September 30, 2022 – This has been an incredible, wonderful, amazing month! This past month, our middle son was ordained to the Transitional Diaconate on his way to priesthood in the Catholic Church. We are blessed!

We buckled down and worked feverishly to get our house somewhat livable for the guests we were expecting.  At the beginning of the month, we installed heated floor wire in the guest bathroom and then leveled the floor with cement.  It is not perfect, but it will work!  Last month, we tried to dry wall the bathroom and dining room nook, but it took us 5 days to hang 5 sheets of drywall. We decided to hire someone to hang the drywall for us.  He knew we had guests coming, but there was not enough time for him to hang and mud everything.  He was able to hang all the drywall, and get the guest bathroom mudded so we could tile the bathtub area, install a toilet and temporary sink for our guests. That was a huge relief.  Before he hung the drywall, though, we took some saint medals and embedded them in the rafters and over every door and window. We ask these saints to pray for us and all those who come into our home.

Thankfully, we were able to get the shower tiled and a make-shift bathroom set up for our guests.

After the ordination, we hung the shiplap in the kitchen. These boards were given to us from friends who took them down from their house. They were very rough wood, but Katie’s dad put them through a plainer to smooth them out. They look great, and we probably only have to buy 3 or 4 boards to finish the kitchen.

We were surprised to find a HUGE egg in our nesting box one day. We knew it was unique, so we took a video as we cracked it open. We thought it might be a triple yoker, but were surprised to find that it was indeed a triple yoker, but also an egg within an egg!  This picture is a screenshot from the video. A few days later, we had another huge egg which we hardboiled. When we opened that one, we found another whole egg inside.

Earlier in the month, Katie’s brother came for a visit. He was on a cross-country trip to ride his motorcycle on some of America’s back roads. He stopped to ride the Ozark mountain highways.  From our house, he headed west, all the way to the coast. It was neat following his journey. He brought his dog, Dahlia with him and we kept her at the farm as he continued west so he did not have to have her hold up in hotels as he took day trips on his bike.  She was a great visitor and she loved to run in our pasture!

We were still harvesting from our garden and putting the tomatoes and peppers in the freezer. Hopefully we will be able to do something with them this winter. Our freezer is getting full! Even though we are keeping the house and the apple orchard as a priority, we are still thinking and planning for other ventures. We tilled up an area of our property where we’d like to install a high tunnel to grow plant starts to sell in the spring, and then other vegetables later in the year. We figured if we have people come out to pick apples, we would have other opportunities for them to buy products from our farm, and a high tunnel would help us provide more items. It would also give nice visibility of our farm from the highway.