Some pictures from the neighborhood today. Rachel and I have been listening to the Telepathy Tapes for most of the day. While we’ve been listening, I’ve been playing solitaire. Haven’t done that in years, especially with real cards.

First Day Hike at Spring Mill state park.

I’ve gotten away from hiking over the past year—and I felt it today. It does me a lot of good in a lot of ways when I’m regularly in the woods. I’m going to get back to that.

One last fun bit about solstice: all the ash from the fires yesterday will be sprinkled onto the garden in the spring.

Closing out the day with a campfire, the flame of which traces back to the spark struck this morning. It’s been a full but unhurried day, my favorite kind. Plenty of time to reflect on the year and consider the one upcoming. Plenty to be grateful for.

Goat kebabs. No local farmer had ground goat available but one did have shoulder steaks. Me and a cleaver got it most of the way there and then a blender did the rest. Goat is associated with Yule, for reasons that aren’t very clear. We also have straw Yule goats we’ll be throwing onto the fire.

(Looks like I’m live blogging Yule. 🤷‍♂️)

Dang, that chili was good. The recipe called for two pounds of ground beef, which felt excessive. We swapped one pound of ground beef for another pound of kidney beans. Perfect. Since we get our beef from a local farmer, it’s expensive—which in turn makes us a bit more sensitive to its overuse.

Chili is cooking over the coals. We went with chili because it’s easy to cook outside—which was more important to us than what we actually cooked. I used Kent Rollins’ recipe; Rachel has her own chili recipe but we went with this one because we’ve been enjoying Kent’s stuff lately.

First act of the solstice: light the Yule fire from flint and steel. I wanted to use that method because it is more bodily and patient than striking a match. This candle will be used to light all the other candles and the cooking fire today.