Jadon and Isaiah: Champion Weight Lifters

Shortly after the boys woke up, Jadon went out to get an apple and Isaiah followed shortly afterwards. I had taken the fruit boxes out of the car, but hadn't moved them inside. Really, there isn't much space for me to move them inside.

I was hard at work, and vaguely realized they had been outside for some time. Perhaps they had gone to play in the well tailings or something, so I didn't think much about it.

Twenty minutes later or so, Jadon came in and said, "The chickens were getting the fruit. Isaiah and I moved a box into the barn." Yes. My 8-year-old and 6-year-old had carried an almost 50-pound box of fruit the length of the barn, and hoisted it up onto a table over waist high. (First they had thrown out all the fruit with massive pecks taken out of them.) What dear, dear boys.

The weather continues hot. I made bread, and went to check the temperature; as I picked up the thermometer, I noticed it read 112 degrees. Ambient air temperature; not in the bread.

Isaiah was climbing up onto the top bunk, and fell hard on his back, right onto the plastic bucket we use for storing toy cars. But, once again, the Lord's protection covered him, and he stood up, bawling, with nothing worse than a raspberry.

I made a BLT for Phil and I: bacon from our pig, bug-eaten lettuce from the lone remaining head in our garden (it was quite bitter), and almost-ripe tomatoes from my garden. Even though I burned the bacon, I still enjoyed it.

Phil opened the compost pile to add more material, and we were stunned to see nothing but a few bleached bones from Chrystal. The microbes went to work very quickly. The pile was hotter than we'd ever measured before, too: over 130 degrees.

We moved the four big sheep from the apple orchard down slope. We had hoped to combine them in the lower pasture with the cows and goats, but they are quite difficult to herd; we were fortunate to move them at all. Those big sheep had been eating the apple trees, and that makes my blood boil. We are ready to dispatch at least one of them once the weather cools a bit.

The final note from this day of interesting events is that we are cutting gluten entirely. We had avoided it for a couple of weeks, but I find it hard to give up the ease of baked bread for breakfast or lunch. But within three days of bread consumption, the boys were picking at each other and weepy. Joe, usually Mr. Sunshine himself, cried for almost three hours. Unheard of. And I felt despair.

No thanks. I can figure out alternative menus in exchange for emotional stability.

I wondered about gluten over the winter when we had our foster daughter, but at the time, I couldn't add one more level of complexity. It may have made our lives easier, though, had we avoided bread.