Status Report: July 2024

Many years ago when blogging was popular, a lot of us Christian women bloggers wrote a monthly post called a Status Report.  More or less what it was, was several blog posts rolled into one, under specific categories as you'll see below.  It was just a simple way to share our thoughts about several things without dedicating an entire blog post to each thing. The last one I ever did was the last week we lived on the farm, before we bought a house and moved to the city. 11 years ago!  

I have lots of thoughts on all the things, so...I've decided to resurrect the old monthly Status Report. 

So here we go! 😊

Sitting: inside with the AC on. I'd like to be sitting outside and taking advantage of it being summer, but the Lord has chosen to keep the heat turned up, and bring in tons of rain. Folks may not like it, but many people's gardens are doing fantastic for it. Other than my cucumbers, my garden is certainly being blessed with the current weather, even if I can't sit outside. I really can't complain.  

Been busy with: Canning season!  Indeed canning season has begun with seasonal fruits and veggies in abundance. This past week I've been able to put up a batch of garlic dill pickles, bread & butter pickles, pickled carrots and a batch of raspberry jam (none of which have made it to the shelf yet). Along with the canning I've been busy tidying up and organizing the the canning shelf. It's more or less just been "put it where it fits" for the last few years so, time to get my act together. 😄 

Feeling: Happy that it's canning season again. 

Wishing: The growing season was longer in my area or that at I had a decent greenhouse to grow year round.  That would be so cool. What a fantastic way to stay busy and active, growing your family's groceries.  

Thinking: about a post I saw on social media regarding motherhood.  Actually several posts lately from various folks discussing aspects of motherhood.  Specifically, Christian, biblically defined motherood.  The post I saw today was essentially this question: If you've always wanted to be a stay at home mom, what was that decision or that goal driven by?   I thought that was a great question.  I've always wanted to be and thankfully am a stay at home mom, and one big part of what drove that for me was not having one when I was growing up, and then seeing examples of what that looked like in my friend's homes. By the time I was 3, my mom was single and had to work outside the home to raise her family.  Most all of my friends though, did have a stay at home mom, and almost all of those moms were happy people (at least as far as they let on), so I was blessed with seeing what that looked like. More or less I just saw amazing examples of what that life was like and it left a permanent impression on me.  

Wondering: what planet I'm on where John Rich goes on Tucker Carlson and tells him the teaching of a pre-trib rapture is a lie. 😳

Looking forward to: when the US Presidential election is over. 😉

Excited about: hearing lids pop when you've taken your cans out of the canner and sat them on a tea towel on the counter. 😍

  

And that will wrap up this Status Report. 

Thanks for stopping by, and have an amazing day.  😊

Garden 2024 Update #10

Other than a sad loss of cucumbers this year from constant rain and flooding, the garden is pretty much right on track.  I'm also including some fun pics of my walk at the river, because there's always something cool to get pics of.

This is my volunteer tomato plant looks to be a slicer!  Growing in the same pot is a strawberry plant, and some purslane that I posted a pic of last update.

Doubled in size since last week. Each time I've googled this plant, from any angle, it tells me it's a Black Mulberry. If you're a mulberry grower, I'd love to hear from you to confirm!

Sometimes, harvests look like this. My wee basket of cherry tomatoes and spearmint for the tea jar.

Spotted this dude on the blackberries.  Google tells me he's a Snipe Fly, or a Rhagio. 

I'm going with Rhagio, as it sounds like a cool name you might find in a Tolkien story. 

On the way to the walking path at the river, I spotted this lovely creature.  It didn't appear afraid of me at all, and let me get about 4 feet away, taking pics.  I'm more or less a Disney Princess now. 😂

Cool structure spotted in the woods, that wasn't there last week.  Lots of kids play in these woods so I suspect one of them or a group of them decided to build this. Very impressive!

Scarlet Runner Beans showing off in the middle of the garden 💖

First batch of garlic dills this year.  Half were mine, the other half I had to pick up at the farmer's market.  Cucumber Lane will be getting an overhaul this fall after the season is over, and I'll be building two new raised beds there instead of planting directly in the ground. 

Just being a Disney Princess again as these two doves let me walk right up to them. 💖

Thanks for stopping by and taking the garden stroll with me 😊

Garden 2024 Update #9

The garden is in full swing this first week of July, and with that also comes loads and loads of mosquitoes, and a spot or two of powdery mildew on my cucumbers and bee balm.  I use the baking soda, dish soap & water recipe to keep it at bay, and it seems to work rather well.  Here's some pics I've snapped over the last couple of weeks in and around the garden.

I transplanted my raspberries this year and they're not producing nearly as well as I'd hoped, so this lovely batch of raspberry jam comes from berries I picked up at the local farmer's market.

This delightful jar of magic potion is a Wild Young Country Cherry wine. This is a new adventure for me, and if you'd like to try it as well, the recipe is here:  Wild Fermented Young Country Wine

A wee harvest of Yukon Gold potatoes, garlic, chocolate mint, holy basil & pickling cucumbers. All of my garlic gets dehydrated then turned into garlic powder for my own seasoning blends (eliminating the need to ever buy it at the store, for the last several years).

Some lovely Sugarbaby Cherry tomatoes

I picked up a couple of Elderberry bushes from the local greenhouse.  This one is called a York Elderberry, and the other one is called a Scotia Elderberry. I've never grown elderberry before so I'm doing a lot of homework on these beautiful berry bushes, and very much looking forward to some homemade elderberry syrup and maybe even an elderberry pie.

Last year I had 9 berry clusters on my one year old Chester Thornless blackberry bushes. This year I have more than 50 clusters!  I'm really looking forward to them ripening next month and a big, beautiful blackberry harvest.

Beefsteak tomatoes doing well

Small batch of Heal All for drying.  If you have this growing in your back yard (and odds are, you do) don't waste it, use it up! Here's a great article on how to ID it, process it and use it: Foraging and Using Self Heal 

While this is not my back garden, it is just a 5 minute walk away, and where I try to get at least several walks in a week, in my ongoing effort to stay as active as I can.  It's a beautiful path along the Thames River here in southern Ontario, lined with lush foliage that includes numerous cherry trees and wild raspberries. 

Whoever said plants can't talk, never met these 3 amigos. 😁 

My raspberry bush on the left, peony in the center, and hibiscus on the right are all desperately leaning into the eastern side of the yard where the sun is unobstructed by the giant maple tree canopy.  What these plants are saying is basically, transplant me, or get that Maple tree trimmed back.  Both will be happening at the end of the season. The peonies will be moved and the maple tree is getting a long overdue trimming to pull the shade canopy back & allow more sun into the garden.

The Scarlet Runner beans all the way to the top of the 7.5 foot trellis

I've had several volunteers show up this year, and this Purslane in the spring onion pot is just the latest.  It joins the volunteer tomato also in the same pot 😊 Most people consider this a weed but did you know it's actually a food?  Here's a good article on the health benefits of Purslane, or what Chinese folklore calls "the vegetable for long life". 

In my ongoing attempt this season to beautify my space, I've addeed these window boxes and these pretty solar lanterns on both the north and south sides of the cottage.  The cut out pattern on the metal lanterns casts a most lovely light along the wall of the cottage at night.  The window boxes contain Mojito Mint I picked up for half price since they were mostly dead.  I've been able to thankfully bring them back to life! (The next beautifying my space project will be to build a wee front porch deck for the cottage, and get rid of those paver stones.)

My volunteer tomato plant. It's always a fun surprise to see volunteers show up.  Last year, I had so many volunteer beets growing in the compost, I harvest them all & canned a batch of pickled beets.  Free food! 😁

Another volunteer this year.  Google lens tells me this is a Black Mulberry.  Funny thing is, I almost bought a Black Mulberry bush earlier this season, then changed my mind and thought I'd pick one up later.  When I went back, they were sold out.  A week later, this showed up in the raised bed where my butternut squash are planted. 

Thanks for stopping by and going on this fun stroll through the garden with me. 😊

Social Media Comment Section: Homestead Bashing

Because I've set a boundary for myself in my activity on social media to contribute nothing but encouragement (hopefully), I choose to not get involved in the comment sections there in what may be considered to be controversial issues. So this is my space for sharing some expounded thoughts on what I see there. 

Recently I was standing in my dining room at the table, picking individual basil leaves off their stems from four different kinds of basil plants to lay out on a tea towel to dry.  I have a dehydrater, but certain plants I like to let leave air dry instead, so the task at hand was to pick off leaf, after leaf, after leaf, one at a time. Just part of the deal, if you harvest and process basil.

As I was doing this, I began to think about bits and pieces of a public conversation I read with a Homestead Basher (yes, it's a thing) and some other folks that were commenting on this person's opinion.  

First, I'll explain Homestead Basher.  I didn't even know this was a thing until I re-opened my long dormant account on twitter/X about a year ago.  I quickly discovered there is a group of folks that seem to enjoy making fun of and making condescending comments about those who homestead.  I'm not entirely certain why they do this, but the same folks also tend to loathe "the patriarchy", disrespect those who hold traditional opinions of gender roles, openly promote/embrace some form of feminism and almost always put "homesteading" in scare quotes. I don't have much in common with these folks but their comments come up from time to time as it happens to do on social media, so that's how I discovered them & saw this conversation. 

In this particular incident, The Basher had made a comment in reference to how some modern day "homesteaders" (and yes, it was in scare quotes) tend to romanticize the past, and then informed the reader that it was terribly hard work and that they would much rather be spending their time & using their gifts, skills and abilities elsewhere,  instead of "on the homestead". 

Basically all the comments agreed, more or less listing off all the exotic places they could be or incredible intellectual things they could be doing instead of dirty, sweaty, back breaking physically demanding work. 

As a work-at-home mom, and an urban, modern day homesteader... I had thoughts. 

First, I've never known of a homesteader to romanticize the work involved so I don't know where that comes from.  Homesteaders are in fact more familiar with the hard work involved than anyone else.  Because we do it and live it every day. We're also quite thankful that we have many incredible modern conveniences that homesteaders of the past only dreamed about. We talk openly about what we're growing, what animals we're raising, which ones are coming, which are breeding, which breeds do better for our situations, what we're getting out of, what we're getting into, what failed, what was a success, what's being built, what needs repairing, etc. Our physically demanding lifestyle is something we just happen to love, and we also love talking about it quite openly and honestly with fellow homesteaders, or those interested in the lifestyle.  

For some homesteaders raising animals as well, this is year round and for others it's a seasonal gig depending on their growing season and greenhouse availability. Either way, it takes an incredible amount of dedication to working hard, to achieve the goal. For some folks, there is just nothing more rewarding and more satisfying than feeling physically exhausted from doing all that work, planning and building, to provide for their family. 

No romanticism whatsover: if you're unwilling or unable to work hard physically, homesteading is simply not for you. I have very limited mobility due to my broken neck and my property is too small to have any animals so my urban homestead is very low-key compared to many, but it's still a load of physical work every single day of the growing season. 

The second thought I had was the idea that being somewhere else, with other people, doing other important things, than being at home working hard for your family, was far more appealing. 

As I picked leaf after leaf off the stems of the basil and then tossed the stems into one pile and the leaves into another pile my only thought was: what's more important than what I'm doing right now in this exact, dull, tedious, repititious, blessed, grateful, thankful moment, processing basil leaves that will bless my family in the way of meals, beverages and more? Is there anywhere else I'd rather be, or is there anyone else I'd rather be with, than the people God blessed me with as family? 

The answer was a resounding NO. There is literally nowhere else on earth I'd rather be. 

I think maybe this is where the dividing line might be for those who find this lifestyle deplorable and worth mocking. For the bashers, they believe their gifts, talents and intellect is wasted away if "merely confined" to the home as they put it. They have so much more to offer, they say, than just being relegated "to the home".  

For most homesteaders, we tend to believe our gifts and talents and intellect were given to us specifically to bless the home, and all who dwell in it. Instead of seeing the home as a place we're limited to, we see the home as the place of foundational blessings where we choose to invest all our talents and hard work into, and then hope our kids take some of that with them when they grow up and move out on their own, and then bless their own households.

So, that's the long version of a social media comment on this particular topic. 😊 

If you're someone looking to get into homesteading and you come across this sort of negative attitude about it, please know that there are folks loving this lifestyle and that most (if not all) the criticisms you may hear about it, are simply not true. And also, we'd be happy to put on a pot of coffee and then spend the next four or five hours telling you how amazingly blessed this life really is. 

Thank you so much for stopping by this old blog and reading my rambly thoughts. I do hope this has blessed and encouraged you in some way. 💖