No frost yet!

It's October 16th and no frost yet! The flowers are still blooming and the nice weather is allowing us to make some enjoyable progress on our winter preparations.

Steve is the superstar soil man and is adding a lot of nice organic matter to all our beds, then covering them lightly with straw to protect the soil from the pounding rain sure to come.

Steve also put in a new gate for us on the east side of the garden. We salvaged the old gate from a barn that is getting torn down and we are wooed by its charm! 

We pulled all the winter squash and were completely wowed by the Cushaw White. They are monsters! We will see how the flesh tastes on some cold wintry day. 

Here's a picture of our soil for documention of this summer's weather - DRY:

Wow. We look forward to fall rains and recharge in soil moisture and ground water. Until then we are enjoying this fabulously beautiful fall and hope you are doing the same!

Picking Lots of Apples

We took a morning to pick apples at Branstool Orchards and enjoyed easy picking, delicious apples and a picturesque location!

The asters growing amongst the apples provided nectar to numerous pollinators and beautiful blooms for us to enjoy.

Apple picking is much quicker than blueberry picking so we picked about 80 lbs of apples in 1-hour or so.

We look forward to the day when our apple trees are fruiting, but for now we are grateful to have so many local orchards to pick from.

Late Summer Garden Harvesting

We are harvesting daily so it's fabulous eating around here! We will pull winter squash and sweet potatoes today since there is rain (we so hope!) in the forecast tomorrow followed by cool/cold temperatures for the remainder of the 10 day. It's not been a great gardening year due to the cool summer and lack of moisture, but it's certainly been worth it. We've put away so much food and love that we know exactly what went into our food, how it was processed and how the earth was treated. Our planet's food supply is intricately connected to conservation of land and biodiversity so we work hard to make our impact the least harmful we can and perhaps even beneficial in some ways.

This time of year is so beautiful with all the changing colors so we are enjoying every last moment outdoors, in the sunshine, and hope you are too!