The Big White Farmhouse

intentional living, little by little

No.673: A Slow and Simple Summer // Write a Letter

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With just a few weeks of summer vacation left, I’m intentionally trying to slow down and make time for a few important tasks.  Today I’m writing a letter!  Can you believe that I haven’t written a single piece of snail mail this entire year?  I checked my stationery stash and was surprised to find that I have significantly less than I thought I did.  I’ll have to remedy that in the future.

Anyway, I chose this “Thinking of You” card from Michelle Mospens.  She does all of her own artwork and calligraphy and they are all beautiful.  I also pulled out my last new baby card for my cousin who delivered last week.  This one is from Love Light Paper.  Wish I didn’t live so far away, so I could snuggle that little cutie!

P.S. In the market for some new cards?  I share many of my favorite small business stationery shops in these posts.

No.672: July in Review & Goals for August 2022

FIVE THINGS I LOVED
  1. the blueberry crumble pie I made for the 4th of July
  2. hand-sewing my scrap quilt while listening to podcasts or Youtube videos (I’m like an old lady sitting by the radio, ha!)
  3. excitement for the upcoming school year
  4. a refreshed living room arrangement
  5. a well-deserved martial art belt promotion for my son
FIVE LESSONS I LEARNED
  1. It is so satisfying to enjoy the fruits of your labor. // Summer is in full swing and we’ve been enjoying so many delicious things from the garden.  We also got our first pig back from the butcher and wow, so delicious!  There really is no comparison.
  2. I’m glad we’re not full-time chicken farmers. // We love raising our own food but man oh man, are we tired of moving/feeding/watering broilers, ha!  Processing day is set for mid-August and we will be so happy to be done with chicken for 2022.
  3. I feel my best with intermittent fasting. // I don’t restrict myself severely and even have a sweet treat here and there, but just paring down the eating window really helps.
  4. Comparison is the thief of joy. // Blame it on my exhaustion from six months of constant work, but I fell into the comparison trap after hearing about a friend’s carefree, successful, monetarily abundant life.  I’m generally at peace with where I am in life, but that conversation sent me on a spiral of “What am I doing wrong?” questioning before I quickly pulled myself out of that destructive thought process.  Our lives are not the same and that’s okay.  I need to be okay staying in my own lane.
  5. There is an eating disorder related to the “clean eating” movement. // I watched this older video about orthorexia nervosa, a fixation on “clean living” which can spiral into other eating disorders.  Apparently, it is on the rise due to social media influencers.  So sad.
FIVE GOALS FOR AUGUST
  1. Try to blog every weekday.  I’ve wanted to try a “Write 30 Days” challenge all year and every month felt too full. August won’t be any different, but I’m going for it anyway!
  2. Complete a “low buy” month.  
  3. Get some animals off the property.  Fiona will be headed to the pig processor and we’ll be processing broilers 2.0.  We’ll welcome the break.
  4. Finish as many homestead projects as possible.  So many half-finished projects!  I’d like to sow the seeds for the fall garden, continue laying woodchips and compost in the food forest, and construct the permanent pig shelter.
  5. Start school!

No.671: Homestead Diaries // July 2022

+ The weather has been so hot and we had our work cut out for us making sure the animals were continually watered.  The pigs are extra vulnerable because they can’t sweat.  They loved their wallows and were constantly covered in mud.  Living their best life!  In other pig news, we saw some behavior that may mean that Ethel actually isn’t pregnant like we originally thought.  It’s wait and see at this point…I obviously have no idea what I’m doing.

+ I harvested zucchini, squash, green beans, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, jalapenos, and even a few raspberries.  We are continually tickled by the fact that we can make meals that use ingredients we grew ourselves!

+ We dealt with a horrible Japanese beetle infestation that ate through the leaves of most of our fruit trees.  A huge blow, but thankfully it looks like the trees themselves will survive.  I’m already making preparations to proactively combat them next year.

+ I continued working on the food forest.  (Broken record at this point…)  More compost, more rocks, more wood chips…

+ We have a final decision on the ducks: two boys and two girls!  They are really looking different these days with different colored beaks and coloring.  I especially love the little flippy feather on the boys’ tails.

+ Fiona update: a farmer friend generously found us an open spot with his pig processor!  Such a relief to have that fiasco sorted out.  If all goes to plan, she should be off the property by mid-August.

No.670: What I Read in July 2022

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#42. THE GIRL WHO CHASED THE MOON by Sarah Addison Allen // ★★☆☆☆
(amazon // bookshop // better world books)

According to Goodreads, I have had this book shelved on my TBR list since 2010!!  At this point, I have completely forgotten who recommended it to me, so I went in completely blind.  And…it was okay.  It was a light read, felt very YA (although I don’t think it was), lacked character development and the plot was uninteresting.  I had qualms with the light touch placed on some heavy issues (like self harm), but maybe I’m just a curmudgeon.  But seriously: there was one male character who snuck into the bedroom of the girl he liked – multiple times! – just to watch her sleep. Am I the only one who finds that not romantic and incredibly creepy?

#43. ALIAS EMMA by Ava Glass // ★★★★☆
(amazon // bookshop)

I read this spy thriller in less than 24 hours!  The story is about a young spy on her first big assignment: bring an innocent man wanted by the Russian government to safety.  All she has to do is get him into MI6 before an assassination team gets to him first.  Such a page turner.  I especially loved that while there was a strong female protagonist, she was also fallible and didn’t treat the men in the story as idiots.  (A big pet peeve of mine.)  If this becomes a series, I will definitely keep reading.  (Alias Emma will be published on August 2, 2022.  Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book!)

#44. HIDDEN AMERICA: FROM COAL MINERS TO COWBOYS, AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPLORATION OF THE UNSEEN PEOPLE WHO MAKE THIS COUNTRY WORK by Jeanne Marie Laskas // ★★★☆☆
(amazon // bookshop // better world books)

This was an interesting look at the jobs most of us take for granted.  For example, I don’t think many of us realize the amount of trust we give to air traffic controllers who make sure airplanes land safely and don’t crash into each other!  Another chapter was about drilling for oil on Oooguruk Island off of Alaska’s North Slope and I fell down a little rabbit hole.  The creation of the island is fascinating as well as just the act of drilling in general.  Did you know that the scale of drilling is actually pretty small?  “The drill bit ranges in diameter from six to thirteen inches; the pipe as small as three inches.  An oil well is a remarkably skinny hole.”  I also found the information about directional drilling technology really interesting: “[It] allows drillers to go down, over, up, snaking any which way through the earth and landing in ever sweeter sweet spots, reaching horizontally as far as four miles from the rig.  In the old days, a single vertical well exposed about 200 to 300 feet of oil reserves.  Now drillers can reach more than 20,000 feet of reservoir rock with one well, significantly reducing the footprint above ground, which in turn reduces costs and, in this part of the world, scarring to the tundra.” (p.217)  The more you know…

#45. PLAINSONG by Kent Haruf // ★★☆☆☆
(amazon // bookshop // better world books)

I usually enjoy small town Americana stories, even when the plot is slow and meandering.  This book was not bad, per se, and I loved the relationship between the teenage pregnant girl and the two farmer bachelor brothers who took her in.  (It had a Secondhand Lions feel that was endearing.)  However, the graphic sexual scenes were really unnecessary and didn’t carry the plot further.  Just an okay read for me.  (This was a pick for my Reading the Alphabet Challenge.)

#46. COPPER RIVER by William Kent Krueger // ★★★☆☆
(amazon // bookshop // better world books)

Number six in the Cork O’Connor mystery series.  A good one.

#47. THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK by Kim Michele Richardson // ★★★☆☆
(amazon // bookshop // better world books)

This historical fiction novel set me off on another rabbit trail!  The main character is an Appalachian pack horse librarian who has blue-tinged skin due to a blood condition called methemoglobinemia.  This article from 1982 about “the blue people” was interesting.  I also learned about the apparent controversy between this book and one of a similar flavor, maybe too similar?

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