"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...

"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...

"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,...