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The Colonel's Grace, 23812 Midland Trail, Victor, WV (2026)

08/30/2026

Fog

One morning, after I finished setting up the stand, the fog settled in so thick I could barely see beyond the edge of the yard.

The mountains disappeared. The road disappeared. Even the fields seemed to fade into the mist. For a little while, my whole world became very small.

And to my surprise, it felt peaceful.

I knew the fog wouldn’t last. Before long, the sun would burn it away, the traffic would return, and another busy late summer day would begin. But for those few quiet moments, there was nothing to look at except what God had placed right in front of me.

As I stood there, I realized that feeling wasn’t new.

I’ve always loved fog.

When I was a teenager, someone told me the old saying that every August fog meant another winter snow. Whether there was any truth to it never really mattered to me. I loved snow then, and if we woke up to a foggy August morning, I’d grin and announce to my dad that we were adding another snowfall to the coming winter.

He had never heard the saying before and wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about snow as I was.

It became one of those little family jokes that never needed a punchline. I’d count the fogs. Dad would roll his eyes. We’d laugh and go on with the day.

Even after I moved away, I never lost my affection for foggy mornings.

Driving home on Route 460 from Virginia Tech toward Bluefield, there are places where you crest a hill and suddenly the valleys below are filled with mist. The fog settles into the folds of the mountains as though someone gently tucked a blanket over them during the night.

No matter how many times I made that drive, I always found myself slowing down to look.

There was something about it that made the world seem quieter. Still. Unhurried.

Years later, standing beside the stand on that summer morning, I finally understood why.

Fog doesn’t erase the world.

The mountains are still there.

The road is still there.

The fields haven’t disappeared.

The fog simply keeps us from seeing farther than we need to.

So much of life is spent wishing we could see farther down the road.

We want to know how things will turn out. We want answers before questions have even finished forming. We want certainty about next month, next year, sometimes even the next decade.

But peace has rarely entered my life through certainty.

More often, it has arrived quietly, asking me to pay attention to today’s work instead of tomorrow’s possibilities.

I wonder if there are seasons when God gently allows the edges of our world to disappear into the mist—not because He is hiding the future from us, but because He is inviting us to stop searching the horizon long enough to notice what He has already placed in our hands.

Perhaps that’s why fog has always felt peaceful to me.

It narrows my attention without taking away my hope.

The road is still there.

I just don’t need to see all of it today.

08/28/2026

A quick note for Friday morning:

I was unexpectedly called away last night, but the stand is open and ready for you!

All of this week’s baked goods have been placed safely in the cooler, so please be sure to look there when you stop by. The rest of the stand is open as usual.

Thank you, as always, for supporting us—and for understanding when life occasionally changes the plan. 🤍

08/27/2026

A Little Slice of the South

Some of the earliest music I remember came from my grandparents’ television.

On one side of the family, it was The Lawrence Welk Show.

On the other, it was The Porter Wagoner Show.

Depending on which grandparents’ house I was visiting, the soundtrack might include an accordion, a champagne bubble, a rhinestone-covered suit, or a young Dolly Parton singing beside Porter.

There were limits to this musical education.

Classic country was welcome.

Modern country was regarded with suspicion.

Actually, suspicion may be too generous a word. Most of it was openly scorned.

I inherited their love for the old songs.

But somewhere along the way, I wandered even farther from the approved family playlist.

For a time, I lived at the beach. In the evenings, I would turn on Andrea Bocelli, sit on my balcony, and watch the waves bring the last rays of the sunset into shore.

It was beautiful and peaceful and just dramatic enough to suit me.

Had my grandfather known I was sitting beside the Atlantic willingly listening to a man sing in Italian, he would have questioned all of my life’s choices, I’m sure.

I generally keep current events—and most of my opinions about them—off this page. There is already enough noise in the world without me adding to it.

But when I heard the news about Dolly Parton this week, it didn’t send me toward commentary as much as it carried me backward.

It carried me to those living rooms, to the music my grandparents loved, and to a kind of Southern country life that never needed to announce itself at all.

It simply was.

An old song—or the loss of a familiar voice—can open a door to places and people we haven’t visited in a while. This weekend’s menu grew from that.

Once that door opened, I found myself wanting to make the kind of food that belonged there: familiar, unpretentious, deeply Southern, and best shared with someone else.

So this weekend, we’re filling the table with a true Southern-style menu, built around three kinds of pie bars in the cooler:

• Pecan Pie Bars
• Old-Fashioned Chess Inspired Bars
• Peach Cobbler Pie Bars

Rounding out the table will be:

• Fresh Sourdough: Jalapeño Cheddar, Lemon Blueberry, and Italian Focaccias
• Sourdough Blueberry Coffee Cake
• Banana Nut Bread
• Five-Flavor Walnut Pound Cake
• Butterscotch Blondies
• Classic and Walnut Brownies

Somewhere between Lawrence Welk’s champagne bubbles, Porter Wagoner’s rhinestones, and Andrea Bocelli singing across an ocean sunset, I developed a deep appreciation for the things that carry us somewhere else—and for the ones that carry us home.

This weekend, we’re going home.

One pie bar at a time.

08/25/2026

The thoughts that find me while I work.

Today’s reading: The Story the Ordinary Was Telling

08/23/2026

The Picture

This past weekend, twenty-four of us gathered in Hilton Head to celebrate two milestones.

Dad turned eighty.

Mom and Dad celebrated fifty-five years of marriage.

Those numbers sound impressive when you say them out loud, but I’ve been thinking about how numbers never really tell the story. Eighty years. Fifty-five years. They’re only the cover of the book. The life itself is found in everything that happened in between.

Mom and Dad met in the library at Concord College in Athens, West Virginia. Mom was a math major studying calculus. Dad, who had recently returned from Vietnam, walked over and asked if she needed any help.

I’ve often wondered what his plan would have been if she had actually said yes.

Her calculus exceeded anything a business major had ever prepared him for.

Somehow, that conversation turned into another one, and six months later they were married.

Looking back, getting married on Dad’s birthday was a fairly strategic decision. As far as I can remember, he has never forgotten their anniversary.

Their introductions to each other’s families were memorable in very different ways.

Dad’s first trip to Possum Creek wasn’t spent sitting politely on the porch making small talk with Grandpa. Instead, the two of them spent the day blasting stumps with dynamite so Grandpa could build an airplane runway across the farm.

That was Dad’s introduction to Mom’s family.

Mom’s introduction to Dad’s family was a little different. Dad was one of eleven children, so there was no quiet, private meeting with the family. She walked into a house full of noise, opinions, and enough activity to make anyone wonder what she had gotten herself into. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Grandpa pinched her arm and announced her dress size. It was apparently his way of welcoming her—or at least of making sure she understood that joining this family came with very little privacy.

Like so many young couples, they began building a life wherever opportunity led them. They lived in Charlotte for a while, then Atlanta, before eventually returning to Bluefield and settling into the house that has been home ever since.

Dad spent his career traveling the back roads of Appalachia, selling mining equipment to coal companies scattered throughout the mountains. Every now and then, especially during the summer when school was out, I got to ride along with him. I don’t remember many of the sales calls, but I remember the feeling of those days. I remember watching the mountains roll by through the truck window, stopping somewhere for lunch, and feeling incredibly important simply because I was going with Dad.

Mom’s work happened much closer to home.

She raised four children.

At first glance, that sounds like a single sentence. But anyone who has ever raised a family knows it contains thousands of days no one else ever sees. It was school lunches and laundry, doctor’s appointments and homework, church on Sundays, ballgames, holidays, meals around the table, and all the quiet work that holds a family together without asking for recognition.

At first, she supplemented Dad’s income by substitute teaching. Later, she ran a bakery out of our home.

Their life wasn’t without its challenges. There were seasons of uncertainty, health struggles, disappointments, and prayers that took longer to answer than anyone would have preferred. There were also countless ordinary days that never seemed particularly remarkable while they were being lived.

Dad had one habit that still makes us laugh.

For reasons none of us has ever understood, he was convinced he would never live past fifty-five.

Why fifty-five?

No one knows.

He simply believed it.

Every birthday after that became another opportunity to remind him that he had been wonderfully wrong.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts that comes with growing older. You eventually realize how many fears never came to pass—and how many blessings you never could have imagined.

As I watched everyone gathering for the family picture this weekend, I realized we weren’t just trying to get twenty-four people to look at the same camera and smile.

We were looking at what fifty-five years had become.

Children.

Grandchildren.

Stories told every Thanksgiving.

Inside jokes that don’t need explaining.

A family tree with branches spreading farther than two college students in a library could ever have imagined.

Mom wanted one good picture.

Just one in which most of us were looking at the camera and the majority weren’t making some sort of face.

It sounded simple enough.

I’m not entirely convinced we accomplished it.

But years from now, I don’t think any of us will remember whether every smile was perfect.

We’ll remember that we were there.

We’ll remember gathering because two ordinary people quietly built a life worth coming home to.

The older I get, the more I think that’s how the best lives are lived.

Not in headlines.

Not in grand accomplishments.

But in ordinary faithfulness, repeated so many times that one day you look around a room and realize twenty-four people are together because two young people met in a college library, said yes to one another, and kept saying yes through all the years that followed.

08/20/2026

Goooooood morning! I know I say this almost every Thursday but how is it the weekend already?

I left late last night after a full day of baking to drive to my parents’ house. We are out of town for a weekend of celebrating.

My aunt Robyn is handling the stand while I’m gone, so if you see her out there, give her a wave!

Fifty-five years ago, on August 21, Mom and Dad got married.

Eighty years ago, on August 21, Dad was born.

So I’m doing something a little cheesy at the stand this weekend in honor of them. 🤦🏻‍♀️

As most of you know, Mom comes from a family interested in flying. She learned to fly but never quite mastered landing—and eventually decided being a math teacher might be more her specialty.

She may not have been able to land a plane, but she did manage to land Dad. 😁

Dad spent his career selling mining equipment to coal mines and associated businesses throughout the Mid-Atlantic.

So this weekend, we’re celebrating with a Love Takes Flight theme!

At the stand, you’ll find flights of:

✈️ Pound cakes: vanilla bean, pumpkin spice pecan, chocolate chip, and blueberry white chocolate
✈️ Brownies: Snickers, walnut, chocolate chip, and Reese cup
✈️ Biscotti: lemon, coconut pecan, chocolate, and cinnamon
✈️ Mini Banana Bread Bundt cakes: classic, chocolate chip, vanilla bean pecan, and white chocolate coconut

Each flight includes four different flavors, so you can try a little bit of everything!

In honor of Dad’s years in sales, we also have three versions of The Salesman’s Sampler:

💼 Apple pie bars with a pecan base

💼 white chocolate pecan and m&m blondies
💼 Mixed berry cake with a walnut ermine icing and apple pecan cake with a pecan ermine icing (in the cooler)

We’ll also have a limited number of single servings from each category for anyone who would rather choose just one—although choosing only one may be the hard part.

Please join me in wishing Dad a very happy 80th birthday and Mom and Dad a happy 55th anniversary!

And think of me as we drive to Hilton Head, I’ll be counting the number of times I hear:

“There’s a car there.”

“Oh, I thought you might not see it.” 🤣

We’d love to have you stop by. 💕

📍 Roadside Stand: 23812 Midland Trail, Victor, WV

⏰ Fresh Bakery: Thursday–Saturday | 7:30 AM–7:30 PM
⏰ Gifts & Single-Serve: Open Daily | 7:30 AM–7:30 PM

💵 Cash, card, and PayPal QR codes accepted

Homemade. Handcrafted. Heartfelt.

08/18/2026

The thoughts that find me while I work.

Today’s reading: Broken Sand Dollars

08/17/2026

A quick stand note: If you purchased the two book vases yesterday afternoon, would you please check your payment or send me a message? Cell service can be a little unreliable at the stand, so it’s entirely possible that a digital payment didn’t process properly.

This is actually the third book vase in the past couple of weeks whose payment appears not to have come through, so if you recently purchased one, would you please double-check that the transaction was completed?

And just as a reminder, on regular stand days, if you’re short on cash or need a little extra time to pay for food, you are always welcome to leave an IOU. (For a pay what you can food days, obviously there’s no need to leave anything, just enjoy!) Simply drop your name and the amount into the cashbox so I know the item has been accounted for. I’m always happy to work with someone—I simply need to know what has been purchased. 💕

Thank you!

08/16/2026

Let’s do a pay what you can Sunday on all food items excluding canned goods (I.e. jams or pantry items). 💕

The Hidden Work

For as long as I can remember, every spring meant the same thing around our house.

Dad planted a garden.

Not a little patch with a handful of tomato plants, either. Ours had tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, rows of Silver Queen sweet corn, half runner beans, and potatoes. Mom already had an asparagus patch that faithfully returned every year, along with rhubarb and berries. She always planted a half row of onions, and before the season was over, she’d find room for sweet potatoes somewhere in the mix.

It was the same garden they had planted while raising four hungry kids.

Which made perfect sense when there were four growing kids coming in for supper every night. It made a little less sense years later when the kids had all grown up, the freezers downstairs were already full of corn, and there were enough green beans lining the shelves to carry us well into another winter.

Still, spring came, and Dad started talking about the garden.

Looking back, I realize none of us really wanted to tell him no.

The year before had changed all of our lives. Dad had suffered a stroke, and while he was making remarkable progress, there was an unspoken understanding that some things were simply going to look different now. None of us wanted to take away one more piece of the life he’d always known.

The garden wasn’t really about vegetables.

It was about normal.

So instead of suggesting we make the whole thing dramatically smaller, I quietly borrowed a couple of rows. Well, to be clear, I did suggest it. The suggestion was quickly shot down. So then I confiscated.

We already had plenty of corn in the freezer and enough green beans on the shelves downstairs. One less row of each wasn’t going to leave anyone hungry, but it would save a little work when harvest season arrived. I decided those two rows belonged to beets and carrots.

I’d never grown much of either, but it seemed like a fair trade.

The funny thing about carrots and beets is that they require a fair amount of faith.

You plant them, and then you wait.

Every morning I’d wander over to those rows looking for the tiniest sign that something was happening beneath the soil. For days, there was nothing but dirt. Then one morning, little green sprouts finally appeared.

Around that same time, I was recovering from surgery on my mouth and it had brought some complications to my sinuses. Every time I bent over, my nose would start bleeding. Looking back, crawling around on my hands and knees pulling w**ds probably wasn’t my brightest moment.

But those little seedlings had finally pushed through the dirt, and I was determined to give them every fighting chance I could.

I babied those rows all summer.

I watered them when they needed it. Pulled every w**d I could find. Checked on them far more often than any sensible person probably should have. By midsummer, I was convinced I had become quite the carrot farmer.

Those tops were beautiful.

Full. Green. Healthy.

If gardening awards had been handed out for leafy enthusiasm, my carrots would’ve been bringing home the blue ribbon.

Unfortunately, carrots are one of those vegetables where the important part happens underground.

When harvest came, I discovered I’d successfully grown what looked suspiciously like gourmet baby carrots. They weren’t much bigger than my thumb, and I remember laughing because all that attention had produced something that would’ve fit perfectly in the snack-size bag at the grocery store.

The beets, on the other hand, never seemed nearly as impressive while they were growing. Their tops were perfectly respectable, but they certainly didn’t inspire the same confidence my carrots did.

Then harvest came.

As it turns out, the carrots had spent the summer putting all their energy into looking impressive above the ground.

The beets had spent the summer becoming exactly what we needed beneath it.

I’ve smiled about that little experiment more times than I can count.

Not because I suddenly became an expert at growing root vegetables. The evidence says otherwise.

But because every now and then I catch myself making the very same mistake.

I assume I know what’s happening because I can only see what’s on the surface.

I don’t think any of us mean to do that. We simply meet people in the middle of their story and begin filling in chapters we haven’t read. We see someone carrying grief, waiting on healing, rebuilding after loss, or praying prayers that don’t seem to have an answer, and it’s easy to wonder if anything is really changing.

Maybe that’s because we’re standing where we’ve always stood—looking at what’s above the surface.

The Lord, on the other hand, has never been confined to our perspective.

I’ve often wondered how much of His work we’ll never fully see this side of heaven. We don’t see the conversations someone has with Him before the sun comes up. We don’t see the quiet decision to forgive, or the moment hope quietly returns after months of despair. We don’t see the courage it took for someone simply to get out of bed that morning, or the roots stretching deeper while everything above the ground still looks exactly the same.

Perhaps that’s why Scripture speaks so often about seeds. They spend part of their lives completely hidden from the people standing right above them. Their most important work begins long before anyone else realizes something is growing.

I suppose that’s why I’ve become a little more careful about assuming I know what God is doing in another person’s life. More often than not, I don’t.

And I can’t help but wonder how many times we’ve looked at someone in the hardest season of their life and quietly decided the story was over, when all along the Lord was doing His deepest work where no one else could see it.

What if we were witnessing a seed…

…and calling it a grave?

08/15/2026

We’re heading down to the Farmers Market at J&J Hardware this morning—and both the market table and the roadside stand are freshly restocked!

We’ve added more pantry favorites, including jams, dilly beans and other concoctions, spice blends, and herb mixes, along with a couple of fresh batches of brownies—including our mixed berry brownies.

And finally, The Colonel herself was in town this weekend, so naturally, we decided to try our hands at frying something. (I’m a biggg chicken when it comes to sizzling oil.)

Now, I won’t go so far as to call what we made fried pies. That might be giving us a little too much credit. 😂

But we do have apple and blueberry Fried Uglies—and despite their somewhat questionable appearance, they taste awfully good!

You’ll find a few at both the roadside stand and the Farmers Market today. Come see us at J&J Hardware!

We’d love to have you stop by. 💕

📍 Roadside Stand: 23812 Midland Trail, Victor, WV

⏰ Fresh Bakery: Thursday–Saturday | 7:30 AM–7:30 PM
⏰ Gifts & Single-Serve: Open Daily | 7:30 AM–7:30 PM

💵 Cash, card, and PayPal QR codes accepted

Homemade. Handcrafted. Heartfelt.

The Colonel's Grace

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