We think we have started the new year off on the right foot yesterday. We didn't bake anything sweet AND we went for a walk in the woods.
We weren't too far in when the holiday sugar withdrawal started to kick in. Visions of sugar plums were dancing in our heads. Look, over there, off the path to the right.
No, it was not a vision; it was real!
A REAL gingerbread house!
Here's to 2009, a year of sweet magic!
Brown was the color of the day for our walk this weekend.
I love that magical time of day when the low sun makes everything glow.
Don't you love the way the milkweed seeds look like a fish?
It is usually cloudy here in the fall so we try to get outside when the sun is shining. The midday sun is very low.
This makes for great shadow fun.
Things that make me happy today:
1. We live on this road.
2. I drove down the above road to get to M's last cross country meet of the season where he made his season goal of finishing the 5 K race in under 20 minutes. (19:56)
3. P is up and feeling better after a day of and naps and fever on the couch.
4. P. talking with a woman in a reproduction 1860's dress last Sunday. Why does hers STAY out?
Each year we work at "Pioneer Days" at Waterloo Farm Museum I demonstrate tatting and how to make handkerchief dolls. When P was a baby she napped in the museum field cradle while I worked my shift. B works the horse drawn wagon ride area, and for the last three years M has played music there with a few friends. It looks like P will be getting a special dress for next year's event. I will try to make one with a deep hem to let out as she grows.
5. P saying in her sleep, "Where is my embroidery?" (she calls these her embroidery)
6. We are having another beautiful sunny fall day today!
Fall is bringing lots of changes here. We are getting clouds and cold winds. Yesterday I started our first fire in the wood stove.
Our spring chickens are all grown up. A couple of them turned out to be roosters and now strut their stuff around the yard. They try to crow but haven't gotten the manly sound worked out yet. Soon we will be getting eggs from the new hens.
It is also time to start cooking up pumpkins for the freezer.
We will make pumpkin muffins today. I shall call them cup cakes and take them for snack at preschool tomorrow for "C" day.
Yesterday was another beautiful day. Knowing that it will soon be cold we went for a walk near some local lakes.
We saw lots of signs of fall.
And enjoyed a beautiful sunset.
P liked that it was PINK. And she even got to go wading before we left
.Everyone has such busy schedules now that school has started. It was nice to take some time for the whole family to do something together.
Now that fall is here, the days are shorter but the temperature is still very warm. We have had some beautiful sunny days this week.
It is time to start the mental shift into the dark time of year. We are losing daylight each day. This is not something I noticed much when I was growing up. In Virginia, the difference is not so great. Maybe I am just more aware of my surroundings as an adult.
It seems that the earth is sending up a burst of color in an effort to fight back the coming dark.
We are soaking it all in. Trying to make the light and color last, at least in our minds.
We know that in the winter months things are more subtle. We will have to notice textures, and shades of brown and white. We will find the beauty in the "non colors." Yes, there will be bits of color here and there, but not like the show of color we are getting now with the fall leaves and garden harvest against a brilliant blue sky.
P and I came home from a busy day of preschool (it was my day to help) and both took naps.We did mark the first day of fall with a walk around the property this afternoon. P collected a fall bouquet.
I hope you all enjoyed your first full day of fall.
One of the things we like about where we live is the wildlife we see. There are sandhill cranes that summer in our field. We also see lots of deer, wild turkeys, pheasants, and an occasional coyote or fox. We enjoy watching hawks and have even spotted a great horned owl sitting on our power line pole.
The wildlife is also one of the things we DON'T like about where we live. I have yet to grow a decent sunflower. Every year I plant them and every year they are eaten by deer. This year I thought we could just plant LOTS of them as we have the room. We are preparing more land to plant with native prairie plants so we used some of that area for a very large sunflower plot. I thought there would be enough for the deer and still have a few survive. Not so.
We also planted extra pumpkins knowing that the deer and other critters would find them. There are some pumpkins in the weedy area of the garden that have not been nibbled but quite a few have large holes.
Last year we planted corn three times and the cranes walked through the garden eating the sprouts as they came up. We did not get a single plant. This year we treated the seed with something that is supposed to deter the cranes. That worked. Now, we hope the raccoons will leave a few ears for us.
When we returned from our trip this weekend, we saw two red tailed hawks sitting on our power line pole. They were eyeing our chickens. They found out while we were gone that they could get a good chicken dinner here. We lost a couple of our new chickens including the feather footed buff cochin. I wish they had gotten the new roosters instead of the hens. When we are home there must be enough activity around the house to keep the hawks away.I sometimes feel like the wild creatures are invading our little farm place. But, then, I remember it is the other way around.
We have invaded their place.
We are working out a way to coexist on the same land. I do admit that I would rather lose the chickens to a red tailed hawk, coyote, or fox than to a neighborhood dog. We will just continue to plant and grow more than we think we will use and hope to end up with enough to make us happy for the effort.
I hope you had a good week.
We enjoyed a week of being completely unplugged. We visited with family
and are now ready to jump back into our routine here.
The low sun in the morning and evening is great for photography. The colors are often more vibrant. We have noticed that the barn is a very vibrant red on some evenings.
Last night, on our after dinner walk I noticed the clouds.
Light on dark.
Dark on light.
Dark and light.
We made our first trip to the local U-Pick blueberry farm. It is close enough that M ran and met us there. (He has just passed 200 miles for the summer and is hoping to make it to 500 before school starts.)We hung our buckets from our belts and started picking.
P was like Little Sal. Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk. Her recommended method of picking was to "eat the big ones and put the little ones in the pail." She did a lot of picking but must have found mostly BIG berries
I like to go early in the morning and listen to the birds while I pick. I get in my own little pretend world that I am a pioneer woman working to feed my family. I ignore that the bushes are in straight trimmed rows and the ground below my feet has been mowed. When I hear the calls of "Only pick the BLUE ones," and "wow, look how big these berries are," and "how many berries have you picked?" coming across the field , I am jolted back to reality. The spell is broken and I know it is time to go.
Morning's haul: 15 pounds.
For lunch we all had peanut butter and blueberry sandwiches. Ahhh, only a short time each year can you have THAT for lunch!
We will freeze most of them for pies this winter.
Miner's Blueberry Pie Filling
3 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (I use 4 cups for a 10 inch pie)
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Mix dry ingredients.
Add to blueberries and mix gently.
Pour into pie pan with crust. Add top crust.
Bake at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes.
Sometimes tending the chickens gets to be mundane. Give them food, give them water, collect the eggs, shoo them out of the flower gardens, let them out in the morning, close them up at night. Some days, however, there are fun little surprises for us. The other day, P and I were out in the yard and stopped by the chicken barn on our way back to the house. There were eggs in the nests and we gathered them in P's hat. There was one egg that was much smaller than the rest.
Another day we went in the barn and saw three hens sitting in the same nest. There were a couple of empty nests but for some reason they all wanted to be in that one.
I am easily amused.
It is hard to believe how busy we are these days. The boys were scheduled to perform at an outdoor event with the Chelsea House Orchestra Saturday evening. We had a hail storm that afternoon and then rain. The festival coordinators canceled the event at the last minute. The sun came out again so we took advantage of our evening at home and the wet ground and set to work weeding our raspberry row. With all of us working we were able to get finished fairly quickly. We then came in and played cards.
Last night P. and I took a walk around and surveyed the garden areas. We saw little pears,
and our freshly weeded, 250 foot raspberry row along the side of the path.
We had the idea this year that we would stop mowing some of the areas that we usually mow. Since pumpkins are supposed to grow well where there was previously lawn, we decided to plant them in these areas. Here are some of our over 90 hills of pumpkins. I am not sure what we will plant in these areas next year. I would like to find something that the chickens can eat that requires relatively low labor.
We saw a little hail damage on our onions.
Not so much on the potatoes. Maybe it is the rye... We planted our potatoes in rows within the garden plot of rye. The rye was there already and was, of course, not ready to harvest. We left the rye and dug the rows for the potatoes. We have carried mulch down the rows. We have noticed that they are growing very well in this environment. The potato beetles have not found them there. I think that the tall rye protects them a bit.
Saturday, we found this dove who had made a nest in our supply of twine in the barn. She sat patiently on her nest all day as we went about our business getting tools, and starting the tractor and lawn mower. She will be a mother soon.
We will keep an eye out for the babies. The incubation period for dove eggs is 17-18 days.
Back in the winter, we ordered baby chicks to be delivered on June first. The incubation period for chickens is 21 days. That means that our little chicks started their incubation at the hatchery on Saturday, as we discovered this dove.
We will also be waiting and watching for these grapes to flower and grow. This will take a lot longer than incubating chicks.
That is the way it is.
We have to wait for some of the best things in life, it helps to have a lot of things that we are anticipating along the way.
About fifteen years ago we planted two areas of native prairie grasses in our fields. We burn a portion of the prairie occasionally, primarily to discourage invasive plants such as the autumn olive. Yesterday was burn day. The weather was beautiful and there was not much wind.
We start the fire so that it burns into the wind, this way it does not burn too fast. When everything goes as planned, there isn't much to do...
I am often mesmerized by the flames while we watch the fire and listen to the popping and crackling sounds it makes.
This area of prairie is below the barns. There is a cluster of locust here that we are trying to kill. It is also an aggressive invader in the prairie areas and is sending up saplings in our raspberry row. We cut the larger trunks of the locust for fire wood.
There are bursts of tall flames when there is a gust of wind or the fire comes to an area of thick tall grass. Some of the big bluestem grass can be eight feet tall.
Burned locust.
Now we watch the regrowth of grasses and flowers. The native prairie plants make great landscaping because once established they can endure long periods with no rain. According to some references, some of the native grasses can have a foot of root for each inch of plant above ground.
We may get plums this year! We will have to keep the chickens out of the tree if we want to eat any of them. Just before the plums are ripe the chickens make a plan. They all gather under the tree and a selected few jump up in the tree to knock the plums down. The others are ready to eat as they fall. Last year we didn't get a single ripe plum.
It seems a bit early, but today is apparently the day according to the farm saying, "plant corn when the oak leaves are as big as squirrels' ears."
Will it be "knee high by the fourth of July?"
B is a steward for a nature preserve near us. He was there working on a trail the other day and took some great photos of tree bark. Look at all the different textures!
Shagbark Hickory
Beech
Black Cherry
Black Willow
Isn't it interesting how different they are, all growing together in the same little bit of forest. At first glance one just sees the forest.
Gwen Marston, a quilt artist friend, was asked about her work and how she developed her style. Her answer was that she grew up in Kansas. She said that in Kansas, especially in winter, you have to notice the tiniest of differences in color shades and texture to fully appreciate your surroundings. I think this is good advice wherever one lives.
Take time to enjoy and really see the world around you!
It started snowing before we went to bed last night and we woke to a fresh blanket of snow. This is spring snow- wet and sticky. It looks and behaves different than winter snow.
When I look out the back window, I am grateful that we have indoor plumbing. I do sometimes think about the original people who lived here when using the outhouse was the "normal" thing -all year.
All that blue sky is SURELY a sign of spring.
Lilac leaf buds.
Anticipation.
This is the start of the boys' spring break. Yeah!
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