Fall's Arrival

After several days of warm temperatures last week, our cool days and evenings have returned.  Although the house was at 64 degrees when I woke up this morning, I built a fire in the wood stove to chase away the chill and darkness.  Dawn doesn’t arrive now until 6:15 or so, and I’m still adapting to the long stretch of darkness between my rising and the sun’s. 

I’ve been heading out to the sheep barn as the sky begins to lighten, but before the sun is truly up.  It creates this magical light on the pasture’s tree line. The leaves have taken on their autumn hue (see Nora’s photo below), and the dawn creates a shimmering, fire-like effect as the breeze ripples through the gold, orange and red leaves.  I tried to capture it the other morning on camera, but with no luck.  Some moments simply have to be experienced.   

The house, too, is taking on its fall look.  Nora stopped by the nursery and picked up some corn stalks late last week.  They joined the mums on the front porch.  I added some pumpkins yesterday.  The Halloween decorations while liven up the scene in another week or so.  Photos to follow later.

With a week left in the month of September, winter preparations are in full swing.  The barn is stocked with enough hay and straw (hopefully) to get the sheep through the long winter.  With the first hard frost in October, the little ones will transition from eating pasture grasses to 2^nd cut hay (supplemented with sweet feed until they’re a year old).  This will continue until the pasture starts growing again in late April/early May.  Bill D., the cattle farmer down the road, will be delivering another 10 bales of old hay, which we pile up around the base of the big chicken coop for added insulation.  A heat lamp and heated base for the water container, along with using the deep litter method, work together to combine a sufficiently warm environment for the hens throughout the winter.  (Made-It and Daisy2 continue to come inside every evening, of course, but their small coop also has a heat lamp for those extra cold days.)  The wood shed is stuffed to the rafters with wood, and we have at least another year’s worth of wood stored in the main barn.  Jim will also be cutting down some dead elms along the wood line that, once split, will probably give us another year’s worth of wood.  No shortage there.

Other preparations underway include weatherproofing the wood on the front porch and chicken coops (thanks Jim), cleaning up the vegetable garden beds (tilling as necessary where the weeds/grasses took over, although my plan is to move completely to a no-till method by next year) and covering them with a nice layer of the sheep poo/straw mixture from the sheep barn.  This will give the manure time to break-down over winter and replenish some of the spent nutrients in the soil.  Jim has already prepped the pumpkin patch in this manner, and will do the same to a newly tilled strawberry bed.  (We’re down to 75 producing strawberry plants in the existing bed, so I will order an additional 75 over the winter for early spring planting in the new bed).  The blueberry beds have been weeded and the ground covered with a layer of cardboard.  Time and weather-permitting, Jim and I will go out into the woods and gather up a couple loads of pine needles to lay down on the cardboard.  Blueberries love acidic soil, and they seem to respond quite well to the slow decomposition of the pine needles.   

On the food front, I canned yet another batch of mixed berry jelly (the blackberries are just starting to turn, so I will no doubt be canning another batch or two of blackberry jelly as well) and made another 8 quarts of apple sauce.  We still have loads of apples on one of the late-ripening trees, which, if they hold out, will be taking a trip to Tess and Mike’s the first weekend of October and finding their way into the apple cider press.  I canned a few quarts of crushed tomatoes over the weekend as well, but I’m waiting for the bulk of our tomatoes to ripen (see Nora’s post below – ignore the comment about me painting myself blue and running around the table).  Onions and shallots are all tucked into the basement for winter storage.  The potatoes will be dug up in another week or two and will be joining them.  The rutabagas and butternut squash are looking good so far, and should be ready for harvest by mid to late October.  

Of course October brings a rash of to-do items – plant garlic, mulch strawberries and roses, plant bulbs and any fall-arriving perennials (of which there will be a few – I just ordered a mix of plants to start filling in the 8’ x 80’ bed in the front of the house; Lady’s Mantle, Cranesbill, Coneflowers, Shasta daisies, Meadow Rue, and Baby’s Breath), divide and transplant perennials (lots of shifting around to take place this fall), wrap and/or cover fragile shrubs, and I’m sure I’m missing at least 10 things, but you get the idea.  There will be a huge sigh of relief once November rolls around and everything is tucked in for the winter.  That said, despite the work, October is still one of my favorite months.