Busy Hands Homestead

Time is rushing past.   The windows are down, my hair tangling in the wind, as I sing along to the radio, and my hand rests on the stick shift, flying down the highway in fifth gear. I have twenty minutes of, what feels like open time, on my way to pick up the kids from horseback riding camp. They have enjoyed a week of horses, ponies, baby goats, tiny bunnies. I’ve endured a week of begging to bring tiny, furry, undeniably cute creatures home.    They almost convinced me. ALMOST. The default answer is: “not until the house is done.” Time is rushing past and it is hard to stop and take a moment to pause, and even harder to look back and reflect on where we have been. We move from day to day, week to week, month to month while also tackling project after project. It is hard to prioritize. It is hard to focus. Sometimes it feels like we are moving in circles.  It is suddenly summer, and not just summer but the middle of summer, almost the end of summer...

For an entire week our mornings and evenings were filled with the chink, chink, chink of cherry pits. Two cherry pies, cherry danishes , and quart bags of pitted cherries are in the freezer.   Jars of apple cherry jam are on the shelf. Once a year we drive up to Finley Point to pick cherries in the summer sun and then jump into the clear  cold water of Flathead lake.   The silver fruit picking ladder gets warm  in the sun and is almost to hot  to touch against my skin as we move from one tree to the next. The sticky, sweet, dark red juice runs down my fingers as I fill the same basket over and over, carrying it up and down the ladder, and we fill the cardboard boxes we brought along. The kids pick cherries for a while, and then get distracted and sprawl on blankets, eating lunch and running through a sprinkler the owner’s of the orchard left on. Between my feet and the ground, between where I stand on the ladder and where the ...

Since we arrived home, nearly midnight, on the fourth of July, our days have been full. Our days have been brimming, no, over flowing with activity.  The weeds were all pulled to reveal little rows of seeds that sprouted in my absence. Kale has been coming into my kitchen by the arm full. Onions are being pulled. We had our first cucumber, followed quickly by many more. Zucchini, Chard, Eggplant, Purple Beans and Snap Peas, Mint, Parsley, Rhubarb, Strawberries, Blueberries and Currants move from garden to plate and sometimes just straight from plant to mouth.  Our hens, which were little more than awkward, gangly adolescents, are now shiny and proud. We check the coop every so often for that very first egg.  Will it be brown? Blue? There are berries to harvest.  And a sink full of strawberries fills our house with a sweet fragrance as they simmer in the process of becoming strawberry syrup and butter.   ...

Do I have a stopping point?  An end goal?  I can't remember any more.  Six quart jars of Amarito Pears line the back of my kitchen counter and six more are ready to go.  I am out of shelf space. The extra shelves Adam hung in our kitchen are filled to capacity.   I am stuck between projects. The things on my list are forever long. I have moments of panic when I remember some thing that I need to do and have not yet done. With only a box and a half of pears sitting in the back room, I feel that I can finally take a moment to sit down - reflect - and recall the sequence of the season that is now filling the kitchen shelves. June  6 - 1/2 pints of Rhubarb Orange Jam             I opened the first jar two days ago - It is fantastic! 3 pints of Pickled Baby Garlic July  5 - 1/2 pints Strawberry Rhubarb Jam 6 - 1/2 pints Cherry Jam with Apple as Pectin 6 - 1/2 pints Cherry Jam (with Palimosa Pectin) ...

A dark ring is left behind in the tub. The bathroom sink is spattered with mud. The kitchen counter is lined with 10 quart jars of peaches, 6 pint jars of cucumber chips, 4 half pint jars of peach jam of fresh out of the oven bread.  Seven jars of dilly beans and 5 pint jars of honeyed bread and butter pickles have already been stashed away on the shelf.  Trays of dehydrated kale and basil are still in the dehydrator needing to be packed away. This isn't exactly how I imagined our Labor Day Weekend. I was hoping for lazing by a river or walking in the woods, but instead I spent most of three days in the kitchen while Adam crawled around in the space below my feet. "You want some coffee?" I shout down at him. "No.  I will just have to come up and pee." A little while later I hear from below me: "Sure, I will take some coffee. I shift a few pots around and put the kettle on. The water is back on after Adam had rerouted all the plumbing to...

Ivory practically jumped into bed last night.  Gone were the tears that had been running down her face, and the numbing ear drops I carefully dripped into her ears after dinner must have been working.  Slipping smoothly under the covers of my bed she grinned at me singing: "Sleep over, Sleep over, it's like a sleep over.  But it's not a sleep over.  It is just laying down in Mama's bed." Adam had driven off just a few minutes earlier to spend the night with his rifle, in spite the icy Montana air, on the side of a mountain alone in a wall tent. I had moved two giant pots filled with forty pounds of halved and cooked apples into our unheated back room to become apple sauce in the morning and decided to cuddle up with Sylvan and Ivory and call it a night.  When Sylvan nudged me awake to nurse I glanced at the clock - almost six in the morning - I don't remember a time that I have slept for that long with out interruption   "Seven thirty ...

Just a week ago Sylvan was still running around in nothing but a diaper. Ivory was lounging in the sunshine. The leaves all around turning every color but green. I hugged the largest Western Larch in the United States! A few days later I marched through my garden bed full of wonderful volunteer tomatoes. I picked red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes and many more green tomatoes.  I lugged a giant box inside. The next night we dragged all those indoor plants that lived outdoors all summer inside.  They now crowd the kitchen table and the space under the window. The cold sent me unpacking. Pulling all the winter coats and hats and gloves out of their hiding places. Snow pants and boots and coats were tried on and either hung on their hooks or put in bags to be passed on to the next lucky children to wear them. Suddenly it is autumn. The sky is blue and clear (no smoke). The buckeyes are just about to rain down from the trees. We rode our bike to th...