Summer Staycation

The longer silence here is mostly due to our lovely (and productive) staycation last week. The primary reason we took a little time off work was to tackle tidying, minimizing, and all those little house projects that pile up when both people work full-time. We went through ALL of our book and reduced to our favorites, best, and beloved, which meant we only needed one bookcase. So we sold the giant black one within a few hours to a very happy lady. We also took 1.5 carloads of stuff and junk to Goodwill and sorted a few piles to take to various family members. We're loving the increasing peace and rest that white space brings to a home.

You might be wondering how a librarian and two avid readers managed to reduce our books so drastically. First, I work at a library and I can get all of these "might read again" books for free anytime we'd like them. Second, roaches. Three very much alive roaches jumped out of the binding of books while sorting and a few shelves were covered in roach poop. I'll take mystery library book stains over known roach poo stains on my reading material any day. Now that we're down to one bookcase, we might be able to clean the shelves periodically and evict any other would-be bug invaders.

Beyond going through our stuff, we found time for extra sleep, dinner with my family, board game time for the Farmer, and even enough margin to watch a summer thunderstorm. We also rediscovered our love of Furman and took several walks. One visit we took a book, Independent Homestead, that we started a year ago and never finished reading together. It got us dreaming about our future land and homestead.

The slower pace of the week allowed us to stop and appreciate the flowers outside and inside. Some of our flowers are only open during daylight and we often miss them during the busy workweeks. Plus, the Farmer has been getting florist "seconds" from the market for a bargain and keeping our house full of color too. Butterfly season is in full swing and flittering visitors have been loving our sunflowers and zinnias around Kilby Cottage. Did you know there's a type of bee that sleeps in flowers? So cute!

The extra time in the mornings and evenings affording some chicken watching. The new girls, Edith and Ethel, have figured out that the older girls don't eat their breakfast quite so close to me and will sneak bites from between my legs. We can't wait to see what shade of blue egg they lay in a few months!

We also spent many an evening harvesting the black bean pods and even had a chance to thresh some of them. The cannellini and kidney beans are next! Two days we were able to visit our farm plot and tackle replanting in the empty rows and trim up the tomatoes to hopefully get a second crop. Speaking of tomatoes, our yellow pear and white cherry tomatoes just started producing here at home and are keeping us well supplied for a household of two!

After a full day of decluttering, we snuck out to our favorite cupcake place and grabbed a treat and browsed the bookstore. They have super delicious gluten-free cupcakes! Chocolate with chocolate for me, of course, and the Farmer got a banana nutella.

On our breaks from sorting piles of stuff and junk, we kept an eye on Facebook Marketplace and Craiglist for a nice used front-loading washer and dryer set to kick off our next home improvement project (adding more counter space in the kitchen!) The good ones tended to get snatched up within hours, but we spotted one that looked okay from the photo and went to check it out in person as it was just down the road from us. Driving up we discovered an inferno in the backyard and the residents didn't speak English. Unfortunately or fortunately, the washer and dryer set were obviously flawed. Crack across the window, gasket wonky, and they had been sitting outside for who knows how long. No deal, but a good story.

Wrapping up the staycation, we visited a fellow homesteading friend who just got these adorable KuneKune/American Guinea Hog piglets! I think they were more happy to see the tomato and hot dog bun scraps we gave them than anything else. ;-) Maybe it will be an extra pound of bacon for them later.