Heat Wave, Thunderstorms, and Elderberry Harvest Season

Hello and happy Sunday from our Lil’ Suburban Homestead! It’s elderberry harvest season!

It has been HOT lately around our lil’ homestead!  While I do have an office job during the day, when I get home usually the first thing I want to do is to take a dip in the pool.  However, lately the afternoon thunderstorms have not been cooperating with my pool schedule lol.

This is also the time of day we harvest the elderberries if the heat wave on that particular day is not too bad.  Also, we have to factor in whether or not the thunderstorms have rolled in yet.  The good news is that rain or shine when I get home from work, the Gossip Gals want to come out and hang with the Viking and myself out back.  Speaking of pools, we have a little tiny baby pool arriving today, so we can place a couple of pavers in their chicken yard in it and some water and hopefully it can help cool them off on these hot summer days.  I will definitely be sharing photos if this is well received.

The Elderberry Harvest

In the meantime the elderberries are coming in on our property like gangbusters, and there is no ignoring them.  Just fyi… if you don’t know in addition to making elderberry syrup, I also make elderberry jam and I think elderberry jam is heaven scent, although I know it’s not magic, since I am the one who makes it…lol If you have ever harvested elderberries you know it’s not easy.  It’s tedious and time consuming and I have learned after watching several YouTube videos on how folks harvest elderberries that we are much stricter about the stems than a lot of other elderberry enthusiasts.

We are super vigilant about the removal of stems and I now have validation knowing how pure are products are. If you don’t know, you don’t want elderberry stems in your products, they are toxic.  One of the best ways that we get rid of the stems, is to soak all of the elederberries and most bugs and stems will float to the top of the pot, however we continue to rake out the stems the entire process; leaving us with a pristine product.

The Heatwave and Thunderstorms

Our orange tree is so heavy with fruits on the vine right now that we are going to be staking it up today.  I ended up mowing the back yard around 8pm last night as it was the coolest time of the day and I got lucky as the mosquitos weren’t as bad as they have been, especially with all of the thunderstorms we have been having. We could see a thunderstorm that had the brightest lightning that was about 40 minutes away last night.

I guess in the meantime one of the positives of this heat wave is that we are catching up on movies and tv shows indoors where it is nice and cool.  And we have had a lot of time spent with family this summer.  This past Friday afternoon time stood still for a while why I babysat our youngest granddaughter and we just hung out. 

As someone who has a very demanding job, it can be strange to just slow down and sometimes a struggle, but it’s so good for me to just “BE!”. We had a blast, I even had her try some of this organic baby food I found at a local food coop and I think she was not quite sure about it lol….either way we had a good time just hanging out and I learned how to sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” again. Then her Papa came home, that is what the Grandgirls call the Viking in my life and he hung out with her for a bit as well.

The slowing down also happens when we hang with our chickens, they are fun to watch and just to see how close they pay attention. This morning, they saw me pull the bedroom blind up and they all ran to their chicken gate.

We have a solar door on the chicken run now that will let them into the side yard, but I think due to all the crazy storms we have been getting, it’s not working, so they got out of their coop early this mroning.

We are also working on projects all weekend and one of them is to completely refresh our guest room/office. We are halfway done, hopefully we will finish today. This was a room I painted right before Covid and it became clutter central, so working to have it be a functional space again. Wish us luck, we are so close.  this is not a super easy accomplishment as we are also in the homestretch of our hall bathroom remodel and we have used that room for a catch all for construction items as well.

For brunch today,  we are going to have buckwheat pancakes and canadian bacon.  I am gluten sensitive so no longer eat gluten, so these are a favorite of mine and honestly taste like molasses cookies to me.

I wish you all a beautiful week until next time!

Fondly,