Leaf harvesting coming to an end!

In the background there are a lot of giggles as Jason and the girls write new verses to a classic Christmas song. 10 p.m. is not a good time to start on the massive project of catching this blog up to date, but we'll see I can get at least one (of about three) posts up. As we anticipate our annual hog butchering weekend, the last few weeks will soon feel like ancient history. So here goes...

The girls savored their days in West Virginia without their parents. And their parents savored their time at Tangly Woods without their kids! Most of Jason's daytime hours were used on the floor project in my parents' in-law quarters and my daytime hours were mostly consumed with CJP work. But we did enjoy one day working outside on the farm together doing fall garden clean up, trellis shuffling and weeding. It was such a glorious day! We also enjoyed watching a few movies that were on our "not family-friendly" list and are now ready for our next read-out-loud-together-book, as we have completed Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison. Please read!!

While most of the garden harvests have been over for awhile, there have been some other kinds of harvests. Our final chicken butchering of 2022 is complete. And the other major fall harvesting - OF LEAVES - is coming to a close. Jason and the girls will hopefully get the last load tomorrow afternoon. Here is the leaf pile spot a few weeks ago. We were OUT! And had been for awhile. So we knew we were going to want to get more than last year. With a larger trailer to work with, we have been able to get larger loads and as of today have done 15 loads over parts of 5 different days. There's a lot of hard work and some major fun involved. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

So that empty leaf pile spot is now loaded up and will be used over the course of the year for many things in gardens, as well as in chicken and duck coops. They are also used as cover material for our humanure composting. What a valuable resource! We are grateful for our neighbors who allow us to come rake their leaves for them and cart them home each year. The pigs even enjoyed a few loads that had acorns for them to enjoy for a fall treat. I was worried we were not going to find time to harvest enough this fall and now I admit that, while it will be nice to have that project wrapped up, I'm kinda sad it's almost over. Leaf raking days are some of my favorite. I love being outside all together and the kids all can pitch in or tend to be able to find ways to entertain themselves even if they aren't helping. Those were some of my favorite days of the last few weeks!