By Angie Mentink

The heat has been intense lately here on the farm. We are anticipating a cold front to move through sometime today. We are all looking forward to it. In the mean time we are heading to the dam for some much needed relief after nap time. We are approaching my favorite time of year. It’s a time filled with abundance, cooler nights, and a time to reflect on what worked well and what needs improvement. We had another year of lessons. I have learned that we will never get it right all the time. There’s always something to learn. Our wood chip garden is doing well where the wood chips were placed last fall. I attempted to fill in other areas with new wood chips in the early spring and realized that was a big mistake. The wood chips sucked the life out of the plants around them. From our experience the wood chips need at least 6 months to break down. We plan to add more this fall when the growing season is done, stock pile a lot to break down, and then add these in the spring.

We learned the importance of planting potatoes around Easter. The first long row we planted at that time did well. My husband let the potatoes come up, then tilled in between the row, and added this dirt around the plants. It choked out the weeds so there wasn’t much to weed. The weeds took over the later crop of potatoes. We are still blessed with an abundance of potatoes, but it’s a mess in those later plantings. We are determined not to let that happen again. We are grateful to have planted two different kinds of potatoes since our red ones didn’t do as well as our white ones. We have planted several nut and fruit trees recently and we think fall is the better time to plant. Our hope is to have plenty for our family, to sell, share, and extra for the animals. The future goal is to run the pigs and other animals through this for a short time.

Cory started milking again in the beginning of summer. We are so blessed with bright, yellow butter, cheese, and cultured dairy! We have been amazed at the things we have been able to do while living in a camper! We are so thankful for the extra produce we have been given by others or grown ourselves. We have been canning applesauce, pickles, drying herbs, and freezing as much as we get.

This has also been a humbling season in my life. We are surrounded in construction mess and there’s not much I can do it about it. As people come and go, I have learned that there is no reason to be anxious or worried about things not being perfect. It’s more about relationships and hospitality rather than having things perfectly organized (not that things are ever perfect). We pray that this season won’t last much longer.

We are so thankful to live in a small community. We have had so much support and encouragement with our new business. It makes all the hard work and effort worth it. We have also been thankful to know most of the people doing work on our house. Brody and his crew with A&A roofing out of York did a fabulous job on our metal roof. He was so careful to make sure everything was done just right. Toby Johansen and Rick Reike from Osceola did amazing work on our windows. We greatly appreciate Toby’s careful attention to detail, wanting to do things right, and refusing to install junk! Cramer’s concrete out of Stromsburg went above and beyond to ensure a solid foundation for our addition! Noyd repair did a meticulous job with our duct work to the upstairs, and Anderson’s did a beautiful job on the finishing of our drywall. We are so thankful to have people that we can trust to handle the things we don’t have the skills to do. In the moments that I feel impatient or ungrateful I try to remind myself that we are blessed so much more than we deserve and we will appreciate having a house more than ever when it’s done.

As this summer speeds by I pray that we cherish every moment, give thanks in everything, serve with compassion, and keep striving to provide more people with natural, God honoring food and skin care products. We would love to hear if there’s a way we can serve you!