Encounters with Sustenance: Nephew season and SO MUCH MORE!

Even with trying to use some measure of restraint, I've just put over 80 pictures into this post. I thought about splitting it into multiple entries, but alas I'm just gonna offer up one massive scrapbook update! And we'll see if I get through it before either a) we have a big thunderstorm (come on clouds!!) or b) I fall asleep again or c) kids come in ready for more food or d) all of the above! We have been hosting a delightful line up of visitors for nearly two weeks and it's been so sweet and somewhat chaotic and has included late nights and early mornings. Today got all changed around for both Jason and me and all of a sudden my day looked relatively open and now I can't seem to keep my eyes open! Due to travel and illness, I'm missing my regular days with this cutie and so eager for us to catch up...maybe tomorrow! At the end of our last time together, he walked to me for the first time.

Jason recently wrapped up one Sassafras job and is getting another rolling. He spent some of many 90+ degree days rebuilding a bridge! He came home very dirty and tired and was glad when it was done. Thankfully, this next project (cabinetry) will include mostly inside work, which will be a relief if we don't get any ongoing reprieve from the heat in July/August. While waiting for wood to come in and an inspection to pass on the new project, he has been catching up on lots of threshing and winnowing. It's very time consuming work that clearly lights him up. He was just showing me the pea seeds that could be the future of our winter ready edible snap pea (as far as he is aware, the first of its kind)!!

I will be VERY happy to welcome more snap peas into our lives! Some seasons I get excited about and then am ready to see them come to a close (tomatoes are a good example of that - right now I'm EAGER for our first tomato and by Sept/Oct I'll be begging frost to come and kill the plants!). But I feel more or less only sadness when it's time to give the spent sugar snap pea vines to the pigs. It's never long enough!

And then there are some seasons that need to end because we are at/over our capacity, but it's just not QUITE time yet (have at least one more breeder rooster that hasn't been bred yet). That's "hatching season!" It's pretty hard to stop the influx of these cute buggers, but alas the coops are mostly full and we've not been able to range them much recently due to a family of gray foxes that are around and hunting, not just at night!

Our egg numbers have dwindled recently and that is often to be expected as the spring flush wanes, but it seems accentuated by a common illness that is impacting some of the birds. When we collect eggs we now have a new handy egg basket holder to use that Jason made recently (a fun little project that enabled him to try out some of the tools he'll be using for his next cabinetry job).

We have some very dearly loved chickens this year. Olivia and Buddy are getting the opportunity to try out being garden chickens, which means there's been a pair of chickens in the garden with us on some of our family work days recently. It's actually quite enjoyable and so far they have been well behaved! It's fun to hear their little contented sounds.

(UPDATE: a) is happening - there is a gentle rain falling outside - haven't heard any thunder yet!)

While on the poultry theme, Duckie had a big hatchday since I last wrote- he turned 10!!!

So the pigs don't feel left out, I'll say that they are doing just fine at their amazing slop-to-pork conversion process. They would appreciate if we had more waste milk or bread for them, but they are growing very well on weeds and fermented fruit and veggie scraps from the co-op. Their tummies did struggle a bit to process the massive pot of cooked chicken guts from our most recent butchering.

Side note: if you look closely, Jason is sporting a bun (credit: me!) and I'm a fan!

But I digress...Plant updates next. As black raspberry season came to an end, blackberry season got rolling. Jason noted yesterday how lovely it is to have berries around regularly at this time of year. Blueberry season is coming to an end next door and wineberry season is underway. So. Much. Delicious. Fruit!

Alida doesn't even love sugar snap peas the way I do, but this mama swoons over a picture of one of her favorite people combined with one of her favorite veggies!

It was such a good move to cut our delicata squash patch in 1/2 and move Alida's flowers into the protected garden where there is more fertile soil. We are enjoying her row of flowers immensely. See my p.s. for a few bonus TW flower photos!

Most years Jason and I have done the lettuce taste testing by ourselves (eat a leaf off of each plant and pull any plants that are bitter/unpleasant, so we are only saving seed from the good ones). The girls joined us this year and they are clearly having a good time (or I'm just very funny). That said, no one wanted to eat lettuce for a while after we made it through the row!

YAY for a thriving cucumber patch! We just had our first big picking yesterday and it's just getting started. And, even more exciting, we are gonna have dill heads and cucumbers at the same time. Yippee!!! We savored our first dilly cucumber salad yesterday! Pickle making is right around the corner. I have learned one thing about myself that I kinda wish I didn't need to admit (partly because of old food rules and notions of what is healthy): I really like cucumbers better (much better) peeled. Thank goodness that we can give our kitchen scraps to the piggies. It takes more time to prep them but I enjoy eating them so much more and am allowing myself to savor them the way I love them, rather than make myself eat them peels and all!

(UPDATE: b) is about to happen if I don't do c) - get the kiddos, that have come in from ping pong and soccer and are playing Animal-opoly, a snack)

The PA Dutch squash and Kali's popcorn patch look beautiful right now!

Kali, with some assistance from Jason, got the locust trees on the upper side of the rotation pruned and Kali, with my assistance, got the black raspberry row on the lower side pruned and tucked into the trellising.

The wheat has been harvested, along with most of the rye.

Kali's help this summer has been a game changer! I've never felt more like a family team than I have (in some moments) this spring/summer!

We do have some unwelcome wanna-be Tangly Woods' garden trimmers/pruners - I think the dry hot weather has some critters becoming bolder in their search for food and we are seeing evidence of more deer browsing. Our flour corn patch is outside the garden fence and so Alida and Terah applied liquid fence recently to discourage them and Jason has now put it into his regular schedule for every other Friday when he also applies neem oil and uses our new handy dandy flame weeder. Some people say that after a while the liquid fence is just "salad dressing" for the deer. I'm really hoping it keeps deterring them!

We happily welcomed my great aunt Eleanor back for another stint while my parents went to the mountains and sent me envious weather reports! Thank goodness for shade trees. She was here when we pulled our garlic and helped get it hung in the garage and the seconds trimmed up for storage. We did NOT have her peel and cut up any garlic and will never again after her poor hands took weeks to recover when she did it previously (I underestimated garlic's potency!)... It was prime garlic pulling weather and we got about a bushel per row (total of 6). We'll be able to use it by the bulb, as we are apt to do when we have enough!

The porch swing in the side yard is a popular spot for visiting and snoozing and listening to the birds and watching the mountain.

There were also opportunities for garden tours and some puzzling together.

My aunt is such a good sport, an amazingly flexible guest, and seems to even get a kick out of the buzz of our life. She even got in on a very energetic and somewhat loud and laughter-filled sleepover. While they all look cozy in the living room, that photo wasn't taken long before Terah missed the comfort of her room and her bed!

We said goodbye to Eleanor and the sleepover friends on the same day we welcomed my nephew Jordon and his family for the weekend. My great nephew is now a spunky, energetic, sweet, chattering, busy, strong-armed toddler. He kept us on our toes and my heart full. The weekend was full of basketball, ping pong, yummy meals together, meaningful conversations, keeping up with Myles, chick adoring, pig petting, water gun fun, and less sleep than is preferable!

They headed back home on Sunday and the same day we welcomed a nephew from Jason's side of the family. Landon and Quentin came to spend a week with their Keezletown family and we got to enjoy time with Landon for the first part of the week and now are savoring our days with Quentin!

I called Landon our chicken whisperer! He somehow was able to open a pen with a broody mama and her chicks and pet the broody hen without her getting defensive. He was sweet with the chickens. He enjoyed them most alive! He watched the butchering for a bit but didn't dive enthusiastically into that process. Jason was SO grateful for a bit of a cool snap for butchering day and our little canopy to keep a good percentage of the bugs at bay!

Landon got in on our 2024 wineberry picking outing (Jason stayed home on free range chicken protection duty. I picked 3 qts, Kali 2 and Alida 1. Landon and Terah both picked lots of berries but the amounts in their containers went up and down throughout the evening, as the amounts in their bellies went up consistently.

On Landon's last day with us the girls took him on a fun afternoon outing to play minigolf and get ice cream. I communed with my podcast feed, the spider webs in our house and prepped for our evening meal with friends around the fire.

It was a gorgeous evening and the kids helped us get all the old (some diseased) black raspberry canes burned up (sometime with more enthusiasm than desired). Pizza pockets, hot dogs, s'mores and Smiley's ice cream nourished us while we visited. The sand provided lots of entertainment!

Yesterday was "swap day!" After some more Yahtzee and ping pong, Landon went two miles down the road to Emily and Jonas' and Quentin joined us (I think he was here for about 5 minutes before they disappeared into the garage for the first of many rounds of ping pong!).

Yesterday afternoon I joined them all for a rousing games of Life. What a questionable game with plenty of fodder for conversations about gender, relationships, career aspirations, life paths, money, children, education, etc... We laughed A LOT and all were millionaires by the end. Twice in the game I invented a better mouse trap, which we desperately could use here at TW (and I also won the Nobel Peace Prize). When I wasn't laughing and pointing out how utterly unlike real life Life is, I was thinking about the messages that games like this teach children if there aren't critical conversations/comments accompanying the play (e.g. everyone must stop and get married and there are pink and blue people for, you guessed it, the girls and boys). Once through was definitely enough for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed it all the way to my retirement!

Last night we went over to enjoy watching the fireworks over the Massanutten from the hill behind Emily and Jonas' home. It's a perfect view and the girls were a little shocked that I was able to fall asleep during the 10 or so minute fireworks' display. One of them said, "Mommy really can fall asleep any where!" It's true, especially right now!

So now for a whole slew of random updates that didn't fit neatly in anywhere else but are notable to me!

I still LOVE sky pictures!

We all survived dental cleanings and no one has any cavities. Yay! Right after it, I might have agreed with Jason that I'd rather get a tattoo - at least you have a lovely souvenir at the end!

A dear friend took this picture of my early morning coffee and cookies set up for us to enjoy while we caught up in the shade. It was a really delightful morning and I continue to feel so deeply grateful for good friends!

The rain has stopped already and this photo is from the only significant rain we have had in months. The ground soaked up all 0.7 inches of it and allowed us to not feel 2 steps behind on irrigating, but we certainly didn't put the hoses away! I went out in it and danced until I was quite wet and my kids were questioning the safety of it with the lightning and thunder accompanying the rain!

I was pleased with my recent modification of the tomato cheese wheat wheels in my mom's cookbook. They weren't only cute, they were also delicious! I still enjoy baking but less in the heat and less since kneading seems to kick up the numbness/tingling in my arms. I'm over halfway through my stint of PT for my carpal tunnel symptoms and have gone from discouraged to encouraged to discouraged again. I'm very glad I'm doing it and learning a lot, but do wish my symptoms were uncategorically improved!

Not only am I doing PT for the first time in my life, I also recently attended one of my sister's yoga classes - I snapped this photo right before it started as proof. She is an incredible yoga instructor and I really hope it's not the last time I'm on a mat in her class!! It also gave me a whole new appreciation for the kinds of spaces yoga instructors can create and made me realize that my one and only experience of taking a formal yoga class was unfortunately a class blending yoga and pilates with diet and wellness culture.

This munchkin is delightful and associates times at Tangly Woods now with smoothies! Thankfully we are never lacking in smoothie ingredients. And who wouldn't want to delight this little human! He certainly delights me regularly!

I did a thing - in addition to getting a tattoo! I threw my hat in the ring for the Evidence Based Birth instructor program. It will be over a month until I hear if I'm accepted. If I am, this would shape some of how I spend the next year of my life (and potentially beyond). I'm really excited about it and mostly just feeling great about the process - the conversations I had in the application process, the affirmation of my skills as a doula and facilitator in collecting letters of reference, and a reason to prioritize spending time putting into writing some of my thoughts about birth work and my place in it!

For now I'm focused on the three families I'm working with who are welcoming little ones into their families later this summer/fall. And I'm soaking up the rapid changes in my own kiddos. I got a belated Mother's Day pampering session recently and this gal is really good at back and shoulder rubs. My face is an accurate reflection of how I'm feeling. I can't speak for her!!

Kali has been graciously taking her sisters to make use of their Free Friday wristbands from the summer reading program. So far they have gone mini-golfing (more waiting in line than playing since many other families had the same idea!) and a trek through Luray Caverns. I'm glad our kids seem to be pretty fond of each other!

And FINALLY a very important update: our guest room has a ceiling fan AND Jason and I didn't deliberate on the purchase/project. We had the thought AND Jason went and got the supplies AND put it in on the SAME DAY!!! What is this world coming to???

If you have read this far and you are NOT my mother, you really deserve some kind of medal! If you take the time to tell me you did so, I might just have to think of some kind of prize because that is some serious dedication to our family scrapbook.

p.s. For now, you get to soak up some of the flowers brightening up our gardens. It seems like this world could use as many infusions of beauty these days as we can find and share.