A furry orange kitten glares at me from the corner of the live animal trap. He's clearly a toughie, with a lean body and a red scratch next to his eye, probably a scar from fighting one of the other cats that roam our neighborhood. I'm careful to keep my fingers away from him. I call my sister immediately. "Are you at home? Because I have a kitten for Patrick!" My sister Joanne and her husband Lamar and their seven children live some twenty miles north, on a small hobby farm in Berks … [Read more...] about To Catch a Tabby Cat
Family
Blood, Sweat, and Tears
"What a week!" The week that spanned the end of July and beginning of August is a week I won't soon forget. It was a week that included blood, sweat, and tears. Blood On Thursday I went to donate blood at a local fire company. Blood banks are hurting for donors since COVID started. Naturally, donating blood doesn't seem like a desirable thing to do during a pandemic, but sick people still need blood, COVID or no COVID. I hadn't donated blood in years since my iron count is often too … [Read more...] about Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Letter from the Yellow Zone
In March I wrote a blogpost in which I mused about what it would be like to live through some sort of natural disaster. Three years— excuse me, three months later, my curiosity has been sated. Lancaster County is now in the Yellow Zone. Pennsylvania is re-opening in stages: red was the total shutdown, yellow is partial, and in green you're to good to go (but not without your face mask, of course.) Most counties in Pennsylvania are green, but Lancaster and several other high-population areas … [Read more...] about Letter from the Yellow Zone
Beefing Up! An Ascension Day Project
Today I learned that 1/4 of a steer equals a lot of meat! A few weeks ago, we heard a neighboring farmer was selling his grass-fed steers to anyone who wanted one. (Like everywhere else, our local farmers are hurting from the supply chain disruptions.) All you had to do was arrange for transporting and butchering. So some of my family decided to go together and purchase a whole steer and then divide the meat. My sister made the arrangements with a butcher shop and the steer was scheduled … [Read more...] about Beefing Up! An Ascension Day Project
A Home for Birds, Bats, and Skunks?
"As soon as the birds flew out, the phone started working again," said Mom this morning. "No one will believe me if I tell them our phone call got cut off because of the birds."' "Everyone will think we're cuckoo if we say our phone and internet isn't working because the birds are building a nest again," I agreed. This, however, is absolutely the truth. The phone box that houses the wires that lead to our house and tether us to the outside world via phone and internet has become the … [Read more...] about A Home for Birds, Bats, and Skunks?