July and August and it's HOT

July 22nd Mom's coming home from the rehabilitation place today!

One of our Birch trees came down in the Winds on Wednesday

I went out Thursday evening to feed the deer and stopped to look at what was left of the Blueberries, not much I picked another 2/3 of a cup and headed inside to wash them and get them onto a tray for freezing.

The earth belongs to God 

Now the ground resists our assignment to tend it. Labor still produces fruit, but it also produces frustration. The shovel hits stone, the calf gets sick, the fence post rots, and the tractor refuses to start on the one morning you need it most.
Every homesteader has heard the ground whisper the same message:
Something here is no longer the way it ought to be.  

So, no matter how many acres we own, we cannot purchase our way out of death. No matter how large the barn, how full the pantry, or how carefully written the will, our bodies return to the dust from which Adam was made.

Every garden bed reclaimed from erosion is a small act of stewardship. Every compost pile, repaired fence, planted orchard, protected creek bank, and rested pasture declares that the earth belongs to God and must not be treated like something disposable. 

Rose pretty much has the dog house repainted, 20+ years had dulled the paint allowing wood to rot in places.

I trimmed up the Forsythia, the Quince that was threatening to grow through the roof of the garden shed.  Then down to the driveway to trim up the weeds there, I headed for the pond there was some wild rose taking over the paths I used when I needed to get to the pond taking over.  Rose is using the trailer so I'd pick up all the trimmings I'd left laying on the ground Sunday.  Two trailer loads did the job, I mowed the deer yard and road out there.

We made a trip to the barn to put a bunch of stuff in storage. 

We made some adjustments to the flagpole in the field, took down the 250th flag on the side of the house and changed the flag on the barn.

I'll start calling roofing contractors to replace our nearly 30 year old roof.  We'll price out standing seam metal roofing as well as conventional shingles.

We'll walk the property looking for Purple Loostrife this weekend

The horseflies are bad this summer, there'll be 4 or five swarming the car as we pull into the yard.

There were two opossums out in the deer yard on Tuesday

Our tomatoes are still coming along, not as many as last year, soon enough we'll have ripe ones. 

I walked over to check on the blueberry bushes, they were all gone now. 

Friday night a large raccoon came into the deer yard 

Holy cow, has it been hot and humid, you sweat buckets just walking around. 

Saturday was HOT and HUMID, and it's a work day at the house, we demo'd the run-in shed wall and replaced the side wall with 5 new 1"x8"x8' rough cut boards, installed two new shelves once the wall was complete, putting everything we'd removed back in. Cut up the old wall boards so we could reuse some of the good pine boards and off to the burn pile with the remainder of the rotted boards.  I mowed the deer yard and the main road.

Rose and I walked through the start up process and tested the generator, it fired right up! 

Sunday we're doing a meet and greet with a rescue a two year old German Shepherd dog that had been passed around house to house, we'll see how it goes, if we agree we'll bring him home today. We're hopeful he'll fit in. 

So far so good, meet "Bullet" he was already named, we brought home, fairly well trained, knows to go slow down the back stairs on a leash, is house trained, sweet soul, so far he is fitting in well.

It's damned hot and humid this week, ugh! Our tomato plants love the heat and humidity, us not so much.

Wednesday evening, I picked up a bunch of fallen dead branches in the side yard, cut the front lawn, and pulled two big piles of weeds from the front beds.

We'll have tomatoes by Sunday evening I'm guessing! 

Your homestead is no longer just a quiet place to live. The garden, pantry, barn, workshop, woodpile, and skills passed around the dinner table form a living insurance policy—one no distant war or shrinking dollar can completely take away.

And with every new row planted, every jar sealed, and every skill passed down, that policy grows a little stronger.

Saturday morning it's gonna be another Scorch'a, Rose is doing some sanding on the run in shed this morning.

I do love me a good nap. 

Sunday another unbearably HOT day, we keep the living room air conditioned but the remainder of the downstairs gets as hot as it is outdoors.

I should be picking the first of our tomatoes today Sunday.  We went and did some food shopping Saturday evening and picked up some sourdough bread for tomato sandwiches!

This is August, and the days are HOT. (90+) with 200% Humidity.  HOPE is on the horizon, the remainder of August should be in the mid 80s!

We need to check the blackberries to see how they are coming along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CNN Poll says 1/3 of Democrats identify as socialists, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has arrived at the party.

Bananas still have to be bought. They still have to be shipped. They still have to be stocked. Someone still has to pay for them.

• A politician can announce cheap bananas.
• A warehouse still has to supply bananas.
• A truck still has to bring bananas.
• A worker still has to stock bananas.
• The price at the register can be lowered through subsidy or policy.
• The bananas themselves remain stubbornly attached to reality. 

A government can own a grocery store. It can subsidize a grocery store. It can even operate a grocery store more cheaply under certain conditions. But eventually, the same economic question appears: What is the actual cost? The answer cannot be negotiated away.

The great illusion of political arithmetic is the belief that numbers can be persuaded to serve a preferred conclusion. Costs can only be reduced, absorbed, delayed, disguised, or transferred, but the grocery receipt eventually arrives—and when it does, someone always pays.