Saturday morning I got started making the beef stroganoff. I’d thawed out a chuck roast to cut up for it. Just as I was getting started, my back went out. It took me forever to get the stroganoff going.
I started it so early because I discovered if you use quality beef stock and simmer it down for hours, you don’t need the flour to thicken it. I was making a double recipe because I had 3 volunteers coming to help with wood and they said they might stay for lunch.
So I took a gulp of pain meds and hoped for the best. When I went up to do the cats, the plastic had been on this hay pile. By the time my younger brother got here around 10AM, it looked like this. Wicked windy morning.
So he and I went up to start putting the plastic back on. My older brother arrived and the 3 of us got it back on and tied down tight again.
The 3 volunteers arrived just as we finished and my brothers got the truck with the splitter and the tractor up to the wood pile and started splitting and cutting up logs. By then my middle brother’s youngest son had shown up to help too.
He and my older brother cut logs, a volunteer and my younger brother split wood, and the other 2 volunteers stacked each tractor load in the shed.
While they waited for loads, I would load the wheelbarrow with the façade stone for the chimneys that was sitting in my New South garden. It was high on the pallet and I could do it. The volunteers would wheel the barrow around and I’d unload it. It was the corner pieces and they were going on top of the pallets, so I could do that.
I got it down to where I couldn’t get pieces off the pallet in the garden by lunch time. I went in and got the lunch, including salad, on the table. The volunteers decided not to stay, as a member of their household is on chemo.
After lunch my brothers and nephew kept at the wood, and nearly filled the right side of the shed. Then they finished moving the stones out of the garden. Now all the stone is in back out of the way.
Once the pallet was out of the garden, I found lots of snowdrops had been trying to grow under it. I couldn’t get a good photo (no bending) but the bits of green in the square shape are snowdrops.
They brought me in a ton of wood. I hope it lasts the week or my back gets better quickly.
My brother had put the box blade on the tractor before bringing it up for wood. It helped balance the tractor with a big load of wood in the bucket. The last thing he did was go up and down the driveway with the box blade to fill in the small puddles that had appeared.
Between the wind and cold, moving stones, standing for all the cooking, and the back pain, I was exhausted. A quick supper of heated up French toast and breakfast sausage and I was in bed by 6:30, after taking another gulp of pain meds and putting arnica cream on my back. I slept nearly 10 hours.
Sunday my husband’s nephew and family are coming for a chicken supper. I plan to take it easy all day. Another cold blustery day, perfect for a warm house and a book to read.