A Day In the Life

Summer sunrise.

 Here in the waning days of summer, I treasure every day. I am a creature of habit. I like to follow a daily schedule – more or less, as long as it’s my schedule and I can alter it when I wish. Once school starts in a few weeks, I won’t have that luxury anymore. So every day I follow my routine knowing that these days will not last much longer.

My day starts at 5:30 when I wake up. I always wake up at that time, school or no school. I’m a morning person. I like to greet the sun. After I wake up, I go upstairs to my workroom and do my morning exercises – nothing strenuous, just some stretching. Then I shower and dress and head to the barn. During most of the summer, it’s light by then. As the days grow shorter, it will be dark and I’ll have to take a light with me. The chickens are always waiting for me to let them out of the coop. I open their door and they rush out and head to the top of their yard and wait for their breakfast. I open the big door on the lower barn and take out their waterers and fill them at the rain barrel. Then I go and open the upper part of the barn and throw them some scratch and fill their feeder. Now they’re set for the day.

Breakfast at the barn.

From the barn, I turn and walk through my little meadow. I can see the beaver pond from there and if I’m careful and don’t move too much, I can see what’s going on there. Sometimes the beavers are still out working on the dam. There are usually ducks, geese, and herons in and around the pond. As I move along the meadow path they always see me and most of them fly away.

Through the meadow.

The beaver pond at sunrise.

From the meadow, I cross the yard to the outside door of the woodshed. That’s where I keep the buckets of sunflower seeds I fill the bird feeders with. There are usually birds waiting for me, mostly chickadees sitting in the crab apple tree chattering at me to hurry.

Across the yard to the bird feeders.

After I fill the feeders, I take a walk through the orchard to check on the progress of the apples and look for any changes that occurred in the night – visits from deer, voles caught in my traps that need removing. Then I walk through the vegetable garden and the flower garden and note what it is I need to do that day after the dew burns off – what needs weeding, what needs to be picked. From there I go indoors and wake the rest of the house for the day. I have my breakfast. We read the scriptures and have our morning prayer. That’s my summer morning routine.

Through the vegetable garden.

Out in the flower garden, the dahlias are at their best right now. The morning glories and the phlox are blooming. The little pinks that grow under the grape arbor are in bloom. They are one of my favorite flowers. They are delicate and so fragrant. The gladiolus are also blooming. I grow them to cut and bring indoors.

Dahlias.

A white dahlia.

Morning glories.

A pink.

Another pink.

A bouquet of gladiolus.

In the afternoon around 3:00, I go down to the barn to do the afternoon chores. I throw the chickens some scratch, check their water, and collect the eggs. In the evenings, my routine varies depending on what we’re doing, but it always includes going down to the barn sometime after dark to close the chicken coop for the night. The chickens live a life of routine. They are up at dawn and ready to roost at dusk. Their routine affects my routine.

August days are busy days. There are always things to do. On Monday I harvested the red onions and set them to cure on the back porch. I picked a basket of tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers and brought them in to process. The tomatoes were just eaten as is by those who like them (not me). The green beans I blanched and froze. The zucchini were eaten for dinner during the week. The cucumbers went into the fridge to await their transformation into pickle relish. I made relish on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Onions curing.

Baskets from the garden.

On Tuesday morning I picked two cabbages and made a batch of sauerkraut. The cabbages looked good, they were nice and solid. This time I chopped some garlic and shredded some apples and added them to the cabbage to ferment. The kraut crock will sit on the kitchen counter for about five weeks before the kraut will be ready to eat.

A crock full of kraut.

Every day last week I spent some time weeding. These days the garden is running rampant, especially the weeds. They know the season is advancing and they’re trying to make seeds to assure their survival. My job is to prevent them from doing that. It’s a losing battle because I’m vastly outnumbered, but I do what I can.

I also spend time every morning killing Japanese beetles. I fill a big bowl with soapy water and knock them into it to drown. It isn’t all that effective, but I try to protect the important plants they love to eat most –  raspberries, blackberries, beans, and zinnias. If I was ever tempted to fog my yard with poison, it would be to destroy Japanese beetles. But I don’t do things like that and it wouldn’t really be effective anyway because more just fly in from other places.

My enemies, the Japanese beetles on my grapes.

Tuesday and Wednesday were relish making days. It’s a two day process. I have a good recipe for relish given to me years ago by our neighbor Brownie Stilson. It calls for cucumbers, onions, peppers, mustard seed, celery seed, cider vinegar, and sugar. I had everything but the peppers – mine aren’t ready yet – so we got some from our friends the Joneses. On Tuesday evening I ground the cukes, onions, and peppers. I really miss Josiah at relish making time. He was always my grinder. I use an old fashioned hand grinder. It chops everything to the perfect size. After grinding it all, I salted it and set it to rest overnight. On Wednesday morning, I drained the mash, added the sugar and spices, cooked it all up, and canned it. I made twelve pints. I hope to make a few more batches. We eat a lot of it and give a lot away.

Making relish.

My list of uncompleted summer projects is still pretty long. I think at this point most of the projects will wait until Josiah is home to help me. He’ll be home on September 4th. It’s hard to believe that his two years are over already, but on the other hand, it seems like ten years since he was here last.

On Friday evening, Stacey and I were taking a stroll through the garden when suddenly, she jumped away and let out a shriek. I thought she’d been startled by a vole, but she insisted she saw a large snake go into the long flowerbed. We cautiously looked around for it among the plants. By her description, 3 feet long and brown, I assumed it was a garter snake. We don’t have venomous snakes in our part of the county. After looking around a few minutes, we spotted it hiding in a clump of sedum. I took a photo of it peeking out at us. I hope it has taken up residence in my garden. A snake that size can eat voles and I welcome any help I can get with getting rid of voles.

The snake peeking out.

On Saturday, Stacey and I did a little local shopping. We drove out to the Amish store for some butter, cereal, peanut butter, and to place an order for chocolate chips. The store recently moved from up near North Bingham to a farm closer to us in Ulysses Township. This farm is owned by the Brenneman family. I told the girl who runs the store that we are related. My second great grandmother was Catherine Brenneman. I believe all Brennemans descend from Melchior Brenneman who was born in Switzerland in 1665 and came to America to escape religious persecution. I’m sure there are thousands of Amish and Mennonites who descend from him – so do I.

The Brenneman's farm.

The Brenneman's home and store.

My 2nd great grandmother, Catherine Brenneman.

From the Amish store, we drove to the place where we buy milk, God’s Country Creamery, at the Bachman farm just up the road from us in Newfield. They were celebrating their 10th anniversary in business and had quite a lot of things going on. We love their milk. They also make cheese and they sell other local produce – meat, vegetables, and fruit. We’re glad we live where things like this are available. We don’t do much shopping at big grocery stores if we can help it.

At God's Country Creamery.

On Saturday afternoon I picked tomatoes and finally had enough to can the first batch of salsa of the year. I also blanched and froze another batch of green beans. I finished harvesting the rest of my onions and set them to cure on the back porch. We’ve come to that time of the year when almost every day there’s something that needs to be harvested and canned, frozen, or dried.

The first batch of salsa.

It’s a beautiful summer Sabbath day today. It’s warm and sunny and everything looks summer perfect. I taught one of my favorite Old Testament lessons in Sunday School about the prophet Elisha. Now we’re home from church. Lunch is almost ready – lasagna and garlic bread. I can smell it and it’s making my mouth water. After lunch and a short nap, I’ll see if anyone wants to go for a walk. Then there is a new week waiting full of the usual and who knows what else.

Sunset on Thursday, looking east.

The same sunset, looking west.