Praise the Lord for the rain! Grandmother and Granddaddy need it so badly; the ground here is incredibly dry, because they haven't had a real rain since about July.
Yesterday and the day before Daddy got his "logging fix." :-) He loves to take Granddaddy's tractor, truck, and chainsaws out into the woods and cut down huge pine trees. Later Granddaddy will load the gigantic logs (they have to be at least 12 feet long, and many of them are almost two feet in diameter!) onto his trailer, and take them to the log mill. From there truckers will transport them somewhere else, to be turned into pine planks that can be used for building.
Today, because it is raining, Daddy will stay inside. He will be making stöllen! This morning he got up early to start the dough ball, which is just flour, yeast, and water. The dough ball has to rise for several hours by itself, so after Daddy made it he went back to bed. :-) Later he will get up and start the rest of the process: soaking raisins in hot water to plump them; cutting pecans and citron; and mixing everything together in his big stöllen bowl. Then that mass of dough has to rise again for several hours before he will separate out sections of dough, form loaves, and bake them after they rise for about half an hour. Making stöllen is quite a long process, but it's a wonderful tradition!
Yesterday I went out to the woods with Gretchen before lunch. We went to find Laurie and Daddy, to warn them that it would soon be time to be inside, and we also needed to locate Reagan and Heidi. It wasn't too hard to find Laurie and Daddy, once we heard the chainsaws. :-) Next we walked down to the concrete bridge, and when we didn't see Reagan and Heidi at Swimming Hole we thought we would walk up the bluff and look over to check Ol' Piney. It turned out that we didn't need to -- as we were starting to head up the hill, we noticed two figures struggling up the road from Ol' Piney, shouting "Help!" We ran over to them, and found that they were carrying a huge piece of ice that they had dislodged from the stream below Ol' Piney. It was at least 3/4ths an inch thick, and the spatial area of the block was probably about 2 feet square (although of course it wasn't a square itself). We helped them carry it up to the back porch and set it on the picnic table to show people later.
Life is never boring at Grandmother and Granddaddy's house! :-D
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It's been rainy all morning long here as well; I feel as if time has stopped at 9:30 am--hardly seems like it's time for lunch already!
ReplyDeleteI have so enjoyed reading about your time with your Grandparents--thanks for sharing :)