Everything else: the play, soccer start up, WV weekend, potatoes and more...

Brace yourselves, so much for a September lull! Here's all the other accumulated items all lumped in one post. I'm starting this following today's cheese workshop (the first of 3 this fall) and before an evening hike with a friend. We'll see how far I get!

The big news: Kali decided to audition for EMU's fall play Pride and Prejudice and she got in! She will be starring as Miss Bingley, the most rich and beautiful woman in the show! Alida is eager to see her in a frilly pink dress with a train. As are the rest of us! She is working on her British accent and her younger sisters are always eager to run lines with her. There will be six public shows in November and two for school groups. In November, for 19 days out of 21, Kali will need to be at EMU for anywhere from 4-6 hours each day!

As you might imagine, this has drastically altered our family's fall schedule. To date, she has needed to be at EMU about 3x a week for practice and that will ramp up as the production dates near. We have decidedly not gotten into any kind of groove yet but are taking the schedule week by week (as it comes out) and working to adjust my work schedule and home life to accommodate and support Kali in this. We are so excited for her! I'm so exhausted by the constant running (or what feels like more trips to town that I've made in many months previous to the last few weeks). I had to reassure her on the way in for a recent practice that I'm so glad she is doing this. After a rather stressful departure where we had left Alida and Terah in tears and Jason with a long evening list of tasks, she was doubting the wisdom of adding this to our family life. I know actions speak louder than words so the verbal reassurance was a start, and we are working to tweak other things to be able to not just survive the next two months but enjoy them! Seeing her practically skip out of practices definitely makes it feel worth the extra effort!

The mostly old news: The girls are playing soccer again. Kali again on a co-ed high school team but this season there are more girls than boys in the league! So that's a change. Alida is with the same age group but decided to go with the all girls division this time and is enjoying it. The new thing is Terah is signed up for mini-kickers. Sadly she missed the first for our WV trip, she missed yesterday because she was sick, and she'll miss one coming up due to a wedding she wouldn't even consider missing! So that's 3 out of the 6 weeks. Let's hope she gets to enjoy the other three as she is very excited to try out the cleats and shin guards she is borrowing for her first season! On the first game day we used the brief break in between games to take a dash to the Green Valley Book Fair for the girls to use a coupon from the summer reading program (thus the picture here).

The annual WV trip: We enjoyed a lovely weekend in WV with 3 generations of friends! This was the 7th annual Myers Benner Showalter Godshall weekend at the Mountain House of Hope! As kids get older, they play so well independently and without needing to work around naps we are also free to go on outings all together. We enjoyed delicious meals together, hikes, walking to the labyrinth, playing at the swing set, painting rocks, playing games, singing, blowing bubbles, wild cranberry picking, exploring rocks and climbing trees, all of us making it to the top of Seneca Rocks, and then cooling off in the swimming hole there after a picnic lunch. A rejuvenating and fun weekend!

The annual potato digs: Upon seeing low 40's in the forecast, we knew it was time to get the sweet potatoes out of the ground. And the black beans in the potato patch were harvested and drying on the racks in the garage, making it also time to get the white potatoes dug. So we planned two family work days in a row this Thursday and Friday and did a whole lot of digging! It tried my patience and my muscles to try to extract sweet potatoes from our dry, hard rocky soil on Thursday. But the yield was satisfying, other than the ones that voles had nibbled circles around. Why can't they just pick a tuber and eat the whole thing?! Friday's digging was much easier with the recent hilling loosening the soil around the white potatoes. The yield was less satisfactory there. So more sweet potatoes than ever this year and less white potatoes than last year.

A few food snippets: We have gotten into some fruit drying this year - thanks to more apples than normal and gifted pears from friends! An odd power outage resulted in me drying apples in the solar dryer which was a huge win (I was in the groove of using the electric one and am a bit chagrined to admit that it took the electricity not being an option to go the other route)!

Tomatoes are coming to an end. We are getting a handful every other day or two but I believe canning is done. This was probably the last beautiful tricolored plate of them!

While harvests are slowing up, we still have meals with this kind of fresh goodness! The pole beans are still giving. We are eating as much summer squash as we can. There are various greens to enjoy alongside eggs with bright orange yokes.

Jason planted our ginger and pineapples plants outside. They are huge AND the pineapple plant has a fruit. :) 

I love the fall colors! The bright yellow golden rod and the burgundy amaranth is breathtakingly beautiful!

And finally, an animal update: I'll start with the sad news. For anyone that read the "PIGLETS" post, I am sad to report that we lost the little boy piglet. He was the one who seemed off since the beginning but we were hoping he might pull through. So we are left with just 3 girls who are spunky! Yesterday they started trying to eat some weeds and this morning I got to see one try to dig in the dirt with her little snout and then her back was itchy and she found the side of her house and was scratching her itch just like the big ones do on the side of the house. SO cute!  The only silver lining in this is that Jason won't have to attempt castration now - something he was ready to attempt and maybe he was even eager for the opportunity to learn (so maybe I'm just glad he won't have to do it).

And we haven't reported on the ducklings of late. As you can see here they are hardly small ducklings anymore but mostly fully grown ducks! The three mamas are still with them and the two grown free range ducks normally stay close by. So they are a content family of 12 who love foraging around together whenever Kali considers it safe to let them out. Most recently we have had a number of fox attack attempts so she often goes out to let them out with her computer in hand to work on writing while they roam around. 

IF you have made it this far, congratulations! I'll sign off for now and enjoy one last summer walk with a friend before we welcome fall officially tomorrow (and hopefully soon more fall-like weather).