What a Mess

43°f/6°C, overcast and light showers off and on. High of 61°f.

Boy oh boy. It's time to get Christmas decorations and such into the booths. Which means dragging out all the totes, trees and so on. And since we had to do that we just got out all the totes for our house too. Clutter everywhere! These photos are after we hauled 9 totes to the booths.

In the log room,

the kitchen,

and the living room,

Stuff everywhere!

But one booth is pretty much done, and the other is halfway there. We tackled Ripley first, as the owner will likely be having the holiday open house in the next week or two.

These are photos from Ripley. None from Ravenswood yet.

I'll get it all sorted out soon! But that's what has occupied me most of this week, just as it has done every year since we started into this business. Next week, life should be back to normal.

The other thing I did this past week was to see the orthopedic doctor about my shoulder pain. After many x-rays and several strength and movement tests, he concluded that I had something called impingement that caused the pain and inflammation.  So a cortisone shot (yowch!) later, I walked out with appointments for physical therapy.  I am sleeping better, but still have some pain. We'll see if it helps.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

The Election

What an amazing night! It was soul-soothing for those of us feeling weighed down by the past 2 years. Even though my state continued blindly following the red path, the national news was fantastic.

Now the Dems need to follow through and make this win count. I really don't care about a series of hearings on the gross misconduct of those in power--that sucks time and energy away from what really needs to be done. I want to see positive actions that will end this stupid war, get the price of gas down, and find ways to reduce the cost of food, and roll back many of the egregious actions taken by the current administration. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Open Mic and Molasses

60°f/15.5°C, cloudy with occasional light showers.

Storyteller at work! At last night's open mic i sang a ballad and told the story of how the community of Burnt House, West Virginia got its name. Ghostly tale.

Our featured artist this time was Keeny Skeen, a local lawyer and songwriter.  His bluesy style was quite a hit! It was a full house once again, as the newspaper ran a nice article about our event, and word is getting out. Great evening.

We picked up our weekly order from Maddie the milk girl, who now has a fridfe at the market for her customers' orders---this time we got eggs, butter and milk, total cost $10. It seems like a bargain ti me for straight from the farm food. Our order varies each week, sometimes we get Greek yogurt or farmer's cheese. The dark jar contains sorghum molasses, made locally, that the maker's daughter dropped off at the Artisan Market for us. Making molasses is a dying art, so i was very glad to get this. You can read about sorghum-making here.  Somewhere i have pictures of when we grew cane and made molasses. I will post them one day! If I can find them, that is. I may make cookies with it, using this recipe.

Maddie's eggs come with a Bible verse! We're not religious, but i like this. 

And a last little bit of fall color, right outside my kitchen window.