Curing in Autumn

 Adam is making more leaves. These are smoother, with fewer bubbles. Here's the first big one he did, painted.

 

I suppose he has about 15 leaves of various sizes in various stages of development. They should dry (or cure) slowly over the winter. Above you see a Japanese Magnolia leaf. He embedded a hook in the back.
 He smoothed the back of the big leaf. The two green hostas above will have light green veins.
Our new puppy, Trixie, wants to help sort pecans.

 Some friends have said it's too early for pecans, that they won't be fully developed. But from reading on two state extension websites, if the pecans are dropping naturally (not from wind), and the husks are dry and fully open (or off entirely), then the pecans should be fully developed, after curing. Curing, or drying, should take about 10 days.

 Adam dug all the sweet potatoes. Here they are, drying ... curing ... on our front porch, on wire racks.

 Some are tiny. Some are mammoth.

They also cure about 10 days.

And I have a steady stream of loofahs coming through their process of curing, deseeding, cleaning, bleaching.

Our small 2nd crop of white potatoes are coming along. I wasn't going to sneak a peak, but then one potato was showing already ....

 My Blue Lake green bean plants are looking very bedraggled from bugs, but I got another bag of beans today. I've been blanching and freezing them.

 Here's Adam's new compost pile inside the garden fence. Beyond the fence you see the big field our friend bush-hogged for us. It looks so good! 

 All the grass out there will eventually be raked into this pile too.
I have one remaining cherry tomato plant in the garden that's bearing. It was a volunteer, I think. I thought it was declining, but it seemed to get a second wind!

 

It has lots of blooms and green tomatoes, and plenty of red ones too. I picked a handful of about 20 today.

I'll take that! 
I love how the produce of a small farm changes so much from season to season. Some crops come around a second time (since we have a long growing season). Some come in bursts -- like Adam's leaf-making. He can only do it now, when the leaves are mature. In a couple of weeks, all these leaves will be yellow and dying. And elephant ears won't be big again until mid-summer. I like that we live in a dance-like comradery with these seasonal shifts of nature. I love that at any given time I can have eggs and nuts and beans and peas and tomatoes and herbs from my own plot of earth. That is quite rewarding.

We Are Diggin' Fall!

As I mentioned before, Adam has been push-mowing this big field. The tidy piles look cute, but that tall stuff on the left/top of the photo? That's the chest-high goldenrod weeds he still has to tackle. Thankfully, a friend with a tractor offered to bush-hog the rest of it for us. He came today.

Today I reminded Adam it was time to check sweet potatoes. They've been in the ground since mid-June. Sure enough ...

 

That's only 5 plants' worth. There are many more to dig. Yay!! I love sweet potatoes. I wonder how long it will take me this winter to tire of them? I think I need to find a good sweet potato pie recipe.

For lunch today, I made some avocado dip with a few things off the farm: egg, a few last tomatoes, and beautiful cilantro:

Our self-seeding cilantro is just lovely:

And my newest hen Autumn laid her first egg this morning!

 She's just a teenaged hen, so her first egg is small. It's on the left, below. Next to it is one of Punkin's eggs. Punkin is a year older. Hens' eggs get larger as they grow older; however, they lay less often. Your "jumbo" eggs in the grocery are from older hens.

Adam continues to lay thick mulch on our house beds. It's like putting the plants nighty-night for the winter.

 A wonderful addition to our farm this weekend is this nice extension ladder that we bought from a friend for $50. It's so good to have it; now we can begin to work on our house eaves/roof/leak. 

 We've had no rain in weeks, and everything's quite dry. But the sky is darkening today, and the clouds are billowing, and it feels like rain. My poor mum (from last year) is trying hard to bloom.

 Yesterday afternoon was nice enough outside to sit in the pecan orchard with the dogs. I've been picking up pecans every day. It will be a banner year.

 That's Ned's head. We looked out over the big field and listened for geese. He and Baby wrestled and competed for my hand. They're just playing.

I have a good friend who's a potter. We both sold our wares at the music festival in Oriental on Saturday. She pulled out this exquisite chalice -

She offered it to me as a gift because it had a hairline crack. Wow! I just love it. It looks like fairytales and Tolkien's world and tree nymphs. I put a small candle in it today while I painted.

That's it from the farm. We're still drying loofahs and picking green beans and wondering how the white potatoes will do. But right now, things are pretty good on the farm.

More Empty Nest Behaviors

I now know what The Empty Nest feels like. Hmm. New, different, wonderful but sometimes a bit empty and quiet. I enjoyed the first week or two, throwing myself into moving furniture and clearing things out, setting up my oh-so-fun craft room. Today is the first day I've sat around thinking, "Hmm. What do I do now?"
Anyway, before this pondering, I did finish some curtains for the other little house, AKA Julia's old room:

 They give privacy but allow some light in.
And a new one for the door:

I also, at last, made a simple skirt from this chicken-themed fabric. I'd bought it to make an apron, so (as you'd guess) the skirt has ended up shorter than my preferred ankle-length. I plan to buy some muslin to make a built-in underskirt or slip, that will hang longer.

Cute fabric, huh?

 I finished a rather unusual weave:

 And for the first time in a very long time, I went to Prayer Shawl at the Methodist Church on Thursday! It was delightful to see my old yarn buddies again and sit and click some needles in their company. I started a basketweave shawl:

The yarn is actually very blue; size 15 needles

 These are NOT our farm pumpkins. We have no pumpkins this year. I photographed these at WalMart.

 Our second go-around with potatoes are sprouting up now:

 And it appears we will have a good pecan year ... we hope. Some of the trees are loaded.

 Lastly, I had a bit of a scare today, walking back from the chicken coop (where Punkin was trying to lay). We'd noticed Ned had a swollen neck (jowel, hanging down below), and we wondered if he'd had another run-in with a snake. Here, they sat in the sun (after the thunderstorm), but notice the foreground ....

 I stepped so close to him! I squealed, oh did I squeal! Thankfully, Ned had already killed him. You can't see it here, but there are flies on him.

This is another one of those yellow-bellied (really orange-bellied) water snakes. They are pretty creepy to look at, but they are not venomous.
So THANK YOU, Ned, for being my protector and killing all snakes on the farm! Oh, how I do loathe the look of them.
Punkin was on an egg-laying strike for about five days, but she appears to be back up and running again. Life is generally quiet on the farm. We do hear from Julia, and she seems to be doing very well at college. That makes my mama heart at ease.
I hope you are enjoying your September thus far! Cooler days are coming!

November on the Farm

 Only a few leaves remain on the grapevines in the orchard. That golden one caught my eye.

 Only the weeds are in bloom now. Our roses are about spent. The camellia buds are full and near bursting. We will see them ruby red in January.

 Most mornings are frosty now on the farm.

Adam has very nearly finished the red metal roof on the little building. He has a bit of caulking to do, that's all. He put some new fencing around my chickens ... again. Escape artists that those hens are! He's growing his compost pile, of course, gathering the cut grasses from the big field. In the photo above, you can see the scythed part of the field, and then in the distance the beige color of the taller grass, not cut yet.
This month he also ripped out and rebuilt the pantry cupboard in the kitchen. We're discussing the continuing project of the house floors -- what to fill the weak parts with, and how to finish them. Simply, I hope. I like simple wood floors.
The pecans that fell after Hurricane Matthew may be the only ones we get this year. I gathered two mesh bags full.
Adam plans to plant little slips of Christmas trees on the property, hoping to cut and sell them down the road. It's cheapest to buy them 1000 at a time. We barely missed the deadline to order them this fall, so it will wait until next fall. They will go in the damper area of the field that isn't suited to farm crops. Pine trees grow here like weeds, and I do not joke!
We are busy, busy with work and the Christmas season, and the farm is quiet. The chickens are producing. The worms are doing very well. The bees are quiet. Ned the guard dog is barking and chasing squirrels, doing his job. And in my mind I'm thinking of the quiet hours I love, fiddling in the spring greenhouse, mere months away.

First Hurricane on the Farm

Hurricane Matthew was kind and skirted out to sea, leaving us with high winds and a dab of rain for us, but no serious damage. Saturday evening brought the heaviest rain and the beginning of flooding in our house lot.

With a forecast of 10-15" of rain, I was quite worried our house would be stranded like Noah's ark in a small pond by morning.

We moved our 3 vehicles by evening to get them out of the water. That was a pain! Adam had to walk back from Bayboro twice.

The wind howled loudly most of the night, and our electricity went out. I tossed and turned. Everyone I spoke to on Sunday said the same thing: "We have no electricity. I slept horribly last night."

Sunday morning, we walked the farm to assess damage. I'm happy to say we had only one branch fall on the barn roof. Otherwise, the yard and field were strewn with hundreds of small branches. Adam got one small hole in the barn roof that he'll repair.

The chicken yard was attacked by the pine tree overhead.

Before the storm hit I removed everything on the front porch -- 65 mph winds were expected and they did arrive! I noticed my rose bush had one last bud just opening. I cut it and brought it inside, a little touch of warm, bright summer as autumn's stormy season takes over.

Sunday morning dawned sunny and suddenly cool. What a relief!

We began gathering debris, two truck beds full.

Monday morning Adam began a fire to burn it all. The wind had died down.

Strong winds robbed most of the county of power, and work continues to restore it. Ours came on Sunday night, and I'm so thankful. The farm is fine. Our young pea plants and lettuces were battered by wind, but I hope they'll recover. But another crop was encouraged by that wind ... the pecans! Quite a few fell, and I began gathering them today. Pecan-gathering means that autumn is truly here!