This morning, Eilidh learned the proper way to harvest and pick apples. And she did very well. Of course, she learned from the best, her own dear mother and grandmother. She learned which apples to pick, which ones to leave, and which ones to let fall to the ground. She was also taught how to twist and snap each apple, leaving the stem attached to the ripe fruit. Eilidh already has the gentle touch of an experienced Rice Orchard apple picker.

In the cool of the morning, and with applewood smoke hovering within the trees, we picked about a dozen or so bushels of Jonathans and Courtlands. While lifting and carrying full crates, I was counseled on the creation of our own orchard and the joys and responsibilities of beekeeping. On our way back to the barn, Eilidh discovered the joy of dangling her feet off the back of the trailer.

Quickly becoming a common evening ritual, the sun set to music and dancing with Papa picking his five-string banjo, Daddy on fiddle, and Eoin squealing high tenor. The hoedown concluded with my dad teaching me that old North Carolina fiddle tune, June Apple.

I have long thought that the first step to right Sabbath keeping is actually working for six days. The last six days, as Navin Johnson might have said, have seemed more like 12 days, 7 hours, and 41 minutes. Half of the family has not been well the whole week and we all had much to get done. We did, by the end of the week, get alot accomplished. It is good to find a restful, peaceful, home waiting for us.

Our Sabbath began tonight with a little ale, some fiddle tunes and dancing, and family hymn singing. Eilidh and Eoin were tucked into their beds and grown-ups were engaged in relaxed conversation. We talked about the work that has been completed and the problems that have been solved, not about how hot it was this week or how tired we were or how ill we had been. In the morning, we will gather with the saints and feast at the table with our Lord.

I don't know much about keeping the Sabbath, but I do know this. It is a joy and pleasure and celebration. And it is good to come home to.

When a friend asked me what I had been working on today, I wasn’t sure what to say. So, as I sometimes like to do, I took the long way home. I told her that I could tell her that I was digging and hauling dirt for fill in the driveway. I also told her that I could also say that I was digging our root cellar. Finally, I told her the truth–that I was doing both at the same time.

Katie and I thought it wise to start digging the fill for the driveway at the best place for a root cellar. The driveway problem is more urgent. But the root cellar is not all that very far behind.

We want a root cellar because we want to be going to the Kroger store less and less. We want a cellar because we want to store up some of the bountiful harvest that God provides. But to be honest, it was not canned peaches or green beans that I was imagining this afternoon as I was digging in the hot 93 degree September sun. I was thinking about what a twelve or sixteen year old mead might taste like when we open the bottles and share them at the very wedding celebrations for which they had been brewed and stored. I wondered if I would even remember how hot the sun or how hard the ground was when I am serving it up with an overflowing heart of joy for my family and our God. I wondered if I would remember to clean the dirt from beneath my fingernails by then.