Welcome September - fall is in the air!

It appears that I've become a "monthly blogger." I was thinking of working on this post outside, but it's actually chilly when sitting still outside. I love that! I am reminded on the first day when there is the fall chill in the air why September is my favorite month! Add to that surviving August and the slowing of tomatoes along with the goldenrod, Jerusalem artichokes and amaranth sprinkling Tangly Woods with yellow and burgundy and it's not a huge surprise that this month is one of the most welcomed of the dozen!

Here are some highlights from the last few weeks.

The last chick hatching of the season has concluded, unless some hen decides to go broody (which is more and more unlikely by the day). Jason had a repeat order for a large hatch so we got to enjoy chicks in the house one more time for adoring and holding before they went off to their new home. There are still chickens of all sizes running around the place, and my morning always includes Alida coming in excitedly from her chicken chores to give me the rundown on how all her favorites are doing. 

There have been some new culinary delights in our household. The star of the show in them is onion chives! I've never been a huge fan of homemade buttermilk cheese or sour cream. I've wanted to like them as they are probably the most bioactive cultured raw milk product one could consume so probably chock full of excellent bacteria (assuming one has a good, safe raw milk source, which we do). But they've often been just a bit too tangy (or sometimes I use the term "barny") for my palate. Well, adding some minced fresh onion chives and a little salt transforms both into delicacies! I'm making "squash chips" as fast as I can route them through my dehydrator and a squash chip dipped in chive sour cream is akin to the best sour cream and onion chips I've ever tasted!

September is a month with lots of celebrations in our family and we kick off the celebrations with my parents' wedding anniversary. They returned to the "Rhino Resort" restaurant for an anniversary addition brunch. We are now gearing up for a string of 4 birthdays in about 2 weeks here at Tangly Woods, thanks to Tala adding another September birthday to our family this year! The excitement is brewing!

Food processing has started to slow up as the focus has shifted to the big fall harvest and cover cropping, but thanks to friends and neighbors we had a small but delightful grape juice making day. We kept out enough for Mom to make two grape pies (which we savored along with another episode of Frozen Planet)! We also made another amazing discovery - after making grape juice, we often strain the remaining pulp through our Victorio strainer (with grape spiral) and then can that as "grape sauce." It's good but we still have a bunch and I was not interested in a canning project at the end of that particular day. So I put the sauce in the crockpot over night to thicken it and the next day spread it on the trays of the dehydrator and it made the most amazing grape leather. 

Fall is the perfect time for outdoor fires and we finally got to eat the pizza pockets we had hoped to enjoy as part of Kali's birthday festivities. 

It's also starting to be the time of year when kiddos are chilly when they craw out of bed in the mornings. It didn't help that I wanted to leave windows open as long as possible. As a result, they work hard to get warmed up in the front room by recreating snuggling under covers once again.

It was a month where I once again (as I do often) felt grateful for Jason's skill set! After pondering on the curious nature of the wet spot that showed up at the end of our front walk, it finally dawned on Jason one day that it was potentially a water line leak. It also corresponded to a huge spike in our electricity usage. A little investigation, including my dad hanging out in the laundry room to see if the pump was clicking on and off, revealed that the pump was on 100% of the time and that we did indeed have a leak (which now explains the troubles we had irrigating in spring and running the well dry over and over again). Hindsight is 20/20 and we feel a bit silly for how long we pondered the wet spot before the most obvious explanation dawned on one of us! In the end (once we carved out a day for Jason's to dedicate to it), it was less than a day's work and about $10 for the part and we are back up and running normally. 

I don't know if Dutch Blitz was happening while Jason was out there digging in the gravel, but it's quite likely. Mostly because it happens a lot, at least for one stint each day if not more. Alida continues to hold the championship in all their competitions, which is probably lovely for the best enjoyment of all because she definitely cares the most about that title!

When not inside playing games, fall is one of the most enjoyable times for family harvests as the weather is such that all can enjoy being outside for a longer time without getting hot, sweaty, tired, etc... Here's some of what is coming in to the garage, common room, three-season room and our mouths:

Tala got to pick her first apples ever - she picked the ENTIRE tree in a few minutes. The harvest = 3 apples! 

Terah was the first to have popcorn ready for harvest. She was so excited to pull the layers of the husk away to see what surprise awaited her beneath. She was very happy with the results!

Speaking of fall colors, the autumn joy in Nora's garden gives me warm fuzzies each time I walk past it!

Tala and Jason get full credit for the buckwheat harvest this year - both in the planting and the harvesting.

It is now winnowed and drying in pans in the common room. Not a huge harvest but plenty for seed and some to eat. 

We have never had such a delicata harvest - over 4 bushels! They like to sit for about 2 weeks before eating to cure but we have some "first use" ones that should be eaten as soon as possible. As I type, Jason is getting some ready to go into the oven for our first sampling. If they taste as good as they look, we will be dining well for the coming months!

Two of our favorite family harvest times are here. Sweet potatoes happened yesterday and white potatoes is coming up on Tuesday. The girls were bundled up as if it was the dead of winter! They will acclimate in time to the cooler temps. :) 

It was a smaller harvest than last year but we think there are also likely still a lot in the patch that we didn't get - runners that went out from the main plant that we'll likely uncover when cover crops go in. We were so thankful to good weather and good help to get them all dug and curing by the end of yesterday - we did have our FIRST FROST last night!

Terah enjoyed immensely getting to help dig this year, and you can see a little video at the end of this post of her special "tick tock" method!

The voles did tax the crop considerably but this was the hill that must have been right near a "vole colony." They seemed to go for the Mahon Yam over Beauregard sweet potatoes this year.

We hose them off before putting them in trays for the curing process, which toughens up the skins, heals over injuries sustained in the harvest and kicks off sugar production for making sweeter tubers!

While we do this every year, the main thing that keeps changing is the ways in which kids can engage in the process as they grow. Terah was quite pleased to have arrived at "tray hauling" status this year.

While tucking the sweet potatoes into the three season room, we discovered a sizable snake skin by Mom and Dad's deck. No one else seemed to like the idea of making it into a necklace. I did assure Tala that I would not actually use it as ribbon for any of her birthday presents!

It is again a time of year in which I'm inclined to grab the camera before certain meals. There are just so many colors! Here we are enjoying many "lasts" of the season - cantaloupe, raspberries, pears (from friends), tomatoes, peppers, fresh parsley pesto, squash saute, tomato and shallot sauce, and of course some homemade cheddar and parmesan (which is a year-round thing!). 

We find ourselves savoring meals like this: okra patties with fresh oregano, squash patties with fresh parsley, some of the last slicer tomatoes and the first boiled sweet potatoes.

I was telling Jason the other day how odd it feels to be going through our days and weeks where in some moments everything seems completely normal - harvesting sweet potatoes and doing morning chores - and then in the next moment nothing feels the same - a trip to town or navigating seeing friends or monitoring any physical symptom that might hint of a virus. Every Friday, either Jason or I (normally me) head to town with a mammoth list of errands (our weekly trek). It's mostly quick stops dropping eggs off or picking up pig scraps, but occasionally I get to savor physically distanced walks with friends or chats out in the yard. On one such visit this week, the person doing lawn care asked that we move to the next yard for them to mow and in the move, my mask (which was on my lap) dropped to the ground. When we returned to our former seating spot, I discovered that the mask--which my mom had made--had had a run-in with the lawn mower. It's amazing how in that instance, a little panic rises up. Thankfully I was nearing the end of my town trip and there was a spare in the car (not as well fitting for me, but I used Jason's to get me home). 

The book Jason and I are reading together currently is Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths for Turbulent Times. While written a decade or so ago, it feels like it could not be more pertinent for this moment. I may not be far enough in to offer a solid book recommendation, but it does say something that I've suggested Jason and I try to read a chapter a day together! More reflections on that might be forthcoming, but for now I find myself thinking about how in many ways we have spent considerable time and energy in our life here at Tangly Woods preparing for how to meet physical needs in the event of a collapse. This book is expanding and deepening my reflections to include pondering how we have/are also preparing emotionally and spiritually. 

Bonus videos for your enjoyment!

Rosie eating chestnuts (last year's that the moths got to in storage)

Terah digging sweet potatoes