Winter is Coming......Finally

Well, the cold weather finally got here.  Last night and the night before the temps finally dropped to freezing.  I woke up to a winter wonderland of frost all across the grass.  It took out the last of the garden too, which in a way was nice, because to tell the truth, I was getting a bit tired of it.

I did go out earlier in the week and strip anything that was left in the garden.  I got a mess of peas and lots of green tomatoes of various sizes.  A friend of ours also cleaned out her garden and gave me a load of hot peppers so I'll have plenty of spicy food this winter.  Can't wait.

So it's time to tuck in and snuggle up for the winter.  I don't think I'm going to have a chance to do that for a bit though.  The crew is coming back tomorrow and starting to work on the house again to finish up a lot of the detail work that is keeping me from getting organized.  I'll be posting as it goes along.

The cooler, clearer weather is bringing some amazing sunsets with it.  All the volcanic ash in the atmosphere is showing up at sunset.  Makes you realize why you like living here.

Around the Farmette

Yesterday was Sunday and I just took it easy.  Went to church, took a nap, spent some time with the Baby Dog. In the afternoon, I took the tractor out and just rolled around the farmette a bit to see how things were looking in the semi-fall we are having.

Here's what I saw.

There's still some greenery left

But the woods are full of falling leaves

The persimmon trees are beginning to ripen

And the drought has claimed a few victims this year

It also claimed the hornets, which isn't a bad thing

And back in the barnyard, the chickie babies are disappearing behind a wall of leaves on their yard fence.

So all in all life goes on as it should and the seasons move along.  Life is good.



Fall......Kinda, Sorta

From what I understand for most of the country, fall has arrived.

Well here at the farmette, that might be debatable.  It's getting cooler, somewhat.  The nights are even coolish.  The days are still a bit hot though.  Still up in the 80s, although its finally in the low 80s.  After the high 90s all summer, we thing we're doing well to get 82.  "They" do say that it's going to start going down more next week.  We'll see.

In the meantime, we haven't had rain in so long that instead of the leaves turning colors, they are simply dying and falling off.  I hate it when that happens.  We are getting a touch of color here and there though.

But work on the farmette continues no matter what the time of year it is.  After we dug up the garden at the end of the growing season, we proceeded to throw out all the mustard, collard and turnip seeds that we could find.  Add a couple of sprinklers and we are beginning to see a payoff.

We'll be canning them up soon to last us after the cold weather does actually show up.  Good eating on a snowy day with a pan of cornbread added to the mix.  Yum.

A Trip Back in Time

It was a really neat day today.  After church, Sister and I went to Lake Guntersville to the marina.  Docked at the marina were replicas of the Nina and Pinta ships used by Columbus to discover the New World.  We went on board and saw the way they lived on ship during the time of Columbus.  It's  very tiny.  I can't imagine being stuck on there for three months with a whole lot of people and not having a serious personality conflict with some folks.

The Nina was to scale, but the Pinta is actually about 50 percent larger than the original.  It's still way too small to spend that much time on.  And it got worse.  The Nina was the only survivor of a hurricane in the West Indies and after picking up survivors from the other ships it sailed to Spain with 201 people on board.  The ship is slightly over 1900 square feet and not all of that is available to the crew.  That had to be one uncomfortable trip.

It was an interesting way to spend a warm Sunday afternoon.  Now I've got to do some relearning my history lessons.

My New Toy

I’m totally speechless. I have a tractor. A John Deere tractor. My sister got it for me. She found it yesterday and just bought it for me simply because I needed one. Apparently there was an 80 year old man in the area that wanted a JD tractor even though his children opposed the idea. So he bought himself what he wanted and then found out it wasn’t. The children then had their way and the tractor got returned. So our local tractor company then had to resell the tractor as used even though it only had two hours on the engine. What an awesome deal!

So it was delivered this morning, all bright and shiney. I immediately spent a couple of hours working on landscaping in the back. It’s a learning experience, but oh how much easier than doing it with a shovel and a rake.

I think I’m in love.

Success!!!!!!!!

At Last!  I'm finally able to upload pictures!

I have found a new interest in life.  I bought a trail camera, hung it up at the gate to the lower pastures at the farm and suddenly found myself bird watching.  Wow!  Seems to be the old gate is a perfect landing zone for just about every species of  bird on the place.  I'm having a wonderful time seeing what is coming about.

This could get to be habit forming.

Giving up

Well, the uploading of pictures is still on the blink, so I'm going to give up on posting photos right now. I'll keep working at it, but for now it's going to be word pictures.

It's September but you'd never know it here. It's still hot, and I mean hot. It was 96 degrees here yesterday. Today is a bit cooler with a little cloud cover so that is nice. Getting some rain has become a beautiful dream. It's dry, dry here now. The grass is crunchy and walking creates a dust cloud. I'm so ready for fall to arrive.

The moon has been full for the last few days. A great big round of yellow cheese in the sky. It's been really beautiful. The other day on the first day of fall, was the actually full moon. A true harvest moon.

We've plowed up the garden. It was pretty much spent. Dug up somewhere around 100 pounds of potatoes, got a few onions and the last of the peppers out. Considering we didn't really do anything to help the garden out this year, we got a lot of food out of it. If we had put in any effort, we might really have produced a good deal more.

Then we planted half of the plot in wheat and half in winter greens. They are all coming up in great abundance. We are having to water them, however. The greens will be ready for picking in about another week or so, and the dogs are grazing on the wheat. They love it.

The chickens have grown double in size since we got them, which is good. The bad news is the majority of them seem to be turning out to be roosters. This could get to be an interesting situation soon. I'm either going to have to find somebody that needs roosters or learn how to process a chicken.

The house is almost done. I ran out of money for a spell so things got put on hold for a bit. Luckily, what is missing is small things, a bit of baseboard here, a touch of paint there, a mirror needing to be hung elsewhere. I've been living there since June, doing things in bits and pieces to get it done. Slowly but surely it's coming together. I got my house in Denver rented out so my builder will be coming back soon to finish up the odds and ends.

I love my house. It's turning out to be everything I wanted it to be. It's Home.