You'll need no castles in Spain

Happy fall! I apologize, if anyone's actually still reading this, for the long hiatus. This summer, while not particularly busy per se, really knocked me out. I have a post started on some of our summer activities, but I'm so enjoying the season right now, that I decided I'd rather start here. We've been having a beautiful fall and Silas and I have really been enjoying spending time outside - walking through the garden, following the chickens, filling buckets with rocks, and generally having a good time. It's such a relief, after what felt like an unrelentingly hot summer, to be able to comfortably spend long stretches of time outside.

While we were down visiting our folks for Silas's birthday, my dad and Tres went searching for chanterelles and came back with quite a haul. We enjoyed a couple of really delicious mushroom-centric meals and then made the rest into duxelles to freeze  and enjoy throughout the winter.

Silas inspects the cleaned mushrooms

Fall is our busiest preservation time and also the end of preserving season. We've finished all of our jams (I made a few jars of plum two weekends ago and declared jam season finished), canned tomatoes, and made 60 pounds of pears into sauce and preserves, so apples and sauerkraut were our two remaining items. The weekend before last, we hit up the farmer's market for 20 heads of cabbage and a local orchard for 100 pounds of apples and got down to it. Silas was a very eager and involved helper. He mashed and stirred kraut for Tres and helped him peel the apples, while I heated and ground them up.

We've also been enjoying the fall "fruits" of our garden. We've had our first good year for brassicas and are really excited for all of the kale, sprouts, and cabbage we'll be eating over the next few months. The kale has been by far the most prolific and I have some recipes to share shortly, as I've been searching for new ways to use all of that goodness. We also have a few sweet potatoes (they filled the wheelbarrow, as you can see  below - we estimated that it's about 200 pounds. . . from 25 feet of plants!). Suffice it to say, I've been looking for sweet potato recipes too.

eating squash, with chopsticks (why not?)

I peeked in on the bees yesterday and things are looking pretty good in there, lots of honey and bees but significantly slower activity. After some internal debate, I decided not to harvest any honey this year, as I really have no idea how much they'll go through this winter. So, this will be a learning year and next year, we'll do some harvesting. I have a little beeswax, from the combs I broke last spring, so I'll still get to do a little experimenting with that this year.

All in all, it's been a wonderful fall thus far and we're hoping that we'll get to continue with the beautiful sunny days and subsequent sunny dispositions for a few more weeks.