October

The winds of Autumn showed up just as we changed seasons. I forgot how windy it gets up here after Summer's over. We had a little rain in-between hay harvests. Yesterday's efforts filled the big loft with square bales. There's one more cut field, which will be round-baled, because our old bodies could not take another round of picking up square bales and getting them up in a loft.

Other signs of Autumn: the neighbors are dumping buckets of black walnuts on their driveway to be run over by the pickup truck and hulled.

The local vineyards are picking grapes. I bought some Cabernet Franc yesterday and have already started in on them. The Chardonnay is bubbling along nicely and the Blackberry Wine is almost ready to be bottled.

It's nice and chilly in the mornings and the leaves are just beginning to turn. Yesterday, I watched about twenty five Canada geese fly over the house on their way to somewhere.

Red sweet and hot peppers await processing in the kitchen and the cooler is full of Hubbard squashes and grapes.

I've made some progress in the old house, lugging furniture and accessories out of our basement to furnish it. Windows are getting washed in both houses and we have some plans for improvements on the farm.

I have the impression that we are beginning the preparations for a long, cold winter. Today, I'll begin to clean out the greenhouse and from now until frost, I'll be loading the Mule with plants that have summered on the porches to transport them down the hill to the greenhouse.
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Thought for the day: "Be Yourself; everyone else is already taken." Oscar Wilde