49 Degrees!

We had a mini heat wave break out today, as the sun pushed the temperature to 49! It wasn’t enough to thaw the apples I cut for applesauce, nor thaw the potatoes I put whole into the pot for mashed potatoes (just a note: freezing potatoes does not improve their taste, but hungry boys and mother will eat anything). It partially thawed the eggs, but only enough to ooze into the egg carton; on removing the yolks, I could still put egg shaped lumps of coldness into a freezer bag and into the freezer. All of this was only possible because the rest of my body was not cold; my fingers, touching so many cold, damp foodstuffs, froze.

So this evening we read about missionary to China Gladys Alyward. (You may have heard of her through a movie about her life, called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.) On her way to China, she is driven off the train in the middle of nowhere in Siberia in winter, and walks 30 miles through the snow and wind to the previous town. (She even falls asleep in a snow bank on the way back, but wakes up again!) The description of the cold, the frostbite, the fatigue startled me. What great extremities God calls his followers to and leads them out of! I’m thankful my life circumstances are nowhere near so difficult.

One of the questions Phil and I had when coming here was: how do farmers fill their day? I mean, morning chores take 15 minutes. Really almost no time.

One answer: maintenance. Phil bought a double bladed axe a couple of years ago, and the wooden handle broke. We’ve hauled the axe around, unusable, but Phil researched proper tree felling techniques (once again, it’s amazing what you can learn in a book). He bought a replacement handle, and spent the morning extracting the stubborn old one, and grinding down the top of the new one to insert it.

That sort of task would drive me bananas. I understand why we have a disposable society: much easier to toss the broken item and buy a new one, rather than repair the mostly-functional old one.

All afternoon, Phil improved his felling technique. Trees that seemed enormous only a week ago, he cut down with ease. I had a new hacksaw, and cut off sapling crowns; the thicker trunks go to the pile for future construction projects; the wide but misshapen logs go to the future firewood pile; the saplings and crowns and other branches go to the future chip piles. Sometimes it seems that much of life is materials handling.

Phil loves cutting down by hand. He loves the quiet, the comparative safety, the manual labor. He has no desire for a chainsaw. Maybe when we get to trees with cross sections larger than dinner plates he’ll change his mind, but I rather doubt it.

The children play imaginative games every chance they get. At one point, I came in to find Jadon playing “poke the belly button” with Jonadab, while Isaiah and Abigail were a baby shark and a mermaid, respectively. Abraham was the keeper of those two interesting characters, though his keeping appeared to involve building Lego cars, so I can’t imagine his responsibilities were terribly onerous.