One week ago, right about now, we left Vienna, VA, grandson, son, daughter in law, and me. We have had grandson solo since Sunday afternoon. His daily routine here requires guitar practice, Kung Fu practice as he is missing those lessons this summer, a writing assignment and a math assignment as practice for weak skills and reinforcement for those skills that he does well. I supervise those practices first thing each morning right after breakfast unless the writing requires a library visit.
We told him that he would have some basic chores to do here at the house each day and for that, we would give him an allowance so that he has some spending money. He can earn extra money by going above and beyond his required chores. He is only 9, so nothing is too onerous or too difficult. We also told him that while he was here, we would do a series of outings and that with cooperation with his practices and chores, he could earn extra outings. Some of the outings planned can be repeated such as the county pool, batting cage, movie date with granddad. Others are ones that will only be done once, such as the one we did today. We drove to Roanoke, the nearest city, about an hour from home, leaving to be there at lunch time. The market square hosts a farmers market many days each week and we caught quite a number of farmers there today. On the market square, there is a hot dog counter and we though it doesn’t stand up to our favorite one from Virginia Beach, it was a delicious unhealthy lunch, followed with healthy purchases of fresh corn, tomatoes, potatoes and a watermelon. One stand had baked goods and we purchased a whole grain breakfast bread full of fruit, nuts, seeds and not too much real cane sugar.
After our lunch and the market we drove a few short blocks to the Virginia Transportation Museum. This was a fun adventure, bringing back many memories for me as I used to ride a Norfolk and Western train from Norfolk to Farmville to and from college. On display are locomotives, passenger cars, cabooses, old wagons, handpump firetrucks, and a trolley car. Inside the museum is a huge O gauge train set up, displays on bus transportation, train history, and air travel. It was a fun couple of hours spent with our grandson.
Back home, the last of the peas were harvested and the vines pulled for the chooks. The peas were shelled and cooked with the corn and some left over kabob beef and pork tenderloin for dinner. Once the clean up was done, some garden weeding and harvest of 76 heads of garlic, now drying for a day or two outside before the stems are clipped and they are moved to the wire shelves of the root cellar to finish drying.
That part of the bed will be cleaned up and planted with a second planting of bush beans within a day or two.
I love when the garden is producing and the local markets have produce that either we don’t grow or don’t have in ready in our garden yet.
I’m loving life on our mountain farm.
Cabin Crafted 