Summer is Here! 7/19/23

**this post was supposed to go live 7/19 but when I went to publish it, half got deleted! I went to bed and hadn’t had time to fuss with it since. So it’s getting published now 😁 thanks for your patience!!

Finally, it feels like Summer! And Summer it is!! We got into the 90s this past week and it was a scorcher! Thankfully, we were able to get our air conditioner put in and even had some time for a few upgrades to the system before the real heat set in. We decided to cut an exhaust hole in the wall of the bus so we could run the ac unit on the floor as it was intended instead of having it propped up on things to be able to vent out the window. Turns out, school bus windows weren’t designed with AC vents in mind! Who knew?!

In addition to the hole in the wall for the hot air to vent out of, Jeff also put an outlet on the floor so we can plug the AC directly into that which is then plugged into shore power so we don’t have to run the extension cord through the door or the window! Woohoo! When it was in the mid 90s outside, it was still a rather warm 78 degrees inside, but boy did it feel great to come into after working in the heat!! We have figured out that if we leave all the windows closed even at night and put the AC on quiet mode, it gives the inside temperature a head start in the morning to keep it cooler throughout the day.

Even though its super hot at the 5-6,000 feet of elevation we have here, up on the tops of the mountains there’s still snow! Jeff took Braydon and Josh on a hike to go fishing last weekend and took this gorgeous shot of the scenery.

Although it looked like there would be some water to fish at only a short hike away, it turned out to be a 2.5 mile hike straight uphill!! All the boys were thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day, but they each had a great time and Jeff got to teach them about some necessary survival skills along the way!

They also caught some very interesting fish way up there. Bryadon loves their huge fins and thinks it makes them look like they can fly!

On their way down, the boys stopped to make a fire along the trail and cook their catch. A cooking fire was a much-needed break from the long hike and lightened their load to carry on the way back down the hill!

Harvesting at the Forbes’ has really ramped up! We had so many veggies to try to stuff in the bags to get delivered to the CSA Members that we had to leave out the cauliflowers! But it is finally time to start harvesting carrots!! We have a love/hate relationship with harvesting carrots. We love them because they are always so festive and colorful and look so fresh in the bags. They also are a fun and delicious snack to munch on if you’re getting close to lunch and realize you didn’t even eat breakfast before you left to go harvest for over 5 hours! There’s also nothing quite like the ‘pop’ the carrots make as they finally loosen from the earth and the smell of the damp carrot once it emerges. But we hate them because they take SO long to harvest and are very difficult as you have to keep the tops intact for the aesthetic appeal. This past week it took Jeff, Braydon, and me almost two hours to harvest and bundle enough carrots to fill the day’s delivery. I still love them, though!!

We had some time to process a bunch of our veggies last week and above is a photo of our pickled radish jar. We pickled some last year in apple cider vinegar and honey and they lasted in the fridge up until this past week when we finished them and then added these new ones. We added fresh dill, garlic scapes, and then topped it off with more apple cider vinegar and another generous squirt of honey. Yum!!

Working at the market I meet many interesting people. Some are locals, weekend warriors, or vacationers/tourists. They all make it very interesting and there is never a dull moment when the store is filled with customers! One of the weekend warriors said he used to make dread beads when his wife had dreads and that he would bring me some next time he was in town. I didn’t think much of it, but he remembered! The handful he brought me is pictured below. The tallest one is from the hull of an antique boat; the ones with red or green on the top and bottom are from a skateboard deck; the spiral is a guitar string wound up; and the furthest left one is a skateboard deck bead with a guitar string inlay. They are so pretty and look really good with all the other brightly-colored beads that currently live in my hair.

The Market has been having a huge sidewalk clearance sale all the month of July clearing out excess inventory from the past year. One of the things in the bins was this adorable salt and pepper pair that nestle in between pine cones and a pine bough. Priced at only $1.99, I knew I needed to put them in the cabins. But there were only two sets, not three!! Bummer! I bought them anyway and they now live in the two little matching cabins. Below is a picture of one in its natural habitat!

The cabins also have little collapsible side tables that guests can set up and move around where they need them. We wipe them down in between each guest’s stay and so eventually the finish will start to wear off. I’ve been putting a new coat of polyurethane on them as I get time. They look much better afterwards! Here’s a picture of one before it’s resealed and one that has a fresh coat. Can you tell which is which??

Seemingly on a polyurethane kick, I also refinished the bench in the barnyard. Every year the caretakers would add another thick layer to reseal the wood and after so many years it was really just getting dark and ugly. Several sanding pads later I had gotten off as much as I could with the palm sander at hand and got a single fresh coat of outdoor polyurethane on the bench. Now older guests can sit while their younger family members enjoy the animals in the barnyard and young children can sit to hold baby bunnies without getting poked by the peeling barnyard bench. It’s not perfect, it has an antique patina to some hard-to-sand parts, but it’s a lot better than it was!

I like using those terry cloth-covered sponges for polyurethane work as it allows for the cracks and crevices to get coated when a brush wouldn’t quite work as well. These sponges come in a multi-pack at Lowe’s and I had some left over from when we used them on the bus so I decided to use them on the bench. Meanwhile, a hen got her head stuck in the bag of sponges, but instead of panicking, she seemed perfectly content with her new headdress and waltzed around the barnyard for quite a while before Jeff “rescued” her. Not before he snapped the hilarious photo below, though!! It seems she didn’t mind – we can only imagine it’s because the bag was clear and she could still see!!

The list of tasks around here is always endless, but just being here to do them is amazing! For example, we’ve had some windy days and some trash had blown into the pond. Instead of trying to walk around the marshy edges to pick it all up, why not learn how to paddle board and just paddle your way to the edges and then work on balancing while bending down to pick the trash up!?! Honestly, paddle boarding wasn’t as hard as I had thought it would be and I had a blast -the pond got cleaned up to boot!! We’ve been working so hard and getting so much done, but it’s all enjoyable and we wouldn’t want to be doing these things anywhere else!! Thanks for checking in!!