First part of Saturday was our local town meeting. Pretty interesting stuff actually, as we all struggle with what things to spend on or make cuts on, in an increasingly limited budget. The meeting broke for a late lunch; we went home for that. Ended up not going back for the second half, having other things that needed doing. Like L helping W retrieve a couple of the new heifers. Yes, we have 6 new young ladies here at the farm :)
L also tilled the small stretch of land we'll be planting flax and oats on again. We'll have to go out and weed the flax half as well as possible, as fiber flax isn't as aggressive as grass. He's also planning on sowing it in rows this year, hoping to keep it more manageable -- last year's experiment was not a success. I expect if we keep improving the quality of the land though, that we'll get better results over time.
I worked on the winter/summer clothing exchange, set some clothing aside for giveaway and rags, and found a new home for some of the gift bags, ribbons, and bows. While we still use them at holidays and such (and many people I know re-use bags too), there's only so much space in the house. I'm working on eliminating a whole box from clothing storage -- have a feeling I'm only going to succeed in downsizing to a smaller box, but I'll take what I can get.
Besides, I'm not unpacking all the percale sheets this year, so some of storage is being taken up by that -- we really don't need to have a bunch of sheets out, and they'll be there when the sheets we're using wear out (or we can exchange sets in storage for variety next year). When I was a kid, we only had 2 or 3 sets of sheets each, and you only really need 2 sets. One on the bed and one to replace them when the first set goes into the wash.
Some shopping, cleaning, and printing happened in the evening.
***
Sunday morning was Beltain at the Sunwheel. We had two guests, which was great :) Things went well overall -- I'd accidentally grabbed a stack of napkins instead of a tablecloth, but fortunately it wasn't windy :D The thing I'd tried to do at Samhuinn worked this time -- tweaked a couple of things. I wrote out the part where we're purifying the grove with the elements so that the druids from all four quarters came in to the center to pick up their element symbols and then went out to scribe the circle all at the same time and then went back to return the symbols at the same time. Four overlapping swirls :) Sort of a ritual dance, if you will. And of course we had a May pole dance, which was lots of fun again -- someday we may manage to wrap our Chief Druid up in the ribbons ;)
A good feast, although we all missed having
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harpnfiddle with us for the ritual and the feast in person... but she'd been driving all night so really needed her rest. I was "restrained" and had only one of the donuts. We had strawberry rhubarb pie, so two donuts would really have been too much.
Got in an excellent walk after everyone left, and then I worked on basic form and iluchuan, before we went off to choir practice. That went pretty well, although we were missing
ellid, who is madly working on papers. Potluck convo was good, got home late, called mom, etc.
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Monday: L had to help load 200 bales early this morning, then count out second-cut bales to set aside for a contract customer, and then another 20 for someone else (I helped with the second and third bits).
Two loads of laundry this morning, and
also picked dandelion greens!***
Dandelions are blooming a little early this year, so not as much picking as last year. Nettles are coming up though, and this year I aim to harvest most of my own.
L has a dental cleaning today, so I get to go shopping at Goldthread Apothecary for empty capsules, glass bottles, etc.
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