On the eve of our departure!

News flash: the Myers-Benners are leaving Tangly Woods for 2 weeks in 12 hours (and the tension is building a bit faster than the excitement at present - especially for me!). I feel confident that the excitement will come as soon as we are actually all packed (like sardines) in the car with all our stuff and we see that it all fits and no one needs to be strapped to the roof. Right now, I'm too tired to feel much of anything other than weariness. It's been a big push this week to try to get the place ready to leave to others. We've been trying to work ahead and do everything but the day to day maintenance. It's kinda telling that it feels cruel to leave others with more than the minimum of what it takes to do the daily animal and plant maintenance stuff. I hope that Tangly Woods will be kind to those keeping things going in our absence. It sure is rewarding us with abundance in the food realm right now.

This break feels really important and essential! And it is not lost on me that it is a CJP student (and some of her CJP student colleagues), along with my parents, that are making this trip possible for us. A trip in August would have been unheard of during my time working at CJP. And now I'm traveling in August and students are helping to tend our place. It feels like a sweet turn of events!

Knowing that this week's news will pale in comparison to a road trip via parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Iowa to see friends, new places and attend a dear friend's wedding, I'm gonna take a few minutes to share some sights from this week while I sit with Terah to help her fall asleep (it's hard to relax enough to fall asleep when there is still the buzz of others packing and getting things together). We'll see if the clicking of keys can lull her to sleep! 

I do not know what I would have done this week with our dynamic trio of kiddos! They really rose to the occasion and did a lot to help us get ready for this trip, especially in the food processing department. I was worried we might miss sweet corn season altogether and that would be a hard thing to swallow. Our freezer supply was dwindling and we love having a good amount tucked away, in addition to corn freezing being a really fun family project. So when I learned that gleaning for a reduced price was available this week, we bumped things around and Jason headed to the farm early Tuesday morning and returned home with 6 bushels.

Jason then moved on to other things (finishing up grain winnowing for one) after helping husk for a bit and the girls and I carried on. The girls helped me ALL DAY! Their stamina for indoor (cooler) food processing work far surpasses what they feel up for on summer outdoor gardening days. I cut an ear or two off at the very beginning and then they cut the rest of the 175 cups of corn we froze. I was honestly in awe - felt like I had hit the "helpfulness jackpot" that day and my did I really need it! It was also a harvest day so there were beans to snip and pickles to can. The tomatoes and peppers are still just trickling in, but it won't be long!

It was a FULL but FUN day! We really made an awfully good team and had a healthy little competition going where the girls tried to get corn cut off before I could get another batch blanched and cooled. They succeeded!

This is where I found Terah not too long after the last corn went in the freezer - I guess we sufficiently tuckered her out!

In other news, the most recent playdate with Ivy included some enhanced costuming for playing "Space" - utilizing both my OR outfit and one of the camping mats we borrowed for our trip.

It's gonna be wild to see how much stuff grows in two weeks' time. Here are the girls in their popcorn patches this week

It won't just be the plants that will grow fast. As I stay in touch with all my doula families there are babies becoming bipeds and saying new words and growing out of newborn clothing. This week when Luca was with us, he was really working at saying Alida (ah...da...da with great enthusiasm). 

When a little one is just shy of 4 weeks old, me going away for 2 weeks is half his lifetime. I'm going to miss these little people!

But I'm also super eager to have a little more time to focus on my own brood for a stint!

And I won't mind not seeing a tower of cucumbers for just a bit either!

Hope to come back re-energized for processing tomatoes! Just got our very first pasta sauce canned the other night and it happened again - all the produce I needed to work up "magically" (it truly feelings that way!) came out to exactly 7 quarts with a tiny bowl for Terah to eat fresh!

Well before I can say we are leaving today, I'm going to sign off and go start packing my clothes! The house is much quieter with the younger gals sacked out now and Jason on their heels. One step at a time and we'll be heading out of here in the morning. I have already warned my family that I'll probably take my first nap minutes into our trip!!