Denise and I bought a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share from the Goshen Farmer's Market. It has been fun to go every other week or so and pick out what fresh vegetables we want to put in our basket. I guess this CSA program is pretty unique in that we get to pick what we put in our basket instead of just taking whatever a farm gives us. It has worked pretty well for us. Depending on our schedules we sometimes have a hard time getting all the fruits and veggies eaten, but it is such good, local food that it usually isn't a problem.
Here is the CSA basket from a recent week: carrots, tomatoes, kholrabi, sugar snap peas, and spring mix. Yummo!
I also bought a flat of strawberries. I have a small strawberry patch in my garden but it only ever provided about a handful at a time, about enough to eat for breakfast the next morning. I wanted more to freeze so I can have them during the winter for granola, smoothies, recipes, etc. Other than the quart we ate for the supper one evening, and some that I gave to my parents, these all went in the freezer.
My one week of vacation so far this summer was staying close to home and volunteering at The Hermitage. I have written on this blog several other times about The Hermitage.
It has become a very special place for me. I go about 2x/year for a personal retreat, which has been a very good discipline. This time I decided to go and work instead of retreat. It was good to see some of the 'other side' of 'keeping the rhythm'. There is a lot of work that goes into the hospitality side of retreat - cooking, cleaning, planning, etc. It was nice to work alongside the directors for a week and use some of my skills. My tasks included organizing a closet of worship resources, weeding flowerbeds, cleaning, researching investment options, researching bulk mailing changes, as well as my main task - updating the room notebooks. All the rooms where guests can stay overnight have a three ring binder of information about The Hermitage, as well as resources on prayer, silence and retreat. The binders had not been updated in quite a while (at least 10 years), so I tried to make them look a little more modern, as well as have more consistent information in each one. I didn't get them all done, and will hopefully be able to finish them some other time when I am there. My daily tasks included cleaning up from supper, setting out continental breakfast for the next morning, making coffee, sweeping walks, and taking the birdfeeder in at night and putting back out in the morning (thanks to raccoons). I also attended morning prayer each morning at 8am, which was a great start to the day. The week overall was a welcome change of pace to the regular routine (and occasional stress) of work.
I also went to church with David and Naomi (directors) and two of their kids on Sunday morning. They worship at a small country church with an attendance of about 40.
The tree I 'lamented' back at the lament service in March is still standing. The pipeline project had not started yet, but there were signs that it would soon.
It was generally hot and sunny the week I was there. There was also a day of rain, and an anxious evening with a threat of severe weather (which ended up not happening.) I had some time in the evenings to take walks in the woods, and some bike rides on some of the area roads.
I had to spread out on the floor of the office to work on the notebooks.
Today I went to Fort Wayne with Denise and Susie to connect with some of our college friends. We met for lunch at Texas Roadhouse and had a great time talking and catching up on each others lives!!
Me, Wendy, Jill, Susie, Denise, and Krisi.
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