August 2022
Fourteen days until my due date! Thankfully, time has been passing pretty quickly. There are days that are rough, but overall, I’ve been able to keep myself preoccupied enough to make the waiting bearable. I had my last important scheduled event cancelled this morning, and just had a doctor’s appointment. Hopefully, the last one before baby comes.
So, a while ago, I was told by a nurse that works labor and delivery that storms often trigger labor for women, and while it made sense when I heard it, I’m officially convinced. I haven’t gone into labor yet, but the nights we’ve had thunderstorms recently, I’ve had contractions throughout the storms. They stop as soon as the storm stops, and my guess is that if I were closer to my due date, that I’d have had the baby by now.
Anyway… Things have been good. Busy, a little chaotic, but good. We got geese, had our niece and nephew come spend a long weekend with us, visited with my cousin and her family, did a bunch of homeschool planning, and did some harvesting and canning, just to name a few things!
The other day, I went out to do some grocery shopping, and when I got home, we discovered that one of the freezers was acting up and needed to be unplugged to assess if it was a goner or not. That meant cleaning out the big chest freezer to make room for other things. I ended up having a long day that day. I made something like 5 gallons of broth from chicken, turkey, and pork bones, canning most of it, making a meal for the family. I ended up passing some items on to my friend to clear a bit of space, and all of the grinding meat that’s been waiting for me to make more sausage came up for me to prep for grinding.
Yesterday, after the meat was thawed, I finally got around to the grinding. It was something like 27 lbs. of pork! I had to take frequent breaks to rest my back and belly… finished reading a book I was half-way through, started another and got about halfway through that one! I canned most of the pork, but some of it was turned into pork burgers. Yes, I finally got around to using the burger press that I was given for Christmas (or my birthday, I forget which)! I made breakfast sausage patties and Italian meatballs. The pre-canned stuff tasted good, so we’ll see how that goes once we start cracking those open.
My mom was over last week and helped me with canning the beets and cleaning up the kitchen. With her help and the kids, we also picked a bunch of the onions that had been knocked over, and we got those laid out for curing. I definitely need extra hands for all of the work right now. It’s incredibly hard on my back and belly if I do too much alone. Adam helped me a lot with the meat project yesterday, and I could not have done it without him!
I’m definitely going to need help as the summer and harvest season progress. I’m taking frequent breaks and can’t even work daily. It’s usually a day or two of hard work WITH a lot of help, and then a day or two of pretty much just resting to get the swelling and soreness to go away. Potato harvest is going to be fun… Lol! Also, it couldn’t come at a worse time. All of those potatoes will need to start being dug right about the time of my due date. The kids aren’t looking forward to it, and unfortunately, I’m going to have to rely heavily on them to pick everything, even if the baby is born before then.
Well, I forgot to take a picture, but we did get geese! One of my friends from high school, her dad reached out to us to see if we were interested in taking them off of his hands. We had a nice visit when we went to pick them up. The geese are getting used to Aaron at this point (he is the primary caretaker). He said they don’t hiss at him as much, so that’s a good thing! We’ve got 8 goslings and 2 parents.
Again, I failed at pictures, but the new building is coming along nicely! We’ve got the materials for roofing the thing, and there are a few more boards to put onto the sides, but it’s looking like a building now. We’re actually going to meet our goals, I think!
We’ve had a lot of unexpected developments in the last couple of weeks. God is working on some big things in our area, and He’s put a lot on my heart and Scott’s recently. I’m not ready to share all that’s going on, but it’s exciting, and I will share when the time’s right. So, some of our attention has been diverted from tasks that we were expecting to be working on towards things that are of more importance. The buzz word as of late from everyone we talk to has been “community,” and both things relate to that.
I’m sort of avoiding the gardens… I had to after the freezer debacle, because I had to focus my attention on dealing with that whole thing. That and the humidity. I get so exhausted just from stepping out on humid days. If it’s humid, I can’t function for very long before feeling sick, but it cools off in the evenings, and I always miss the nice weather! Oh well. I’ve been enjoying the rest and all of the reading and planning that I’ve been doing.
Oh, I did do a bunch of random cleaning in the last week. After the freezer thawed, I had to spend my time monitoring things in the kitchen, so I straightened out the lower kitchen cabinets. I’ve been meaning to do that for weeks. The big freezer got washed out before we restocked it, and the upright was thawed and washed, and appears to be working again. I also cleaned out some school bins that have been staring me down but that I’ve been too lazy to deal with. I don’t know if that’s nesting or just necessity.
Not much of an update this time, but I guess I’ll have plenty to report as time allows as the harvest really begins to come in and the baby is born!
Love and Blessings~Danielle
