Letting pictures do most of the talking!

If I wait to catch up on the blog until I feel like I have my thoughts gathered enough to articulate things well, I am likely to fall horribly behind on this scrapbook or give up on it entirely. So in "true scrapbook style," I'm leaning heavily on photos this evening. Here's some snippets from Tangly Woods - brace yourself for a very random ride through the last few weeks. I think it will be much more enjoyable than if it was possible to take and share pictures of the emotions that have accompanied that same time frame! Many of the things pictured here are those things that bring me back into some sense of groundedness. For those things, I'm very grateful! (These photos go back before the last blog post, which was dedicated in its entirety to the anniversary of Nora's death)

We are utilizing old bread stick bags, that came to us with bread for our pigs, to try to protect our first go at a "naked barley" crop. The birds have already voted that they like it, but we'd enjoy a chance at trying it and getting a seed increase for future plantings!

The barley pre-harvest in the root patch. It's so beautiful as it turns golden!

Benner family times - trying to savor what is possible at this time!

Myers family times

 

Still really prefer the in person and up close times. So glad I have these precious gals to hug!

And we treasured some really special times with my parents during their recent visit and are counting the days until their return to Tangly Woods.

It was especially fun to help Dad celebrate his birthday - Terah still goes around the house singing lines from the song we made up for him. It's so cute when I hear her belting out, "76 years old Herbert Ezra is..."

After considerable time and effort, we were able to give away over 350 tomato plants (not the sad ones pictured here) and many sweet potato slips..

Garlic scape season has come and gone. We have a new kind of garlic from Uzbekistan that not only has scapes that are fun to pop out at harvest but making a creamier milder pesto. 

And we got a "hot tip" from a friend to try fermenting garlic scapes. So we'll be enjoying scapes for months to come (or at least weeks - we are making a pretty good dent in them already).

Terah was so excited to plant her popcorn and stuck with it to the very end. I'm glad she enjoyed it as we'll be replanting soon - darn squirrels!

She allowed us to help her and chattered more or less the whole time.

And then we moved to Alida's patch. That one will almost have to be completely replanted. We didn't find it all that helpful when we noticed that the squirrels were digging up her corn and planting it elsewhere in the garden. Come on squirrels, we put it where we wanted to start. :) 

We are going to try putting hot sauce in the holes with the corn. Will it deter them on our second go? Time will tell!!

Still eating outside as often as we can. So happy when the evenings cool off enough to make it pleasant to be outside. I'm back to making 4 gallons of mint/lemon balm/raspberry leaf tea every 2-3 days to keep up with this family!

We did a reorganization of our guest room which included giving this bed away. It's one we refinished together the summer we got married. 

The room can still be a guest room but is roomier with the futon moved down from upstairs (Jason is currently researching "mites" as I type this as he had them crawling on him when he sat down on said futon a bit ago. He thinks they found their way in upstairs from the Phoebe nest on the downspot outside the room - he says they don't live longer than 3 weeks so we won't be using the futon for a bit...). It also has the addition of a desk for Jason! While he did not build it, he did spend nearly 4 hours scrubbing it the day after we got it - it is a completely different color, looks like a new desk AND most importantly no longer smells of smoke!

Red hot poker in their prime. My favorite moment from them this year was watching a bird land on one and turn upside down to drink the nectar (just like our kids do).

We have two new tree climbers in our midst: Alida AND Terah are both getting into climbing trees.

We continue to enjoy physically distanced hikes and picnics with friends, most often to Hensley's Pond.

Hensley's Pond may be one of my favorite spots in the world at present - such a nourishing spot for my soul!

I successfully emptied the chest freezer and defrosted it. We have one loaded freezer of mostly meat. Just a little bit of fruit, some seeds, a few veggies, coffee, butter, some breads and a whole lot of chicken, pork and venison. Well balance that out soon enough!

Potato crusted ricotta quiche - made possible when I found 2 shopping bags full of potatoes in the root cellar I didn't know we had. Yay! This is a favorite breakfast, especially when it can be made with freshly steamed spinach, and lavishly sprinkled with homemade cheddar on top!

Loving my more recently acquired friendship with mullein! Drying as much as I can this year for tea this winter - helped Terah so much last winter when she had a cold and was coughing at night!

We made our first batch (probably not the last) of peppermint pesto for a spectacular batch of homemade peppermint patties. I had some leftover melted chocolate and so I also made homemade pecan butter granola clusters that I coated with the remaining chocolate - wow, what a discovery!

Here is one of the many reasons it is hard to relax around here! There are not many moments like this but if Jason chooses to get horizontal in the living room, he won't be alone for long!

The rose bush in Nora's garden is blooming, along with other new flowers even since last week. A place of beauty and color!

We are growing SO MUCH parsley! I'm eating it by the handful. It makes me so happy as we have struggled to grow parsley over the last number of years. I've even frozen some and made lots of pesto. 

But lest I get overly confident, the basil right next door to the parsley doesn't look nearly so happy. We are giving it time and hoping it will still flourish.

Time for lettuce taste testing. The night before we did it, Alida was worried after we went to bed that she had not been clear enough with us that she did NOT want to miss it. So we woke to signs up that Kali had written to make sure we didn't taste test the lettuce without her. Kali is an amazing big sister and knows what it feels like to not want to miss out on one of the most exciting kinds ofTangly Woods' events - seed saving efforts! You really can tell the difference between different lettuces. We only keep ones that we want to eat again!

Barley harvesting time. I learned how and helped for the first time ever. Most meaningful aspect of it was using my Grandpa Myers' sickle. 

Just one of the many baby bird nests around. These three little cardinals are growing in the blackberry bushes that we walk by many times every day. That means we scare their parents (unintentionally) often - sorry cardinals!

I harvested the first major picking of magenta lambsquarters for freezing. I love how it makes the water hot pink when I rinse it. We are eating MANY greens right now, including a new green called senposai that we were gifted seeds for.

Alida continues to enjoy cooking experiments and Terah has caught the bug. They each bought a box of cupcake papers for their enjoyment and made yogurt blueberry cups this week. 

Alida's first cosmos is blooming - much to her delight!

Jason noted that the barley shocks reset the Tangly Woods "bucolicity index" at 100. I agree!!

We are eager to have this threshed and dried so we can make some flour - we are out!!

Our morning routine for the last 5 mornings has been that I do the morning chores and pig weeds and some other general outdoor tasks while Jason scythes until the grass is too dry. The 2nd hay cutting was deemed complete as of today (there is always more than could be done but we moved on to mulching). 

Kali joined us for a bit - the younger two thought the cool house was a better option.

Despite a rather major flare up of my "elbow tendinitis" or whatever it is, I was determined (maybe stupidly) to help get the mulching done before the predicted rains. 

I thought a lot as I worked about the many who have done in our country's history and still today do hard and hot and repetitive labor without adequate compensation, in unsafe conditions and without the satisfaction of getting to enjoy the fruits of their labors. As I was out there today taking another stab at understanding what it takes to sustain me, I felt again that this is good, hard and important work.

While we worked, the Massanutten chickens had found the piglets' paddock and an excellent dust bathing spot! It was so fun to watch, that I even took a video of it if you want to see the dust plumes!

And there ends the random walk through the last little while! It's now time for the daily tick checks and the bedtime routine!