Mass offered at 4:00 AM this morning. Fire lit. Laudie-dog fed. Chickens fed. And then, in the dark, 50 minutes before sunrise, I was gassing up the chainsaw and adding some bar oil. I accomplished this without a flashlight, by sound alone. Makes me wonder if I could do it if I were blind… I think so. Blind people are amazing.
So, I cut to stove-friendly lengths a five foot length of 14 inch think hemlock log, along with some smaller chunks, then split these up, hauled them, brought them into the hermitage and stacked them, all done by the time the first rays of the sun were breaking over the ridge to the East.
Please God, I’ll be doing more of that throughout today, since it looks to be a beautiful day, even if it’s below freezing right now. It looks like there will rain and snow into the foreseeable future, so it would be good to get all this done today.
One happy hermit. I’m remembering ye all in prayer. Thank you for yours.
By the way, did you remember, today, this ten second novena of thanksgiving to the Immaculate Conception for seminarian Philip Gerard Johnson‘s cancer going into remission? Take out ten seconds right now and do this, as it is very much great news:
O most beautiful lady, who appeared to the humble little Bernadette in the Grotto of Lourdes, look with pitying eye upon the sick and the afflicted. Let me remember to say to you each day as do the pilgrims at Lourdes, “Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.” Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
So happy you had a wonderful trip and that you made it home safe and sound to find all in order.
I have added Phillip’s name to the upcoming Novena of Masses (40 days) that begins on Ash Wednesday at St. William the Confessor in Greenville Tx., offered by Fr. Paul Weinberger.
Hmm, it’s 29 years since we last cut down a tree together – and I still remember the accuracy with which you got it to topple into the V in the wall at the end of the garden. That was some tree. Some lumberjacking.
Even the B.A.R.D. was impressed!
Done, and, will offer up the greatly exhausting yet committed task I face at the end of every work week for confessors. What a job it is to search out all the grime in every corner of every machine in a food processing plant. Somehow, it is so very exhausting yet so satisfying to clean, then to welcome, the lab tech with bacterial swabs and high powered flashlights along with the declaration of “acceptable” or “unacceptable”.
Wish I could send you some of my much lauded potato soup. Perfect for cold weather heartiness. Which makes me wonder what your cooking arrangements are? What do you generally eat, I mean, a lot of canned food, I would suppose? (Do hermits have microwaves?!) But you might give us an idea what you (and Laudie) wouldn’t mind finding in a CARE package..forced, of course.
Rebecca: I am throwing tantrum like protestations right now! Don’t do it!
Anyway, my present kitchen counter is the top of a five gallon bucket of rain water, but I’ll occasionally use a cooler corner of the top of the wood-stove as well. I do get some canned tomatoes for pasta, which cooks al dente on the wood stove if carefully watched. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have been a favorite since about three years old. I do get some eggs from the old chickens. I’m not great at variety… C.W. does send in Mystic Monk Bold Hermit Blend… Better than bread and water, so, for a hermit, I suppose I’m living high off the hog’s back, as the saying goes…
No running water. No sinks. No microwave. No fridge. No freezer.
Now that it’s winter, I’ll sometimes get a bit of milk and cottage cheese. Occasionally a bit of tuna.