the Barnhart Reunion (snapshots)

 

the summer of grilling

When we first moved into our new home, the only appliance it had was a refrigerator. Absent a stove, we turned to the trusty Blackstone grill. The thing about Blackstones is you can cook just about anything on them. You’re not limited to meat, planked salmon, and kabobs; Ashley loves making eggs and pancakes on it, for instance. For two weeks we cooked on nothing but the grill, and when we got a new stove – an air fryer stove, like the wife has always wanted – we decided to continue making most of our meals on the grill. Amish chicken, chicken thighs, pork chops and pork loins, ribeyes and top sirloins, shaved beef and beef medallions, salmon and tilapia – the Blackstone covers it all. On a whim I decided to chop up some cabbage and potatoes and throw them in a tin-foil pan and cook them on the grill, and it turned out so good that it’s become our standard for cooking vegetables. Perhaps the best part about working the grill is that I don’t do it alone; I always have company. Without fail Moose shows up from the woods and hovers around for choice morsels – I tend to throw him some meat most days – and Zoey and Naomi like to assist me with the cooking. At the end of a long day, there’s nothing quite as soothing as hanging out with my girls, smoking a nice cigar from House of Cigar, sipping on bourbon, and working the grill. I’ll miss these summer days, though I’m looking forward to our crop of winter meals: roasts and soups and stews and pies. 

Zoey, Naomi, and Maggie keeping me company while I grill. They're sitting on a brick
pizza oven that needs to be thoroughly cleaned before use; it's one of my late summer goals.

Moose enjoying some grilled shrimp. I am a generous master.

a new blog (transplant)

Greetings if you have come across this blog by way of the old one! One of the privileges of getting older is looking back on the days of your youth and seeing how cringe you really were, and that cringe was put on full display for anyone willing to take the time to comb through old blog posts. I won't link to the old blog here, for it is best Dead and Buried (though I'm keeping it alive for nostalgic purposes).

I figured now is as good a time as any to shift to a new blog. We've undergone lots of changes in the past six months, and in a lot of ways we are reshaping how we do life. Late last month we sold our first home on Woody Hollow Drive to move into a fixer-upper in the rolling wooded hills of Batavia, Ohio. 

our last family photo from Woody Hollow!

Our reasons for moving were several, but at the top of the list (1) we wanted to be closer to our church and church community, (2) we wanted more opportunities to live the homestead/hobby farm life, and (3) we wanted to get out of the Glitz and Glamour of uppity West Chester. While my drive to the office has doubled, I'm thankful that I get to do a lot of my job from home. We're looking forward to life outside suburbia, and it's been a bit of a culture shock, especially for the wife. According to the federal government, Clermont County is the westernmost Ohio county considered part of Appalachia, and that Appalachian culture is on full display. I'm quite fine with it; in a sense, these are my people. 

home sweet home

The home we purchased is surrounded by woods and filled with all sorts of wildlife: giant beetles, snakes, a koi pond with fish and flowered lily-pads and dragonflies and frogs, foxes and raccoons and opossums, and a menagerie of odd-looking bugs and woodland critters. Just yesterday Zoey found the bones of a deer on our property, and one of our goals is to bleach the bones and reassemble as much of the skeleton as we can ('Consider it part of next year's homeschool curriculum,' I told the wife). Our two mature cats, Moose and Elouise, love the property, and we got two new kittens, named OJ Pickles and Bear, who will be joining them outdoors. We have enough property to hopefully begin raising meat rabbits and chickens next year or the year after, and I'm looking forward to getting our garden going next spring (this year I contented myself with just a few plants in pots, and of course jalapenos were one of them). There's a lot of work to be done on the yard - the previous owners let it go the way of the birds - but we've found some hidden gems: yucca plants, which I love and whose buds are edible; bamboo along the fence-line, which can be used to make fishing poles and cat toys and all sorts of things; Chinese Rose of Sharon, which are midsummer bloomers; and Japanese maples, which are expensive. At some point an owner must've had been an aficionado of all things Asian. 

There's a lot of work to be done on the home itself; that's the nature of a fixer-upper. Our home warranty goes into effect the end of this month, and we have a laundry list of service calls to make. We've tackled a few things (electrical issues, some plumbing stuff, and odds-and-ends), and we're in the process of patching drywall, painting the interior top-to-bottom, and we're about halfway done tearing out the disgusting upstairs carpet and sealing the sturdy subfloor with Kilz and painting it with deck paint (a temporary solution until we put flooring in). Despite all the work that needs to be done, we're happy with the home: it's almost twice the size of Woody Hollow Drive, four bedrooms and three full baths, with a basement that, once waterproofed, can be finished. We have a five-year plan to bring it up to speed, and in the meantime the girls love it. 'This home is perfect for me,' Naomi mused. 

Another big change in the midst of all this is another promotion at work: come September I will be officially instated as the 'Assistant Director' at Walk of Joy. In this position I'll oversee all the departments within our company: our Residential department, our Employment department, and our two day programs. The plan is for a further promotion in September 2024 to 'Executive Director,' in which I begin taking over a lot of the responsibilities currently handled by our CEO. I thank the Lord for the favor He has shown me: over the past six years, I have gone from being a simple direct care service provider working shifts in the field to a Site Lead, to an Employment Specialist, to a Site Coordinator, to Assistant Residential Director, and I have two promotions on the horizon. Each new position has come with a significant pay raise, and each has come with less hours away from home. I'm reminded of one of my favorite passages from the psalms:

O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup;

   You maintain my lot.

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;

   Yes, I have a good inheritance.  [Psalm 16.5-6]