Normal Days

It's just a normal day.  Nothing special.

After a week off while we worked hard on other things, we are back to the discipline of homeschooling.  The kids are scattered around the house doing their school work and my evening holds the promise of correcting papers.

Preserving the harvest is an everyday job that I seem to only remember every other day.  After the green beans are picked, they need snapped and blanched.  I don't think I've gotten it all done in one day yet.  After picking in the morning, I leave the bucket somewhere and discover it the next morning.  Ack!  These beans I finally finished today actually waited three days.  We picked them Friday, snapped them Saturday, and then I forgot to blanch them until today.  That's a long time!  While they sit around, they lose some of their tender freshness, so we'll pay for this forgetting in flavor.  I'm making a new resolution to move faster.

We're getting a full gallon bag of these green beans every three days.  I just love how the freezer is filling up of these wondering vegetables.  Everybody in the family likes green beans and they are one of the highest producers in the garden.

We are making a cake today, so it begins with a fine grind on the wheat.  I'm amazed we can get such light and well flavored cake from whole wheat, but the grind must be just as fine as we can get it.

Today is nothing special, just normal cooking and schooling and being family.  These are days that are easy to disregard, but it's in these typical normal days that real life happens.  The breeze is cool this morning but the sun is shining.  The chickens are scratching.  The cows are grazing.  The children are feeding their minds and bodies.  It's a good day.