Hey y’all—today was one of them snowcovered days where you ain’t got a whole lot you can be doing outside, so I put it to good use. I cleaned the old corn out of my shelling box (some of it was leftover from the Foothills Farm Festival and had started molding), then I shelled what I’ve got left of our Boone County white corn. I showed y’all two different hand-crank shellers—one newer and one old as the hills—and you could really see the difference. The newer one was slinging kernels outside the box and busting some, which is exactly why I say you don’t shell seed corn with these things. After that, I put my little Vivore grinder to work and made cracked corn for the chickens—two buckets full. I played with the adjustment to see if it would do cornmeal too, and I do believe it’ll make cornmeal if you tighten it down and sift it, but I wasn’t trying to make “cornmeal quality” today. While Andy was out tending chores, I got in the kitchen and made my mama’s chicken stew—milk, butter, broth, chicken, and a flour slurry to thicken it just enough to stick to the meat. Around here, chicken stew over loaf bread is just part of winter, and I baked a sourdough loaf to go with it—good food, old ways, and a reminder why we love this life.