Friends, a week away in the forests of the North Carolina mountains has been a balm for my mental health. Well, that and the fact that I’m two steps away from securing a position that I will not only enjoy and be good at, but that will help secure my family’s financial stability and longtermContinue reading “Finding Healing and Fall Harvest Salad, Pumpernickel Bread, and Big Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie”
Category Archives: family story
Job Search Thoughts, Half Drunk and Near Midnight
I fought so hard for confidence. And in all honesty, even when I had more confidence I never had enough. It is both a source of continued strength—I am open to what I don’t know and eager to learn to fill the gap—and a source of weakness—I question what I know and often over-value others’Continue reading “Job Search Thoughts, Half Drunk and Near Midnight”
Returning To My Roots
Something in me broke last week. I don’t think it was a bad thing, actually. I think I had to acknowledge how I was feeling about leaving my position in higher education and about how my job search had been going (ahem decidedly not stellar). The world inside the academy is institutional by design, andContinue reading “Returning To My Roots”
The Deflated Balloon
I am watching a reality television show where artists compete for a big prize. Each week they are challenged to dig deeper for inspiration, to push their art further. Every week they are critiqued by judges–sometimes harshly–and then they put themselves back together again to create more and do more and show more for evenContinue reading “The Deflated Balloon”
The Job Search is Broken, But We Can Make It Better (Part 2)
I promise I’ll return to my usual posts about gardens and food and family life soon. I crave that, actually, but between moving away from our homestead of 10 years in the beginning of May and losing my job later in May (combined with historic inflation), there has been no bandwidth to plan the newContinue reading “The Job Search is Broken, But We Can Make It Better (Part 2)”
Cooking in my new Cozy, Cluttered Kitchen: Zucchini-Asparagus Fritters with Pesto Yogurt Sauce
To update everyone from my last post, Charles–our beloved kitty–found his way home. YAY!! After a week of prayers and me bushwhacking through dense forest, he wound up at our sliding glass door at 11:30pm one evening, meowing frantically to be let inside. He didn’t leave my side or let me leave his sight forContinue reading “Cooking in my new Cozy, Cluttered Kitchen: Zucchini-Asparagus Fritters with Pesto Yogurt Sauce”
Bittersweet Updates: New Homestead but Lost Things
So much has happened and is happening since my last update about maple syrup there is no reasonable way to include it all in this post. I have had very good reasons for not being able to update that I will gloss over by simply saying we had to finish all of our projects onContinue reading “Bittersweet Updates: New Homestead but Lost Things”
It’s Tree Tapping Season! A Quick Guide to Homemade Pure Maple Syrup
Syrup season heralds spring. It’s the first early spring food, a sweet reward for making it through another cold and gray winter, arriving with those first bursts of 50 degree, sunny days, just when the forest feels like it’s coming back to life. Sap flows when it’s freezing at night, forcing the tree to take in more water and nutrients from the ground and then around 45-50 degrees during the day. It needs to be just warm enough to unfreeze those nutrients on the inside of the tree, but not so warm that the tree starts to bud, generally speaking at least 42 degrees. Here in Indiana, as a result, the season lenth varies greatly each year–sometimes giving us a heady month, and others, just a few short days.
Dear White Church: A Love Letter to the Forest Behind our Homestead
We bought our home 11 years ago because it was pretty much all we could afford. We were young and had few resources but big dreams. We had lived in my parents’ home for 3 years. Chloe, our daughter, slept in her own room. Liam, our baby son, slept in a co-sleeper he’d long outgrownContinue reading “Dear White Church: A Love Letter to the Forest Behind our Homestead”
Finding the Home in Homestead
Oh hi there. *sheepish wave*. So, yes, it’s been 9 months since I last updated the blog. In my defense, I got the kids through their homeschool year in the middle of a global pandemic, dealt with the uncertainty of (yet another) year as contingent faculty (“will I have a job or won’t I?”) whileContinue reading “Finding the Home in Homestead”
Hull Family Homestead 