This afternoon it felt like the weather shifted dramatically and now cool air is streaming in our open windows! Fall is here and it feels like it! I love living in a place where there are seasonal changes. I also feel like living with children is like living in a house with changing seasons. There are things to celebrate and grieve with the changes, but right now I have a change that I'm celebrating with abundant enthusiasm.
The reason I have time to start this blogpost is because our youngest has taken a fancy to DOING DISHES! And it has stuck now for a number of days so maybe it's gonna be a thing. Our eldest and middle daughters do not enjoy doing dishes at all so I thought maybe we were going to strike out on that one. But Terah is currently in the middle of doing ALL the supper dishes (other than a few sharp things I got out of the way for her). And she seems to be having a grand time of it: water, suds, and plenty of room to use her imagination to do them in silly ways (like right now she is using a set of tongs to get the silverware out of the water and giggling). I'm a huge fan! The other day when we were doing grape juice, she was at the sink for hours throughout the day. I really thought I was in heaven! I mean making grape juice is already nearly heaven and then to have a dishwasher at the ready...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...and she's pretty fast! That's as far as I got last night before I was needed in the "bedtime buddy" realm! And now a Friday errands day is ahead of me while a large fall chicken butchering takes place here on the home front. So this post will likely be written over a number of days since I looked through pictures from the last two weeks and have 15-20 random "scrapbook updates." So I'll just plunge in and come out at the other side at some point.
Pokeberry dyeing update: It was a success in terms of learning something and (I think) having an enjoyable time of it. But not so much in turning things anything close to a pokeberry color. They looked marvelous initially as you can see here. And then you can see what happened in the rinsing!
Gardens and food processing updates:
There's plenty in this realm to report! We are in the thick of "chestnut and persimmon season." I just processed our first round of persimmons and made the inaugural batch of chocolate persimmon muffins! And the chestnuts are big and beautiful this year (we are picking up nearly a gallon a day). I was kinda dreading chestnut roasting as they have historically been so labor intensive. That was because I forgot that we found a new (for us) amazing method for processing them last year. It is now again cemented in my mind that
THIS is the way to do it and it's magical! We've been able to share gallons with others and still have plenty for roasting anytime there are spare hands that want to score chestnuts to prep them for the oven. Next up is learning more recipes that we enjoy using chestnuts in, as we still have some in the freezer from last year. There's always that hurdle of incorporating a new food we haven't traditionally been accustomed to cooking with into the regular rhythms of food preparation!
The other fall harvests and the following cover cropping continues. Jason did the buckwheat harvest, threshing and winnowing on his own while the rest of us were engaged in other things. I do enjoy seeing what photos he takes during those processes and really liked the buckwheat against the sky one!
Speaking of doing things on our own, I did feel kinda proud of my mulching job. One day while Jason was working away from home, I used the rest of the hay from the drainfield cutting to do a second round of putting down feed sacks and mulching this bed in preparation for our planned fall currant planting. The bed needed a good clearing/chop back which I also did "all by myself." A shower felt so good when I was done!! As seen here, the okra is still putting out new flowers but this cooler weather is slowing the plants down considerably. It's time! We really don't need more in the freezer.
Ok, so time to admit that we did our white potato harvest as a family and it didn't go so great - either in potato yield or in attitudes and endurance in the potato patch! I should know by now that white potato digging has often gotten the adults in the family in bad moods. In the early years it was just such hard digging. Now it's beautiful digging in much improved soil but for some reason our yields the past 5 years have gone down by 1/2 bushel a year from 4.5 in 2018 to 2.5 (at most) this year. Anyway, the younger kids petered out on helping before the job was done and Jason and I got worked up around things much bigger than the harvest we were engaged in, but that often seems triggered by it (what are we trying to accomplish?...how do we measure our success?...are we on the same team with our goals and what we are aiming to do at Tangly Woods?...what are we learning or trying to learn and how do we find time to troubleshoot things that aren't going well?...who are our mentors?...when do we admit that something isn't working well in our system and make larger shifts?...).
The bulging earth in the sweet potato hills makes us eager for that potato harvest. Normally done in the cool fall temps and normally pulling larger tubers from the ground is a great mood boosting activity. Stay tuned!! It's currently scheduled for a birthday activity this week.
With the cooler temps, I'm not so opposed to turning the oven on so seed testing our delicata squash has begun in earnest. We'll see if we can make our way through the bin of seed candidates before their ideal window of tastiness passes. We got smart this year and sorted them immediately for ones for pigs, ones to give away and ones we wanted to test for seed. So it's a slightly (only slightly) more manageable amount. I didn't take a picture, but Kali treated us to one of her fabulous meals last night of roasted delicata which she had filled with a delicious venison black bean mixture. Yum! Oh, and the meal was topped off with an apple cake that Alida made with Grandma. It truly is "the year of the apple around here!" We are enjoying fresh eating apples, we are drying apples, and we are cooking/baking with them. And today will be applesauce day and the other evening we enjoyed our second annual cider pressing with our Cub Runts crew next door. I didn't even crank a single apple, but I was happy with my task!
The other large food processing thing that happened was making grape juice, followed by grape sauce and then grape leather, last weekend. Emily, Jonas and Ivy joined us for a bit both days and Jonathan, Christen and Luca came for a fun impromptu visit mid-project. We gleaned grapes from our dear friends' vineyard Saturday - a 2 acre vineyard that they did not have the capacity to tend to this year and they were not harvesting from it. We only picked a tiny fraction of what was there. Our car was the limiting factor on what we could bring home. But it's a good thing because as it was I pulled a 19 hour day on Sunday. In the end we had about 80 quarts of what I love to call "liquid gold!"
This processing day completely made up for the white potato digging process. It felt to me like a day where our teamwork was at it's best. I went to bed bone weary and so content. We worked together so well, everyone helped in various ways AND we had fun. Early in the day we got into awarding each other and ourselves "brownie points" for the ways we were helping each other. Towards the end of the day we made and enjoyed brownies together!
The night culminated in Terah losing her 8th tooth!!!
So once I tucked the grape juice on the shelves, this is what the root cellar is looking like. We'll see where I find to tuck away today's applesauce. Once the remaining fall harvests are in, I'll be begging the first frost to come!
Luca: So when we aren't stocking up food for the winter, we are savoring as many times with this baby as we can (and it is still not nearly enough for our girls who often ask "when will we next see Luca" minutes after he departs)! He's 7 months now and I melt into a complete puddle when he reaches for me. I feel sad that I never got to be super close geographically to any of my nieces and nephews when they were little (with the exception of Ivy who arrived in our lives when I still had a nursing-not-sleeping-through-the-night little one of my own). So I'm savoring having this dear little one in our lives at this juncture. And it could easily be a post of its own and I'm choosing from what seem like a bazillion photos, but here's some recent favorites from our times together. The ones of him sleeping are hard earned moments as sleep doesn't come easily for this super active, happy, engaged, curious, on-the-go little one. I'm pulling all my old tricks and tips out of my hat and normally have to use about all of them together at once (dark closet, snuggling, bottle, patting, singing, bouncing and rocking all at once!). When he's awake there's almost nothing he is NOT interested in. He loves pulling hair and eating us, playing piano, watching us eat, reaching for anything within reach, offering abundant smiles, chewing on toys, watching the pigs and chickens, waking up the girls in their bunk beds, patting and patting and more patting, music and so much more.
Other times with dear ones!
We said Kali officially turned 19 when we finally got to have her pizza pockets dinner over an outdoor fire meal with her dear friends, I & M. It was a gorgeous evening after a very iffy weather day. The moon and the fire made for some spectacular sights.
When Mom and Dad are traveling, they've graciously allowed their home to be used by others. We've had two lovely stints recently with our dear friend, Rabab. It's so fun to have her with us, not to mention that she treats us to some of her amazing cooking.
Other random tidbits:
I have been banned from ever purchasing a puzzle for my mother again. My kiddos and mom fly through puzzles and so I thought they could use a challenge. Despite her loud complaints, the day she got it together she was expounding on all the great life lessons it taught her. So I'm not sure the ban has to be followed to a T. :)
Terah finished her first comforter to donate to MCC. She was just a bit proud of it!
My kids can now say that they have tried a McDonald's happy meal, thanks to the summer reading program at our local library. It was the first time in probably 30 years that I have tried a cheeseburger, and probably about that long on the fries. Who knew they no longer include catsup without you specifically requesting it. And our order was messed up in so many ways. But we'll call it a success in other ways, including yet another step in my own winding, complicated, and exciting healing journey with food. Oh, and the girls now want us to replicate a happy meal at home with our methods/ingredients. I'm in!
The reason we were all out together was for blood work. So also a first for the younger two. Two and half plus years into Covid, we felt it was time to see if any of them have the Factor V Leiden clotting thing Jason has. As we navigate if/when/how much we want to open up our activities, that risk factor feels like information we'd like to have. They all did great! Thankfully Alida's went 100% smoothly. Phew! She takes after me with her feelings about needles. For Terah, on the other hand, they missed her vein entirely and after digging around a bit had to give up and go to the other arm - which she offered them freely. What a kid!! She most certainly does not take after me in that regard. The outing was also a good excuse for Kali to get more driving practice! We are looking for opportunities just about whenever we can because she has her driver's test scheduled for Tuesday. We might have another solo driver in our home soon. The girls are already cooking up ideas of outings they might go on together.
Well it's about time to bring this post to a close and mix up some pumpkin muffins. I've got a morning pre-birthday hike with friends to Hensley's Pond to look forward to before diving into applesauce making. With all the living this post represents, we find ourselves vigiling at a distance with dear friends in PA who are journeying with their mother/wife in her final days. This dear friend accompanied Jason and me in our courtship and plans for marriage through premarital sessions leading up to our wedding. And then she took part in our wedding in very significant ways, including offering the meditation. I've been thinking about her words a lot this week, particularly her noting that I have the "gift of intensity." I often feel that my intensity is a bit of a burden, and it was truly only this week that the word GIFT really stuck out to me. I'm wondering how to channel the gift aspects of that part of me more fully. So I'm grateful for how her words live on and take on new life in me even decades later. Our life journeys together through growing up and then aging feel so poignant here sometimes. As I go out to the gardens or to tend animals, my parents might be found on their deck preparing their burial shrouds. This mixing of living well and preparing to die well is a gift to all of us. But it doesn't make it easy!
In closing, I'm so very glad that America's Got Talent introduced me to this pole dancer. I'm a tad obsessed with Kristy Sellars' final performance these days! I think of so many near and dear to me as I listen to these words and wish to hold out light to them!
Take a look!!
The "year of the apple" continues around here. Saturday we made applesauce. So. Much. Applesauce. It ended up being over 90 quarts when the canner finished at 1 a.m. or so. Some yellow sauce from apples given to us and then our favorite pink Liberty sauce from the above mentioned trees. I went to bed bone tired and happy. I love those kinds of food processing days but my body is telling me that it needs more rest surrounding them if I'm not gonna tank afterwards (hello 44 year old body). Lesson learned?!?!?! I made some apple butter too and we pulled out plenty for fresh eating. So we are eating (and drinking) apples in all the ways! Jason and the girls went and picked apples on Saturday morning while I prepped things at home. I had a delightful pre-birthday hike with two friends that morning and, between that and Jason being occupied with chores, it was nearly noon when "applesaucing" commenced. 
It's hard to find the right words to describe how wonderful it was to have my second cousin, Colette, and her son, Birch, come for a short, but oh so sweet, visit from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning. The night before they left one of my kiddos was moaning how "there's nothing to look forward to" and apparently the morning they were leaving, her son was saying how he didn't want to leave and wanted to stay longer. So all our appetites are whetted for a longer visit next time! Birch is 8 and Terah noted how lovely it was to have a playmate who was between her and Alida's ages. Whatever it was, there was magic in their connection and they had such a marvelous time. Saturday night, we were treated to the fruits of their labors with a shadow puppet show!
