#33 — The Boneyard
Janie,
I’m quite ecstatic about your divorce being finalized in just a few weeks! We’ll throw the party of the century to celebrate! You’ve handled this whole rotten ordeal with wisdom and patience.. always putting the kids emotional and physical needs first. You are an incredible mother.
Funny you’d mention chickens being the gateway farm animal.. because my priest who lives minutes away from us just said he’d love it if we kept a cow on his land haha but that’s a project for next year. I haven’t even planted seeds in my garden yet so I’m falling alarmingly behind. Our chickens should start laying in about 4 months though if everything goes well! I honestly don’t know what color the eggs will be so I’m excited to be surprised! The girls absolutely love them! Sunny begs to be taken downstairs (where we currently keep them until they’re ready to live outside in a few weeks) and she goes right up to the coop and yells “HI CHICKENS!”
Anyway. Here’s a string of some thoughts and events from recent days. I don’t have much of anything interesting or really worthwhile to say. I too am trying to get more organized and struggling.. a lot.
I have high hopes this year about getting a real tan. I’ve started slowly building one in hopes that by the time we set sail in the U.P. I won’t fry. My runs, mowing the lawn, and soon gardening should hopefully help with this. I’m outside with the kids most of the day but that won’t contribute too much to the tan because I keep them out of direct sunlight during peak UV hours. We don’t use traditional sunscreen, just beef tallow which so far has worked great. Even on days when there isn’t as much shade they don’t burn. Oddly enough, my very-not-at-all-crunchy mother recently told me that she never put sunscreen on me or any of my siblings as kids. We spent all day everyday outside and I can’t ever remember getting burned. I’m going to try as best as I can to remember to take magnesium so I can absorb victim D more easily and I’ll be taking electrolytes to help stay hydrated - all essential for protecting yourself from harmful sun interaction. Everyone’s afraid of the sun these days and it’s sad that most peoples lifestyles actually do turn the sun into a threat. I’ll be a very happy lady if my kids can grow up knowing how essential good sunlight is.
I recently heard that drinking watermelon juice can act as sunscreen but working from the inside out? I’m going to look into this.
I recently found a waterfall in the woods near our house with a shallow pool just perfect for the girls to swim in! I’m not 100% sure yet but I think the creek is spring fed. It’s completely shaded except for a few spots where the sun can beam in through little gaps in the trees. As you probably can remember, waterfalls are not very common around here so to stumble upon an undocumented waterfall is as good as gold. My only complaint is that it is right outside a neighborhood so we’ll have to see if it gets any traffic from the locals. But it does inspire me to go off the trails and try to find some more gems out there. Ideally, a cave. But I can’t really do that with the kids so if I ever have some free time in the future….
My runs have been going so well! Right now my routine is to walk 5 mins to warm up, then alternate running for 2 mins and walking for 1.5 mins for a total of 20 mins, and then 5 mins cool down walk. I’ll do that for a week and then increase the running time to 3 min. The couch to 5k plan is so doable for me.
I’ve been making lots of bone broth from scratch! It used to be something that really intimidated me so I kept putting it off. After the first batch I couldn’t believe how easy it was and now I whip it up without giving it a second thought! I’ve thought about just referring to the kitchen as “The Boneyard” which is what I would call my cooking show if I had one, all about bones.
Ginny found these electrolytes packets that are so similar to LMNT which is super popular right now. The main difference is these are flavored with organic fruit and half the price!
-Lydiahttps://a.co/d/fbYllfO