SUNDAY CANNING.
The Bugtussle family is on vacation! That means we are watching the farm for 10 days - moving the animals, bottle feeding a calf, taking care of Ira's menagerie, and generally being busy! But today. Today, we had an excess of tomatoes and it was just too nice outside to resist. I parked myself in the outdoor kitchen all day long and canned. It was 75 degrees, remarkably quiet with no children or critters around - basically, it was bliss.Canning is normally done in the heat of summer, slaving over a hot stove for hours - and in our case, a WOOD fire! Thankfully, I was able to use the Smith's stove. I read, I watched the hummingbird's on the kiwi vine, I relaxed. We do indeed have a busy 10 days ahead of us, but today was a nice little calm before the storm. Sundays are good for rest, and it is always lovely when our schedule allows them to actually be restful. I hope your Sunday was just as perfect.- Hannah.
BOW AND ARROW.
A friend recently (and generously) lent me a bow and some arrows when he heard I was interested in learning to bow hunt. And then, hilarity ensued. At first I couldn't pull the thing back—being that it was a powerful compound bow—so I had to spend a couple weeks building the muscle. Then, when I finally got to the point where I could draw it back—notably after I learned how to loosen the tension—I started to practice.Practice, however, is a generous term. In reality, I would shoot the arrows approximately nowhere close to the box I'd set up, and then spend the next twenty minutes searching the woods for them. But after a few days I started to hit the box. Then I started to hit the target. Then I started to hit it from further and further away. Suddenly, this instrument which bordered on being a silly toy in my hands when I first picked it up, was becoming a weapon. And as I became more and more accurate—a deadly weapon.The thing is, I want to learn to hunt. Or more specifically, I want to experience the act of hunting. I want to feel what our ancestors felt. I want to feel the nerves and the pain and don't want it to be easy—thus the bow. A gun gives you quite a bit of range (ten times the range in some cases). With a bow, you have to get within forty yards or so if you want a good chance at hitting your target. You have to be quiet, camouflaged, calm. Deer are not stupid, or rather deer have evolved to evade, out run, and outsmart close-range hunters. I want that challenge.However, since I don't feel that simply wanting to "experience" something is necessarily a justification for doing it, I also want to learn to hunt because Hannah and I want the meat. We don't raise any meat animals of our own yet and know this winter we're going to want to have some around. So, I borrowed a bow and arrow, figured out how to shoot it, and soon will start hunting.All I've hit is a box, and I know I have a considerably long way to go before dinner is served. Apologies to our vegetarian followers, but expect a few more posts this winter about my adventures learning to hunt, clean and cook venison––well, hunt definitely, clean and cook, hopefully.- Jesse.
THE SEPTEMBER GARDEN.
The garden is an amazingly strange place right now....cool nights and hot days mean that we have an abundance of fall AND summer vegetables. The second patch of tomatoes finally kicked on (about 200 plants!), the eggplant are doing great, the muskmelons are ripening. BUT - our fall garden is doing great as well! We are already harvesting kale, lettuce, and arugula - and the pumpkins and winter squash are ready as well. We got all the butternut harvested last week, and we took a little sampling from the sweet potato patch yesterday. After the trauma of last year, it has been a blessing of a season for us.- Hannah.
RITUAL NUMBER ONE.
For the most part, Wendell is nocturnal. The majority of his days are spent sleeping off his night's adventures, so it's rare that we'll actually see much of him between the hours of breakfast and dinner...with one exception. After lunch every weekday, Hannah, Wendell and I all take a walk to the mailbox, and when we call for him around that time––"Come on, Goof!"––he comes running out from under the house, out from our neighbor's pasture, or sometimes just out of nowhere, and excitedly joins us on our walk.This long walk to the mailbox has become our first family ritual, and I think we all cherish it equally. Wendell bounds down the road, joyfully bouncing in and out of the woods, throwing his whole body back and forth as he wags his enormous tail. Hannah and I hold hands, occasionally throwing sticks for Wendell to chase (until he gets bored with that and chases our shoes). When we get to our box and grab the mail, we all turn around and head back together, as a family.It's such a lovely event, and it's one of my favorite parts of every day. I like to imagine ourselves making this same walk, at this same time, when we have children, when those children grow up, and when we're old and it takes up the better part of the day. Not that Bugtussle hasn't felt like home since I first laid eyes on it, but adding this ritual has solidified that feeling for me. We live here now, with the ritual to prove it.- Jesse.