Frost clung to the ground most mornings now, making early chores rather chilly, especially when the long, half-frozen grass soaked your socks through the holes of your garden clogs. (Note to self - it may be time for closed toe shoes.) Oddly, the trellised tomato plants still lingered, not thriving, but greeting each day with hope of returning warmth. The squash vines perished weeks ago, but the tomatoes are a stubborn lot this year. We've cleared the tomato plants twice now, anticipating...
13 days ago • 2 min read
Scarlett swaths of color caught my eyes in the morning light, erupting on the south hill - the sugar maples! Planted years ago, we'd used the autumn olive bushes as nursery plants to protect them from the scouring winds. Now there was no missing how they had outgrown their protectors, spreading their canopies on the hillside. It'll be at least another decade before they're ready for tapping (likely longer), but someday homemade maple syrup will be a part of the bounty of our land. The fall...
20 days ago • 3 min read
"Look at that! How did that get there?" My husband was pointing to a Grandpa Ott's morning glory flower, which had planted itself at the base of an autumberry bush, that had planted itself in the raised beds that made up the retaining walls near our front door. Nary a sprinkle of rain had fallen in some days, and the bed was filled with gravel and a thin topping of soil, but that volunteer flower was tenaciously clinging to that volunteer plant like it was climbing up the finest trellis in a...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
"Fall started with an armload of giant zucchini, stacked up in my arms like cordwood. I thought back to the beginning of the growing season, and wondering if three plants would be enough. As it turns out, even after one of the plants died of mysterious circumstances, the remaining two plants lived up to their reputations as providers of garden abundance." I had to laugh the other day. I went out to grab a zucchini to cook for breakfast (we often make up a pan of sautéed zucchini and a pan of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
"And so passed a good man, slipping away quietly in the night, surrounded by family. There was no fanfare, just a simple service and meal, as he had requested." We bid farewell to my father in law, Gus Neverman (August Neverman III) this week. Grandpa Gus had struggled with an assortment of health issues in recent years; now he is not hurting anymore. You may remember me mentioning his last visit here with grandma about three months ago. They came out for an afternoon and we treated them with...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
"The late summer sun may promise many days of warmth to come, but the chilly morning dew on barefoot toes and dapples of bright colors in the tree tops remind us that autumn is on its way." Another week, another round of canning and preserving as we make like squirrels, prepping for the winter ahead. We wrapped up pear processing with some juice that we'll use for finger gelatin, jam, and fruit leather. I really enjoyed the cranberry pear jam this year, as we used Honestly Cranberry freeze...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
"I woke with a start as thunder boomed in the predawn light. A wave of relief washed over me as the winds picked up along with the storm. We'd spent hours picking pears the previous evening, finishing just at evenfall. Had we been a day later, the storm would have taken most of the crop." Harvest season marches on here on the homestead. This week we helped the neighbors get the pear crop in, spending about two and a half hours with my sons in a tractor bucket picking the higher branches while...
2 months ago • 3 min read
"The chill breeze swept across the open fields, an early and unwelcome harbinger of the winter days ahead. It was only late August, but already nighttime temperatures had dipped unseasonably low. There was a pause in the wind, and for a moment, the ghost of the warm sunlight that bathed the homestead just an hour before lingered. Then it began to blow again, and the heat vanished like a wisp of a memory." Our weather took a sharp turn towards cold this week, with nighttime lows into the 40s,...
2 months ago • 4 min read
"The sunlit hours of late summer days always seemed to shrink faster than they grew in spring. With the shifting of the season, so too changed the aromas in the home. Instead of being greeted by peaches and honey as I entered, my senses were teased by the perfume of apples and a whiff of fresh baked bread." Our life is very seasonal here on the homestead. Because we grow and preserve so much of our food, timing is critical (and can be a tricky when the weather doesn't cooperate). There's also...
3 months ago • 2 min read