March 22 & 23, 2026
Sunday
I awoke in the night with a tummy ache. I’m not sure what caused it but it went away after a while. I played wordle, connections and duotrigordle. Then I wrote my blog and pasted it. I went back to sleep and woke again at 8:30 AM. I woke Angel up and we got ready to drive home from Salt Lake City. We hugged Scott and Delany goodbye and headed home.
The drive was nice. Traffic was light and we listened to Labyrinth of Fire by Keith Robinson. It’s the 2nd book in the Island of Fog series. We are really enjoying the series and there are 18 books total which should take us a while to get through.
On the drive home, we stopped at Malad Gorge state park. That’s one of my favorite places in Southern Idaho. https://visitsouthidaho.com/adventure/malad-gorge-unit-thousand-springs-state-park/ We went to the day-use park and used the bathroom. Angel played on the playground for a while and the dogs ran and ran. I walked around exploring and looking for edible plants. We stayed there for about an hour and I felt refreshed to continue on the drive home.
When we got to Boise, I got off the interstate and went through the city. We stopped and got smoothies at Boise Juice Co. Then I drove to Emmett and took dirt roads all the way to Indian valley. I love to drive the backroads from Emmett to Indian Valley. There is some beautiful vast country out there. Biscuitroots were blooming all over the hillsides. An abundance of food as far as the eye could see. I felt grateful to now know about biscuitroots. They are everywhere and in the future I want to eat only biscuitroots for at least 3 days. I want to feel the energy of eating only biscuitroots. They are a perfect food with complex carbs, essential proteins and an abundance of vitamins and minerals. They were a staple food for the Native Americans and they can be eaten raw or cooked. I like to eat them raw to get the most nutrition since cooking food kills a lot of the vitamins and minerals as well as the enzymes.
I stopped at another one of my favorite spots next to Big Willow creek and let the dogs run. I tried getting Angel to get out of the truck to run around too but she wasn’t going for it. I sat by the creek and enjoyed the scenery while listening to the sound of the wind and water. I basked in the sound of running water and wind blowing through the trees. The air smelled fresh and clean and it was a nice nature rest-stop before finishing our drive home.
When we got home, I checked on the chickens. They looked great. My friend Sunshine had taken care of them while we were gone and I was thankful for her help.
We unpacked, then I installed an automatic solar powered chicken coop door that had arrived from Amazon. I put it on one of the coops and tested it out. It worked! Now I need one more automatic door for the other chicken coop and I won’t have to manually close the chicken coop doors at night or open them in the morning. Yay! I got a fire going in the wood stove, we each took a bath and went to bed at 10 PM.
Monday
I awoke in the night and played wordle, connections and duotrigordle. Then I sleep more and woke up at 8 AM. It was a busy morning. After making my morning tea and Angel’s breakfast, I started beans cooking for Angel, did laundry and hung it on the line outside, made fresh squeezed OJ and finished unpacking.
I took Angel to a friends for a play date and I went to one of my friends. My friend sold me a bunch of firewood and I brought my trailer to haul the wood home. He also sold me an industrial wagon which I really needed, a canopy I can use at the farmers market and a folding table. Yay! I spent all day loading up firewood and working on a deer hide to turn it into leather. My friend had offered to teach me how to tan a hide a month or so ago and even though I don’t kill animals or eat meat, I thought it was a useful skill to learn. People throw away animal hides all the time and those hides can be used and to me it’s a way of honoring the animals life by not wasting any of it. Up here in the mountains there are a lot of hunters and many of them toss the animals hides.
My friend didn’t know that I didn’t eat meat until I was halfway through the tanning process. When he found out, he thought it was ironic that someone who didn’t eat meat was learning a skill that most people who do eat meat don’t know how to do.
The first part of scraping the hide was very gross and nasty (especially for someone who doesn’t handle meat) and extremely physically challenging. I’m past the gross part though it is still physically challenging. The hide is almost leather and once it’s done, I plan on making moccasins.
I spent all day stacking wood onto the trailer and in the back of my pickup, rotating between that and working on the hide. By the time I was done, my arms were so tired they barely had any strength left. I drove home to drop off the trailer before picking up Angel. The trailer was weighed down so much that I couldn’t get it unhitched from the truck and after fighting with it for a while, I was able to use a jack to unhook it. Oh my poor arms, they were ready to be done.
I got Angel from her friends and had her help me unload the firewood from the pickup and stack it. I was so tired by the time we were done, I could barely function. I got the clothes off the clothesline and went to the groceries store. After putting the groceries away, I was transferring the beans I had started cooking that morning into a bowl. The bowl tipped sideways causing a bunch a beans and water to spill all over the counter, down the inside and outside of the cupboards and onto the floor. I almost started crying, I was so tired and now I had a big mess to clean up. Angel took pity on me and offered to start me a bath. I thanked her and said that would be nice. I cleaned up the mess and as I was cleaning I was able to see the humor in “spilling the beans”.
I closed up the chickens for the night and got in the bath Angel had drawn up for me. The water was nice and hot and felt good on my sore body. Angel got in the bath after me and we went to bed. I was just getting ready to go to sleep when my friend that I had spent the day with called and we talked for a while. When I got off the phone, I fell asleep instantly at around 10 PM.
Thank you for reading my blog and being a part of my life. I appreciate you.
Love, Victoria
Leave a Reply