy just exactly the produce she needs for the week, especially since it’s just the two of us at home now. Of course, going to Perkins Orchard was only the start of a long morning of running errands.

From Perkins Orchard, Colleen and I headed to TSC and Walmart which are about ten or fifteen miles down the road, but less than a mile from each other. We kind of stretched our budget a little, but not enough to get us in trouble. Along with feed and supplies for the girls, Colleen and I needed a few things beyond our usual grocery list from Walmart. Since we do not have central heating and air conditioning, having fans in the house to move the air in the summer is a must. We ended up getting another tower fan. The tower fans we get aren’t terribly expensive, but they do earn their keep and it feels as though they are cooling the air along with circulating it in the summer. I also needed an electric drill. I have a battery operated drill, but it doesn’t take long to run down the batteries when I drill into green logs so I can put mushroom plugs into the logs.

Steven and Alex came up to the house while Colleen and I were running around all morning. The boys had their chainsaws with them and went to cutting up and moving the big oak tree that had fallen in the backyard. They did one heck of a job too. It looks like just about everything got cut up and moved with the exception of the biggest part of the main trunk. I’m not sure when I will be able to split and stack everything, but between the wood still up in the front yard, the stuff that is already split and stacked, and this new wood, we are well on our way to having full racks for next winter. Hopefully, we won’t burn quite as much wood as we did last winter when I was home, teaching online every day.

The boys were still here when Colleen and I got home and helped get everything from the Trail Blazer into the house. It wasn’t long after that they headed on their way, and after Colleen and I ate lunch we got to our afternoon activities. Colleen put the groceries and most everything else away while I headed outside to work in the yard, pulling the lawnmower out of winter storage. There was no way I was going to get the grass and weeds on whole lot cut. I still have piles of leaves everywhere and the pieces and parts of the tree in the backyard. The parts of the lot to which I could get were rather overgrown though and it took most all of the afternoon and a good bit of coaxing the lawnmower to get through everything. I finally put the lawnmower away right before Colleen had dinner ready.

After dinner Colleen kept right on going with her cleaning and organizing from our morning out and about. As the evening waned she headed out back to take care of the girls too. I glued myself to my computer and got my grade books caught up for the week. Thankfully this is one long task I will only have to do for a few more weeks before our summer break. The sun set and Colleen and I were still working. That didn’t last too long fortunately and Colleen ran out of steam shortly before I finished up with my grade books. There wasn’t much else we were going to do on the night so we closed up shop and called it a day.

Colleen and I were up with the sun this morning and were greeted with a beautiful morning. Colleen is already busy cleaning and I have schoolwork and hopefully taxes to get out of the way today. We only have five more weeks of school left this year and, yes, we are counting down the days. We’re looking forward to setting up the pool on Memorial Day weekend, but other than that we’ll be taking everything one day at a time. The world is still crazy, but Colleen and I don’t have the time to worry about that. We make our difference in this world one day at a time and try to set a good and positive example for everyone around us. I suppose that really is all that anyone can do. Our life is good, we are healthy, and we are quite content with things up here on our little hill. I do know that at the end of each and every day Colleen and I always find peace of mind in knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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May 09, 2021: Week #60: This Candle That Is Burning At Both Ends Is Getting Small

Another week, more confusion, and the world still doesn’t know what is really happening. Here we are just finishing our 60th week of the Great American Stay at Home and the government is starting to tell us that they think it is alright for us to go out and play. Colleen and I are skeptical to say the least so we will be staying close to home. Of course, the list of things that we need to do is a mile long, but the weather is getting nicer by the day and our summer break from school is almost here. It’s a little bit on the cool side this morning, but not uncomfortable. We should be looking at mostly sunny skies today and things should stay that way for the week in front us as the temperatures start to warm up again. I guess last week was a typical spring week for weather. We had plenty of sunshine and some occasional rain. At least the rain’s timing was good enough to keep our gardens watered all week.

While last Sunday was a beautiful day, Colleen and I were both starting to show the signs of being worn down from the long and different school year. Colleen spent the morning cleaning and I did my usual writing. I did take a nap after lunch which of course put me a little bit behind in my schoolwork. I did get most of the work done, but had to finish things up on Monday. Colleen did find enough energy to make a lovely pork roast for Sunday dinner that included a plethora of fresh vegetables we had picked up from Perkins Orchard on Saturday. All in all though, it was just a day to get through and not much on our “To-Do” list got accomplished.

Monday morning was a struggle for us to get moving. Fortunately, the rain that moved in on Sunday night, leaving everything pretty wet to start the morning, had passed by the time we headed to school. Nothing went terribly wrong during the day, but it sure seemed like we were bumping in to everything as we made our way through the day. I did end up having a meeting in short notice at the end of the school day that got me home a little later than usual. I guess the best that can be said of Monday though, is that Colleen and I survived. Monday night I struggled through most of my schoolwork and Colleen cleaned up after dinner and took care of the girls for the night, but that was all either of us had any energy to get done.

The rest of the school week seemed to crawl and we did have a short blast of severe storms that moved through right at the end of school on Tuesday, the storm lasted maybe 30 minutes, but the skies sure did look ugly for a spell. The rest of the week was a little bit cooler, but for the most part there was plenty of sunshine. I didn’t have to go to school on Wednesday like usual, but my day was chewed up with online training and meetings. Colleen and I did what we had to do to make it through the week. Getting my schoolwork ready took me later into the evenings than I would have liked, but it needed to be done. By the time we got to Friday morning it was a real struggle to get out of bed and get moving.

I waited around until after sunrise Friday morning before I headed to school, like usual. The morning was kind of gray but I did get to see some dawn color through the full canopy of leaves in the tree. By the time Colleen and I made it to Friday afternoon after school we were worn out. We had gotten a new toaster oven with an air fryer setting last weekend so Colleen gave it a try and we had fish and chips for dinner. I had hoped to catch my second wind after dinner and at least get some grading for school done, but I was so tired I was just about falling over. I did manage to wait until sunset before I just had to head upstairs to bed and crash. Colleen took care of the girls at sunset, closed up the house, and headed upstairs too, not far behind me.

Yesterday started slow for Colleen and me, but ended up being somewhat of a productive day. Colleen and I eventually did get out of the house to run our errands. Just to punctuate the kind of week we had been having, I left my travel mug of hot coffee in the microwave when we left. We made our usual stop at Perkins Orchard for our weekly produce and then stopped at the market. Frozen lobster tails were on sale again so we got two to go with dinner today as a Mother’s Day treat. I still had big circles under my eyes when we got home so Colleen chased me upstairs for a nap. She was busy in the kitchen while I was upstairs sleeping. There was still plenty of time before dinner when I came back downstairs so I headed around back to rake out the girls’ pen and change the bedding in the coop. Hug-Me was quite content to stay in the nesting box laying an egg while I cleaned everything around her. When she finally did get up I found not only had she laid her egg but she was sitting on a second egg.

Colleen made a quick and easy dinner of Sloppy Joe’s and air fried French fries. After dinner I graded as much schoolwork as I could, but finally just had to give it up and spend a little time out on the back porch and watch the sunset. Colleen cleaned the kitchen and waited until sunset to put the girls to roost and then we both called it a day. It’s been a while since both Colleen and I have been this worn out, but the last year or so has been different. Colleen and I have no complaints about the Great American Stay at Home though, and honestly, we did all we could do to keep things as normal as possible up here on the hill. Sure, a good many things didn’t get done, but they will get done in due time. Of course, we do have our summer break getting ready to start in just about a month. We have no idea what the new school year will look like come this fall and we don’t worry about it either.

The Great American Stay at Home has proved a couple of very important things to Colleen and me. We don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy and we don’t need to worry about things we cannot change. We grow vegetables, collect fresh eggs from our chickens, can everything we are able to can and keep our larder stocked, we cut, split, and stack firewood for heat in the winter, but mostly we smile and laugh. It seems we can find humor in most all of our daily activities. Our life is good. We are healthy and the kids are healthy. Every day is a new day with unlimited opportunity for which we are very thankful. At the end of each day, no matter what the day brings our way, we can look around and know that all is right on the homestead.

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May 16, 2021: Week #61: May Is Halfway Over And Summer Break Is Three Weeks Away

Well, I’ve decided to keep my weekly count of the Great American Stay at Home going for a little while longer. Despite many states relaxing their mask and social distancing rules, I do not believe we are out of the woods yet, but I suppose that is a matter of personal opinion. Apart from that, Colleen and I had a pretty calm week, but the week was anything but a routine week. The weather was mostly good with lots of sunshine for the week and some mild temperatures. We did get a nasty thunderstorm blow up on our heads late Monday afternoon, but it passed quickly. School on the other hand was a little bit wacky. I had my usual Wellness Wednesday where I didn’t have to go to school, but the afternoon got eaten up with mandatory online training. Thursday was a teacher workday. I went into school, but I came home early and Colleen got to stay home. With the mass panic and shortage of gasoline in the area on Friday, the local school districts made the day a remote learning day so Colleen and I stayed home again although I did have to teach from home.

With last Sunday being Mother’s Day, Colleen and I tried to take it easy. Oh, Colleen did spend some time in the kitchen and I had my usual schoolwork, but we didn’t try to get a whole lot else accomplished. The kids checked in with Colleen mostly by phone, but Alex did swing by the house for a short visit. We don’t see him a lot now that he is living on his own. The boy is looking good though. I grilled some steaks and vegetables and Colleen broiled a couple of lobster tails for dinner. I guess that is as close to a celebration as we got. Colleen and I spent the better part of the evening relaxing, so I’d have to say the day turned out quite well.

Monday morning Colleen and I headed to school like usual. On my way into school I noticed a couple of gas stations had jacked their prices up quite a bit so I stopped to fill up the Honda at one station that had not raised it gasoline prices yet. Little did I know the Great Gas Panic of 2021 would go full blown by Monday afternoon. Fortunately, we had filled up the Trail Blazer in the course of our weekend errands too. By the time school got out for me Monday afternoon, the skies had turned black and a dandy thunderstorm had blown into the area. The kids got on their buses before the rains really started to come down. I ended up waiting about 30 minutes at school for a break in the rain before I headed home. I got home just in time to beat the second round of the storm which brought lots of thunder, lightning, and even some hail. After the storm passed the sun came back out. Everything sure did look green and lush after the rains on Monday evening.

Tuesday was just a plain old school day with the added trial by fire of limited gasoline supplies. I did check out our gardens after I got home from school, and while our potato plants took a beating in Monday’s storm they seemed to be okay. Colleen went to school on Wednesday, but I stayed home and sat through my afternoon online training on the back porch. Colleen stayed home on Thursday and I went to school for a short teacher’s workday. We both stayed home on Friday when local school districts made it a remote school day, although I did teach classes from our dining room table on the day. I have a feeling that remote learning days are going to drastically change the future of snow days for the kids.

Since Friday was such a lovely day, I decided I would spend Friday evening burning the pile of leaves on the side of the house that Colleen had raked up a few weeks back. It was a little bit tricky because while the top of the pile was dry, the bottom of the pile was still wet. When I started, I figured I could get everything burnt by sunset. I was wrong, and I ended up sitting outside until almost midnight when the pile finally was just a black charred bed of glowing embers. At that point, I just had to throw in the towel, leave the pile smoldering, and head to bed. The pile was still hot and smoldering when I got up Saturday morning.

Saturday morning Colleen and I ran our needed errands in the Honda instead of the Trail Blazer to conserve gasoline, not knowing when gasoline would start making its way back into the area. We made our usual runs to Perkins Orchard and then the market. I think we covered a total of 25 miles which used less than one gallon of gas in the Honda which gets 35 miles to the gallon. We were home early so I started getting my grade books caught up for the week. After lunch we put our state taxes in the mail and after that I went outside to quarter the big rounds of firewood in our front yard while Colleen spent her afternoon in the kitchen. After dinner it was back to the computers for me and I was able to finish up my grade books with plenty of the early evening left to relax out on the back porch. The evening chores were minimal and after Colleen locked the girls into the coop for the night she headed upstairs. I followed her upstairs when the last of the day’s twilight started to fade.

The sun still hasn’t come out yet this morning and the skies are just milky at the moment. The morning chores are done and it’s just about time to get moving in the day. The gasoline situation seems to be improving slowly, but I can’t even say that much for the other conditions in the world at the moment. These are crazy times in which we live. Colleen and I, however, are still doing quite well which I believe has a great deal to do with the way we approach life. We take one day at a time, focus our time and efforts on things we can change, and let tomorrow take care of itself. We know everything will work out just the way it should. Whether we are working in the gardens, splitting and stacking firewood, working in the yard, or just relaxing, our life is a simple one. We are very fortunate to lead the life we do and everyday is a great day because all we have to do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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May 23, 2021: Week #62: The School Year Is Almost Done And We Are Limping To The Finish Line.

After 62 weeks of the Great American Stay at Home, it looks like governors are starting to pull back in earnest on their mandated restrictions. I’m still a bit skeptical since the drug companies are saying the booster shot for the vaccine will be ready by this fall and that it won’t be until the last part of 2022 when everyone including young children have the potential of being vaccinated. Of course, there is a new, even more virulent strain of the virus in India and it’s starting to show up in other countries including this one. Just to make things more interesting we did have the panic gas shortage last weekend, but it seems that that has started working its way out of our system. Fortunately, it, like the virus, hasn’t disrupted things for Colleen and me up here on our little hill. In spite of everything else going on last week, the weather cooperated quite nicely with plenty of sunshine and no rain. Of course, the weather folks are now saying we are on the verge of a mild drought.

School is starting to wind down for this school year and while I still have some schoolwork to do on Sundays I did manage to find a little time to get out in the yard last Sunday afternoon. I had quartered a number of larger pieces of firewood with a maul and wedges on Saturday so I moved them to near the log splitter on Sunday. There is still a good bit of wood to be cut and split up in the front yard, but it is looking like that chore will have to wait until summer break starts now. Colleen spent most of her Sunday in the kitchen getting meals ready for the upcoming week, and she put together a lovely Sunday dinner of pork chops and eggplant Creole for dinner. No day would be complete around here with something popping up either that Colleen and I had forgotten about, or something that manages to surprise us. Last Sunday night as we were getting ready to call it a day, we remembered we hadn’t filed our federal taxes yet. Fortunately, it only took us a little bit of extra time before we wrapped everything up online and sent our completed taxes on their merry way.

Colleen and I started the school week planning around the gasoline we had in our vehicles. With a 70 mile round trip to school, Colleen only had a couple of days of gasoline in her tank on Monday morning. Fortunately, she found some gas on her way home on Tuesday so that problem disappeared quickly. My school week saw the start of the end of year testing and final exams. Because the testing has to be in person per the state and with the breakdown of our cohorts, the testing is spread out over last week and this coming week. The hardest part of the whole ordeal is me trying to stay awake while the kids are quietly testing. When my kids weren’t testing, I had them making up missing work in hopes of bringing their grades up. For actually doing almost nothing and sitting there all week, it seemed I would come home exhausted every day. It was all I could do each evening to just sit on the back porch, keep my eyes open, and watch the wildlife wander through the backyard.

Friday wasn’t much different than the rest of the week except Friday evening while I was sitting on the back porch, I had to figure out the best way to get the area where we will put the pool this year cleaned up. After going through last summer without a pool, Colleen and I bought a new pool in February, stored it in our basement, and have plans to set it up over Memorial Day weekend. The pool area, like most of the rest of our yard, was buried in leaves from last fall and Colleen and I had decided that we would clean it up on Saturday. Apart from dinner and a little planning not much else happened on Friday evening. With school winding down, Colleen and I are quite worn out and very much looking forward to the start of our summer break.

Yesterday started with our usual Saturday morning coffee and then Colleen and I hit the road to run our usual Saturday morning errands. Our first stop was Perkins Orchard for the week’s fresh produce. After Perkins Orchard we stopped at the market for the rest of our weekly groceries and then a stop at the gas station to fill up the Trail Blazer so we could get it back on the cycle of filling up on Saturdays. After lunch Colleen and I both headed outside to get working on the pool area. The afternoon wasn’t without its surprise though. When Colleen realized she was standing next to a rather large black snake she made some very unnatural noises and did a little hot foot dancing to get away from the snake. As a rule snakes don’t bother Colleen too much unless they are on the large side and catch her by surprise. It took us most all afternoon to clean up. I ended up burning the leaves, but everything was pretty much done by dinner time. I can’t say as it was hard work yesterday, but I sure was whipped after dinner and ended up going to bed early.

The sun is out again this morning, there is a light breeze blowing, and the temperatures are supposed to get close to 90 degrees later today. Colleen and I have our usual Sunday activities to get ready for the upcoming school week, but I fortunately don’t have nearly as much schoolwork now that school is getting ready to go on summer break. It’s been a crazy school year to say the least and Colleen and I are looking forward to our break. Usually in the spring I can find a few weekend days to go fishing, but I haven’t been fishing yet this year. I will find time once school is done. I figure I owe it to myself. Needless to say fishing wasn’t the only thing to get put on hold this year and our “To-Do” is longer than it’s been in quite some time. All the same, Colleen and I will keep taking things one day at a time. We really do enjoy spending time doing things up here on our little hill so we have no plans to travel this summer. We do know though, that no matter what life throws at us all we need do is stand on the back porch and look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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May 30, 2021: Week #63: The Governor Says The Masks Can Come Off, We Say Fat Chance!

It’s been 63 weeks since the world went on lockdown and as of this weekend our governor now says the masks can come off. I suppose that is what politicians do, they issue executive orders and other such things in order to direct people into doing what they believe are in their electorate’s best interests. I personally do not believe things are nearly as good as the media and politicians are saying, but that’s where my common sense takes over. I have a feeling Colleen and I will be keeping our distance from folks and wearing a mask out in public for quite some time to come. We certainly will not begrudge anybody from doing what they think is best in their special circumstances either. This whole mess is, for all practical purposes, uncharted territory. Of course we are on the doorstep of summer and after last year many people are looking forward to their vacations. Colleen and I are looking forward to having a quiet summer up here on our hill. Traveling is not in our plans at all.

For the most part, the weather last week was sunny, warm, and generally quite nice. In fact, we have seen so little rain of late that the state says we are under minor drought conditions. Our gardens certainly haven’t minded the warm weather, but our celery and radishes did bolt early this year. The rest of the gardens are doing well though. Yesterday brought us our first rain in a while. We probably didn’t get as much rain as they did to the south and east of us and we certainly didn’t see the soaking rains that have engulfed the northeastern states, but everything was wet this morning and the cold front pushing that rain has us looking at temperatures struggling to get over 60 degrees today. Fortunately, the whole long Memorial Day weekend will not it be a wash out with the sun expected to make an appearance later today and all day tomorrow.

Colleen came out of the gate on fire last Sunday. Before I even found my way to the back porch, she had made the coffee, let the girls out for the day, and had dragged her washtubs outback to do the laundry. I don’t think my fire ever got lit last Sunday. I just found my way out to the back porch and stayed there all morning while I wrote. Colleen’s fire didn’t last long and as soon as all the laundry was on the line she geared down for the day. The rest of the day turned into a slow crawl for her. Colleen did find the time to make a marvelous dinner of pan seared fish and oven roasted vegetables. I just did what little schoolwork that needed to be done and not much else.

With the school year winding down, there really wasn’t much for either Colleen or me to do during the week. My school dove headlong into its end of year testing and I administered tests all five days at school. Colleen’s school will start their end of year tests this coming week. Even with the slow school week both of us were coming home totally worn out. I suspect it had a lot to do with us starting to gear down after this long and strange school year. Colleen declared it was “Slacker Selection” week for dinners and we foraged or availed ourselves of the easiest meals possible in the evenings. Alex swung by the house on Tuesday after work to pick up his new glasses that had been delivered here. I was sitting on the front porch with a cigar when he got here, and as he walked down the stairs from the driveway, he dropped to one knee. I didn’t know if something was wrong, but before I could get up to check on things, Alex was standing up again holding tall of a rather large black snake. Most likely it was the same snake that startled Colleen the weekend before. He just put the snake into the garden so it could go on its way. The black snake is a rodent eater so it is welcome up here on the homestead.

Apart from Colleen watering the gardens all week, we pretty well had neglected them for the week. After Colleen and I celebrated the end of the week with pizza for dinner Friday night, our Slacker Selection for the day, I was able to get out and get a good look at the gardens. I realized that it was time to cut some of our Swiss chard and the peas needed picking desperately. In all the years we have grown peas, I can’t remember a time when the pea plants were so heavily laden with pods. Colleen and I really didn’t feel like getting into the gardens on Friday evening so we put it off until yesterday. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing and I even joined an online meeting with a handful of friends with I had gone to college around 9 o’clock.

I guess I probably stayed up later talking with my friends on Friday night because I slept until 9:30 yesterday morning. Needless to say, my sleeping late yesterday turned our planned activities on their ear. Colleen decided it was too late in the morning after I had my coffee to run our usual errands and, of course, neither of us really had much in the way of motivation either. The day started with some spotty sunshine, but there was rain in the forecast for the afternoon and through the night. Colleen and I did manage to get out into the gardens to harvest the peas and Swiss chard around lunchtime. I pulled all the radishes too as some plants were starting to bolt and the turnips needed the space anyway. The rain moved into the area sometime in the mid afternoon and Colleen and I didn’t do much for the rest of the day.

Colleen and I woke up to a gray morning today, but at least the rain was gone. It looks like we’ll be playing a little catch up today. After Colleen let the girls out of the coop for the day we made plans to run our usual weekend errands. If all goes well I’ll smoke a pork butt this afternoon which will feed us for a few days this week. We do have tomorrow off from school, but school is winding down and we don’t have much to do to get ready for the upcoming week. Colleen and I are so ready for our summer break so I guess relaxing this weekend is just our way of recharging our batteries. The world may be crazy still, but up here on our little hill things are going just fine. Colleen and I take everything one day at a time and when we look around we smile thankfully because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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June 06, 2021: We Are Ready To Start Our Summer Break!

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning and Colleen and I are on the verge of our summer break. Last week started out with the long Memorial Day weekend. The rain from last weekend cleared out by Monday, but everything was still soaked and though it didn’t get too hot the temperatures were high enough to drive up the humidity and make for a sticky day. Tuesday and Wednesday were nice enough with plenty of sunshine, but the rains came back on Wednesday night and lasted through Friday morning. By Friday afternoon the sun was back out, yesterday was just gorgeous, and the temperature got up to 90 degrees. Today it shouldn’t be quite as warm and there is an outside chance of a rain shower later in the afternoon. Right now though, there is plenty of sunshine, deep blue skies, a few white fluffy clouds, a light breeze, and some very pleasant temperatures.

Last Sunday’s weather wasn’t terribly conducive to working outside so it was a good thing Colleen and I needed to play catch up after our somewhat upside-down Saturday. We ended up running our usual weekend errands on Sunday morning. Once we start our summer break we will run them on Friday mornings. Neither Colleen nor I had schoolwork of any significance that needed doing and besides Monday was a holiday so we had an easy day of it. The rain let up by the time we got home from our errands and after lunch I smoked a pork butt so Colleen could make BBQ pulled pork to feed us during the week. Colleen made some coleslaw and potato salad to go with the pork too. I guess we did a little of this and a little of that over the course of the day too, but mostly we tried to relax.

Monday was Memorial Day and Colleen and I just sort of got ourselves ready for the school week. I finished updating and closed my grade books for the last time this school year. Colleen put a few things together in the kitchen so the week’s meals would be easy. I did finally get a chance to plug four oak logs with shiitake mushroom spores. This is our first try at growing our own mushrooms so we are excited. The mushrooms probably won’t do anything for a while which will give me extra time to do more reading and learning about them. Slowly but surely, Colleen and I are adding new things to our list of skills and knowledge, all of which should come into play quite nicely once we retire in three or four years.

Tuesday through Friday were school days. For me it was my last week of school with kids showing up for their last day of school on Friday. I do have a teacher workday this coming Monday, but that’s it for me. Colleen still has the whole week to go. The rain came back on Wednesday night and lasted until Friday morning, but the sun was out by the time I left school on Friday. Between the ample rain during the week and the warmer temperatures, our gardens are flourishing. I’ll probably need to get out into the gardens later today to check on things. It’s a good thing my summer break starts this coming Tuesday, because it’s time to weed the gardens and plant some beans too. There are about a million others things that need doing around here as well.

Colleen and I made yesterday about as close to a vacation as we get. We had planned a short trip to Al and Alysia’s place, to enjoy a small feast, and to visit with them. Given the last year and then some, we really haven’t had a whole lot of time to spend with any of the kids so it was a real treat for us. In an effort to keep himself occupied with something other than work over the Great American Stay At Home, Al has taken to trying his hand at gardening. He built a couple of small raised beds and has several pots and other containers in which he is growing everything from cabbage to zucchini squash. Colleen and I brought the kids a box of our greenhouse starts for the gardens and both of them were very excited to have more to add to the gardens. Alysia put together a low country boil for our little feast and it was sure good. I probably ate too much though.

Colleen and I didn’t travel far yesterday, but the traffic was nuts and after more than a year of sticking close to our little hill we quickly remembered why we like it so much up here. Apart from visiting the kids, I don’t think we will venture very far away from home again this summer. The pool still isn’t up thanks to the recent rains, but it will be going up as soon as possible. Of course, there is plenty of firewood to split and stack this summer too. I’m not too sure exactly what else Colleen and I will accomplish on our summer break, but every day will be a new adventure like always. Hopefully, I will find some time to do a little fishing, I’m sure we’ll be doing some canning, and we are hopeful we can have a little July 4th family get together this year. We haven’t had one in two years now.

Colleen and I do not have any specific plans for this summer. The weird and busy school year has left us woefully behind on cleaning up our usual “To-Do” list. Everything changes with summer break starting this Tuesday for me and next Saturday for Colleen. Ironically, I am looking at getting some schoolwork done this summer in preparation for the fall along with everything else that needs doing. Heck, we might even get into the basement this summer, but we’ve been saying that for the last five years at least. No matter what we do or don’t do for that matter, Colleen and I will laugh at our activities and make the best out of each and every day. At day’s end, we’ll kick back, relax, and smile because every day is a good day up here on our little hill and all is right on the homestead.

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June 13, 2021: Bring On The Summer Heat!

Last week brought the 2020-21 school year to an end. As of Friday, Colleen and I were both on our summer break. Mine actually started last Tuesday, but Colleen’s school didn’t finish up until Friday. With high school graduations going on all week, the weather was less than cooperative. A lot of high schools had planned outdoor graduations to facilitate the marginal social distancing that is still in place. The first part of the week was actually pretty nice, but rainy weather moved into the area on Wednesday night and stuck around through Friday. There wasn’t any rain yesterday, but everything was still wet, there wasn’t a whole lot of sunshine, and the temperatures never got out of the 70’s. Today the sun is doing a little better job of burning off the morning clouds and the temperatures are a little bit warmer than yesterday.

Last Sunday was catch up day for us after having gone to Al and Alysia’s place on Saturday. We had gone to Perkins Orchard on Saturday, but bypassed our usual stop at the market. We had planned on doing it Sunday morning, but that didn’t happen. Colleen only had a very small list anyway. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of prep work for the upcoming school week either. Colleen did get the laundry done on Sunday morning, but that was the end of any energy either of us had, and we spent the rest of the day just relaxing. Oh, there were the usual daily chores like taking care of the chickens, cleaning up around the house a bit, and Colleen made a lovely Arroz Con Pollo for dinner, but that was the extent of anything we did. Around here we know if something doesn’t get done today it will still be there tomorrow so we don’t worry about it.

Monday was just another school day for Colleen and me, but it was my last school day of the year. I managed to get home a little early and a bit before Colleen who had stopped at the market on her way home. Yea, that was supposed to be our Saturday stop at the market. Buttercup and I helped get Colleen and the groceries into the house. Colleen did stop on the way into the house to admire a rogue orange lily that had bloomed in her lily garden. Once Colleen was settled after getting home, we headed out to the gardens to pick our fresh snap peas, but after that neither of us did much of anything on the rest of the day.

Tuesday morning Colleen headed off to school and I enjoyed a leisurely cup of coffee on the back porch. My morning of leisure didn’t last too long and after I had finished my coffee, I was down in the yard working. Firewood is going to be a biggie for Colleen and me this summer. We easily burnt three times more than usual last winter because I was teaching from home. I pulled out all of the winter ready racks, cleaned up the area, and replaced the racks in anticipation of filling them up this summer. Knowing full well we would never get the wheelbarrow and wagon through the knee high, overgrown backyard, once the racks were back in place I pulled out the lawnmower and started to reclaim the backyard. It took a whole lot longer than I anticipated, but I got done what I could given there is still a rather large tree laying in our backyard that needs to be cut, split, and stacked on the wood racks. By the time Colleen got home, the lawn was done and I was soaked to the skin. The rest of the afternoon and evening was pretty much run of the mill.

Wednesday morning showed up and I was still full of spit and vinegar. Colleen headed off to school, I enjoyed my morning coffee, and then it was back to the work around here. The easiest way to get rid of the pile of bark, leaves, and wood debris I had raked up from around winter ready firewood racks was to burn it. With rain forecast for Wednesday evening I figured it had to get done before everything got wet. Wet leaves and wood do not burn well. It wasn’t a big pile but there was enough bark in the pile to keep it burning for a while. Once the fire was well established I started moving firewood up to the winter ready racks. That’s a lot easier said than done because the wood has to be brought up the hill. It took me all morning to move the firewood from our reserve rack down by the compost bin up the hill. When I was younger I would have filled up the wheelbarrow and pushed it up the hill and it probably would have taken me half of the time it did to move the wood on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, those days have long passed me by and I resorted to using a wagon to haul smaller loads of wood so I wouldn’t kill myself. I moved all of the wood in the reserve rack up to the winter ready racks, but that ended up only being about a quarter of a cord of wood. I have a feeling it will be a long summer of moving wood because it takes four cords and then some to fill the racks. I did get to do some gardening Wednesday afternoon and finally got our eggplant starts planted in the gardens, Colleen’s lemon balm and English thyme transplanted to bigger peat pots, and started a tray of ten peat pots of banana peppers.

Thursday and Friday were both rainy and the morning fog that hung in the trees made things look like we were in the Pacific Northwest. I spent both days in front of my computers doing schoolwork while Colleen was at school. I teach at a year round school and we start back in the middle of July, and even with a few workdays before the kids come back to the classroom, the last thing I want to be doing is scrambling at the last minute to get things ready for class. Fortunately, having done everything online over the last school year had me very familiar with the tools and tricks I needed to make the job quick and efficient. I managed to get a week’s worth of lesson plans and two days worth of class notes done. Not wanting to spend all of Friday in front of the computer, I managed to do a little bit of porch gardening after lunch and then I hung a sign up on our basement door that Colleen had gotten a few months back. The basement is where our larder is located and Colleen gets the biggest kick out of “shopping in our basement” whenever she needs something. I’ll bet we have a good six months of supplies and canned food down there in the shelves.

Yesterday morning Colleen and I started out slow. We enjoyed a lovely cup of coffee and some breakfast before we headed out to do our usual Saturday morning errands. We started late and got home late, a good bit after lunch. Neither Colleen nor I had much motivation when we got home. Colleen put the groceries away and then sat down to read, and I headed upstairs to take a nap. I woke up and came downstairs a little bit before dinner and after dinner we didn’t do much either. Colleen and I both had a good laugh at Buttercup who spread out in front of a fan after dinner as she didn’t seem to have much spunk on the evening either. I didn’t even have enough energy to put a movie in the Blu-Ray player to watch. We didn’t do much on the evening save for the usual evening chores and both of us headed upstairs to bed shortly after the sun had set.

Things haven’t started out today quite as slowly as yesterday. Colleen and I did enjoy our breakfast and Colleen has moved the last batch of her potted porch plants from the second floor porch down to the back porch. The sun has finally chased most of the morning clouds from the skies and it is a beautiful morning too. I’m sure Colleen will spend some time in the kitchen today and I’d like to find some time for the gardens. There is no schoolwork that needs doing. I will grill our dinner this evening, but other than that we’ll just have to see where our day leads us. There is no place that Colleen and I would rather spend our summer break than right up here on the hill. I do have a doctor’s appointment first thing tomorrow morning, but that is the extent for our plans for the week. Every day will be like a Saturday until school starts again and that’s just fine by us. The world is still upside-down, but we can’t do much to change that. Whatever happens will happen, but up here on our little hill, all we need to do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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June 20, 2021: A Pool, Summer Break, And The End Of Spring!

The last week of spring is behind us now and it was a dandy. We had lots of sunshine and warm temperatures that made things ideal for a very busy week outside for Colleen and me. The remnants of the latest tropical storm have just found their way up here to our little hill this morning and we now have a gentle rain falling helping to keep everything cool. It has been a warm dry week so the rain is definitely welcome especially for our gardens which sadly are a little neglected and a bit over grown at this point. I suppose we’ll get to the gardens sooner or later. I’m afraid the gardens just haven’t bubbled up to the top of our very long “To-Do” list this summer. We will get to them though, in fact, it looks like it’s just about time to take the potatoes out of the ground.

Last weekend was the first weekend where both Colleen and I were on our summer break. To that end, we both more or less took the day to kick back and relax, knowing once we got going on our summer activities the rest of our summer break would be very busy. Colleen took advantage of a beautiful morning to get a load of laundry washed and hung on the line to dry, but that was the extent of any motivation either of us had on the day. Sunday dinner was on me though, and as the afternoon started to slide into early evening I fired up the grill on the back porch. Dinner wasn’t anything fancy per se, but nothing says a beautiful spring Sunday better than steaks, a baked potato, and some fresh braised veggies all cooked on the grill. There really isn’t a better way to dive into summer break especially given the wacky year at school that had just finished.

I was up early Monday morning and out the front door on my way to a doctor’s appointment for a checkup. Everything went pretty well with the doctor I guess. Being stuck in front of computers for the school year had limited my physical activity so my blood pressure crept up a bit and I had a few extra pounds under my belt, but I figure with all of my summer activities I can turn those numbers around. Colleen got another load of laundry done while I was gone and even though our day started late because of my appointment Colleen and I managed to get down to Lowe’s to get a few things, primarily sand to shore up the area on which we planned on putting up the new pool, and so I could get a gas powered weed eater. Of course, no trip to Lowe’s would be complete without a visit to the garden center. As always, we left Lowe’s and their garden center with several extra plants including a small rosemary bush for the chicken planter Colleen had gotten a while back from the Tractor Supply Company.

Tuesday morning sort of got turned upside down right out of the gate. I had planned on building up and leveling the ground for our new pool. Colleen changed all that when she told me she wanted to get our usual start of the summer Costco run out of the way. The Costco run went just fine, but Colleen started looking at outdoor patio furniture. That pretty much firmed up the idea of putting a patio out next to the pool. We are on summer break so what was one more major project added to our “To-Do” list. Once we got home and got everything into the house. I headed out back, fixed the area for the pool, and started measuring and figuring how best to make the patio happen. Funny thing about Tuesday though, Colleen and I found we had already started losing track of what day it was. To us the day could have been any day from Monday to Saturday. That’s what summer break is all about around here I guess, one day just melts into the next.

Wednesday was pool day, but before the pool went up and the day heated up, Colleen took advantage of the lovely morning to bake some fresh bread. Once the bread was cooling on the racks and our morning coffee had been finished, it was time to drag the pool out of the basement and set it up. We got everything set up and started filling the pool by noon. After lunch Colleen and I did our best to get the wrinkles out of the pool liner. Once the pool was filling up it was time to start thinking about adding the patio by the pool. The patio wasn’t on our original summer “To-Do” list and it sort of just came to life after Colleen got a note from some cousins that they might be coming to visit this summer. That’s pretty much how some things happen around here. Something unexpected gets us excited, the wheels start turning, and things happen.

Thursday morning found Colleen and me headed down to Lowe’s again to get the needed materials for the patio frame. As we pulled into the parking lot I realized I had left the water running to fill the pool. That made for one quick trip to Lowe’s without a visit to the garden center because we didn’t want the water in the pool to start running over the sides. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting the patio frame together and making sure the corners were square. As it turned out one of the boards had a slight twist warp to it so I had to do a little maneuvering to bend the warp out of the board so I could square up the last corner. I never figured putting four boards together in a rectangle would be so much work. By the end of the day the pool was filled and the patio frame was ready to go.

Friday morning I was out trying to level the patio frame. Getting anything level on the side of a hill is always a challenge. The frame is only to hold the gravel and sand base for the patio so I didn’t want to dig the high spot on the ground down too much and after I got the back and right side of the frame level I figured the only way to get the front and left side frame level was to build up the front left hand corner of the frame with rocks to support frame. Fortunately there are rocks aplenty around this place. I pretty much had the frame leveled out by time the heat of the day took over. Colleen had spent the better part of her day doing more laundry and then cleaning the house. The vacuum cleaner got one heck of a workout for sure. The day had gotten hot enough that there was only one thing to do come mid afternoon and that was to get into the pool.

Yesterday was hotter than Friday. I spent my morning leveling the ground inside of the patio frame, using the dirt from the high areas to fill in behind the corner of the frame I had propped on rocks. Colleen spent all morning working in her gardens and after I finished moving all of the dirt I could, I pulled the lawnmower out and cut the grass and weeds on the side hill. I still needed more dirt to level everything out for the patio so Colleen and I headed down to Lowe’s again to get some top soil and, of course, more flowers for Colleen’s gardens. After lunch Colleen and I got the dirt down to the patio and while I was working there, Colleen was planting flowers. The heat of the day finally got the best of us and we were in the pool again yesterday afternoon.

Well the rain has decided to start falling for real this morning. Fortunately, it’s mostly a gentle soaking rain which will be good for the gardens. It’s Father’s Day and with the rain falling there isn’t too much going on around here today. I suppose Colleen will spend some time in the kitchen and I may even do a little schoolwork. I’m not sure how long the rain will last and then I’m not sure how long it will take everything to dry out again. The pool and the patio usurped getting any firewood cut, split, or moved last week, but that’s what summer break is all about. With any luck the patio will be finished by next weekend and then Colleen and I can tackle the firewood. We take everything one day at a time and know everything will get done in its own good time. The world is what it is, but up here on our little hill everything moves at a much slower and easier pace. No matter what does or doesn’t get done, all Colleen and I ever need do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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June 27, 2021: It’s Definitely Summer, But It Hasn’t Been Too Hot Yet!

It’s a lovely Sunday morning up here on the hill. Another busy week has passed and while the northwest corner of the country is having their brains melted with record heat, it hasn’t been too hot here in the heart of the Carolinas. Last week the daytime temperatures stayed mostly in the lower 80’s and we had some rain here and there. It wasn’t terribly wet, but it was enough to keep our gardens well watered. It looks like we’ll have much of the same this week again, but we shouldn’t see any rain until later in the week. Things might even warm up enough to start the week so Colleen and I can get to enjoy some time in the pool in the afternoons. Since the pool has been up, I think we’ve only been in it a handful of times. There have been some summers where we’ve found our way into the water almost every afternoon. The summer is still young though and we do still have July and August in front of us. Even with me starting school again in mid July, I will be looking forward to the pool’s cool water when I get home in the afternoons.

Last Sunday was Father’s Day and for the most part it was a quiet day spent fielding phone calls and visiting with the kids. I did do my usual Sunday morning writing, and Colleen spent a little time in the kitchen. We decided to have a big mid afternoon meal rather than lunch and dinner so Colleen made some pan seared salmon with roasted fresh vegetables. It really was quite tasty. Colleen also baked a big batch of berry muffins on the day, but that was more or less the extent of any energy we spent. All in all it is was a rather restful and enjoyable Father’s Day.

Monday morning showed up and Colleen and I got down to our usual daily adventures. Colleen started the morning by loading up the dehydrator with fresh ginger. She dries the ginger and then grinds it up to add to her spice supplies. We did make a run down to Lowe’s to get some base rock for the patio I was building out by the pool. As luck would have it, I underestimated how much base rock I would need and came up short when I laid it all out during the afternoon. Colleen did some dry canning on the day and added a number of quarts of crackers and stuffing mix to our basement larder. After dinner everything was quiet and I even found some time to watch a movie.

We kind of got rained in on Tuesday. It wasn’t a torrential rain or anything like that, but it was enough to keep Colleen and me in the house all day. At least the gardens got a good soaking. I did some schoolwork, but not much as my motivation was running low. I did finally put together my new gas powered weed eater not that it did much good because I couldn’t go outside. Colleen spent the better part of her day cleaning her kitchen. She gutted a couple of her kitchen drawers, boxed up the things she doesn’t use and brought them down into the basement, and re-lined the drawers with new contact paper before she put everything else back in place. I managed to watch another movie on the day, but overall it was a low key day.

Wednesday came with a dentist appointment for me. My teeth have been problematic since I have been a kid, and now they’ve reached the point where the last four teeth in the top of my mouth need to come out and I need a full upper plate. Honestly, I’ll be glad when the process is done so I don’t have to deal with the teeth anymore. I did stop at Lowe’s on the way home and got the rest of the base rock I needed for the patio. I even surprised Colleen when I brought home some new garden flowers for her. After dinner I put the rest of the base rock down for the patio. That pretty much put a wrap on Wednesday around here. It wasn’t the most productive day, but at least the patio was one step closer to be being done.

Thursday was Colleen’s turn at the dentist’s. Fortunately she didn’t need any major work. Everything had dried out pretty well from Tuesday’s rain so while Colleen was gone, I got outside, fired up my new weed eater, and knocked down all of the tall grass and weeds along the eastern property line. I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed with my new Craftsman weed eater. It’s certainly not an industrial level weed eater, but it is more than enough to handle the job around here. After Colleen got home from the dentist and I had lunch, we headed out to take care of our usually weekly errands. We headed to Perkins Orchard to get our fresh produce. Since Colleen had designs on doing some fermenting we ended up getting two bags of fresh veggies. We made a quick stop at the market too. With the way the prices of everything have been going up of late, we decided to take advantage of their senior discount day.

Friday morning Colleen and I headed to Lowe’s to get some sand to finish off the base of the patio, 1200 pounds of sand. I spent all morning and into the early afternoon laying and leveling the sand. Once the sand was in place, Colleen and I laid the playground foam mat on top of the sand and that finished the patio. While I was working on the patio all morning, Colleen was trying her hand at making homemade sauerkraut. The sauerkraut is now down in the basement fermenting and won’t be ready for a few weeks. Needless to say, we are quite looking forward to when it is ready. I ended up taking a nap Friday afternoon, but Colleen kept going with her adventure in fermenting and made some “Garden in a Jar“ which of course isn’t what it’s really called, but I can’t ever remember it’s real name. Along with the fermenting sauerkraut in the basement, Colleen is also now fermenting a mix of fresh garden vegetables, specifically broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, asparagus, and onions.

Since Colleen and I did not have to leave the hill yesterday, we finally made some plans for the day. On our last Costco run we bought two big bags of frozen chicken. Yesterday it was time to can the chicken meat. It took us all afternoon. Colleen would pack the jars and then I babysat the canner out in the back porch. We ran three batches of jars through the canner and ended up with 19 pints of chicken meat. Each pint jar holds a little bit more than a pound of chicken so it makes it very convenient for Colleen to use when she cooks. The whole process from beginning to end didn’t require a whole lot of physical effort, but we were both tired once we finished and the jars of chicken were sitting in the shelf in our basement larder.

The sun has finally burned away the morning clouds and it is starting to warm up around here. I have two weeks left to my summer break. Fortunately, even though it is short, because I teach in a year round school now, I do get three week breaks between each quarter. It really does help break up the school year. Colleen doesn’t have to go back to school until the end of August so she still has a bit of here summer break left. One day, one week, or one month, Colleen and I just keep taking things one day at a time. The world can do what the world will do and while so many sit by and watch, Colleen and I will make a difference through our actions. Whatever any given day may bring our way, Colleen and I can look around, up here on our little hill, and thankfully celebrate knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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July 04, 2021: Just Over A Week Left In My Summer Break, But It Is Independence Day!

Another week of summer break has slipped by us and we are definitely in the throes of summer now. It was an unusually busy week up here on the hill despite some rain and a few dentist appointments. I’ve been out of school a month already and am looking at heading back into the classroom a week from this coming Tuesday. Colleen still has a ways to go on her break as she does not go back to school until the end of August. Not to worry though, what I miss with a shorter summer break, I will more than make up for with three week breaks between each quarter of the school year. Weather-wise, the week brought us little bit of everything from 100 degree heat indices to cool, 60 degree rainy days. Fortunately, our “To-Do” list has just as much that needs doing inside as it does things that need doing outside.

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Last Sunday started out slow and easy and stayed that way all day. We had some rain move through late Saturday so everything was pretty wet to start the day. I knew the day was supposed to get hot so I made sure the pool chemicals were up to snuff and the filter had a new cartridge in it. As expected the afternoon did warm up quite a bit and Colleen and I found ourselves enjoying the cool water later in the afternoon. Colleen found some time in the kitchen making corn muffins and then putting together taco fixings for dinner. That was literally the extent of our day though, and for the most part, it was a restful Sunday. Colleen and I do try to find some time to relax and recharge our batteries when we can.

Monday morning proved to be very pleasant, but Colleen was out of the house first thing, heading to the dentist office. It wasn’t anything major and she was home within an hour. Shortly after she got home, the dentist office called, they had an early afternoon cancellation, and wanted to know if I could come in for my dental work. I had some major work that needed to be done which was originally scheduled for Tuesday morning. I jumped at the opportunity. I’m not sure how much Novocaine Doc actually used in my mouth, but everything was feeling fine when I came home until the Novocaine started wearing off. I knew I was looking at being uncomfortable for a bit so I took some ibuprofen and headed upstairs to bed. I woke up with my mouth feeling very tender, but on the whole I was feeling pretty good.

Tuesday morning I woke up feeling pretty good, but I needed to head back down to the dentist office so Doc could check his handy work. It was a quick visit so I still had the whole day in front of me. Colleen wanted to get outside into her gardens and before I ever finished my coffee, Colleen was out playing in the dirt. I figured Colleen had the right idea for the day and once my coffee was done I transplanted our pepper plants into the garden from which we had harvested potatoes last week and then I transplanted some fennel and dill into pots since fennel and dill do not play well with other plants. The day was not without some excitement though. Colleen was hunting some flower pots under the back porch. As she made her way out with two big ceramic pots, she tripped. The pots went flying, crashing to the ground, and ending up broken in a thousand pieces. Fortunately, Colleen ended up with just a bruise in her knee having missed all of the sharp, ceramic shards that could have cut her up very badly.

Wednesday ended up being a particularly busy day for Colleen and me. The morning started out with Colleen doing laundry and with me cleaning out the chicken coop. We did make a quick run to the store later in the morning to get a picnic tent to put over our new patio. Colleen and I had it set up in no time, but it was time for lunch when we finished. After lunch it didn’t take the day long to start heating up in a big way. The temperature climbed through 90 degrees and the heat index got to the century mark. It didn’t take much convincing for Colleen and me to head into the pool in the middle of the afternoon. The pool water temperature was 80 degrees, but it still felt cool and refreshing. After we got out of the pool and dried off, Colleen made meatloaf for dinner which I found I could eat and enjoy even with all of my healing dental work in my mouth from earlier in the week.

Thursday proved to be another beautiful day, albeit it another warm one. I still needed to anchor the picnic tent which involved some more digging so the legs would set evenly. Colleen started cleaning up the area behind the patio and once the tent was anchored, I joined Colleen’s cleanup effort with my new weed eater. After lunch we were out in the front yard cleaning that up. I moved the leaves that had been on the ground since last fall with the leaf blower and Colleen raked. By mid afternoon we had two of the three tiers in the front yard cleaned up, but the day had gotten hot, so we quickly decided it was time to head into the pool. I definitely will not be letting this fall’s leaves sit on the ground through the fall and winter again. The highlight of the day though proved to be something very simple. Colleen is growing some cone flowers as part of her herb gardening adventure. Cone flowers are the source of Echinacea and Colleen’s cone flower had a beautiful bloom on it.

Friday morning was gray and rainy. I decided it would be a good day to spend time on my computer doing schoolwork. I got a good bit of work done too for all of my classes. Colleen spent most of her day reading and cleaning the house. She did find some time in the kitchen and made some wonderful cherry tarts. After my dental work, eating some fresh fruits has proved difficult for me, but I sure can eat the tarts without any problems and they are delicious. The sun actually started drying things out later in the afternoon. It wasn’t warm enough to get into the pool, but the evening was quite pleasant even with the elevated humidity. The night ended up being nice and cool and was perfect for a good night’s sleep.

Yesterday morning our firewood took center stage and Colleen and I were outside as soon as we finished our morning coffee, moving and stacking split firewood to our winter ready racks. Moving the wood took us all morning and a bit past noon. I guess I’m getting smarter in my old age because I moved smaller loads than I would have liked to move up the hill in the wheelbarrow and wagon, but I didn’t burn out or kill myself either. Colleen stacked the wood as I got it up the hill. Between the two of us we got all of the firewood I had split so far this year moved up the hill and stacked. That’s one cord done and three more to go. Unfortunately, as tired and worn out as we were come mid afternoon, it wasn’t warm enough for us to enjoy our pool. I suppose the cool day probably worked in our favor though because we didn’t get overheated. I did catch a nap in the afternoon after which I took care of the weekly pool maintenance and added some more sand to the low spots under the mat on the patio while Colleen cleaned up her workroom and patched my overalls. We were both tired yesterday evening though and we had no trouble falling asleep.

This morning it is a cool and beautiful morning. The afternoon temperatures are supposed to be close to 90 degrees again and Colleen and I are looking forward to getting into the pool. There a few things we would like to accomplish today too. Colleen is inventorying our freezer and it would be great if I could split more firewood today, but what happens today will happen. Lest I forget though, today is a very special day in the history of this country. It is Independence Day! Everything, and I mean everything, that happens in this country could not have happened without this day 245 years ago. Oh, I know it’s not perfect, but the fact that each and every citizen can voice their opinion, even in opposition to the status quo, without fear of government suppression or worse execution, is something not enjoyed by a great many countries in the world. Colleen and I will keep taking things one day at a time because we know everything will work out just fine in time and all the while we can look around up here on our little hill and know that all is right on the homestead.

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July 11, 2021: My Summer Break Is Done!

Oh my, another week of summer has passed and with it my summer break has melted away. I go back to school this coming Tuesday for a run of teacher workdays and the kids are back in the classroom a week from tomorrow. The sun has finally made an appearance this morning. We started the day with a thick fog hanging in the tree tops. Hopefully things will be a little cooler today, but it feels like the humidity will stick around. It’s been a wild week thanks to the weather. The first part of last week was hot and humid and then on Thursday, tropical storm Elsa blew over our heads. We only got rain, but not the wind fortunately as the storm had broken up before it got to us. Friday started out just warm and humid, but a front or something pushed through the area and come Friday evening we were dealing with a barrage of 15 minute thunderstorms. Yesterday wasn’t as warm as it had been earlier in the week, but we were still dealing with oppressive humidity. All the same, it was a productive week for Colleen and me.

Last Sunday was Independence Day, but this year, like last and unlike previous years, there was no gathering of our clan. Colleen and I are still very skeptical about everything associated with this dang virus so we stayed close to home, but that’s nothing new to us even when things seem right in the world. Colleen did spend her day working on the porch gardens and transplanting flowers into decorative pots to go on our new patio. I managed to get out into the front gardens during the afternoon and even harvested a good many cherry tomatoes, all of which came from volunteer plants. The tomato plants that we have grew from seeds that were in the compost I had added to our gardens. Mostly though, last Sunday was a quiet day. Colleen and I did spend a little time in the pool and just generally caught our breath getting ready for the new week in front of us.

Monday morning was a beautiful morning, but it was back to the dentist office for me. The last of my teeth that needed to come out got pulled and everything else got scraped clean. Thankfully I was pretty numb while the dentist worked his magic. The whole day was essentially lost to me though. Once I got home and the Novocaine started wearing off, I took some ibuprofen and headed to bed for the afternoon. I was feeling much better when I got up at dinner time, but I sure didn’t feel like eating dinner. I honestly don’t know what Colleen did all day. I know she was worried about me, she always worries about me. I suppose someone has to do it. I suspect she spent her day cleaning up around the house because the family room looked a whole lot more organized and neat Monday evening.

Tuesday I woke up feeling just fine and feeling like I needed to do twice as much work to make up for not doing anything on Monday. After my morning coffee I headed down to the log splitter and split all of the cut firewood that Colleen and I had moved there the week before. Colleen didn’t miss a beat either, and she was out in the yard with her rake and electric weed eater cleaning things up. Once I finished splitting the wood I could, I grabbed my chainsaw, sharpened it, and headed to the front yard to start cutting the last of the wood up there so it could eventually get split. The heat chased Colleen and me into house a little after lunchtime. We ended up heading into the pool after lunch again to cool off. The big surprise of the day was that our patio furniture got delivered right before dinner. Of course, it all needed assembly, and I managed to get the two chairs put together and out to the patio after dinner.

Wednesday was Colleen’s turn to visit the dentist. Fortunately, it wasn’t anything major and Colleen even stopped at the market and pharmacy on her way home. A rather industrious little squirrel reminded me that I need to get going after Colleen left. I spent my morning putting together the rest of our new patio furniture, a loveseat and a coffee table. I was out on the patio tightening up the last of the screws when Colleen got home. After lunch Colleen and I moved the firewood I had cut on Tuesday after which we headed straight for the pool. It really wasn’t a whole lot of wood, but moving it one piece at a time in 90 degree heat buffeted by 95 percent humidity made a small job more difficult that it needed to be. After dinner I watched a movie while Colleen made herself at home outside on our new patio furniture. Before we closed up shop for the night, Colleen and I made sure we had everything in the house, or tied down outside because Elsa would be moving through on Thursday morning.

Elsa’s rains started a little after 9 o’clock on Thursday morning and it just kept raining right through the day until around dinner time. Obviously working outside wasn’t an option on Thursday so I got in front of my computers and did schoolwork. My goal was to have enough work done to make the upcoming week of teacher workdays easy for me. Colleen found some time to get into the kitchen and made some fresh mayonnaise and a rather large batch of coleslaw. Colleen had planned on BBQ pulled pork sandwiches for dinner and pulled pork sandwiches just wouldn’t be right without coleslaw on them. The real highlight of our day was when the indoor/outdoor rug for our patio got delivered after dinner.

Friday morning was wet, but the sun was shining. Colleen and I let things dry out a little and then we headed out to the wood pile at the top of the front yard. I cut while Colleen hauled. We spent most of the morning out in the wood pile, but didn’t come near getting the job finished. The temperature was a bit easier on us than it had been, but the humidity was oppressive once again. We worked until lunch and that was all we had in us for the day. Colleen and I had moved all of the furniture off of the patio so it could dry before we had headed to the wood pile. The patio had dried nicely, Colleen gave the base mat a good sweeping, we put down the rug, and then replaced the furniture. The sun was still shining at that point so we headed for the pool to cool off. We couldn’t have been in the pool more than 20 minutes when heard the distant rumble of thunder. The skies started to get dark so we got out of the pool and within 15 minutes we had a full-fledged thunderstorm on our hands. The storm was a quick one, but for the next several hours we just kept getting a series of 10 or 15 minute thunderstorms.

Yesterday morning was wet again. While Colleen and I were waiting for things to dry out some, Colleen got into the kitchen and started making some fresh bread. The bread will be for my lunches at school next week. Once Colleen had the dough in its first rising I headed outside to cut more firewood. Colleen joined me outside once the dough was in the bread pan for it second rising. Colleen and I got through about half of the remaining firewood before my chainsaw started getting dull from the dirt on the outside of the logs and from cutting hardwood. We cut and moved what we could, Colleen headed back inside to bake her bread, and I re-sharpened the chainsaw. After lunch we headed into the pool, we had an early dinner, and after dinner Steven and Lily came by the house for a visit. Lily is getting big and she readily made herself comfortable on our new patio furniture.

The morning has become sunny and bright burning off the fog from earlier. We have a light breeze too which is making things quite nice. It seems the government and media have gone into a full blown panic with the upsurge of the delta variant. I can’t believe they are promoting a door to door campaign to check people’s papers and are looking for ways to make people uncomfortable about their vaccination choice. This is America, not NAZI Germany! Oh well, nothing is right out in the world these days it seems. All the same, Colleen and I are doing well. I am looking forward to the start of school. We will keep wearing our masks, avoiding crowds, washing our hands regularly, and taking things one day at a time. We expect this virus mess to be with us for a good while longer and to get even messier once the flu season gets here. It is what it is, but Colleen and I know everything will work out the way it is supposed to work out, and this too shall pass. We are very thankful though that no matter what happens in the world, all we need do is look around up here on our little hill to know that all is right on the homestead.

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July 18, 2021: Let The Games Begin!

My summer break is really done now as the kids and I will be heading into the classroom tomorrow morning. Last week was a pretty week outside even though there four teacher workdays that kept me in school. Apart from a pop up thunderstorm here and there, the week was mostly sunny and warm which is typical for this time of year in Central North Carolina. Even though I was in school from Tuesday through Friday, Colleen who is still on her summer break and will be until late August took full advantage of the week. Today the weather is iffy at best. The skies are gray and there is a chance of storms throughout the whole day. All the same, it should be a quiet day up here on the hill. Colleen and I will do our best to get ready for the upcoming week and try to relax when we can.

Colleen and I did our best to relax last Sunday. There are still a thousand things on our “To-Do” list, but neither of us had the motivation to do any more than absolutely had to be done on the day. Heck, I even took a nap later in the afternoon. Since it was my last weekend of summer break Colleen made a very special dinner of Mexican stuffed peppers. It’s a rather involved recipe, but it is a real treat we both very much enjoy. We did have a quick sun shower after dinner. It didn’t last very long and everything was starting to dry up before sunset rolled around. All in all it turned out to be a lovely Sunday.

Monday was my last full day of summer break and Colleen and I decided we wanted to get all of the firewood moved from the top of the hill in the front yard down the hill by the log splitter. We got out in the yard as soon as we finished our morning coffee and we stayed out there until lunchtime. Unfortunately, between all of the wood that needed to be moved and the heat of the day our efforts fell short by a few rather large pieces of un-quartered rounds. We just didn’t have in us to get those last few pieces. I took a quick nap after lunch and when I woke up I found Colleen relaxing in the shade on our new patio. We took a quick dip in the pool to beat the day’s heat. After dinner we took it easy for the evening and I made sure I had everything ready to go for my first teacher workday at school on Tuesday.

The rest of my week was spent at school. It was four days of the usual start of school meetings and training. Going from online classes last year back into the classroom this year is proving to be a challenge. All of the summer school software updates were running late and a lot of the kids never filled out their registration information for this year. My hat is off to our administration that has done a yeoman’s job of working around everything to give the teachers a best guess of their classes, but I suppose no one will know exactly what things look like until we get a week or so into the new school year. Of course, I’m doing my best to come up with various ways to get through the first week of school, so our dining room table looks like it did last year with my computers spread out everywhere.

Colleen spent her week trying to adjust to me not being at home. She spent a good bit of her time outside working in the gardens and cleaning up the yards. She did get most of the front yard cleaned up. I never did get to finish blowing last fall’s leaves off of the yard so Colleen finished the job with her rake. Our front yard certainly will never be a picture for Better Homes and Gardens, but at least it is clean and neat now. Colleen did find the time to set up a new batch of extracts so they will be ready for the holiday baking season and she found time to enjoy the pool in the afternoons too. I am so jealous of her pool time.

Yesterday I was up and moving early. I wanted to get the last of the firewood moved off of the top of the hill in the front yard and I did, even though it took a little bit of doing. I spent the rest of the morning in front of the log splitter splitting firewood for this winter, not that anyone could tell by looking at the pile of un-split wood still in the ground. Colleen spent all morning cleaning and vacuuming in the house. After lunch we both got into the garden and harvested some Swiss chard and a bunch of cherry tomatoes. Funny thing, we didn’t plant any tomatoes this year. All of our tomato vines are volunteers thanks to our compost. We didn’t do much after dinner. The skies started getting dark and threatening but the rain passed us by.

Today should be an easy day. I don’t have too much to do for school and Colleen will make sure she has things ready to go for my lunch. Tomorrow will be interesting. I’m not sure how I will handle the social distancing thing, but I will be wearing two masks. My classes will have anywhere from 20 to 30 kids depending on who shows up. The politicians and the media are in full blown fear mongering mood these days, probably because they don’t have a clue. Do they ever have a clue? Fortunately, Colleen and I do not react to their shock and awe tactics, instead we rely on good old fashion common sense which it seems is not all that common in the world these days. None of this really matters though because Colleen and I just keep taking things one day at a time. At the end of each day we look around and smile too, because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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July 25, 2021: The First Week Of School Is A Wrap

Another week, more COVID, I’m back in school with a room full of kids, and who knows what will happen from here. All the same we have a beautiful morning up here on our hill. Surprisingly, for midsummer, things have not been oppressively hot around here. Unfortunately, the western part of the country can’t say the same. That’s some crazy heat with which the folks out there are dealing. We had a very pleasant week weather wise up here on the hill. There wasn’t any rain to speak of and the daytime high temperatures checked in around 90 degrees mostly. Colleen is still on her summer break, but I headed back into the classroom last Monday. I really don’t mind going back to school early though because I do get three week breaks between each quarter grading period. The first of those breaks will hit in mid-September.

Last Sunday proved to be a very slow day up here on the hill. Neither Colleen nor I had much in the way of motivation and Colleen battled a sinus headache for most of the morning. I finally suggested she make herself a cup of coffee with oregano which she did and her headache ultimately subsided. Since my first day of school was Monday, I spent the better part of the day tying up a few loose ends for school and then relaxing. There is a lot to be said for sitting on the porch watching the little critters run around in the yard. I’m not sure I’ll ever really get accustomed to the short summer breaks that come with a year round school, but I’ve quickly learned to love our three week breaks at the end of each quarter. The first one is in September and if it doesn’t rain, I’ll be able to make up for the things I didn’t get done this summer when the temperatures are a little bit cooler.

Monday started without much fanfare for the first day of school, but the sun was shining when I left for school. Most of the kids hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom in a year and a half. Things were a bit chaotic as one might expect, but things got better as the week passed. I guess the biggest problems we had were the updates on the software teachers needed hadn’t been completed by the county and the school had to make sure computers got distributed to the kids properly. The biggest problem all week was switching the freshman over from the ChromeBooks they used in middle school to the MacBooks they’ll need for high school. Personally, I think the MacBooks are trash, but we have to use what we have. By the time Friday rolled around, the software was up and working, but the school was still switching out computers.

Colleen had the idea to do laundry on Monday, but scrubbed that idea in favor of staying in the kitchen to do some baking. It’s not that she got carried away, but she did bake three dozen muffins for my school lunches. She also spent most of the rest of the day looking for the books I had promised Louis in exchange for his help moving and stacking firewood. Colleen went through almost every box in our basement only to find the books in a box in a closet upstairs. I’d have to say her afternoon break in the pool was well earned. The laundry did finally make it to the clothesline on Tuesday morning. Slowly, but surely, Colleen and I are switching gears out of our full blown summer break mode.

Like me getting used to being in the classroom again, Colleen is adjusting to spending her days at home alone. On Tuesday along with getting the laundry done she canned some apple butter and did some raking out in the yard. I never did get to blow last fall’s leaves completely past the wood line so they sat in piles all over the yard all spring and summer. Wednesday it was some more raking and on Thursday she took advantage of senior discount day at the market. Once Colleen got everything home and into the house from the market, one thing lead to another and Colleen spent most of the day cleaning and reorganizing her kitchen pantry. Of course it was a big job, but Thursday afternoon like each afternoon during the week Colleen did manage to find some time to get into the pool to cool off and relax.

Colleen was back at her raking on Friday and she finished up the big pile of leaves in the backyard. She actually tried to keep going by cleaning up behind the hen coop, but the heat of the day got the best of her so she gave it up and headed to the pool. I got a text from the shop at school after lunch letting me know that Alex’s car was ready. Alex couldn’t make it into town because of work so after I got home from school Colleen gave me a ride to the shop so we could get Alex’s car for him. After we ate dinner I was so tired from my week at school I ended up going to bed around 7:30 and slept for 12 hours.

Even though I got up a little later than usual yesterday morning there were things that needed doing. Foremost on that list was to split firewood. I spent all morning at the log splitter and while there is still a good bit of un-split wood, at least I feel like I made a dent in the piles. Colleen spent the morning in the kitchen. She baked a couple of loaves of rye bread for the sandwiches in my lunches this coming week and she made a casserole too. Alex stopped by the house after lunch, visited for a while, and then headed home in his car. Colleen and I found our way into the pool after that. Colleen and I ate a mid afternoon meal after which I took a two-hour nap. When sunset rolled around, Colleen took care of the girls for the night before she headed upstairs. I stayed downstairs and did a couple hours of schoolwork.

I won’t be splitting firewood today because things are back to doing schoolwork to get ready for the upcoming week. It’s too bad too because it is a beautiful day. Colleen is already in the kitchen. I’m not complaining though at least we have a direction, although a day of leisure would be nice too. The world is still a mess and the politicians are getting testy as they can do little more than re-impose restrictions and mask mandates as the virus numbers are headed in the wrong direction again. Colleen and I are doing well though, and we’ll just keep wearing our masks, but we had no intention of giving them up for a good while anyway. We keep taking everything one day at a time and are quite content in knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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August 01, 2021: Yes, It Is The First Day Of August

I made it through my first full week of school where I was actually teaching the kids math. Most of the week was hot and sunny so when the school’s AC started acting up the building did get a little warm. Fortunately, the maintenance crew was right on top of it and the building never got really hot. Yesterday things started to cool off a little and then this morning, wouldn’t you know it, we’re suppose to have a thunderstorm roll through just to start us off today. It looks like we might be in for some rain later, but right now it’s just gray and humid. I am thankful the temperature is still below 80 degrees otherwise it would be really steamy and I don’t think there is room in front of Buttercup’s fan. I suppose a rainy Sunday isn’t so bad especially since I have a good bit of school work to do today. Colleen still has a couple of weeks left to her summer break.

Given I needed to get ready for a week of school and teaching math, last Sunday was both a beautiful day and it was quiet as I spent most of my day on my computers. Colleen spent a good bit of time in the kitchen making a couple of her potato pies. Mostly they require a good bit of prep work before the ingredients all get added to the pie shell, but once they are ready for the oven, there isn’t much to them and when they are finished, Colleen has four meals ready to go for the week or so in front of us. We usually eat one during the week and Colleen freezes the second pie for some time in the future. Once the pies were out of the oven, Colleen started putting together a Yankee pot roast for Sunday dinner. I can’t even describe how tender and delicious that was. The roast just sort of fell apart when it saw the fork coming its way.

Monday I was up before the sun and there was a great big, bright moon to greet me when I stepped out on the back porch with my morning coffee. We did have the threat of rain on the day so Colleen opted out of doing the laundry and spent the better of the day making a peppermint balm to keep the mosquitoes away. This moved up in priority on her “To-Do” list when she started spending more time out on our new patio. I got home from school at my regular time and after dinner Anna Maria and Lily stopped by for a visit and to go swimming. After they got out of the pool Lily and I spent time watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on my phone.

Tuesday came and went much as Monday had, although the rain never really did show up. The threat of rain kept Colleen from attempting to get the laundry done. While I was at school, Colleen finished putting her peppermint balm together and putting it into little tin containers. I did get a text from Alex telling me his “Check Engine” light on his car came back on. I told him to get the car back down to the shop after work. I was elbow deep in schoolwork when Alex dropped the car off at the shop so Colleen went and picked him up. His roommate came and got him here at the house after that. I ended up staying up until 11 o’clock trying to get as much schoolwork done as I could.

The sun made a grand appearance first thing on Wednesday morning and Colleen finally got to do the laundry, and after that she got her rake and kept going on cleaning up our little half-acre. Colleen spent as much time cleaning behind the hen coop as she could until the day’s heat got the best of her and then she headed to the pool. It seems by the time I get home I’m too tired to want to get into the pool. I did check on Alex’s car and the problem had the shop temporarily baffled. They figured it was a bad computer or old sensors that were not talking to the new computer. I spent all evening and deep into the night on my schoolwork again. Colleen took care of the evening chores and was upstairs in bed long before I headed upstairs for the night.

The clothes on the line weren’t quite dry on Wednesday evening. It had been hot and sunny all day, but the humidity was wicked high all day too so Colleen left the clothes on the line and collected them on Thursday morning. Like Wednesday, when Colleen finished with the laundry she headed back to her raking. She even cleaned up all of the bark that had been piling up around my log splitter. When I got home and went done back to check on Colleen’s handy work, the girls all ran down to the back side of the coop to see what I was doing. I swear, chickens are some of the goofiest things on the face of the earth. Thankfully though, it was a quiet evening for us, and I didn’t even have to stay up too late doing schoolwork.

Friday morning before I left for school I was treated to a few deer and among them, a young buck wandering through the backyard. I had kind of an easy day at school with a couple of my classes taking quizzes. Colleen was outside in the yard even before I left for school watering the gardens. She spent another day with her rake and when the heat of the day started getting to be too much she headed into the pool. We did try something new for dinner. A while back Colleen found out that summer squash and zucchini breaded and cooked in an air fryer made a wonderful substitute for French fries. Well, there wasn’t any squash in the refrigerator on Friday so Colleen tried the same trick with cucumbers. In my entire life, I had never had cooked cucumbers before Friday evening. The cucumber fries that Colleen made to go with our burgers on Friday night were incredible.

Yesterday turned out to be both beautiful and incredibly busy for Colleen and me. I found a good bit of time to spend splitting wood and get into the pool in mid afternoon, but if I was sitting down I had a computer in front of me and I was grading schoolwork. Even after dinner, I stayed up until 10 o’clock working on the computer. While I was out splitting firewood, Colleen decided she wasn’t happy with the way her peppermint balm turned out earlier so she re-worked it. She is much happier with the way it turned out yesterday. The better part of the rest of Colleen’s day was spent doing housework. By the time we called it a day and headed upstairs, we were both worn out.

It didn’t take long for the rain to show up this morning. We had a nice little thunderstorm move through right around 8:30. Everything is wet now, and with more rain in the forecast, neither Colleen nor I will be working outside today. That’s probably a good thing for me since I still have a good bit of school work that needs to be done. With any luck I won’t have to stay up late tonight, but I never know for sure. It feels kind of strange to say that today is the first day of August, but it is. I’m not quite sure what happened to the first part of the year. Even with the virus numbers headed up again, school is in full swing for me now, and yes, I am gladly wearing my mask. The whole thing is what it is and Colleen and I are well and still taking things one day at a time. Whatever happens will happen, but Colleen and I know that up here on our little hill everything is calm and peaceful, and all is right on the homestead.

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August 08, 2021: We Are Settling Into A School Routine

It’s an early Sunday morning and quite the lovely morning at that. Another week has passed. My school is in full swing, the virus numbers continue to climb, the daylight is getting shorter, and Colleen and I keep marching along with our lives. The weather was nice this week. We had a quick thunderstorm last Sunday morning, a little bit of rain on Tuesday, and apart from that the only rain we saw for the rest of the week started on Friday night and lasted through the day yesterday. The sun is back this morning and it is burning off the last of yesterday’s clouds although most things are still wet this morning. The week did see the temperatures climb into the mid and upper 80’s, but that really wasn’t bad for early August. While I was at school all week, Colleen was able to get outside and work around the house. Colleen still has another nine days of her summer break left so she has been and will continue to make the best of them.

Last Sunday was a slow day around here. Mostly, I spent the day in front of my computer getting things ready for the upcoming week at school. Colleen spent a good part of her day in the kitchen getting ready for the upcoming week too. She did, however, find the time to can some tomatoes. This was the first time I can remember she’s actually canned something we had grown in our gardens. We had our usual Sunday meal in the middle of the afternoon which let me just keep working on my schoolwork right through our usual dinner time and I was even able to finish everything up at a reasonable hour and get a good night’s sleep. Up until last week, I hadn’t caught my stride for school and I had been burning a good bit of the late night oil.

Monday morning I was up and headed to school with the sun and it was that way all week. Things are starting to settle down at school and slowly, but surely I am finding my rhythm again. We had a faculty meeting Wednesday before school started, I had a number of kids who were absent for various reasons during the week, and later in the week we even had a case of the virus pop up in the school, but it didn’t affect me. The school did its usual fine job of contact tracing, contacting the necessary people, and deep cleaning. I suppose that under the current conditions, that sort of thing is just another routine at school now. Schools in our county are still requiring everyone to wear masks. Even when they don’t require it, mine will not be coming off for a long while.

Monday was laundry day and Colleen was elbow deep in wash water shortly after I headed off to school. It took her the better part of the morning to fill the clothesline, but that is the nature of the task. The day was cool and dry so it was a good day for hanging laundry. Colleen spent the rest of her day working in the house, cleaning and such. I ended up getting home just a bit later than usual, but dinner was waiting. I was able to get my schoolwork done early again and got to spend a little time on the back porch after sunset, enjoying a cigar and the light show from Colleen’s solar powered garden decorations.

Tuesday morning there were some threatening clouds overhead, but Colleen decided to head outside anyway and work around the house. Of course that means Colleen had a rake in her hands. She managed to clean up a good many of the leaves behind the hen coop and she even cleaned up all of the bark around the log splitter I had made last Saturday. It didn’t really rain all that hard on Tuesday, but the ground started to get slippery so Colleen hung up her rake for the day. She spent the afternoon baking. I had a quick dentist appointment after school so I was a little late getting home again.

Wednesday morning was cool enough for Colleen to head outside again and pick up where she left off raking on Tuesday. Colleen was on a mission Wednesday morning though, and by lunchtime she had her annual raking adventure done. With the afternoon still in front of her, Colleen decided it was time to transplant her lemon balm into a long pot. The lemon balm is this year’s addition to Colleen’s herb garden experiment. She wants to get the lemon balm established this year, nurture it through the winter in her greenhouse on the second floor porch, and see what she can do with it next summer. Once I got home, we did have to run down to the shop to get Alex’s car for him. The computer in the car was still acting up so he wanted to get the problems resolved.

Thursday was senior day down at the market so Colleen put a market list together and headed down there to do our weekly shopping sometime in the middle of the morning. Surprisingly for how little the two of us eat, the market list was a little longer than usual. Colleen got everything home, brought everything into the house, and spent the rest of the afternoon putting things away and reorganizing the kitchen. Alex picked up his car after dinner. Before he got back to his place, the check engine light came on again. I texted the shop told them what happened and to expect the car on Friday afternoon. The big surprise of the day happened when Colleen went out to lock the girls in the coop around sunset. There was a raccoon climbing, scaling is a better word, up the back side of our house. Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do without some way to get up three or four stories high. I’ll keep my air rifle handy and maybe one day I’ll get lucky and catch the critter unaware. I might have to resort to trapping it too.

Friday was the end of a long week. Since Colleen had finished her raking, she started shuttling split firewood up to our winter ready racks. It is a slow process at best. Colleen managed to top off two half-cord racks and start filling a third rack before she ran out of steam. Alex dropped his car off at the shop in the late afternoon and Steven picked him up saving me a trip. I ended up grading and getting one class’s grade book updated before the county took the software down for routine maintenance. I checked this morning and the system is still down. The rain started falling some time after dinner, but it cooled everything off nicely making for a very sleep worthy night.

Our rain wasn’t a hard rain, but it did last most of the day yesterday. I suppose everything happens for a reason, even the rain. There wasn’t a chance I’d be working around the house yesterday so right after breakfast I got in front of my computer and started grading. Apart from eating and a couple of short breaks, I spent all day yesterday with the computer. I did finally finish everything right at sunset. Colleen spent most of her day up in her workroom working on her cookbooks and getting organized to start her next project. It really was a very quiet Saturday around here, but I definitely needed the time to grade. With any luck the grade book system will be up later today and I can wrap that work up for this week. If not, I will be scrambling come tomorrow morning.

Today has started out much nicer than yesterday, and everything is still calm. The county government has issued a new mask mandate given the surge in the virus of late. It really isn’t a big deal for Colleen and me. It seems like masks are just going to be part of our everyday life for a while to come. Fortunately, Colleen and I had not even entertained the thought of taking our masks off while we are out in public. What is really sad about this whole thing is that kids are starting to fall victim to the virus and all of these “safe”, “immune”, unmasked, and vaccinated folks are contributing to the spike in numbers in a big way. It is what it is, I suppose. Colleen and I just keep going, taking one day at a time. We are quite content up here on our little hill and all we need do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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August 15, 2021: It Was The Hottest Week Of The Year!

We’re already into the middle of August and Mother Nature has put an exclamation point next to these midsummer days. Only two words are needed to describe the week’s weather, hot and humid. The temperatures have been in the 90’s all week and the heat index ran between 100 and 105 degrees. We did finally get a break from the heat yesterday afternoon when a line of strong thunderstorms pushed through the area, the breeze really picked up, and the afternoon temperatures dropped 15 degrees in an hour’s time. Oddly enough, apart from some light rain yesterday evening and last night, the storms basically missed us up here on the hill. Ten miles south or ten miles east of us was a completely different story where lightning started fires, trees came down, and people lost power.

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Last Sunday was a pretty routine Sunday around here. Louis was supposed to come up to the house to move firewood, but he never showed up. I did my usual writing and schoolwork for the day and Colleen spent some time in the kitchen getting ready for the week. We did shift our routine around a bit and instead of eating lunch or dinner we decided a big mid afternoon meal would probably work better on the day. It did, and since it’s just Colleen and me at home, a mid afternoon Sunday meal is likely to become our routine now. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any time to work outside and in particular cut the grass and weeds around the backyard so everything is quite shaggy back there.

Last week was Colleen’s last week of her summer break. She starts school on this coming Tuesday morning. After I left for school on Monday morning, Colleen was down back, elbow deep in her washtubs doing the laundry. If getting the laundry done wasn’t enough, Colleen started to haul the split firewood up from down by the log splitter. She didn’t move a whole lot before the heat of the day settled into the area, but every little bit helps. I still have a good more wood to split and when my three-week quarter break in September gets here, I will try to move whatever hasn’t been moved at that point. Colleen did find time to relax and cool off in the pool in the middle of the afternoon and then have dinner ready when I got home from school.

Tuesday morning I was off to school with the sun again and after her morning coffee, Colleen started hauling firewood again. Hauling firewood up the hill from log splitter to the winter ready racks is no easy task. The best either of us can do is a wagon load or a half full wheelbarrow load at a time. Colleen uses the wagon. Slowly but surely, the job will get done though. On Tuesday Colleen managed to fill up another half-cord rack. I still have to repair one of our racks, but when all is said and done we’ll have almost four cords of wood in the winter ready racks and another cord or two in the reserve racks. Last year with me teaching from home every day, we burnt just about every bit of that wood too. Oh yea, we did get Alex’s car back from the shop again Tuesday evening, hoping they had finally resolved all of the nagging computer and sensor issues.

Wednesday proved to be interesting at school. It was a hazy hot morning when I left for school. A lot of kids are starting to not show up because they are in quarantine because someone in their family tested positive for COVID. The days started getting very warm and the school’s AC started really struggling. Colleen needed to start getting ready for a scheduled medical procedure on Thursday so she stayed inside all day. She took care of the usual household chores and even found time to bake some fresh bread. Colleen spent most of the day relaxing though trying to get her head in a good place for Thursday medical procedure.

Thursday was the big day and Colleen spent the morning relaxing and getting ready to head out after lunch. I was at school and the AC issues started mounting. Colleen left for her appointment after lunchtime, got there in plenty of time to take care of all of the necessary paperwork and headed down to the appropriate area only to find out they couldn’t do the procedure and she would have to come back on Friday morning. Colleen was back at home when I got home from school. It was just another hot August afternoon, but both of us couldn’t help but notice that Colleen’s Solomon Seal garden was starting to turn yellow. That is always the first sign that summer is waning and fall isn’t too far off.

Colleen pulled out of the driveway headed to her rescheduled appointment right after I left for school. The procedure went as well as could be expected and Colleen was home before lunch. Right around lunchtime the chillers on my school’s AC system died and with a heat index of 105, the school released everyone at 1 o’clock. Since the chillers will not get fixed until Monday afternoon, they made Monday an early release day as well. Ironically, I had scheduled to give a county diagnostic test to my kids on Friday and Monday. I always say no amount of planning can ever replace dumb luck. Colleen looked worn out Friday evening and didn’t do a whole lot other than lock the girls in their coop for the night before she headed upstairs for the night.

Yesterday morning Colleen was feeling a little better, but not great. Fortunately, we had errands that needed to be run so after our morning coffee we headed out the front door. It was a quick run to Perkins Orchard for fresh produce and then a trip to Walmart for odds and ends we had put off getting for the last month or so. We got home at noon hoping we could get into the pool after lunch, but the rumblings of distant thunder persuaded us taking a nap was a better option. After our naps Colleen finished putting the groceries away and I spent the afternoon grading for school. We never did get hammered with the thunderstorms that moved through the area. We did get a little rain though.

This morning it was absolutely beautiful when I headed out to the back porch for my morning coffee. That didn’t last very long though as clouds started to fill the sky. I have some more school work that needs doing and Colleen is planning on a mid afternoon meal again since it worked so well last Sunday. There doesn’t seem to be anything unusual going on in the world today. Everything is still in a state of chaos and the virus numbers are still climbing. Sadly, it’s the kids that are getting the worst of it lately. Colleen and I are doing well and we are religiously wearing our masks and will for some time to come. We’ll just keep taking things one day at a time and stay out of the political bickering over vaccines and masks. The days come and the days go, but up here on our little hill we just have to look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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August 22, 2021: The School Bell Is Ringing.

We have got a beautiful Sunday morning on our hands this week. There’s lots of sunshine and the temperature is quite pleasant. For the most part last week’s weather was pretty much the typical mid August weather for around here, hot, but not too hot and we had our pop up evening and nighttime thunderstorms. A couple of days saw the rain carry over through the nights and into the mornings which made for tricky driving for Colleen who leaves for school before sunrise, but she did okay and didn’t have any problems. The humidity was high all week and the afternoons got down right steamy, but it was pretty much par for the course. I had a regular school week teaching my usual classes, but Colleen started back to school and had to endure four teacher workdays. She heads back to school with the kids starting tomorrow.

Overall last weekend was busy, but more so on Saturday than on Sunday. Sunday Colleen and I basically just spent the day getting ready for the upcoming week. I got my grades and grade books all caught up and put together some class work for the week. Colleen prepped a few meals for the week so she wouldn’t have to cook when she got home from school and she put together one heck of an awesome Sunday dinner. Dinner was pork chops smothered in a cream sauce with onions and apples and boy, oh boy was it ever good. We ate dinner in the middle of the afternoon which seems to be working out well as we can forego lunch and dinner at their usual times. It seems to make working through the afternoon into the evening much easier.

Monday was Colleen’s last day of summer break, but did she relax? Oh heck no! After I left for school she ended up in the kitchen baking bread. Monday was a bit of a strange day at school for me. The chillers in the school’s AC unit needed replacing so we got out of school at 1 o’clock. I took a quick nap when I got home and when I got back up, Colleen and I headed down to the shop to collect the Trail Blazer so Colleen could get to school on Tuesday morning. As it turns out there is a small leak at the top of the radiator so we will be nursing the Trail Blazer along until I am on quarter break in mid-September. It’s going to be another pricey fix, but the fix is still cheaper than getting a new vehicle and the guys at the shop do good work at a fair price.

The rest of the school week was pretty uneventful. Colleen fought to stay awake during her meetings all week. I had a teacher workday on Wednesday and took the morning off for a dental appointment. I figure a dental appointment was far better than listening to speeches by the superintendent of schools and other such officials. I did go to school after lunch and ended up sitting through three, hour long, online, back to back to back meetings before I came home. Somehow on Wednesday evening Colleen found the motivation to bake a double batch of corn muffins. Nothing else much happened during the week and Colleen and I just tried to get back into the routine of both of us being at school again.

We had a dandy thunderstorm slide just to the south of us in Friday night. We saw the lightning, heard the thunder, but only got a prolonged rain shower from it. Yesterday morning was gray and wet though. All the same it was a busy day up here on the hill. Apart from my usual grading for school I spent a good part of the morning and well into the afternoon splitting firewood. There are a few rogue pieces of wood that need to be cut before I can split them, but I finally finished all of the other wood Alex dropped in our front yard a year and a half ago. Colleen and I have already filled three half-cord racks in our winter ready cache and have four more to go, one of which I need to repair before we fill it. At least all of the wood that I’ve split so far is well seasoned unlike the pile waiting to be split in the backyard thanks to the fallen oak tree this spring. Colleen spent her day in the kitchen and reading when she could. She put together a lovely biscuit topped chicken pot pie that will feed us for a couple of meals during the upcoming week.

Hopefully I can finish my schoolwork early today because there is just so much that needs doing around here. I am optimistic that I will be able to clean the hen coop and change the bedding today and just maybe cut the weeds and grass in the side yard. Colleen will spend her day doing the usual housework and prepping dinners and our lunches for the week. Now that schools on the traditional calendar are starting Monday for the kids, things will get interesting. After 4 weeks at my school we’ve had a handful of virus cases pop up. I can’t even imagine what it will be like once all of the kids will be back in school, especially at the real big schools like Colleen’s. It is a sure bet that Colleen and I will keep our masks on our faces and exercise extra caution. It seems like the vaccine isn’t living up to its advertising as more and more breakthrough cases start showing up and more and more of those cases are ending up in the hospitals. Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time and rely on good old common sense. Every day we will find our way home, look around, and smile because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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August 29, 2021: More Summer Heat To Close Out August.

Colleen and I made it through another week and just to make things interesting it was Colleen’s first week of school. The weather cooperated for the most part. We didn’t see a lick of rain, but as the week passed, Mother Nature jacked the temperatures up quite a bit. Last Sunday was pleasant enough. We had lots of sunshine and the temperatures stayed in the 80’s, by Friday afternoon the high temperature was somewhere between 95 and 100 degrees with a 105 degree heat index. Yesterday wasn’t quite that warm and today is supposed to cool off a tad bit more. I guess Mother Nature didn’t want us to forget it was still summer, at least for a few more weeks anyway. We’re not complaining though. At this time of the year we could be dealing with a hurricane like the Gulf Coast has one their hands right now.

Last Sunday turned out to be about as close to a day off as Colleen and I seem to get lately. Most of my schoolwork was done and Colleen didn’t have a whole lot of prepping to do for the upcoming week so neither of us was moving to terribly quickly. Everything happens for a reason and we probably should have known it was an easier Sunday than most because we were headed into the headwinds of a rough week at school. Colleen did make some wonderful Arroz Con Pollo for our Sunday meal. Not much else of substance got accomplished, but come Sunday evening we were set and ready to tackle our school week in the morning.

Our school days start off early around here and Colleen leaves before sunup. I take care of the morning chores once we have a little daylight and then I head off to school. Monday came and went without too much incident. It was the first day of school at Colleen’s school and for the first time in a year and a half the classrooms were full. Her school, like most schools, has a number of vacant teacher slots so that added to the chaos of the day. For the rest of the week things settled down for Colleen while someone flipped the switch on crazy for my week. From Tuesday through Thursday it seemed that every time I wasn’t in class, I had a meeting and that included before and after school. By the time Friday got here I was relying on sheer determination to get me through the day.

Colleen and I managed to keep things between the ditches all week. I put in some late nights getting my class work ready for the next day, but I managed to get out of bed every morning and make sure the girls were let out of their coop and fed. Friday night I got to slow down some and enjoy my monthly online chat with my college friends. It was a late night again and I didn’t crawl in bed until around 11:30. We had lost power at some point on Friday and the alarm clock reset itself so right after I crawled into bed and started to fall asleep, the alarm clock went off at midnight. Of course Friday wasn’t without at least one fly in the ointment. Alex’s car was back in the shop again last week, he got it back on Thursday, and the check engine light came back on Friday morning. I’m beginning to think computers do not belong in cars.

Last week had left me very little time to get my grading done. So yesterday after my first cup of morning coffee I pulled out my computer and started grading. I stayed in front of that computer until sunset with the exception of two 30 minute naps to give my eyes a rest, and an hour and a half when I had to pick Alex up at the shop and run him home. Yes, indeed, Alex’s car is back in the shop to start another week. At least Alex gave me directions to his place along all of the two lane country back roads. Colleen took advantage of the beautiful day by doing laundry yesterday. She started a little before I left to go help Alex and finished putting everything on the line right before I got home.

I took one of my quick naps after eating lunch yesterday afternoon and when I got up Colleen was enjoying some time in the cool pool water. I thought about joining her, but decided I still had too much grading to do. The grading kept me pretty tied up and I never heard Colleen come back into the house. The next thing I knew she was asking me if I wanted dinner which I did not still being elbow deep in my grading. For all my time in front of my computer yesterday I still have some grading to do today. Just to make things even more interesting, the grade book software we use messed up yesterday and even though I’m putting my grades into the computer, the software is not calculating the overall grades properly. One of two things is going to happen here. One, we’ll figure out what is going haywire with the software and set things straight, or two, the changes were intentional and I’m going to have to rebuild my grade books. It’s going to be fun either way.

Today promises to be another busy day around here. I’ll be grading and doing other schoolwork and Colleen will be in the kitchen. We do have a three-day weekend next weekend so just maybe Colleen and I can squeeze a few extra needed chores into our days. There is still plenty of firewood to be moved, cut, and split, and the yards need to be cut desperately. We’ll get to what we can and everything else will get done in due time. I sure can’t say much about what’s going on in the world though. Between “The Great Vaccine Saga” and all of the political turmoil, things are really a mess. Colleen and I have our hands full between school and the daily activities up here on our little hill. We take one day at a time, find our way home in the evening, take a big sigh, and smile when we look around because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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September 05, 2021: A New Month And A Long Weekend

It’s Labor Day weekend, we have a long weekend break, and we certainly have a beautiful Sunday morning to go with the beautiful weekend in general. The weather wasn’t too bad last week even with Ida running through the country. Ida went a good ways north of us and all we got was a day of rain on Wednesday. The rain from Ida started falling around here sometime during the day on Wednesday while Colleen and I were in school and it was pretty much gone by sunset. The temperatures really started cooling off after that and we even got down into the mid 50’s on Friday night. Yesterday barely got up to 80 degrees and Colleen and I are expecting much of the same today and tomorrow. We don’t have school tomorrow so we are really enjoying our lovely long weekend.

Colleen and I didn’t do a whole lot last Sunday. I had my usual grading, schoolwork, and writing, all of which chewed up most of my day. Colleen took care of her usual Sunday house work and even found some time to do a little baking. The day was warm and I suppose we could have found our way into the pool, but that didn’t happen and it looks as though it may have been our last chance to enjoy the pool this year. Buttercup, who I can’t figure out why for the life of me, is not a fan of water unless of course it is a mud puddle, choose to camp out in front of the fans all day while Colleen and I went about our various tasks.

Our school week was crazy, well actually Colleen’s more so than mine. It seems an awful lot of teachers were calling in sick or staying in quarantine last week at Colleen’s school so she ended up covering various classes wherever they needed her. Things did start to settle down by Friday, but it wasn’t a fun week for my darling wife. The weather didn’t help much on Wednesday. The skies looked rough Wednesday morning, but we didn’t get much more than rain in the afternoon. Friday was my crazy day at school. The kids were wired for sound like there was a full moon which there wasn’t. I’m not too sure if it was the onset of the cooler temperatures or the pending long weekend, but come time to go home I was flying out of the school’s front door.

Friday evening was absolutely gorgeous around here. The skies were clear, the temperatures were mild, and everything seemed just right to get a start in our three-day weekend. All that changed right after dinner when I headed out to the back porch and realized I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I figured a quick after dinner nap would do me just fine so a little before 6 o’clock I laid down. I woke back up at 10:30 changed out of my street clothes, crawled under the covers, feel back asleep, and didn’t wake up until 7 o’clock yesterday morning. I have no idea what Colleen did all evening and I surely can’t remember the last time I slept 12 plus hours in a night. I guess I was pretty tired and needed the sleep.

Even though nothing got done Friday after school, Colleen and I made up for it yesterday. After our morning coffee we headed down to Perkins Orchard for our weekly supply of fresh produce. Once we got home we started tackling our “To-Do” list. I cut the side yard and Colleen raked everything up. The gardens got weeded and watered. Colleen helped me repair one of our firewood racks. After that I even found some time to grade and get my grade books up to date. Dinner was a plate full of tasty leftovers Colleen had in the refrigerator and after that we were able to spend the better part of the evening just relaxing. I have a feeling that today and tomorrow will be a good bit like yesterday. Long weekends and an extremely long “To-Do” list just seem to go hand in hand around here.

It sure looks like we have a dandy Sunday on our hands today. There is a light breeze blowing, lots of sunshine, and the temperatures should get into the low 80’s. The three day weekend has definitely taken the urgency of getting things done away from this weekend. Colleen and I have no plans to go anywhere and we are quite content with just taking care of things around our little homestead. Fall is right around the corner now and some of the smaller trees are starting to lose the green from their leaves. The world is crazier than ever these days, the virus is still raging and mutating, and we are in the heart of our hurricane season too. None of that really matters up here on our little hill though. Colleen and I just keep taking one day at a time. Even with the chaos of the last year and a half, not much has changed in our lives. Our life is simple and we like it that way. Every day we look around and smile, thankful for all we have, and knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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September 12, 2021: An Unexpected Fly In The Ointment

Another Sunday morning, another weekend, still more to get done around here, and like usual, there isn’t enough time to get everything done. We’re half way through September and fall is just 10 days away. Mother Nature is struggling to hold on to summer though. The temperatures have started to get into the 50’s at night, but some days got up to almost 90 in the late afternoon. We might even see 90 again at the beginning of the coming week. We did get a little bit of rain last week, but that was on Wednesday night and the sun was out again by midday on Thursday. This weekend has been just beautiful with cooler temperatures and plenty of sunshine, all weekend long!

Last Sunday was a little bit different compared to the usual. It was day 2 of our 3-day Labor Day weekend. Colleen didn’t waste any time getting down to business either. While I was still writing on the back porch, Colleen hauled out her washtubs and did the laundry. By lunch time the laundry was on the line, I had finished my writing, and I decided to cut as much of the backyard as I could even with all of the limbs, logs, and branches laying around and with the wet laundry on the line. I did take advantage of the rest of the afternoon once I finished the lawn to get my grading and grade books wrapped up for the week, but on the whole the day was not stress filled with things that had to be done. Colleen and I even got to relax with a chicken Creole dinner, not worrying about what needed to be finished for Monday morning.

Colleen and I weren’t in any particular rush to move on Monday morning, but we did have plans to run to Tractor Supply Company for chicken feed and other supplies, and we did want to move some firewood up to the winter ready racks from pile of split firewood down behind the hen coop. When we finally finished our coffee we hopped into the Trail Blazer and headed down the road. The trip to Tractor Supply Company turned out to be a little bit of an adventure for us. Oh we got the supplies we needed, but the store staff was restocking their shelves and Colleen and I ended up doing a little bit of Christmas shopping while we were there. I guess it’s not too early to start this year. We never did get to move any firewood, but I did clean out the hen coop and pen and replace the girls’ bedding in the coop later in the afternoon.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were just our usual school days. Colleen would leave before sunrise and I would wait until the sun came up, let the girls out for the day, and then be on my way. Colleen did have a bit of a rough go of things at school though. It seems that there is a huge gap between what the school system now expects an IA to do and what the IA’s are actually are trained to do. The district just recently changed the job description mostly to cover their butts I think. Colleen came home very frustrated for a couple of days, but I think the school is finally realizing there is no way any IA will be able to meet the changes in the job description. My days went pretty well and I was able to start my end of quarter testing on Thursday without any problems.

Friday saw Colleen’s week finally start to calm down, but my week got turned on its ear thanks to an email from our superintendent about a change in school board policy. At the moment, the school board, elected politicians, wants all of the teachers in the county vaccinated. That is not good. I couldn’t believe how many teachers were visibly upset by the email. Given the current circumstances with the shortage of teachers, I can’t imagine how big the shortage will get now. Instead of teachers talking about how to help the kids, they were talking about leaving the district. I have a very tough decision to make over the next few weeks. I would explain just how badly all levels of government have handled the pandemic to this point, but this is neither the time nor the place for a discourse on political stupidity. I did get to sit on the pack porch and ponder the situation as I watched the sun set. Fortunately, I am in a position where I can retire if I so choose.

Yesterday morning I was still in a bit of a malaise from my brain trying to sort through Friday’s events. Colleen and I finally decided to head down to Perkins Orchard for our weekly produce and then we stopped at the market on our way home. Perkins Orchard had a ton of potted Mums for sale yesterday so in addition to our bag of produce we got some potted Mums. Of course, Colleen was very excited to get new flowers and as soon as we got home she went about decorating one of the gardens by the driveway. I’ll admit it turned out nicely. I spent the rest of my day at home grading and getting my grade books caught up for the week. I was able to get everything finished before sunset so I spent the rest of the evening and a good bit of the early night on the porch with a cigar pondering our various options associated with Friday’s email.

This morning is cool and comfortable with plenty of sunshine. Colleen has already been in the kitchen for a while. I have a little school work to do but not much and I do have a short week and the start of my first quarter break to which I very much am looking forward. Thankfully, Colleen and I didn’t have any real plans for the weekend. I do know the next few weeks are going to be a mental roller coaster ride while Colleen and I sort through recent events. Unfortunately, the politicians are trying to force our hand to comply with their ill conceived ideology and it has finally found its way to up here on our little hill. Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time though. We’ll sort through the mess and everything will work just fine without us selling our souls and sacrificing our principles or ethical beliefs. Sometimes the road gets bumpy, but in the end Colleen and I can look around and know that all is right on the homestead.

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September 19, 2021: No Big Decisions Yet, But Soon

It’s the 79th week of the declared pandemic that started on Friday March 13th, 2020. Yeppers, I’m still counting. I only use that date because that was the day they sent schools to remote learning for the better part of the next year. Here we are getting ready to start the fall of 2021, and things don’t look a whole lot better and in some ways they are worse. Despite all of the whining by the politicians, the media, and the vaccinated Karens, Colleen and I are doing quite well and enjoying this lovely end to summer. It looks like summer is trying to have one last fling this weekend with plenty bright sunshine and temperatures in the upper 80’s. Last week was very nice for the most part too with only the occasional rain shower. What we don’t have this weekend is a hurricane threatening to make landfall.

Last Sunday wasn’t too especially busy for Colleen and me, or at least it didn’t seem so. We were still having to go to school, but it was going to be a short week, Colleen and I had Thursday off from school, it was also the last week of school for me before our 3-week intersession break. I did my usual Sunday writing and some schoolwork, but I didn’t have a whole lot that really needed doing. Colleen went into a full blown search mode looking for places to which we could move and get as far away from mindless government regulations and mandates as possible. She found one place and we began making plans to check it out on Thursday. Somehow my darling wife also found time to do a good bit of baking on Sunday that yielded two loaves of fresh bread, two dozen banana muffins, and a cookie jar full of hermit bars. Maybe Colleen’s day was a little busier than my day was.

Monday through Wednesday were just typical school days although the mood among the teachers at my school was decidedly more somber. With the quarter coming to a close I used my time to help the kids get caught up on missing work, and to their credit most all of my kids actually did work instead of goofing off. Colleen took advantage of having Thursday off from school by stopping at the laundromat on her way home on Wednesday. Colleen got the clothes hung out in the line Wednesday after she got home and then got in contact with the real estate agent about the property we wanted to see. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out and though unsold, the property is being taken off of the market for now. After dinner Colleen realized she had pulled a muscle or something in her back and since it was really starting to bother she headed upstairs early to call it a night.

Thursday morning when Colleen and I woke up the muscles in her back had tightened up so much she could barely move and when she did it was painful. Since our property hunting trip had gotten scrubbed on Wednesday night, we had made plans to move firewood up the hill to the winter ready racks. It didn’t take too much to see Colleen wouldn’t be moving wood with her back the way it was. I figured any wood I could move by myself was better than no wood getting moved so I headed out early and started hauling firewood up the hill one wagon full at a time. I moved wood all morning and a little bit into the afternoon before I just couldn’t do it anymore. Colleen spent her day in a recliner resting her back.

Why Colleen or I had to go to school on Friday after having Thursday off was beyond me. A lot of kids didn’t even bother to show up at my school. Colleen’s back had been feeling better Friday morning, but by the time she got home Friday afternoon she was in some serious pain again. Before Colleen could get comfortable though we had one errand than needed to be run, the shop let me know that Alex’s car was finally ready so Colleen drove me down to the shop and then we both came home. Colleen found her way to the recliner and I headed out to the back porch to start my 3-week break with a cigar while I watched the evening sun fade to dusk.

Colleen’s back was feeling better, but not great yesterday morning. We decided to push our weekly trip to Perkins Orchard and the market off until today. Colleen wanted to make some of her spicy chicken soup so I hauled out her big black cast iron pot and put it on the stove for her before I headed outside to move more firewood. I finished filling our fourth half-cord rack of wood right before lunch. We now have two-plus cords of firewood stacked and ready to go. Colleen had finished the soup and it was simmering on the stove by then. After lunch Colleen did her best to stay comfortable and relax. I played on the computer all afternoon. Colleen and I both enjoyed a nice bowl of homemade soup for dinner after which we spent the night relaxing.

Colleen and I woke up to a beautiful morning today. Colleen’s back is feeling much better so we will head out and run our errands before too long. I have no schoolwork to do today and Colleen doesn’t have near as much prepping for the upcoming week as usual. She will have to put the groceries away and straighten out her kitchen though and she is planning our usual Sunday dinner. Colleen has school this week, but I do not. I don’t have any big plans, but after the start of school this year, this break is most welcome. The world is still a mess and the media and politicians are still trying to convince everyone to drink the Kool-Aid. Believe me when I say the politicians are not looking out for our best interests. It is what it is though. Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time, keep looking for some place remote to which we can move, we’ll keep smiling through it all. For the time being, we will find our way home every day, shut the world out behind our front door, and be very thankful for all we have because up here on our little hill, all is right on the homestead.

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September 26, 2021: Fall Is Here And Not Too Soon!

Another week has passed, fall is here, some of the leaves are starting to change color, and I have been on the first week of my three week quarter break. Mother Nature sort of cooperated, we had a beautiful weekend last weekend, and Monday just couldn’t have been any prettier of a day. A slow moving cold front pushed through the area on Tuesday and Wednesday bringing us almost two inches of rain, but right behind it were cool fall temperatures. The nights have started dropping to 50 degrees and the days are only getting into the 70’s. The sun came back on Thursday, everything finally dried out on Friday. Colleen, Alex, and I spent all day yesterday working outside, and today is another beautiful day with unlimited potential so who knows what will come of it.

Colleen had pulled a muscle in her back going into last weekend, but by Sunday she was finally starting to feel better. All the same, we both took things a little easier on the day. We had pushed our usual Saturday errands to Sunday so after we finished our morning coffee we were on our way to Perkins Orchard and then the market. I was just starting my three week quarter break so there was less urgency to get things done as I didn’t have any schoolwork hanging over my head and Colleen wasn’t going to have to get stuff ready to pack into my daily lunches. Colleen did do some cooking on the day. She made a big pot of ham and black bean soup and we had a delicious chicken fried steak for dinner later in the day.

Colleen left for school before the sun came up on Monday morning like usual. I got a cup of coffee and headed out to the back porch looking forward to a beautiful day and to being off from school. Once the sun started to come up I let the girls out of their coop for the day, finished my coffee, and started hauling firewood up the hill to the winter ready racks. By 11 o’clock I had the third rack full, most all of the fourth rack was filled, and there was no more split firewood on the ground to be moved. I had forgotten to eat breakfast so I had a big cup full of Colleen’s soup for lunch, and then I headed outside with the weed eater and started on the knee high weeds hiding all of the oak firewood rounds in the backyard. I didn’t get the whole yard done, but I could see a good bit of the firewood again. Colleen got home at her regular time and then we just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday started out gray and stayed gray all day pretty much. Colleen headed off to school and I had to scramble a little bit so I could get the girls out and set for the day and then get to my dentist appointment that was scheduled for first thing in the morning. When I got home I decided it was time to start cleaning the carpets in the house. Our old vacuum cleaner and rug shampooer had seen better days so I headed to the discount department store just down the road and bought a new vacuum cleaner and rug shampooer. I spent the rest of the morning working on the parts of the living room rug to which I could get without moving furniture and with Buttercup under foot. Colleen sure was surprised when she got home from school. Our rugs are 20 plus years old and definitely have seen better days, but after a good vacuuming and shampooing the living room rug looked a whole lot better.

The forecasted rain started Tuesday night, but was mostly on and off and it wasn’t rainy for Colleen’s drive into school on Wednesday morning. With the rain outside, Wednesday was another day perfect for working on cleaning the rugs. I gave the dining room a good vacuuming and then did what shampooing I could. The biggest challenge was the rug in the doorway from the kitchen into the dining room. Not only does that part of the of the rug see a lot of traffic, it is also where Buttercup likes to camp out and watch Colleen when she is working in the kitchen. When I finished, the rug looked better, but it still looked grayer than I had hoped so I think I will have to go over that part of the rug again. We did have one minor problem pop up on Wednesday. The rain was still off and on all day, but it came hard and fast at times. The canopy over our pool patio started catch water, stretched out of shape catching even more water, and the weight of the water finally caused the whole canopy structure to collapse. It was annoying, but minor in the grand scheme of things I guess.

Thursday morning the rain had pretty much stopped and the morning was just gray, cloudy and wet. We got most of our rain overnight so Colleen didn’t have to deal with it on her drive into school. We ended up with almost two inches of rain. The girls’ pen was muddy and slick, but I still let them out of their coop for the day and then I had another dentist appointment. When I got back from my appointment it was time to start cleaning the family room rug. I ran into the same problem with the rug leading into the kitchen from the family room as I did with the rug from the kitchen to the dining room. All the same, the family room rug looks a far cry better than it did before I started and I’m going to try and go over the gray part of the rug again this week to see if it gets any better. The skies cleared up and the temperatures started cooling off on Thursday afternoon so I got to enjoy the evening on the back porch watching the sunset.

Friday morning Colleen headed into school, the sun came up, the temperature was only 50 degrees, and it felt like a fall day. Everything was still too wet to work outside so I just kept going on cleaning the house. The family room rugs were still drying, but everything that had collected on top of the cabinet, bookcase, and stereo speakers needed to be picked up and put away. That didn’t take terribly long fortunately and after that I tried to fix the leaky kitchen faucet, but when I pulled everything apart I realized the only way to fix the faucet was to replace it. Now I’m trying to decide whether to replace just the faucet or the whole sink and faucet with a new set up that Colleen has had her eye on for a while. The living room floor was dry enough for me to start moving furniture and get to the other parts of the rug so I moved Buttercup’s loveseat into the middle of the living room, vacuumed and shampooed the rug in the new open area.

Yesterday the sun came up, the ground was dry, and Colleen and I were outside working as soon as we finished our morning coffee. Alex said he would be coming over to help with the work so I fired up the smoker and started smoking ribs for him before I got into the heavy work. Colleen got into her gardens to dead head plants and to collect the last of her garden ornaments for winter storage. Once the smoker was going I grabbed the chainsaw, cut up the last of the large pieces of firewood by the splitter, and then I split everything that I had cut up. I was taking a break when Alex showed up with his dog Koda. He moved the log splitter to near the wood line in the backyard and then got my weed eater and finished knocking down the weeds in the back part of the yard that I didn’t get to do on Monday. I grabbed my chainsaw, again, started cutting up the limbs and branches that didn’t need splitting, and then started splitting the oak rounds in the backyard. Colleen decided to start hauling all the wood I split in the morning up the hill and ended up filling up our fourth winter ready rack and starting on our fifth rack. My back finally told me I had split enough wood and Alex picked up for me where I left off, splitting all the wood he could until the splitter ran out of gas. After Colleen moved all of the wood I had split in the morning, she cleaned up the area, Alex headed back on his way back home with a container full of smoked ribs about then, and Colleen and I got take out for dinner. It was the least I could do after all the work that got done yesterday.

It is another beautiful morning today! The temperatures should stay cool, there is plenty of sunshine, and while there is still plenty of work to be done, I think Colleen and I will let it stay undone save for what absolutely must be done today. We do have our weekly errands to run and Colleen does have some cooking to do today, but I promised I would make the omelets for dinner later today to save her some work. Sadly, I think we have decided to comply with Big Brother’s mandate to get the dang vaccine, and maybe we’ll get it at the market today. Believe me, getting the vaccine is not about any concern for our health and in fact we are more concerned about our health after we get the vaccine, but if the schools lose the number of teachers and IA’s that seems imminent, how is a mass teacher shortage fair to the kids? All the same, Colleen and I will not change our lifestyle at all. We will keep taking care of one day at a time because no matter what happens we can stand on our back porch any time day or night, look around, and know that up here on our little hill all is right on the homestead.

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October 03, 2021: I Love My Fall Break!

That puts a wrap on the first two weeks of my fall quarter break. I have one more week to go. The weather couldn’t have been any better last week. We had lots of sunshine and cool temperatures. I think it may have only gotten up into the 70’s or maybe the 80’s all week. It was great weather for working outside and I spent a good bit of my time in the yards. It looks like we have a good bit of rain headed our way for the week in front of us, but that’s okay too because there is still plenty that needs to be done inside the house. Once I start back to school, Colleen and I will be looking forward to the start of the holiday season and with our daughter Stephanie having moved back to North Carolina it looks like the whole family will be back together for the first time in a very long time.

Colleen and I had put off our weekly run to Perkins Orchard and the market until Sunday last weekend so it wasn’t too long after we finished our morning coffee before we headed down the road. Colleen had done a little baking in the morning before we left and after we got home and everything got put away, she was back in the kitchen making a big pot of minestrone soup. With fall’s cooler temperatures soup will be a mainstay around here until late spring next year. Mostly our day was quiet though. Colleen and I finally did decide to get vaccinated. It was a tough choice and a choice we should have never had to make, either we had to deal with the potential of a long health threat of an unproven vaccine or I was going to retire leaving my kids without a math teacher for the rest of the school year. I just couldn’t do that to my kids.

Our mornings started last week with Colleen leaving for school every day. I would have my morning coffee on the back porch, wait for the sun to come up so I could let the girls out for the day, and then start working around the house. Monday was sort of a mish-mash of activities for me. I shampooed the rugs leading into kitchen for a second time, I tried to finish filling the sixth winter ready rack with firewood, and I started sorting through the pile of cut and uncut oak in the backyard so there was a pile of wood ready to be split in front of the log splitter. I gave that job up shortly before Colleen got home and after dinner while I did a little schoolwork Colleen got a batch of fresh sauerkraut fermenting.

Tuesday morning after Colleen left for school, the sun came up, and the girls were set for the day, and I was out in the backyard. I finished weed whacking the last of the tall weeds right up to the wood line. Now, I can blow leaves later this year without any problems. The weed whacking didn’t take too long and once I finished I planted myself in front of the log splitter. I split everything I had piled up. After a quick break for lunch, I made a new pile of un-spilt wood in front of the log splitter and did finally finish filling the sixth winter ready wood rack, but by then it was about the time for Colleen to be getting home so I didn’t do much else on the day.

Wednesday morning I just wasn’t feeling the love for splitting firewood so I moved the last of the furniture in the living room off of the part of the rug that I hadn’t cleaned yet and got to vacuuming and shampooing it. Since I was on a roll, I decided to tackle the staircase and two landings. That was a major challenge. I managed to get everything vacuumed, but I only got the two landings shampooed. They will definitely need to be done a second time as they tend to be Buttercup’s hangout of choice. Wednesday evening Colleen turned ten pounds of onions into eight quarts of onion soup for canning. Since it was kind of late when she finished, the soup just went into the refrigerator to get canned another day.

I had a slow start of things on Thursday morning. I had a dentist appointment and I finally got my upper plate. It was strange having teeth in my mouth again. Once I got home I sorted through the uncut pile again and added more unsplit wood to the pile in front of the log splitter. I cleaned up more of the loose limbs and branches in the backyard until it was time for Colleen to leave school. I was sitting on the front porch waiting for Colleen when Stephanie pulled into the driveway the kids. Any plans for the rest of the day and evening I might have had, changed right then and there. Colleen got home a little while after that and we spent the next three hours visiting and getting caught up with Stephanie. Needless to say the plans to can soup we had for Thursday evening, got put on hold.

Friday morning I was back to splitting firewood but not before I finished my coffee and got to admire the deer that had wondered through the backyard. I split everything that I had piled up in front of the splitter which pretty well took me right through lunch. After lunch I was back to sorting cut and uncut wood. There’s another pile of unsplit wood in front of the log splitter. When Colleen got home we decided we needed to get a Costco run out of the way. Two hours later we were back home unloading two buggies full of supplies that had been piled in the back of the Trail Blazer and, yes, believe it or not, we had bought some Christmas presents. Colleen and I even got ourselves one of those premade, ready to cook dinners to make the evening easier. By the time the sun set and the girls got locked up for the night, Colleen and I were rather tired.

Yesterday morning Colleen and I finally got around to canning the French onion soup she had made on Wednesday evening. Colleen filled and sealed the jars and I baby sat the pressure canner outside on the camp stove. While I was as babysitting the canner, I went Christmas shopping online and Colleen was inside vacuuming the walls, baseboards, and all the little spots in the living room. We finally got the living room put back together so it is ready to go for the upcoming holiday season. We ended up ordering a good many Christmas presents yesterday and when we sat down to take inventory of what we had ordered we realized we were almost halfway through our Christmas shopping. With any luck, the way we are going we will be done before Thanksgiving.

Since I’m still on break and do not have to go to school tomorrow there isn’t a lot of urgency for me to do anything today. Colleen on the other hand has a long list of things she would like to get done and she is already in the kitchen this morning. It’s kind of hard to believe we are already a few days into October already. This year has flown by us. Colleen and I are already planning and getting ready for the holidays. Knowing that nearly half of our Christmas shopping is done sure makes things seem a lot less stressful. Of course, the world is a mess with the media and politicians making things worse by trying to put their spin on things like they really have any control over or know what is happening anyway. Colleen and I just keep taking one day at a time up here on our little hill. No matter what any day brings our way, all we have to do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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October 10, 2021: My Break Is Over, Bring On The Holidays

My quarter break is over and I head back to school with the kids tomorrow morning. We had the threat of rain most all of last week, but apart from gray skies and a little rain early in the week and then yesterday, it wasn’t a bad weather week. By Wednesday most everything had cleared up, the temperatures cooled down a little bit, and everything was just right for a little porch sitting by the time Thursday showed up. I did have to go to school on Friday for a teacher workday. The rain showed up again Friday night. Yesterday was just plain rainy and dreary all day and this morning the rain has stopped, but the skies are gray and we have a good breeze blowing so I guess things may start to dry out. One thing for sure though, fall is definitely here and our leaves should start changing color soon.

Last Sunday was kind of a “this and that” day. Colleen was up early and did a little dry canning before we headed out to Perkins Orchard for our weekly supply of fresh produce. We got home a little before noon and we spent the rest of the day cleaning. I finished working on a few trouble spots that were still in the carpets and Colleen found time to get upstairs in her workroom to get it ready to start wrapping Christmas presents. We’re doing our shopping early this year, mostly online, and stuff has already started to arrive at the house. With any luck we’ll be done by Thanksgiving and won’t have to worry about item availability or shipping delays. I can’t ever remember getting our Christmas shopping done so early, but if we do, it should be a smooth slide into Christmas for us.

Monday Colleen headed into school at her usual time and when the sun came up the skies had a funky color to them, and we had the threat of rain hanging over our heads too. With rain in the forecast I wasn’t planning on working outside so I turned my attention to the rugs again. I was surprised at how well the area rug on the family room floor looked when I was done. Next on the list were the landings and the stairs to the second floor. The stairs have to be done with the hand attachments so they are always considerably more difficult. The stairs turned out just fine, but even after two passes with the rug shampooer, the landings are not so great. Of course, after 20 years and three dogs calling the landings their special places, I suppose they look pretty good all considered.

Tuesday started pretty much the same way Monday started. Colleen headed off to school in the dark of the predawn. We didn’t get much rain other than a stray shower here and there. When the sun came up, it started trying to poke holes in the clouds so I did see the sun every now and again. The area rug in the family room turned out so well that I decided to shampoo the area rug in the dining room, well at least the half that wasn’t under the dining room table. I spent the rest of the day doing this and that, and I even managed to get some schoolwork done. With my break from school winding down I figured I might just as well start taking things a little easier too.

Wednesday morning I slept late, in fact I didn’t get out of bed until well after Colleen had gotten to school. There wasn’t much I needed to do on the day and the day was turning out to be pretty nice so I pulled my computer out and spent most of the day working on gaming stuff for my club at school. I’m not sure how it happened, but my gaming club is easily the most popular club at school boasting a membership of about five percent of the student body. Fortunately, I have three other people helping me run the club. It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to have a meeting during this first week back to school, but after that we may have to have a couple of meetings a week.

Wednesday after Colleen got home from school we moved the dining room table so Thursday morning I was able to finish cleaning the dining room area rug. It was the last of the rugs and carpets that needed cleaning. Usually cleaning and shampooing the rugs takes me right up until Thanksgiving. Needless to say I am done early this year, and now it will just be a matter of keeping them clean until we get to the holidays. Thursday ended up being a very nice day along with being my last day of break. Colleen headed off to school like usual. When the sun came up I stood on the back porch, looking at our wood pile, and quickly decided I wasn’t going to do any work on the day, well except for the dining room rug. I spent most all day playing on the computer. It was the first day and only day of my break where I did almost nothing.

Friday morning Colleen left for school, I took care of the girls for the day, and then I headed into school. I spent my time getting the last of my grade books finished for the first quarter, straightening out my classroom, and getting stuff ready for this week. I did get to leave a little early and even got home before Colleen. Given the state of things in the world, Colleen and I made the executive decision to head to Walmart on Friday afternoon to do some Christmas shopping and restock our larder for the holidays. That ended up being a three hour plus shopping trip which is much longer than we usually like to spend away from the house when we go to Walmart, but we got it done. It was dark when we got home so everything got dumped on the family room sofa except the stuff that needed to be put in the refrigerator.

Colleen and I woke up to a wet and rainy day yesterday. Fortunately, most of the heavy rains stayed south and east of us. It took us a little while to get going, but the first thing we absolutely had to do was get the stuff off of the family room sofa and onto the shelves in the basement larder. It took us all morning! Colleen stayed in the basement while I shuttled everything down to her. I can’t even guess how many trips up and down the basement stairs I made. We finished right at lunchtime and after lunch while I was finishing up my schoolwork for the week, Colleen was breaking down the bulk meat we bought into portion sized packaging to get put into the freezers. It’s safe to say we don’t have any more room in the larder or the freezer and apart from needing Thanksgiving turkeys we should be well set for at least the rest of the year.

It’s another gray morning this morning, but there isn’t any rain. Colleen no doubt will be in the kitchen for a good part of the day, but I don’t have a whole lot that needs to be done. I’m thinking I may work on my game for my school club some more though. The politicians and media are still trying to figure out what is going on in the world. I have to say though, it doesn’t look great despite whatever spin they are putting in things. Colleen and I are doing well, and we are taking everything one day at a time. We are definitely getting excited about the holidays and having the whole family here too even though the holidays are still a little ways off. There isn’t much that seems certain these days, but one thing Colleen and I do know is that up here on our little hill all is right on the homestead.

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October 17, 2021: The Cool Temperatures Are Here And Maybe This Time To Stay For A While

It looks like fall has finally gotten here. After a week’s worth of sunshine and 80 degree temperatures, we had a cold front move through the area yesterday, drop a little bit of rain, and then drag the temperatures down into the 40’s last night. This morning is every bit of a crisp fall morning, there is plenty of sunshine, but apart from a few leaves on the ground the trees around here are mostly still green. I don’t think that will be the case for much longer though. It looks like the week in front of us will see the nights drop down to about 45 degrees and the warmest of the afternoons may just push through 70 degrees. There isn’t any rain in the forecast yet, but that is always subject to change. More importantly though is that squirrel season opens up on Monday and it looks like there is a bumper crop of the fuzzy little gray devils this year.

Colleen and I were up with the sun last Sunday, and it wasn’t too long after that when Colleen found herself in the kitchen. It turned out to be a busy day of cooking and baking for her. I did my usual Sunday morning writing to start the day. I had finished all of my schoolwork so after lunch while Colleen was in the kitchen I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the rugs on the first floor. Colleen made some pan seared salmon and pasta Alfredo for dinner, but not before she had baked two dozen corn muffins, two potato pies, and two ham pot pies. Of course, somewhere in there she also managed to put together the fixings for our school lunches and by the time we called it a day our lunches for Monday were ready to go and waiting in the refrigerator.

There wasn’t anything too particularly out of the ordinary during the school week for either Colleen or me. Colleen would leave for school before sunrise and then I would wait for the first light of day to let the girls out of the coop after which I would head into school. Colleen had a teacher workday on Monday, got out of school a little bit early, and stopped to do the laundry on the way home. I had an early release day on Wednesday, but that just meant I had a faculty meeting after school so I didn’t get to leave early. By Friday evening Colleen and I were both tired and worn out from a week at school that seemed to drag on far too long.

Colleen and I were up with the sun yesterday morning and we were greeted by a warm and sunny day. There was rain in the forecast for the afternoon, but we sure couldn’t tell by the sunshine and blue skies. I looked at the wood pile at the bottom of the hill and seriously contemplated hauling firewood yesterday. Not knowing exactly when the rain would show up, I managed to talk myself out of that chore and spent the day doing schoolwork. It’s that much less I have to do today. Colleen spent the day cleaning the house, putting the floor fans in the basement, and bringing the space heaters up to the bedrooms. I found some time right before dinner to clean out the fireplace too. Right around 2 o’clock the skies started getting dark, by 2:30 it was raining, by 3:30 the sun was shining again, and after that the temperatures started dropping dramatically. By 5 o’clock, the temperatures had dropped more than 10 degrees, were still heading down after dinner, and didn’t stop until they got to 45 degrees this morning.

Last night Colleen and I got down to the serious business of Christmas. Colleen headed upstairs to wrap Christmas presents and I headed out to the porch to do some more online shopping. Given the current state of affairs and the fact that Colleen and I are already seeing things disappear from store shelves we decided to get our holiday prep done early. We already have our larder stocked for the holiday season and our Christmas shopping is just about done apart from a handful of gifts and stocking stuffers for which we are still looking. Colleen and I are shooting to have everything done by Thanksgiving except the decorations. This year will certainly be different from last year when we were scampering to get everything done right up until a day or two before Christmas.

The sun is out, the sky is blue, and the cool temperature is a sure sign that fall is here this morning. The critters are moving around in the backyard and in the woods. I have a little bit of schoolwork to do today and Colleen will find herself in the kitchen I am sure. I guess the media and the politicians are still trying to figure out how to sway masses with 30 second sound bites. I sure do wish more people would read and maybe this country wouldn’t be in the mess it is. I suppose it doesn’t matter though. Colleen and I keep taking everything one day at a time and rely on good old fashion common sense. Up here on our little hill everything is calm and peaceful, and Colleen and I are looking forward to spending the holidays with all of our kids this year. It really is a wonderful feeling to be able to look around and know that all is right on the homestead.

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October 24, 2021: A Quiet Week Save For A Sheep’s Tag

Last week certainly was a very pleasant fall week around here. The forecast called for some rain on Friday, but we only got a little bit of cloud cover instead. The fall temperatures finally showed up and stuck around though. The days temperatures got up into the 60’s or low 70’s and the nights got down to 50 degrees give or take a few degrees. Most of the leaves around here are still green, but some have started changing color, and it shouldn’t be too very long before Mother Nature has the trees adorned in their usual lovely fall colors, and then not too long after that the branches will be bare until next spring. One thing we haven’t had to do yet this year is start a fire in the fireplace to help warm up the house. In years past it was not unusual to start a fire in early or mid October. The way things are going this year, we may not need a fire until November which I might add is only about a week away now.

Last Sunday turned out to be rather ordinary. I wrote and took care of my schoolwork, while Colleen spent a good bit of her day in the kitchen getting things ready for the week in front of us. Amazon delivered a few more packages of Christmas presents in the afternoon, Colleen made a Yankee pot roast for dinner, and once dinner was done and the kitchen was cleaned, Colleen and I had the evening more or less to ourselves. I had managed to finish my schoolwork right after dinner and then did a little bit more online Christmas shopping. Colleen found some time after dinner to wrap some more Christmas presents. Her workroom upstairs is looking more and more like the wrapping room up at the North Pole.

Colleen and I had a pretty normal week at school. With the sun rising later and later every morning the poor girls seem confused when I let them out of the coop right before sunrise so I can get to school on time. Colleen had a workday Monday, but unfortunately she did have to go into school. I had a week filled with my usual meetings including my gaming club meeting on Wednesday after school. For everything the week wasn’t, it sure did seem to drag out. I suspect a good bit of that had to do with the anticipation and anxiety of knowing we would be getting the second shot of our COVID vaccination shots which neither of us wanted after school on Friday.

Colleen and I are not opposed to vaccinations per se, but with no long term studies behind the vaccine and both of us being very low on the risk category scale because of our lifestyle, we greatly resent not having a choice. It absolutely amazes us that so many people in this country are comfortable with a sheep’s tag stuck on their ear thanks to an inept government and 20 second media sound bites. I could really get up on a soap box right here, but what’s the point. I figure if you want the government to take care of you, you deserve what is coming your way and what you get in the long run. I guess it doesn’t really matter now that we’ve done it. The sun will still come up in the morning and Colleen and I keep making our way through the day.

Anyway, I met Colleen at the market after I got off school on Friday and we got our second dose of the vaccine at the pharmacy. Friday night went well enough, but that COVID hangover kicked in on Saturday. Colleen woke up feeling achy and lethargic. I was feeling okay, with the exception of also feeling lethargic. Colleen ended up on a steady diet of ibuprofen all day for her achy joints and muscles. As the day moved on I started not being able to stay warm. I managed to get some schoolwork done on the day though. Colleen made a big pot of soup and some muffins before she finally gave out for the day. At 6 o’clock I finally had to give it up myself and headed upstairs and got under a pile of blankets to stay warm and that’s where I stayed for the rest of the night.

All is well this morning, apart from feeling a little worn out from our ordeal yesterday, Colleen and I are back in the game. It is a beautiful day, but Colleen and I will be hustling to catch up on what didn’t get accomplished yesterday. With any luck my schoolwork will not keep me up too late tonight. It’s hard to believe we are looking at the last week of October already. The holidays will be here soon and with them a whole new round of chaos. Colleen and I sure don’t see where things are getting better out there in the world, but then again virtually everything is out of our control right now. We’ll keep taking things one day at a time and make the best out of all of our opportunities. We sure don’t have any complaints, our bills are paid, there is food on the table, there is a roof over our head, and the family is healthy. At the end of each and every day we can look around and smile because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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October 31, 2021: It’s Halloween Already And That’s Scary!

If anybody is still counting, we are heading into week 86 of the pandemic. The month of October has flown by us and we’re looking at the start of another holiday season too. The weather has started to feel like fall around here with the morning temperatures starting out at less than 50 degrees for the most part. To go with the cooler temperatures last week we had some up and down weather. Last Sunday night we had a line of storms move through the area that even took our power out for a couple of hours. The rain came back on Wednesday night and hung around all day Thursday. There was a good bit of heavy fog sitting on the ground Friday which made Colleen’s drive to school treacherous. Yesterday and today’s weather has been pretty nice though. There is plenty of sunshine and a bit of a gusty breeze that only makes it feel all that much more like fall.

Last Sunday Colleen and I were just getting over the side effects of the second round of COVID vaccine that we had gotten on Friday evening so it was a slow, but busy day. Colleen and I both had to play catch-up for what didn’t get done on Saturday. At least it was a nice enough day for me to do my schoolwork out on the back porch. Colleen did just enough in the kitchen to get us through the week and then made a lovely dinner of shrimp and pasta. I managed to finish all my work on the computer after dinner and once the kitchen was clean, Colleen even got a few more Christmas presents wrapped upstairs.

Our school week wasn’t bad at all fortunately. Colleen had a workday on Wednesday so she got to stay home and started her day by baking fresh bread. Colleen spent the rest of the day cleaning and wrapping Christmas presents. My week at school was pretty typical. I had to cover an unusually large number of classes for absent teachers and I did have a bunch of meetings that chewed up a lot of time, forcing me to do most of my schoolwork after dinner at home. It is what it is and there will always be weeks like that. I was worn out by the time Friday afternoon showed up and I got to come home. Colleen had stopped at the market on her way home Friday afternoon so that was at least one less thing we needed to take care of on Saturday.

Yesterday Colleen and I were up before the sun. We got to enjoy our morning coffee before we really started moving. We really only had one activity planned and that was a run to the local discount department store to see if we could get closer to finishing up our Christmas shopping this year. Once we got home I spent the rest of the day grading and trying to get my grade books caught up. Colleen spent her afternoon upstairs cleaning up and wrapping Christmas presents. With all our kids local now, we are looking at a large family gathering for the holidays. I think we may have 18 people here on Christmas morning. There will be lots of shirts and socks under the tree this year. The last time all of the kids got together for Christmas was in 2010. Fortunately, Colleen and I should have our Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving this year too.

We have a beautiful fall day on our hands today. The temperatures are cool and the leaves have started to change color. I’ll be in front of my computer most all day. I didn’t finish my grading yesterday and I still have to get everything put together for my classes tomorrow. Colleen will be in the kitchen getting meals ready for the week. Tomorrow is laundry day too and she definitely will not want to cook once she gets home tomorrow afternoon. Looking back, this certainly has been a busy school year for Colleen and me. We try to play catch-up and catch our breath on the weekends, but it always seems like there is more work than time. Fortunately we do get a four day weekend for Veterans Day this year and then a week and a half after that it’s our Thanksgiving break. Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time. Everything will get done sooner or later, but always exactly when it needs to be done. We may be busy, but everything is good up here on our little hill. There is a wonderful peace of mind that comes from looking around and knowing that all is right on the homestead.

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November 07, 2021: Cold Air, A Fire In The Fireplace, And Plugged Drains, Life Is Good!

Well it certainly was a busy and chaotic week around here. Fall weather finally showed up and we got our first night of freezing nighttime temperatures. We had a little rain during the week, but not much. The leaves are really starting to change color now and a fairly steady breeze is covering the ground with fallen leaves. I had hoped to blow some of the leaves into the woods this weekend, but plumbing problems sort of took precedence and the yard work got put on the back burner. Fortunately Colleen and I have a short week at school and a 4-day weekend coming up. The holidays are quickly approaching too so things are going to be very busy around here. At the very least, I can say there won’t be a shortage of things that we need to do around here on our school breaks between now and the New Year. This year is sure flying by us though.

Last Sunday was just a beautiful fall day. Unfortunately, I was buried in schoolwork and spent most of my day in front of the computer. I don’t have quite so much schoolwork today. Colleen spent her day getting ready for the week in front of us and wrapping Christmas presents. I was able to get my schoolwork done and Colleen had her work wrapped up shortly after dinner so the day wasn’t totally spent working. It’s not exactly how we wanted to spend our day, but we did take advantage of a quiet evening to relax before we headed to bed at the end of the day.

The school week was hectic and chaotic for Colleen and me. Apart from the usual weekly chores, I got saddled with a number of meetings both before and after school, and since substitute teachers are about as scarce as hen’s teeth this year, I ended up covering a number of classes at school for teachers who called in sick. Just to make things even more interesting the drains on the second floor plugged up during the week. That made a bit of a mess and the overflow ran down the pipes and soaked a section of the first floor ceiling. Fortunately, everything on the first floor is draining properly so that will afford Colleen time to get everything else set to rights and so far it doesn’t look like the repairs to everything that will need to be done are not something I can’t handle or haven done before.

I had hoped to get a jump on the weekend on Friday evening after school, but Colleen and I were whipped from the week. Colleen stopped at the market on her way home from school to get that errand out of the way for the weekend. She was lucky too. She found two 15 pound turkeys for Thanksgiving at the market. Pickings were slim though and I fear things will only get worse as we get closer to the holiday. I managed to find enough energy to do some of my grading for school and Colleen wrapped some more presents. I got a good chunk of my grading done, but still had a good bit more to do when my eyes finally said they had had enough for the night.

Colleen and I knew we would be in for a busy weekend come yesterday morning. We had our usual morning coffee and then headed outside to move some firewood from the winter ready racks up to the porch rack. It was a gray, cool, breezy day, but apart from the firewood, everything else we needed to do was inside. With the firewood done, I got back to my grading. Sometime after mid day I decided that it was time to work on the plumbing. Colleen and I tried to clear the clog in the drain without much luck. Since the ceiling in the first floor under the pipes was going to have to come down anyway, I started doing that and opened everything up under the drain pipe run. After Colleen and I cleaned up that mess we decided we were done for the day.

After dinner Colleen and I did our best to relax. Colleen locked the girls in their coop at sunset and then headed upstairs to wrap Christmas presents. I got a cigar and headed out to the back porch to do some more online Christmas shopping. Colleen has most all of the presents wrapped and I was able to find a few last gifts. As of right now we only need one more present and three or four stocking stuffers. It sure looks like we’ll have all of our Christmas presents set and ready to go before Thanksgiving. I can’t ever remember being done this early before.

This morning it was cold enough in the house for us to light the first fire of the season in the fireplace. I have more schoolwork to do and Colleen will be getting things ready for the upcoming week. Fortunately, we only have a 3-day school week and then a 4-day weekend. We’ll probably try to free up the clog in the drain again, but mostly we will just be getting ready for tomorrow. The drain clog is problematic, but in the grand scheme of things it is really just a bump in the road. Colleen and I will just keep taking things one day at a time knowing everything will work out just fine in time. We really are quite well and very fortunate because all we need do is look around up here on our little hill to know that all is right on the homestead.

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November 14, 2021: A Much Needed 4-Day Break And Now We Get Ready For The Holidays

Another week has passed, and it was an interesting week to say the least. The temperatures ran anywhere from 30 to 75 degrees over the course of the week. We were threatened with rain, but that all fizzled out before the rain got here and all we saw were clouds. Mother Nature has decided to paint most all of the local foliage in brilliant hues of yellow, orange, dark red, and brown this year. It is easily one of the most spectacular and colorful falls I have ever seen around here. Colleen and I had Thursday and Friday off from school and got to enjoy just a wonderful long 4-day weekend so now our eyes are turned to Thanksgiving which is less than two weeks away. We’re not real sure where this year went, but it sure has flown by seemingly in the blink of an eye.

There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary up here on the hill last Sunday. It was cold enough that we needed to put our first fire of the year in the fireplace. Colleen and I did spend some time working on the second floor plumbing. Colleen even cleaned the cobwebs out from around the pipes in the ceiling. Unfortunately, we had very limited success and our clogged drain persists. Other than that, it was a day of getting my grading and schoolwork done even though the grade book software was offline for maintenance. Colleen spent a good bit of time in the kitchen getting meals ready for the week in front of us. We managed to get most everything done by dinner time so we could enjoy a lovely meal of salmon, yellow rice and oven roasted vegetables.

Our three days of school, Monday through Wednesday were slow and easy for the most part although getting up early is a bit more challenging lately. I had my usual barrage of meetings and had to cover a bunch of extra classes for absent teachers. There just are not many available substitute teachers these days. Colleen’s time at school was pretty routine too. We did get our last shipment of Christmas presents on Wednesday which was reason for a small celebration on our part. There will be 16 people here on Christmas morning and our Christmas shopping is done so there will be no last minute hunting for presents! Colleen and I are quite proud of ourselves and really looking forward to enjoying the holiday season now.

Colleen was up early on Thursday morning. The morning chores were done and the coffee was made by the time I came wandering downstairs. After my morning coffee, I worked on the plumbing for a while. There still isn’t any significant change in the situation. I finally had my fill of plumbing and headed outside to blow the leaves off the front yard. Colleen did some housework and then finished wrapping the last of the Christmas presents. All that is left to wrap are the stocking stuffers and I think there is more than an enough time to get those done before Christmas. Thursday was also Colleen’s birthday and in the middle of the afternoon James, Stephanie and the babies, and Steven all stopped by for a surprise visit. We visited with everyone for about three hours and it wasn’t too long after dark when the kids headed on their way.

Friday morning the front yard was covered with leaves again, but Colleen and I decided to run our weekly errands. We needed feed for the chickens and dog food so our first stop was the Tractor Supply Company. Since Walmart was close, we stopped in there too. Of course, we headed straight for the Christmas section and even got a few more inflatables for the front yard, one of which is a 10 foot tall Christmas Tree,. For the first time in about two years we stopped and had lunch at a restaurant. It was only Hardee’s, and we didn’t really want to go into the restaurant proper so we went through the drive-thru. We found a shady spot in the parking lot and ate our lunch in the car which was fun for us.

Saturday Colleen and I got back to our regular weekend. I pulled out my computer and managed to get all of my schoolwork done so I have today free from schoolwork. Colleen decided that since we had such a big jump on Christmas this year, she wanted to start decorating. She spent most of her afternoon getting started on putting up her Christmas village in the living room. I helped a little with the decorating when I needed a break from my schoolwork and put the garland and some lights up around the fireplace. I’m not sure if Colleen will be decorating today though because it looks like she has a long list of what she wants to get done in the kitchen. Believe it or not, Colleen and I did spend the evening relaxing which for me meant sitting on the back porch with a cigar watching the moon and the stars fill the night sky.

Apart from being a tad chilly this morning we have a beautiful fall day. There is plenty of sunshine and the deer and squirrels seem to be everywhere. I’ve given some thought to heading outside later and blowing the leaves from the backyard and I need to get back to the plumbing. I suppose what gets done will get done today. I’m heading into a week of benchmark testing at school tomorrow so I’m not expecting the week to be too difficult. The week after that is Thanksgiving and we only have two days of school before our Thanksgiving break. After that it will be a three week run to our Christmas break. Colleen and I sure aren’t trying to rush the season though. We’ll keep taking everything one day at a time. Everything is going quite well up here on our little hill. Like always, all Colleen and I ever need do is look around to know that all is right on the homestead.

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November 21, 2021: It’s Time To Set The Table And Roast The Turkey!

It is an awesome November morning on this Sunday before Thanksgiving. In fact, all of last week was pretty dang good. Mother Nature seemed to get the sunshine right all week, but she was having a few problems with the thermostat. Temperatures ran the gambit from the upper 20’s to the mid 70’s over the course of the week. The warm temperatures that showed up in the middle of the week only lasted a day or two and yesterday and today we won’t get out of the 50’s with temperatures below freezing at night. The cold temperatures have encouraged all but the most stubborn leaves to give up their green and once again the ground around here is covered with leaves with still plenty more that the trees need to shed. We are supposed to see some rain tonight and into tomorrow morning, but fortunately the nighttime temperatures will stay well above freezing so it will just be a cold biting rain and not snow.

Last Sunday turned out to be a busy day for Colleen and me. After we lit the day’s fire, took care of the girls, and finished our morning coffee, I found my way to the back porch to write and Colleen ended up in the kitchen. My writing only took me into mid morning last Sunday and by the time I was finished Colleen was putting together the holiday meat pies. The recipe for meat pies is an old family tradition, handed through the generations in my family. I can remember visiting my great-grandparents and there being meat pies on the dinner table during the holidays. Colleen is the fourth generation to use the recipe that I personally can remember and I really look forward to the pies every year. When Colleen is in the kitchen I also know better than to be under foot so I spent the day blowing leaves off of the backyard, not that anyone could tell by looking at the yard today.

Colleen and I actually had a very uneventful week at school. Colleen would drive off into the dark, down the hill every morning while I would wait for the first light of day to let the girls out of their coop before I left for school. My week was unusually mundane as most of my classes were taking midyear, county mandated, benchmark tests. I did have a club meeting after school on Wednesday and the meeting went really well, but with the sun setting early I didn’t get home until after dark. The evenings at home for the most part were quiet too. I worked on getting the clogged drain on the 2nd floor unclogged with limited success and Colleen decided it was time to start putting up her big Christmas village in the living room.

Friday we had a full moon and Colleen and I expected the kids to be goofy at school. Much too our surprise it wasn’t too bad. We were both tired from our school week when we got home, but we decided we needed to run to Target to get Christmas candy for the Christmas stockings. The candy is the last thing we needed for Christmas because our shopping is done and the presents are wrapped. We hadn’t been to Target in probably two years because of the pandemic so we really didn’t know what to expect. Our trip ended up being a real eye opener. First of all, I was driving at night with traffic. I don’t like driving as it is, and in the dark with traffic, driving was not fun. The store itself was utterly disappointing! We got all of the candy we wanted and a few other things, but the shelves were sparse compared to what we remembered. We weren’t in any particular rush Friday night, but after a little bit of walking around in the store we decided we had seen enough, we checked out, and then we headed home.

Yesterday morning was downright chilly with the temperature just below freezing. Colleen had made plans to be in the kitchen all day so I figured, chilly or not, setting up my computers outside was better than being inside and potentially in Colleen’s way. I had a 2-hour online meeting yesterday morning and I spent the rest of my day grading, updating my grade books, and getting my schoolwork done for the coming week. I didn’t notice the chilly temperatures, really, and got to enjoy watching the deer meander through the backyard while I worked. Colleen was a baking demon yesterday. She ended up making four dozen cupcakes, two of my favorite holiday fruit cakes, and she even experimented with a new holiday cornbread. She made the cornbread with maple syrup instead of honey and added dried cranberries to the batter. To go with the cornbread which turned out to be fabulous she made some maple butter to spread on them. It certainly looks like we have a new addition to the table for our Thanksgiving feast.

Colleen is back in the kitchen this morning. I don’t have any schoolwork to do so I promised Colleen I would start cleaning things up for Thursday. We only have two days of school this week so it will be an easy start to the week. We’re still not exactly sure if all of our kids will show up for Thanksgiving, but we should see most of them at some point throughout the day. Colleen is planning on ten people being at the table for the annual feast. Friday we will get our Christmas tree and start our Christmas decorating in earnest. It looks like the world has stepped up its crazy again with more protests and riots. It absolutely amazes me what social media has done to the world. Fortunately, things are quiet up here on our little hill. Colleen and I just keep taking everything one day at a time and let common sense guide our decisions. Whatever upheavals there are in the world, Colleen and I can just look around here at any time and know that all is right on the homestead.

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November 28, 2021:Thanksgiving Is Done. There Are Leftovers In The Refrigerator And The Countdown To Christmas Is In Full Swing!

And just like that Thanksgiving has come and gone. The weather has been grand all week too. We did have a little bit of rain one night, I can’t remember which night it was at the moment, but it showed up after dark and was gone before sunrise. The front that brought the rain also brought back the cold temperatures and where we had some relatively mild days to start the week, by this weekend the seasonable chill was back in the air. Today Colleen and I must find our usual Sunday before the school week routine again. Fortunately, I don’t think there is a lot that needs doing, but nonetheless we will need to be ready to go in the morning when the alarm clock starts screaming at us. Colleen and I have 15 school days before we start our Christmas break and we are counting down the day to both our break and Christmas Day.

Last Sunday was the unofficial start to getting ready for the Thanksgiving gathering of our clan. Colleen and I were only looking at going to school on Monday and Tuesday so prepping for the week wasn’t too bad. I did have a bit of schoolwork to do, but not much. Colleen pulled out a couple of her cast iron pots and made some chili and her vegetable and tomato sauce to go on ravioli. Of course there was my usual writing and the two of us spent the later part of the day starting to clean up the house. After dinner Colleen even found time to work on her big Christmas village in the living room.

Monday and Tuesday seemed to fly by at school. Colleen made some cupcakes for me to bring to school for our faculty meeting after school on Monday. The cupcakes didn’t last long at the meeting. Naturally, a number of kids took one day or both days off so none of my classes were full. I didn’t see any sense of teaching any new material so I gave the kids the opportunity to finish any missing work they had. As it turned out we had a few teachers out as well so I covered a few extra classes too since substitute teachers are about as scarce as hen’s teeth. Colleen’s two days were just as uneventful as mine and by the time Tuesday evening rolled around we were ready for our Thanksgiving break.

Wednesday was a big preparation day for Colleen and me. Colleen spent her day in the kitchen baking and making the sides that could be prepared ahead of time. I gave the house a good thorough cleaning. Anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor or was sitting around where it didn’t belong got put away and the rugs got one heck of a vacuuming. Colleen and I even covered the hole in the first floor ceiling under our drain pipes for aesthetic reason if nothing else. By the time Colleen and I sat down to dinner, Colleen had made a holiday coleslaw with cranberries in it, corn muffins with maple syrup and cranberries, maple butter for the muffins, 36 bite sized pumpkin pies, and who knows how many deviled eggs. After dinner she put the finishing touches on her Christmas village and then we called it a night and headed off to bed.

Colleen and I were up before the sun on Thanksgiving morning. We had our coffee and then got the turkeys cooking. Colleen stuffed one of the birds and put it in the oven for a traditional oven roasted turkey. I fired up the smoker and got the second bird going. I smoked it with apple wood this year. Alex was the first to show up and that was around 9 o’clock. Alex is not one to sit around and before I knew it he had pulled out my leaf blower and spent his morning blowing the leaves off of the backyard. Louis showed up about an hour after Alex and Louis jumped right into helping around here and refilled the firewood rack on the back porch. Al and Alysia showed up a little before noon with the wine for the feast. Steven, Anna Maria, and Lily whom were weren’t expecting until the afternoon even showed up in time for dinner.

Colleen planned on a 1 o’clock Thanksgiving dinner. We didn’t quite make it, but were only a little bit late. While Colleen set the table and brought the sides out, I carved the two birds. Dinner was wonderful, everyone ate their fill, and I dare say a few ate more than their fill, but such is the nature of the day. Everyone hung around and visited after dinner. It was the first time the family has been able to do that since March of 2020. Even Christmas last year was in shifts with the kids coming and going at different times. Sadly, as with all such family gatherings, the afternoon passed too quickly and before we knew it we were saying our goodbyes, but looking forward to another gathering and at Christmas this year. After the kids left, Colleen cleaned up everything. I would have helped, but Colleen is particular about her Nana’s antique china and won’t let anyone, even me, touch the stuff save for eating off of it. By 9 o’clock the cleaning up was done and we were both exhausted.

Colleen and I were up bright and early Friday morning. The day after Thanksgiving is Christmas Tree Day in this house. Colleen and I headed out the door to Perkins Orchard just like we did last year. We had gotten such a wonderful Christmas tree last year we knew we were headed back again this year. Colleen and I were expecting a big price jump in trees so we had budgeted for that and we are glad we did. The price of live Christmas trees easily doubled and then some from last year. All the same, Colleen and I would not be deterred and we found another absolutely beautiful tree for our living room this year. We did make a quick stop at the market on the way home, not that we needed much given all of the leftovers in the refrigerator. By the time Colleen and I wrapped things up for the day, the tree was up with its lights and Colleen had stripped the smoked turkey.

Yesterday was a day for decorating and baking. Colleen was in the kitchen before sunup baking bread for the week and as soon as I finished my morning coffee I started hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree. The bread finally came out of the oven and Colleen joined me in the living room, hanging the ornaments. Once the ornaments were up it was time for me to hang the tinsel. Colleen does not do tinsel. Colleen headed back into the kitchen to strip the second turkey and start boiling the carcass for her turkey soup. The last things I put on the tree were the candy canes and then it was time for lunch. After lunch I headed out to the back porch with my computer to get some schoolwork done while Colleen decided to continue decorating the family room. Sunset rolled around, Colleen locked the girls in their coop for the night, we ate a late supper of our homemade French onion soup with Colleen’s fresh bread, I had my usual after dinner cigar, and Colleen and I called it an early night again yesterday.

It’s a crisp and sunny late November morning today. The fire is burning in the fireplace and Colleen has started decorating again this morning. I have a little schoolwork I will need to do later. It’s back to school tomorrow for Colleen and me and we are counting down our days until our Christmas break. The world is certainly acting bonkers again. There was a shooting at a local mall and there is a new virus variant freaking everyone out too. There isn’t much Colleen or I can do to change all of that crazy, but we can smile and treat the people with whom we deal every day with the kindness and respect everyone deserves. Colleen and I will keep taking everything one day at a time. At the end of each day we will find our way home, look around, and be very thankful for all we have up here on our little hill because we know that all is right on the homestead.

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December 05, 2021: Just Three Weeks Until Christmas Now, So Let The Games Begin

Thanksgiving has come and gone, the mad dash to Christmas has begun, there are only two weeks of school left before our Christmas break, and 90 weeks have passed since everything initially got locked down thanks to COVID. Up here on our little hill it was just another week of taking one day at a time and making things work. Mother Nature certainly cooperated with fine weather on the week. We haven’t seen any rain in a while which is a bit problematic, but who is going to argue with sunny, 70 degree days in December? We do have some rain in this coming week’s forecast, but that’s not until the middle of the week and to go with the rain the temperatures are only suppose to get up into the 40’s. There is nothing like a cold biting rain to remind us that it is December in North Carolina.

Last Sunday Colleen and I were readjusting our mindset from a long Thanksgiving break to getting ready to go back to school on Monday morning. Fortunately, there wasn’t a whole that we needed to do to get ready for school. I did what computer work I needed to do for school and Colleen spent most of the day decorating. Colleen’s Victorian Era Dickens Christmas village got set up in the family room and several stand alone pieces are now decorating tops of bookcases, speakers, and end tables. One of my particular favorites is our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. As a kid in the pre-cable TV era, that Christmas special was always something I looked forward to watching.

Apart from the starting the countdown to Christmas, the school week was uneventful for Colleen and me. Colleen would leave before sunrise and get home a couple of hours before sunset. I pulled out of the driveway with the rising sun and got home with the setting sun, except for Wednesday when I got home well after dark since I had to stay after school for a club meeting. Colleen did manage to get all of our Christmas cards written out, addressed, and in the mail by Friday. Most of my evenings were spent doing schoolwork while Colleen would take care of the evening chores and get lunches ready for the next day. Thankfully, Colleen and I are done with our Christmas shopping so there was no need to leave the house in the evenings to do any shopping. Colleen did stop at the market on her way home Friday so that freed us up from weekend errands too.

Friday evening was time to relax, kind of. Colleen and I had plans to start our outdoor decorating yesterday so I wanted to at least get a jump on my weekend schoolwork. Of course, with the temperatures in the mid 60’s for the evening, I setup shop on the back porch and enjoyed a cigar while I worked. Colleen decided it was time to start loading the Christmas stockings. That’s not quite as easy as it sounds. The three or four small gifts going into each stocking need to be wrapped. What makes this year a particular challenge is we are expecting sixteen people in the house on Christmas morning. I think 16 Christmas stockings is a new record for us. We are very lucky to have all the kids and most of the grandkids here this year. Sadly, it was never something my parents got to enjoy after my sisters and I got older and moved out of our parents’ house.

Yesterday was just a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures. Colleen and I had plans to do more decorating especially outside. Before we could tackle decorating the front yard though, I had to get the leaves blown off of it. I started right after I finished my morning coffee and it took me right up until noon. Colleen did some more decorating inside while I blew the leaves. Colleen also found the time to make a pot of turkey soup, an experimental egg casserole she wanted to try with hopes it would work out and she could add it to our Christmas brunch, a batch of fresh mayonnaise, and some turkey salad for our lunches this week. After lunch it was time for me to start hanging lights. That didn’t work out quite so well and I ended up having to go to Lowe’s to get new icicle lights for our front porch.

My trip to Lowe’s was uneventful, but I was totally shocked when I got to Lowe’s. Christmas is still three weeks away and Lowe’s was all but stripped bare of its things for Christmas. Even their usual plethora of Christmas trees was just about gone. I did find icicle lights though and even bought an extra box for insurance. Needless to say, I didn’t get much done with the outside decorating. The icicle lights are up along with a little bit of garland and that is it. After dinner I did a good bit of schoolwork done hoping I could do some decorating today. Colleen was back in her workroom filling stockings again. I think I worked outside until around 8 o’clock before I had to give it up for the night.

It’s a little cooler this morning, but there is plenty of sunshine. Colleen and I will try to get some decorating done outside along with everything else we need to do to get ready for the school week in front of us. We only have two weeks of school left before our Christmas break starts and Colleen and I are counting down the days. Of course, there is the latest twist with COVID developing yet another new variant. Colleen and I will continue to exercise the utmost caution to stay safe and healthy. No matter what happens in this crazy world Colleen and I will keep taking everything one day at a time. Everything up here on our little hill is going just fine though. At the end of each day we can look around and smile thankfully because all is right on the homestead.

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December 12, 2021: One Week Of School Left, Less Than Two Weeks Until Christmas, Be Still My Heart

Another week has passed, Christmas is less than two weeks away, yet another variant of the virus has reared its ugly head, our Christmas decorations are up, our shopping is done, the presents are wrapped, and Colleen and I have one more week of school before the start of our Christmas break. Mother Nature is doing her best to keep things confusing. The temperatures have been swinging between lows in the 20’s to highs in the 70’s around here. We finally got some rain last night. It was what was left from the line of storms that ran across the country and spawned all of the tornadoes in Kentucky. Fortunately for us, by the time the storms crossed over the Appalachian Mountains there wasn’t much left except a little bit of wind and some rain. The cold front that was pushing the storms did drop the temperatures by a good 20 degrees from yesterday. It may be a bit chilly right now, but we have a bright sunny day otherwise.

Colleen and I finally got around to setting up the Christmas decorations in the front yard last Sunday. It took us most all of the afternoon, finishing up right around sunset, but we were still left us with putting the garland and the lights in the front porch yesterday. After years of collecting yard decorations and putting them up for Christmas, Colleen and I have a systematic teamwork approach. She tells me where they go and I run the extension cords and secure everything in place. This year like usual we added a few new decorations so we have a rather holly-jolly display. The neighbors on either side of us joined in on the decorating this year too, and they decorated their yards. We have quite the colorful and eclectic cul-de-sac this year.

The school week passed quickly and calmly for Colleen and me. Kids and teachers alike were getting antsy for the start of the Christmas break. It should be even more interesting this week. Wednesday I had to start a round of county mandated testing for my kids. It’s a long test and as of Friday only about half of my kids had finished. Last Wednesday we had an early release day for the kids at my school, I ended up getting stuck in a 2-hour long training session after the kids left, and after the training session my principal threw a catered Christmas party for the teachers and staff at the school. This never happened at the high school at which I used to teach. This week we have Secret Santas at school so that should be fun too. One of last week’s real highlights had nothing to do with school. It seems the unseasonably warm weather has encouraged our girls to start occasionally laying eggs again.

Yesterday was gray and cloudy to start the day, but it was warm. It was supposed to rain during the day, but the weather folks had taken out all the rain in the forecast for the day leaving just the line of storms to move through the area last night. I took advantage of the warm dry weather to finish up decorating the front of the house. Colleen spent the day cleaning up inside. At one point Colleen came out to the front porch with a stack of CD’s. She was cleaning up around the stereo system and decided to put all of our Christmas CD’s together. I guess over the years we have collected quite a bit of Christmas music. By the time I finished with the last of the outside decorations I was starting to feel a little tired and worn out. Colleen and I had an early dinner and I tried to do some schoolwork after dinner. That didn’t last long at all and about 6 o’clock I headed upstairs to go to bed. I got up once in the middle of the night, but fell back asleep quickly and didn’t roll out of bed until after sunup this morning. I have no idea what Colleen did yesterday evening and I never heard the storms blow through the area.

I woke up to a bright and sunny morning feeling quite rested today . Colleen already had the coffee made and the morning chores done. We really don’t have a lot that needs doing today either. Colleen is experimenting with a new cinnamon roll recipe for her Christmas brunch, and I have a little bit of schoolwork that needs doing. I suppose to say the world is a mess would be an understatement of late. Inflation has prices of everything getting more expensive by the day and the virus has a new variant that is surging too. The government and media are still trying to convince everyone that things are all rosy and getting better. I suppose it’s true you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Colleen and I tend to take all of the government and media ramblings with a grain of salt, relying on our good old fashion common sense. It hasn’t disappointed us yet. We take one day at a time and at the end of each day we take stock up here on our little hill and smile thankfully because all is right on the homestead.

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December 19, 2021: School Is Out, The Lights Are Up, The Presents Are Wrapped, And We Are At ElfCon 2!

It’s a warm rainy Sunday morning, the coffee is hot and fresh, and Christmas is less than a week away now! We sure haven’t seen much rain of late and, come to think of it, we haven’t seen seasonable temperatures in a while either, but that all changes today. It is 60 degrees this morning and that will be our high for the day because as this rain moves through the area, the mercury will drop into the 20’s by late tonight. The first part of next week looks like it will be on the cold side, but come Christmas Day the thermometer is headed back into to the 60’s melting away any hopes I had for a White Christmas. The closest Colleen and I have come to a White Christmas was back in 2010 when we got a foot of snow on the day AFTER Christmas.

Last Sunday proved to be a very easy day for Colleen and me. Most all of our Christmas preparations are done or close to done, we didn’t have a whole lot that needed doing to get ready for the upcoming week of school, and everything stayed quiet up here on our little hill. I spent the morning writing like usual, but Colleen had it in her mind to try a new cinnamon roll recipe. If the rolls turned out well they were destined to be added to her Christmas Day brunch buffet. As luck would have it, the cinnamon rolls turned out to be some of the very best Colleen had ever made! There is no doubt that these rolls will be a part of our Christmas brunch. I’m working on adding the recipe to the list of recipes in “Colleen’s Kitchen” here on our website too. I did have a little schoolwork that needed to be done on the day and Colleen did have some housework to do too, but we were looking at our last week of school before the start of our Christmas break so all in all it really was a very easy Sunday.

For the most part, our week at school was pretty uneventful. Colleen and I would get home after school and we really didn’t have a whole lot that needed doing. Colleen spent a couple of evenings filling the Christmas stockings with the prerequisite candy and I dug into reading up on the role playing adventure game that I promised the kids I would run on Christmas Eve. Colleen put all of our leftover candy into a gallon jar, filling it to the top, as we kind of went over the top this year. Friday rolled around and with it came more than enough excitement for the entire week. It seems there was some stupid school violence challenge on Tik Tok and some kid made specific mention of my school. When I got to school on Friday morning a good many teachers had called in sick and about half of the students didn’t show up. The police had gotten to the kid well before school started, we had lots of extra security, and while tension ran high, nothing came if it, fortunately. I really have to applaud my school’s administration staff who did a fantastic job of keeping calm and handling everything. My school really does have the most incredible principal and staff.

Yesterday was the first day of Christmas break for Colleen and me. It’s not like there was a whole lot to do, but with rain forecast for just after lunch, I figured I had better blow the leaves off the backyard before they got wet and started to mat down. Wet matted leaves are tough to blow and if left in place they will freeze into a blanket when the temperatures drop creating a problem for the septic system’s leech field. We have enough plumbing issues at the moment without giving the leech field the opportunity to start acting up. Fortunately, I was able to get most of the backyard cleaned up before the rain started. Colleen spent the day cleaning up spare rooms so the rooms would be ready for any overnight visitors on Christmas Eve. As a treat to us, Colleen and I ordered Chinese takeout for dinner last night. We don’t eat out often even in the best of times and we certainly have not eaten out in close to two years now, but every once in a while we do get take out. Last night was only the second time we’ve had Chinese since this shebang started back in early 2020.

The rain is falling, the wind is picking up, and the temperature is starting to drop. It sure does look like it will be a good day for Colleen and me to run errands. We might even get ourselves a Frisco Burger meal from Hardee’s in our travels. To make the day just a bit brighter and merrier we’ve already plugged in all of the exterior illumination. I don’t have a clue what will happen in the world today, but up here on our little hill we are at ElfCon 2 as we wait for that jolly old elf’s arrival at midnight on Saturday morning. It looks like it will be a grand Christmas for Colleen and me as all of our kids and most of our grandkids will be here for Christmas Day. Colleen and I are on break and we will be taking everything slowly and one day at a time. We have no place to be other than right here at home and when we look around we smile thankfully and quite contently because all is right on the homestead.

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December 26, 2021: Christmas Is Now Just Awesome Memories And This Is The Last Entry For The Year 2021!

What a week we had! Christmas has come and gone and all that is left are the memories and for us to welcome the New Year. Our weather has been interesting to say the least. The week started out very seasonable with some rain and Colleen and I lit a fire in the fireplace every morning until Christmas Day. When Christmas morning rolled around the day started at 50 degrees and by the middle of the afternoon the mercury had climbed to near 70 degrees. I haven’t seen warm Christmas weather since I lived in Louisiana more than 20 years ago and then it wasn’t unusual for me to play a round of golf on Christmas Eve. Yesterday’s weather was certainly out of the ordinary for this part of North Carolina. Today will be even warmer around here. By the time I found my way out to the back porch with my morning coffee today the temperature was already in the mid 50’s and climbing.

Colleen and I were on our Christmas break last week and last Sunday we started with the final preparations for our Christmas celebration with our family. The day was dreary with a biting rain so Colleen and I decided to run a few errands and then treat ourselves to lunch at Hardee’s. We don’t go out to eat and rarely do we get take out, but last Sunday we got Hardee’s from the drive-thru, found a quiet spot to park, and ate our lunch in the Trail Blazer while we listened to Christmas music. There’s nothing like a couple of old farts acting like teenagers, but we had a great time. We got a break in the rain once we got home so we didn’t get soaked bringing everything into the house. It didn’t take me long once we got home to get a fire going in the fireplace either so we could chase the cold, damp chill out of the house.

Monday morning Colleen and I needed to drop the Trail Blazer off at the shop for some routine maintenance, but after that we started the final preparations for Christmas Day. Colleen spent most of her day in the kitchen. She made some cinnamon swirl bread, the filling for her minced fruit pie-tarts, and she started making homemade eggnog. Since Colleen cooks the eggs for the eggnog the whole process takes two days. I started cleaning and vacuuming everything on the first floor. Of course, there was a fire going in the fireplace too, so in between my various tasks I was shuttling firewood into the house. Buttercup does not like the vacuum cleaner and disappeared while I vacuumed the living room, but once I moved to the other rooms Buttercup found her spot on the loveseat by the fire and stayed there most of the day.

Tuesday morning Colleen and I got the Trail Blazer back from the shop. I’m glad we took it in too, because they found a small leak in one of the hoses that circulated the transmission fluid which explained why I had been adding transmission fluid to the Trail Blazer about once a week. It was a quick, easy, and inexpensive fix fortunately. The rest of the day we spent at home more or less. Colleen finished making her eggnog and put it in quart canning jars and then went about preparing the various ingredients she would need for the assortment of dishes she had planned for our Christmas brunch. My phone stared acting up badly so I decided it was time to get a new one. I ran down to the phone store and got a nice new phone two generations newer then my last one for a very good price since I had so many upgrade credits. I stopped at the ABC store on the way home to get a few bottles of adult beverages for the holidays too. I was never more than 5 or 6 miles from the house either. It turned out to be a mostly relaxed day for us. We even got a few more Christmas cards in the mail that Colleen added to our collection adorning the front door.

Wednesday morning the weather started to warm up again under bright and sunny blue skies. Colleen was still in full blown prep mode for our Christmas brunch. I pretty much had the house cleaned up so I decided to jump into the Trail Blazer and head out to the cigar warehouse about 30 miles west of here. It was only Wednesday so I figured the traffic wouldn’t be too bad. Boy was I wrong. The interstate was slammed. I don’t like driving as it is and I like driving in traffic even less, but I took my time and didn’t try anything crazy, making it there and back without incident. The trip has actually become sort of an annual tradition for me. Every year on our Christmas break, after we get paid, and before Christmas Day I head out to the warehouse, splurge a bit, and treat myself to some special cigars to smoke over the holiday.

Thursday is when things really started to come together in the kitchen for Colleen. She made sure everything was ready for our Christmas Eve taco bar buffet. Colleen got the ground beef and the shredded chicken prepared and ready to go and she even made some fresh pico de gallo. The Christmas brunch didn’t get neglected either. Colleen made her cinnamon rolls and minced apple tarts over the course of the day too. I did some last minute spot cleaning around the house in anticipation of the first of our Christmas guests that we were expecting a little after lunch on Christmas Eve. Even after dinner, Colleen was still in the kitchen making her buttermilk biscuits for our planned brunch on Christmas Day. No Christmas Brunch would be complete without sausage, biscuits, and gravy.

Friday was Christmas Eve and that meant it was time for the festivities to start. Colleen was elbow deep in her brunch preparations. I got everything ready for the game of Dungeons and Dragons I promised some the kids we would play on Christmas Eve. Steven surprised us and showed up mid morning with his dog. We weren’t expecting him. He didn’t want to play our planned game so he headed down to the fire pit and got it going. Having a fire in the fire pit on Christmas Eve is another holiday tradition around here. Alex and his dog showed up about an hour after Steven. We weren’t expecting Alex until Christmas Day either. The gaming party started showing up around 2 o’clock, that being a friend we had invited to play the game with us, and about 30 minutes later the last of the crew, James, Donna, and Louis, showed up. It didn’t take us long to get the game underway and we played for about six hours taking a break to indulge in Colleen’s taco bar for dinner. After the game ended, the kids headed out to the fire pit for the rest of the night while Colleen and I called it a day and headed upstairs to bed.

Yesterday was Christmas and Santa brought a U-Haul for everything because we had so many people here. All of our boys had spent the night here and were still asleep when Colleen and I got up in the morning. We had to do a little room shuffling on Christmas Eve because we weren’t expecting Steven and Alex to spend the night with their dogs which they did. Everyone slept late letting Colleen and I have a peaceful Christmas morning. Everyone was up though when Micayla, Louis’s girlfriend, got here around 10:30, and that is when the festivities started. Presents were opened amidst the laughter and stories and then it was on to the brunch. The brunch was superb! Colleen really out did herself and I dare say I was not the only one who ate too much.

Al and Alysia couldn’t join us for the morning fun. They were driving in 3 hours from the coast. They ended up getting here a little before 1 o’clock, but unfortunately Louis and Micayla had to leave before Al and Alysia got here. Everyone else gathered in the living room again and it was time for round two of the gift exchange. We all got to visit a while, but James and Donna had to leave for another Christmas visit with Donna’s family. Alex left not too long after that too. It was right about then that I got word from Anna Maria that she would be bringing Lily over. That gave me just enough time to clean up the living room for round three. Unfortunately, Al and Alysia were exhausted from their weekend traveling and wanted to get home before dark so they had to leave. Steven was still here so Colleen, Steven, Anna Maria, and I gave Lily her own special gift opening time. Lily had the time of her life tearing paper, playing with her toys, and giving Anna Maria all of the clothes she got.

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Our time with the kids passed all too quickly yesterday. Stephanie and the kids didn’t make it unfortunately and after Anna Maria and Lily left and Steven left, our house was once again quiet save for the Christmas music playing on the stereo. I cleaned up the living room while Colleen cleaned up in the kitchen. Colleen finished about 8:30 and headed upstairs to unwind in bed where she fell asleep sitting up watching something on her tablet. I headed out to the back porch for a cigar after the living room had been cleaned and after my cigar I headed upstairs to bed. The day seemed to have flown by in a blur for us. We had started our Christmas shopping in October and after three months of preparations, two days of festivities just didn’t seem to be very much, but Colleen and I wouldn’t change the joy, laughter, fun times, and memories created for anything.

Buttercup got Colleen up before the sun today so when I got up at sunrise the girls were out, the coffee was hot and fresh, and the house was quiet. Colleen and I have absolutely nothing planned for today. There are more than enough leftovers so Colleen doesn’t have to cook. We are still on our holiday break so we don’t need to get ready for school either. There aren’t many Sundays where Colleen and I can kick back and do nothing, but today is one of those days. There are 364 days until next Christmas and while Colleen and I are still savoring this year’s family gathering, we are already looking forward to next year. It seems so far away, but I suspect, that just like this year, the time will pass very quickly. Colleen and I will keep taking one day at a time, getting the most we can out of each and every day. Our life is simple and we like it that way. It doesn’t matter the day or the time of the day because whenever Colleen and I get to look around up here on our little hill we know that no matter what a day brings our way, all is right on the homestead.

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