Darkest Depths 2018

Our snowperson has gotten tipsy from too much moonshine!

Just after noon today the moon is full and we slip from the month of Darkest Depths into Cold Time. The fact that the Winter Solstice was last night is a happy coincidence.

We've had some warm weather this past month. Yesterday it was 60 degrees! But in the evening, rain moved in and we woke to four inches of snow on the ground. It looks much more as it should for this season!

Scrubbed sunchokes waiting to be sliced.

Because of the warm weather, Bob was able to dig the sunchokes and we got them packed into the crock to ferment. Yumm!










I've been busy since Thanksgiving threshing out my dried beans. I worked six days a week and finally finished on the 18th. I got 10 gallons to put in the pantry. I'm glad that job's done!

A year's worth of dried beans for us.

Sweater for this year.

Since I was so busy with the "bean project", I've not spent enough time on Bob's Christmas sweater. I'm nearly finished with one sleeve, but still have one to go. It's not his only gift, so he'll not be a sad little guy. Actually, we do all of our gift shopping at pre and post holiday sales for the upcoming year. They just go into a drawer and when a birthday, anniversary . . . comes along, we pull something out. We just got all of our gifts for 2019!





While I've been busy with the beans, Bob's been working on the bathroom project. He hooked up all of the plumbing and it tested out fine, with no leaks!

Major plumbing rework.

Now he's got the wiring done. The wiring in that room was particularly distressing and has been disconnected since shortly after we moved in (as soon as it was discovered).

Measuring for lights.

The electrical inspector is due to come in January. In the meantime, Bob's got a little wiring to do in the garage and many holes to deal with in the walls of the bathroom.

Lights at last!

He need not be idle!










We celebrated the Solstice last night. We had a special dish for supper and some pumpkin pie.

Celebration table cloth and Solstice tree

After supper we played a board game, worked on a jigsaw puzzle and watched a short video.

Cozy.

This morning we relaxed by the fire, eating a leisurely breakfast of warm blueberry scones and tea and looking out at the snowy woods.

That's what the season of darkness is about for us; resting, rejuvenating and quietly enjoying life.






May your season and celebrations be all that is meaningful and enjoyable to you. And if not, why not take steps to make is so? We have, and it's worth it.

Till next time,
Kathleen, Bob and Lunette

Seed Fall 2018

Double pumpkin. Twice as good!

Happy Thanksgiving! Today is the last day of Seed Fall. It's a very cold day here (17 degrees) and snowing. We celebrated our harvest already, so today we're not making any special meal.

Bob chopping fruits

 We are preparing our Yuletide goodies: lebkuchen and fruitcake. These will need a month to "ripen", so have to be made now.

The creek on Thanksgiving morning

Lunette got to go for a cold walk by the creek this morning.









The root crops are in the root cellar, Bob's gathered walnuts from a friend's property and wood has been chopped.

Nice carrots this year!

Plenty of English walnuts 

Lumberjack Bob again

The garden eleven inches under

Now the garden is all "put to bed" and resting under a blanket of snow.

Wild rice pilaf on a bed of winter squash and spicy green beans

We celebrated the completion of our harvest on the tenth of the month. We enjoyed a nice lunch and relaxed.






Our fall chores have been halted by an early snowstorm. In the predawn hours of the 16th, we got a fast eleven inches of snow.

This is what 11" looks like

See Lunette peeking from under the right bushes?

Bob was totally unprepared for the snow: leaves not raked, snowblower not on, log splitter sitting out and three loads of split logs not stacked. The logs have now been stacked and the snow blower is operational. The leaves will have to rest until spring.









On the day before the big snow, Bob did get the horse radish roots dug.

Cold digging this year

Horse radish ready to go to the root cellar

I cleaned, ground and packed the roots up a couple of days later. Eight quarts this year. Hopefully this amount will see us through. We were a little short last year with six quarts.









Unfortunately, the snow came before Bob got the sunchokes dug. Unless there's enough snow melt to get to them, we'll be without them this year. Oh well, life goes on.

Our autumn, and most of the summer was wet, cool and cloudy. Looking at our solar panel report is almost as depressing as listening to the national news. Almost. However, we've "run the numbers" and are encouraged by our energy production/use findings. When we had our panels installed, they were sized to meet 100% of our electrical use. At that time, we had neither the electric car nor the induction stove. Because of their addition, we've been paying about $30 a month for electricity. (This would be less with normal sunshine.) With the elimination of all propane, and gasoline for our our primary car, we have saved $80 a month. Offset this with the $30 monthly increase in our electric bill, and our net savings is $50 a month! This doesn't include the less tangible savings in health of the planet, etc. We're very pleased. Not only do our efforts make sense morally, but the numbers prove their monetary value as well. Something to think about.

Now is our season for reading, resting and thinking, and doing home improvement work. Our books are at the ready. Put on the tea, light the fire and let's begin!

To all of you, a happy season of peace and rest.
Till next time,
Kathleen, Bob and Lunette

Song Time 2018

Colorful flowers of Autumn

This is the last full day of our month called Song Time. We're in the middle of autumn, but we've been busy preparing for winter here.

The garden is being "put to bed". This month I nearly completed the harvesting.

Eggplant pasta sauce ready to freeze

The last of the eggplants and tomatoes were made into pasta sauce. Some yummy winter meals there!

A small cranberry crop this year

I picked our cranberries and put them in the freezer.

Preparing apples for dehydrating

Some of the Crispin apples were made into dried apple slices. I filled the dehydrator and ended up with nearly a gallon of dried slices.
The rest of the apples are in the root cellar.








The dried beans have all been harvested and they are in the cellar curing; waiting to be threshed out this winter.
All that remains in the garden is the kale, chard, carrots and beets. The kale and chard will come out at the end of the week. The beets and carrots will stay a while longer, while the root cellar cools down some more.

Cleaning off the bean trellises

With the crops mainly gone, garden clean up is underway. I've got all of the bean trellises cleaned off, and on the weekend I'll cut down all of the flowers. I left them for the bees, but they seem to be finished with them now. I hope to put away all of the structures this weekend, too. This is a two person job so I have to wait until Bob's available to help me.

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay..."

Bob's been busy building the wood pile. He and a neighbor, with whom we share wood, have gotten thirteen face cords ready.
Bob cuts the logs, the neighbor splits them into stove size pieces and Bob (or occasionally I) stacks the wood. Everyone is responsible for their own kindling.
Lunette's job is to make sure the piles are free of rodents and cats.

Bob stacking his "small wood"

Lunette takes her work seriously

Bob's annual vacation falls during this month. We had a fair balance between chores and recreation. (Our resting vacation occurs when Bob has the last week of the year off for Cornell's shut down.) On this vacation, we toured the 1828 Brick Tavern Museum and went on a special event tour at Rose Hill Mansion. We also did a little shopping, ate out just a few times, played games and worked on jig saw puzzles. We enjoyed ourselves.

We've had typically wet weather, a bit on the cold side. We had snow on the ground on the morning of the 18th. The birds at the feeders are our winter friends now: House Finches, House Sparrows, Blue Jays, Nuthatches, Chickadees, Cardinals and Woodpeckers. The Juncos haven't come yet. Many Snow Geese flew over the day before the snow.
All of nature around us is getting ready to settle in for a rest. We have just a few more tasks before we're ready to join in. We hope you're all getting ready, too. We have found late fall and winter much more enjoyable when we mold our expectations and activities to the season, rather than expecting to live "summerly" all year 'round. "To everything there is a season..."

Till next time - Happy Autumn!
Kathleen, Bob and Lunette

Ingathering 2018

Freedom Apples ready to pick

The full moon is tomorrow night, and with it ends our month of Ingathering. As the name implies, much of our effort this month is spent in preserving our food harvest and bringing in firewood.

Both freezers are now nearly full. I still want to put in a few more boxes of mixed greens and applesauce.

Making applesauce is easy with this mill

Our Freedom apple gave us about a bushel of fruit this year. The Crispin has yet to be harvested but it's got a few fruits. I may dry those in slices.

Moonglow pears

Our pear harvest is still small enough to fit in the vegetable drawer of our refrigerator.














While walking Lunette, Bob found some Hen of the Woods mushrooms on a log.

Hen of the Woods

He picked some of it and that, too has been stashed in our freezer.

Bob finished putting wood chips on the existing paths in the garden. We'll be adding new borders around the perimeter which will need chips also, but that will have to wait. First, we need to focus on this winter's wood. We should be starting in earnest on that sometime this week.

On one of our warm days last week I was able to get all of our windows cleaned, inside and out.

Easy to clean replacement windows

With twenty two windows to clean, it's an all day task! But it's so nice to have it done before the cold weather.











Lunette's been busy helping Bob with the wood chips and digging out mice and moles.

Lunette puts her all into hole digging: notice the dirty tongue!

She doesn't care how deeply she has to go down.

Yesterday was the Autumnal Equinox. We took the day off to enjoy ourselves. Bob and Lunette went for a nice walk in the woods. Later Bob and I went to Canandaigua to tour the Granger Homestead Museum. It was very enjoyable. We came home and had a nice soup for supper and watched a movie. We found it all very relaxing.

The equinox is a balancing point for us. It's time to let go of the hectic garden work and to prepare for winter's upcoming rest. We still have things in the garden. We always find it amusing when on the day after Labor Day people begin to ask if there's still anything in our garden. Like it's there one day and gone the next? We still have the drying beans, green beans, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, carrots, beets, kale and chard. But, the harried work of summer is done.

This is also a good time to reassess our lifestyle and make necessary changes. Next year we'll be decreasing the physical size of the garden, and how much is planted. All of  this also tends towards balance.

That's enough for now. We hope you'll all take time to enjoy the simple pleasures of autumn: cool days, colorful leaves, birds migrating overhead, apples and wood smoke (if you're lucky enough to live rurally).

Take care and we'll be in touch at the end of Song Time,

Kathleen, Bob and Lunette

Abundance 2018

Thimble berries

The month of Abundance has passed. We've had an abundance of produce. And of rain!

First I'll talk about the rain. In the predawn hours of August 14, we were socked with a terrific rain storm. By 6 am, we had 6.5" in our rain gauge and our creek was roaring!

Our bridge in high water

At one point, the water was so high that it flowed over the top of our bridge deck. This was too much for the bridge to take. The banks on each end eroded back by about six feet, and one of the very large concrete supports was washed downstream. The bridge is now a pile of debris in the middle of the creek bed. We don't have the resources (time, money or skill)
to replace it. For now we'll have to ford the creek to reach the other side. Perhaps we'll place some stepping stones across in a more placid spot.

View downstream from our bridge at high water

One good thing to come of the storm was a flush of growth on three of our shiitake logs. Thunder storms sometimes trigger these growth spurts.

Basket full of shiitakes

 We ate a few of these fresh and dried most of them for winter use.

Some of one day's harvest

The garden, too has been producing abundantly. I've dug both "regular" potatoes and sweet potatoes. I've frozen beans and tomatoes are at their peak.

Some of our "regular" potatoes

Sweet potatoes

We've eaten many tomatoes fresh, I've dried some, and canned many. This brings me to the promised discussion of my new canner. I had one of those blue granite ware canners that you see everywhere. Mine was flat on the bottom and worked on my stove, but not well. After doing a bit of study, I found that this canner base was 1" too large for my largest heating zone. It wasn't heating efficiently. Hmm. What to do? I still wanted a canner. (I don't have enough freezer space to freeze my tomatoes.) I found an induction compatible stainless steel canner with an acceptable base diameter. Okay. Good reviews. I ordered one. When it came, I found out it would do both water bath canning and steam canning. (NB steam canning was approved by the USDA in 2014.)

New canner

It's more efficient because it's the proper size, it holds 8 pts rather than 7 pts and if I use the steam method, only uses 3 qts of water compared to 11 qts for water bath canning. It uses less water and so, takes less time to get to the proper temperature for processing. Win, win! Now that I've used it about a half dozen times, I've refined my technique and am very pleased with it.

Jars of tomatoes fresh out of the canner.

Such a helper!

Lunette's been helping Bob lay fresh wood chips on the garden paths. She protects him from any large earth worms he may uncover.








As she's aged, her hips have become more troublesome (a typical issue among her breed). She slips on our wood floors and has fallen down our entire staircase at least twice. We're worried she may fracture a limb. Bob mentioned this to our vet, who recommended these gripper booties.

Baby's got new shoes!

We put them on her any time she may be going up or down stairs and they work very well. She also seems to have regained some confidence about going down the stairs. Now all three of us have special house shoes.









Bob continues to be busy with various garden and wood cutting chores.

We did take time on July 29th for a walk in the Finger Lakes National Forest near our home. It was a nice break.

Teeter Pond, one of Lunette's favorites.

We hope you're all ready to ease into your autumn schedules. Catch up with you at the end of Ingathering.

Till next time,
Kathleen, Bob and Lunette.

Fire Fly Time 2018

The July Garden

Trellises filling with bean vines

The month of Fire Fly Time has come to an end. This is the month when the garden really begins to come into its own. Here's some of the produce we've been enjoying....

Raspberries and squash

Cabbages and currants

Cucumbers

Eggplants and peppers

And our first tomato!

We've also harvested and frozen black currants, sour cherries, strawberries, blue berries, peas and parsley. The second freezer has been turned on. A true mark of the season!

Chopping cabbage to ferment

We had "Kraut Day" this month. Our 15 liter fermenting crock is now filled with red cabbage and cucumbers. It's in our root cellar, bubbling away. (We hope!)

Bob pressing down the shredded cabbage

I harvested garlic last week. There are now fifty one large heads drying in our attic. Later I'll plant fall spinach in this spot.

Garlic bed waiting to be harvested

Harvested garlic 

Fall carrots are up, and this weekend I'll sow our beets.









Besides helping on "Kraut Day", Bob's been starting to bring in firewood. So far he's got about five face cords done.

The compound miter saw works great for cutting up the "small wood"

Another of his chores is tending the fruit trees. He has to thin excess fruit, remove pests and spray the fruits to deter some pests.

Spraying with Surround clay

He uses only organically approved sprays: a dormant oil spray and a clay spray. Both coat the trees/fruit and act as a barrier against pests. We've always had great success with these.








While Bob and I are busy about the homestead, Lunette does her fair share. She considers her primary functions these days as patrol and guard.

One of her favorite sentry points

When she deems it necessary, she'll chase vermin or kill a snake or two.

Too hot and tired

As she ages and her heart gets a bit weaker, the heat really affects her. We've had some very hot and humid weather this month and she has suffered. Poor baby.

Welcome break from chores

Still, when she's off duty, a walk in our woods is always welcome.












Hopefully next month will bring the produce in earnest. I should be canning tomatoes and freezing beans by then, as well as digging and storing potatoes.

We hope that all of you are enjoying your summer. Get outside and get in touch with nature. Even if it's just sitting on your stoop. It's great for your health. Next month I'll tell you all about my new canner. Oooh.

Till then,
Kathleen, Bob and Lunette








end