A Long Overdue Hello

Please accept my humblest apologies for being absent from the blog for so long.  I really have no excuse.  I do have to admit that I have been on sensory overload.  It feels as though the world is coming apart at the seams and the more chaotic the world, the more I am compelled to live a quiet and peaceful life.  Folly, to be sure, but my reality nonetheless.

Our family has been busy.  We are tirelessly preparing, maintaining and managing.  As the daily news becomes more dire our efforts become more consistently focused on preparation.  We have been inventorying our supplies, rounding out our shopping lists and creating comprehensive location charts.  We have streamlined our preparedness stores, rotated our stock and filled emptying barrels.  We have been cleaning out and organizing all of our outbuildings to make them more usable and easily accessible.  These are jobs we do every summer, but this summer we are organizing, inventorying and cleaning with a quiet, but intensified anticipation.

The shelves are filling up with this year's harvest

Along with our cleaning and organizing, we have been canning - not as much as we'd like, but canning as much as we are able.  We have canned gallons of raspberry jam and raspberry orange conserve, as well as bread and butter pickles and many quarts of green beans.  The shelves are filling and the remaining shelves are cleaned and waiting for the tomato harvest, as well as deer and elk.

Freshly canned green beans and raspberry jam

Bread and butter pickles

As the hot summer days give way to cooler, late summer evenings, we have begun our yearly firewood harvest.  Master Hand Grenade and Miss Serenity have been sawing logs so that the rest of the family can split and stack the year's firewood.

And thus we continue our quest for a quiet and peaceful life.....while we are yet able.