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Break out the slow cookers and dutch ovens because

Break out the slow cookers and dutch ovens because soup season is here 🥰🍜😍🥫🥣

Happy first day of fall 🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁

Happy first day of fall 🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁

Caught this beautiful moment today as I was headed

Caught this beautiful moment today as I was headed out the door and it stopped me in my tracks. Harmonious nature at its finest. A simple moment of beauty.

Each day I have been challenging myself to find a moment of beauty and joy so I don’t spend the whole day focusing on how tough this season has been. Every day has something lovely in it. Even the days where I feel like the grief and anger over the loss and of my children have consumed me, there is always at least one thing that will make me smile.

Grief is a weird journey…. But even on the hardest days, I’m going to keep finding simple joys and beauty. And I have faith that someday, things will get easier.

Fall vibes 🍁🍂🍁🍂 (I’m just ignoring

Fall vibes 🍁🍂🍁🍂

(I’m just ignoring the fact that it’s still 80+ degrees outside 😂😂)

Harvest. Preserving. Stocking the pantry.

That’s what most think of when they think of canning. It’s what I thought of canning too… up until the last month.

The day we got home from the hospital after delivering our twin girls and saying goodbye to them, there was a pile of cucumbers from our garden on the counter and more in the garden ready to harvest. We had worked so hard on our garden this year and the idea of letting those vegetables go to waste did not sit well with us. So after a day or two, we pulled out the ball canning guide and pickle mix, sterilized the jars and made several pints of pickles. We did it all together- my husband and I, working in the kitchen, laughing over the spilled pickle juice, talking while we chopped cucumbers, enjoying the fruits of our labors when we looked at our freshly sealed jars. It was a happy moment in our storm of sadness. So we did more. We went to a produce stand the next weekend and got a bushel of tomatoes and canned those too. The next weekend, we attempted apples. And more tomatoes.

Canning is something we planned on doing before our tragedy. It’s something some people probably thought we were crazy for doing days after our babies died. But somehow, it has been therapeutic. Something we can do together. Time to talk and laugh and connect over cutting boards and bowls of veggies. Distracting our brains with learning a new skill instead of thinking constantly about our loss. Moments of pride as we survey our work and our food for winter. A sense of accomplishment even on days where our hearts are hurting. A simple thing- preserving food- but it is so much more to us right now.

We hear the phrase “find joy in the simple things” often, especially in the farming and homesteading community. But we actually are finding joy in the simple things during a emotional storm of grief and loss. And there is so much beauty in that.

A late summer working farm kitchen. There is con

A late summer working farm kitchen.

There is constant garden produce on the counter. There is a constant stream of canning products around the kitchen: canner on the stove, filled processed jars on the counter, empty jars in the sink waiting to be sterilized. The ball canning book lives open in the cookbook stand; our trusty how to guide to help us through this canning adventure. It’s messy and productive and in near constant chaos as we rush to preserve everything we can before winter while also living our normal day to day with breakfasts on the go and a home cooked dinner most evenings.

It’s a busy season but such a fulfilling one. We see the pantry shelves filling with produce and the freezers are stuffed with homegrown chicken and pork and locally sourced beef. We are ready for winter and proud of our summer efforts.

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