Catching up is pointless!

This feels like a rather common occurrence: I come to the blog to see when I last wrote and it dawns on me how much has happened since my last posting.  This time is no different except that this time around it feels like it has been fuller than usual.  It has a whole lot to do with the fact that as of yesterday I'm at 36 weeks and the countdown until Spark makes her grand debut is coming fast!  It seems both Jason and I have a case of nesting, though (as much as I'd like it to include the indoors of our home), the focus is on harvesting some of our final big crops (peanuts, sweet potatoes, squashes, corn) and tucking in beds for the winter with various cover crops.  We are eager to be able to devote the vast majority of our emotional and physical energy to the nurture and care of this little gal and to our family's adjustment (but it will come soon enough and I'm reminding her that she doesn't need to be in too much of a hurry!).

Jason is working on the garden plan as we speak and will need me for the "plan becomes reality" conversation here soon.  So in light of that, this will be a post of many pictures and few words...

This is my view for much of the day when I'm at home working on various food processing projects.  Yes, I'm very careful to keep my protrusion out of the path of sharp knives!

Friend and former CJP student joined us for a 24 hour potato digging and salsa making blitz!

A break in the harvesting and food processing for watermelon. Alida was spitting a seed on Spark!

Our family picture for September highlighted each of us holding a fruit grown on our property - Alida has our first pineapple, Jason cantaloupe, Kali watermelon, I'm holding a peach and Spark was trying to hold a bunch of grapes but this picture caught her dropping them!

Here's Alida harvesting our first pineapple - the top was planted from a Blessingway that women friends held for me when I was pregnant with her.

It's pretty cute, but not as cute as the gal holding it!!

Yes, four pictures with the pineapple!  It was a very ceremonial cutting and partaking - one quarter for each of us. It was amazingly scrumptious!!!

Fall harvests!  There's more where those came from...

Jonathan and Jason started working on a roof structure to store various kinds of carbonaceous materials.  It's a work in progress to date... 

We hosted a chicken and duck butchering day, inviting some of the fellows from Allegheny Mountain Institute to join. Lots of learning took place, good food and conversation, and our freezers are now officially full.  Hopefully we don't land upon any road kill deer in the near future!

During Kali's week in WV this summer she started on three hats - one for her, one for Alida and one for Spark. Here are all three girls wearing their hats!

Their littlest sister is joining a crazy bunch!  These kiddos crack us up many times a day with their antics...

Many counter spaces (or in this case the guest room chest top) look something like this at this time of year.  Just about as soon as I catch up on one load, another comes in (we are needing to do a major harvest on the gardens about every other day). 

Our first ever red raspberry peach jam from our bushes/trees.  Yum!

The very last watermelon and cucumbers.  Until next summer!

One of my pre-baby wishes was to locate no-spray apples to make sauce from.  It didn't seem like the year to be without applesauce with Spark coming along.  We didn't expect to land 9 bushels to do up.  Yes, we did in fact say we would take pick all of them to process on shares.  And,  yes, we did them all in 1.5 days.  Go Myers-Benner team!

It's one of the things Jason and I love most to do together. So often he is on other tasks and I'm food processing but I wasn't taking this feat on without him!

The girls both enjoyed cranking.  Otherwise, Alida was mostly a good source of an occasional distraction or humorous entertainment.  But without Kali chopping we would have been doing it most of today too!

The first day Jason and the girls did slip out to get the spinach in the ground.  

And when I slipped out to photograph them I couldn't help but also get some of the veggie amaranth.  So beautiful, even if we have had too many other veggies to eat any of it...

Spark will appreciate this come next summer.  Not sure how she felt about me being on my feet for 18 plus hours...

The best helper ever!  She loves being part of all aspects of our home and homestead. She asks me at least a dozen times a day, "is there anything I can do to help?"  

Trombone squash that got away from us stuffed with chicken sausage, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, herbs and cheese on top.  Way beyond edible!  This was dinner on the second day when I had come to the conclusion (after the first day) that I should not live on apples alone if I don't want a very rumbly tummy!

We are into chestnuts.  Either Jason or I are scoring and boiling chestnuts daily for the girls currently.  They love to go out and collect them each day and bring in their finds.

Here they are peeling chestnuts, but of more interest to me was the apple rhubarb crisp and apple red raspberry crisp in the background.  Yes, we may soon be "appled out" at the rate we are consuming apples and apple products currently!

Did I mention the girls amusing us?  We still do nightly "tick checks" even though we haven't found one in months.  The girls are finding ways to make it a more fun ritual so they normally have some combo of Jason or my clothing on when I come find them in the closet.  Don't be disturbed - only clean underwear goes on their heads!

Alida couldn't quite last as long as we needed to stay up last night to finish off the applesauce!

Here was the sight before I went to bed about 1:30 a.m.  And we had already removed about 60 quarts from the porch and I canned the apple butter inside.  Yep, LOTS of applesauce!

And to not go through food processing withdrawal today I'm trying a new thing - homemade ketchup!  It smells great but is taking a long time to get thick.  We'll see what the morning brings but Jason and Kali used it already in its runnier form on roasted potatoes and Jason is a big fan!

Today was just too gorgeous of a day to not go for a walk.  And another pre-baby wish of mine was for one more family hike to the lake.  We did it!  And it was lovely!

Alida loves sitting on Spark.  And she can now do it without any hands!!  She can only do it for a few more weeks so she might as well enjoy it while it lasts!