The Flicker Haven Farm Files-A Preservation Sensation!

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Like the yellow jackets who are currently buzzing around my water fountain, I too, have been flitting around more than a bit in the realm of preservation.

To start with, I have been preserving many of the flowers that I grew this year. One of my friends who comes over for game night showed me how to string strawflowers on floral wire pieces this week.

I am not sad with the display that is currently occupying the center space of my dining room table:

This Friday that same friend and I are having a fall wreath making fest in our barn, so I am sure you will see another post in the near future showcasing the fruit of our flower and drieds crafting labors.

Another area that has been productive in the preservation area of our homestead has been my forays into canning-land. September is always a pretty canning intense month. Yesterday, I came home from a shift at the bakery and canned salsa and zucchini relish. It was a long day.

But, the effort will be oh so worth it when I want something tasty this winter and crack open a jar of salsa made with our own tomatoes and peppers. YUMTOWN!

Firewood cutting, splitting, and stacking has been ongoing. We are onto our fourth rick of wood. The woodshed holds eight ricks, so it feels pretty splendid to be almost halfway done.

It's so weird to have all red fir though, like my face breaks into a elitist wood snob grin every time I stack a piece. Okay, not really, as I am not really a wood snob because I am not burning larch or pressed fire logs. If I ever get to that point you will know that I have embraced my inner wood elitist.

Class-based joking aside, one other area of preservation that I am quite heavily involved in is the right to read. Our community has been invaded with a particular type of authoritarian cult that seems to enjoy tearing one of our beloved and surprisingly functional institutions apart all in the name of protecting children. I, of course, am speaking of the library, and as I was a librarian in our local library network for a quarter of my life, it goes without saying that the place holds an important place in my heart.

I also don't appreciate outlanders making a problem where there wasn't one. And I really get all sorts of prickly when crusading authoritarians engage in reprehensible conduct while trying to achieve their aims.

A community is made up of all kinds, and our community was functioning in an amazing way. Sure, we had problems, every community does, but in our rural part of the world we don't need saving, and the vast majority of us also believe in parents being the gatekeepers of what content their children consume, not the government.

I could wax political about this issue for days, but instead, I baked some tasty dairy-free chocolate cookies and am going to head out to a potluck meeting with members in my community who care about such things as the right to read, intellectual freedom, and holding people who violate such things accountable.

Because community, like canning food for winter, stocking up on firewood, and creating beautiful floral art, is indeed a thing worth preserving.

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's now in red fir pitch scent and texture iPhone. The text divider image was made in Canva.

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