Tag Archives: Seasons

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Halloween Hijinks, Part Two

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This year’s Halloween Extravaganza was pirate – themed!  Almost everyone joined in and got piratey, except a few of us who chose to go all non – conformist (READ: Those of us who could not get it together in time).

Can you guess what I was?  A few people couldn’t, though most got it straight away.

Hint: Those are birds stuck to me.

Since you can’t read it, Paul’s label says : “I could not afford a Halloween costume this year.  I am the 99%”

Emily made her own costume this year.  She’s some sort of Japanese fictional character.  I don’t know either.

I think she looks like Esmerelda from Bewitched here, but not everyone agreed.

The kids filled up on sweet party treats, I filled up on too much………fun.  Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

Elizabeth’s husband led us all in a fun party game of Pirates vs. Villagers that was a lot of fun for adults and kids alike.

I only got lynched twice.

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Halloween Hijinks, Part One

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Happy Belated Halloween!  Did you all have a spooktacular weekend?  We did!

We attended our friend Elizabeth’s annual Halloween party, had a fun pumpkin carving evening with scary movies, spent the school day of Halloween watching Halloween movies, and went out into the night to gather candy with our friends Jessie and Keith and their family. I *may* have had too much Kraken rum that night.  But sea – monster themed rum seemed a perfect fit for a creepy night of fun!

There’s plenty of photographic evidence of the weekend’s festivities, but I am starting out here with the fruits of our pumpkin carving efforts. It took several hours for us all to be done, and thankfully Paul ordered pizza or we wouldn’t have had dinner until well after midnight.

Emily’s owl pumpkin.  She and Maddie decided to try patterns where much of the design is etched, rather than punched out.

Maddie’s “Flying Dutchman” ghost ship took the longest, but is very impressive.  I don’t know how she’ll manage to top it next year!

Oona did not do any carving, but she approved the pattern I used and emptied all the guts out.

Greasy Grimy Pumpkin Guts!

Mine and Oona’s Headless Horseman.  I am really happy with how it turned out.

 

Neve’s Graveyard scene.  She did all of the pattern tracing and all carving but the most delicate areas.

Paul did some of the shaded areas on the ghost ship with Maddie.

Oona and Maddie definitely engaged in some pumpkin – gut hijinks.

We set out our pumpkins Sunday night and lit them, and Monday morning found the chickens on the front porch pecking at them.  We managed to save them and keep the chicks away (mostly) for the day, but by the afternoon following Halloween they had pecked away all of the designs.  Since Halloween had passed we simply threw all of the jack o’lanterns in with all the chickens and let them eat them.  They did a fair job of it, exceeded in their efficiency only by the goats last year.

Next up: the annual Halloween party!

 

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Old Farm Day

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Our very rural county does not have a county fair.  We barely have a supermarket.  Very little excitement happens here (unless you count the various animal escapes or occasional tornadoes and forest fires).  However, the first Saturday of every October we have our county fair equivalent: Old Farm Day.

The basic idea is a showcasing of livestock and antique farm equipment from local farms.  But that’s not all.  There’s the local orchard making open kettle apple butter all day.  Pulled pork barbeque and kettle corn.  Square dancing and bluegrass.  Draft horse plowing demonstrations, animal sound contests, beekeepers with honey and mechanical bull riding.  And tractors on display.  Lots and lots of old tractors.

This year we met up with Zac and Caroline for their first Old Farm Day.  They seemed to enjoy it as much as we do.

I will say that there seemed to be less animals this year, and there was no one doing any spinning or basket weaving demonstrations.  Otherwise it was quite lovely, and I would have stayed until the bitter end had we not had things to do back home, and small children hanging off us and asking to buy everything in sight.

LOVE this old chicken coop!

11 Ton steam engine built in 1921 to power plows or mill machinery.

The location is beautiful – it’s one of the oldest former plantations in the county.

Waiting for the kids’ “Tater Hunt” to begin.

“How can we get this thing home without anyone noticing???”

Neve & Oona’s “Tater” haul.  You get to keep what your kid grabs out of the ground!

That’s a “Large” size kettle corn.  Paul might have bought an extra – large, had they offered it.

Oona and Neve each lasted (barely) 10 seconds on the mechanical bull this year.

We left happy and satisfied with our Old Farm Day experience, and look forward to next year!

PS – plan your 2012  Juniper Moon Farm Farm-Stay experience accordingly!

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An Apple A Day

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After our yearly apple – picking outing yesterday we should certainly have an apple a day for quite awhile!

Although we try to make it out to pick every fruit of the season – cherries, strawberries, peaches – our favorite “not to be missed” fruit to pick is apples.  It’s something to do with the changing of the leaves and the weather and how we look forward to months of apple pies, apple sauce, apple butter and more.

This weekend was perfect because there was a definite chill in the air and it was over cast – very fall – like.

Three types of apples were ready to pick: Jonagold, Golden Delicious, and Red Delicious.  I’ll admit – none of these are my favorite.  But, I’ll head back in a few weeks when the Winesaps are ready and pick my own little stash.

The orchard was pretty crowded and the air was full of the scent of fresh cider donuts and the sound of apples falling to the ground.  There were lots of fallen apples.

I know the people that run the orchard go through and collect these later for some use (cider?  dunno) but seeing them all there made me wish I could collect a bunch to take to my goats and llama – they love apples!  I also imagine that the pigs over at Juniper Moon Farm would be equally happy to have them.

The orchard we go to every year is on a mountain – top and the views are stunning.  Of course, the day we went was overcast so it had less of the wow – factor.

Oona and Neve wanted to bite into those apples right now but we made them wait until we could go home and wash them.

And of course we went for the donuts – you can’t not get some after smelling them the whole while.

I love the country store there – and I wish my larder looked like this!

The pumpkins were also sorely tempting but we decided it’s still a bit early to be bringing those home.

At the end of our trip we had over 60 lbs of apples to lug home.  I brought a big big over to Caroline and Zac at the farm, but when I got back home and saw just how much was still left I kind of wished I had given them more.  I’ll be spending the next week making every apple concoction you can imagine.  And I assure you we’ll be eating apple sauce all through the cold days of winter.

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Making My Peace With Summer

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It’s probably abundantly clear to most people who know me well that summer is not my favorite season.  I have very little tolerance for the heat, and as for the bugs, well.

But it wasn’t always this way.  My dislike for summer is fairly recent – it started about 15 years ago when we moved to central Virginia from upstate New York.  Most of my summers as a kid were spent on lakes or rivers in a place where most people still don’t have central air.  If they do, they don’t need to run it more than a week or two a year.  We run ours nearly non – stop from May through October.

Of course we save on the heating bills come winter.

My point is summer used to be fun, full of swimming and fresh garden vegetables, drive 0 in movies and soft – serve ice cream.

My kids rarely get to see the outside world until late afternoon, once the sun is not so intense and it’s not too hot to swim.

This makes me sad, and I am trying to make sure we have a better summer experience than years past.  We’re still enforcing the “no being out in the sun if it’s over 100” rule, but having the pool makes it easier to have some summer fun.

The garden is also helping me out with my summer malaise.  Good fresh tomatoes and basil and cucumbers go a long way to cure the “I miss winter” blues.

I’ve been conquering some of the heat by reminding myself that without me being out there to manage it, the garden wouldn’t thrive.  Every day I am out there to water it, pull weeds and take care of the squash bugs that have yet again invaded.  The best way to control them without chemicals is to crush the eggs whenever you find them – and find them I do.  It’s pretty gross, and I usually find a few mature bugs to deal with as well.  All in all, however, this daily attention has saved me the infestation levels I have suffered in other years.  Plus – the rewards are many.

Like this beauty, not too far from harvest-ability:

It’s a Dixie Queen Watermelon, and I hadn’t even realized it was there until today.  There’s several little ones around it.

I am so excited for them to mature fully so we can enjoy them!

There’s some pie pumpkins beginning to orange (not enough, but hopefully we’ll get a few more before the vine stops producing), about 6 or so acorn squash getting darker by the day, and about a bajillion butternut squash – several of which look close to done.

This fall we’ll have plenty of my butternut squash and apple soup.

With cucumbers I picked from the front garden today I made 4 jars of refrigerator pickles and then picked fresh basil to make pesto for dinner.

This is what saves summer for me.  I’ll try not to whine so much about the way the humidity deflates my will and the heat saps my motivation and instead I’ll savor some freshness from my garden.

But I’ll still quietly look forward to fall.  Just sayin’.

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Summer Baking

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I know, I know.  Considering it’s been dangerously hot out for the last week baking doesn’t seem quite like the thing to do.

Thankfully Paul doesn’t mind that I keep the AC set to 70.

There’s been so many zucchini from the garden and there’s local peaches for sale at our Whole Foods Market, so I was itching to do something.  Plus my computer got virused and I couldn’t get online for a few days.

Not that I honestly have wanted to do anything while it’s been this hot other than lay around and nap (the pool water’s been into the 95 range, so we can’t even swim) , but I couldn’t let all this goodness go bad.

First up was a twist on plain ol’ Zucchini Bread that I found while wandering around Pinterest.

Zucchini Blueberry Bread. (Click the link to go straight to the recipe)

Fortunately I am also swimming in an abundance of eggs so I got to use of some of those as well.

Grated zucchini plus plump fresh blueberries in a sweet and cinnamon-y batter.  Yum!

I can tell it’s awesomely good, but I can’t tell you much more because Neve’s  barely let me have any.

Clearly it’s excellent summer snacking for the 8 year old crowd.

Next up is Peach Cobbler from a Country Living article a summer or two ago.  It’s made in a cast iron skillet, which I find incredibly charming and rustic in a fruit dessert.

You can go right to the recipe by clicking on it above, but basically you get a bunch of fresh peaches, scald them in boiling water to soften them up a bit and make the skin slide off nice and easily.

You make a luscious topping with your dry ingredients (plus a hint of dried ginger) and toss your sliced peaches in a bowl with sugar and vanilla.  I added a bunch of cinnamon as well.

Throw it in your cast iron skillet, top it with your chilled topping like so:

Throw it in the oven and bake it and enjoy the magnificent aromas that will fill your kitchen.

Then it will disappear with alarming speed, I guarantee.

Just like peach and zucchini season will disappear before we know it as well. So go forth and enjoy the fruits of summer while they last!

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Butternuts & Baby Chicks

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We have been thoroughly enjoying the last two days here.  A cold front has apparently pushed through because it’s been in the lower 80’s with low humidity.  Just gorgeous!  If this was what summer was like here I’d have no cause for complaint.  It does make me wish we lived back up in New England but then we’d be complaining about the bitter cold all winter, so yeah.

We have had some sad moments – two of our new chickens, Squeak and Arwen (both gotten this past spring as babies) were taken by a fox two days ago.  I saw the fox from inside the house and ran outside screaming and clapping my hands and managed to scare it off, but it (or an accomplice) had already gotten two of our girls.  There was a trail of Arwen’s feathers off into the woods and no sign of Squeak.  It’s very sad and frustrating, but we are determined to build them a Fort Knox style enclosure soon – one that they can’t fly (or climb, as those dummies have been doing) out of, because there will be a roof.  If we had 4 or 5 dozen chickens then missing a few here and there wouldn’t be so bad.  But we have just about 2 dozen.  Enough that it’s noticeable.

However, at least one industrious hen is looking to help out in that regard.

Our Blue Copper Marans Hen, Amelie, has gone broody.

She’s sitting on a small cache of 7 eggs, hopefully all of which are fertilized.  I’m still counting down the weeks (maybe months) until our 3 remaining Ameraucanas (Arwen was the 4th)  start laying their blue eggs.  It will be nice to have those again.

I am also counting down until I can harvest the butternut squash, which is going gangbusters right now.  I spied a few squash beetles that I am going to have to deal with and I hope all the squash can mature before the bugs get the better of them.

The Jack Be Little pumpkins are starting to deepen in hue and I am seeing the beginnings of my Acorn squash, yellow crookneck and sugar pie pumpkins.  There’s also the start of some Blue of Hungaria pumpkins.

My Sugar Baby watermelon vines are looking fantastic but so far there’s been no flowering.  Hopefully it will happen soon!

All of the seeds I planted this year came from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

I’m excited to be growing these rare-ish old – fashioned, non GMO seeds.  The selections were beautiful and interesting to look at.  I’m looking forward to when I can have a much larger garden and grow more than enough for us.  My summers will undoubtedly be slammed with canning at that point, but come January, it will be worth it.  Hopefully this winter we’ll still be enjoying the slow roasted tomatoes from this summer.  If they ever ripen.

No, I’m not impatient.  Not one bit.

Nope, not at all.

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Another Solstice

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It’s the summer solstice today.  The first official day of summer. The longest day of the year. The day after which all days will begin to shorten.

This is a day we enjoy celebrating.  There’s no commercial or familial obligations; most people barely acknowledge it.  It’s a day for us to celebrate something more basic – the change of seasons.  More specifically, today we celebrate the best parts of summer.

Traditionally, this is best done outside.  Swimming all day, or peach – picking like last year.  Eating all our meals outside, the last one under a growing canopy of night, the starts just beginning to twinkle and the fireflies and bats just beginning to show.  Later on, a campfire with marshmallows and games or stories.  Maybe even singing.

This year, the weather wasn’t that cooperative.

We tried swimming, but as today was the first day over 80 degrees in a week or two the pool water was decidedly too cold.  Besides that, various thunderstorms rattling through the area kept us inside as well. There won’t be any eating outside tonight (too muggy and buggy), no fireflies, no bats.  (Well, there might be, but between the clouds and mist, and whatnot, you know).

So we’ve tried out more of the quiet, unsung sweet parts of summer.

Making blueberry muffins (and eating them all before even one picture could be taken).

Quietly watching the approach of a summer storm (a non – threatening, no – tornado kind of storm) from the safety of the front porch.

Making a round of Butterbeer for the kids.

Reading (Emily is working on the 4th Harry Potter book, Neve the first.  I am reading the 3rd book of The Hunger Games trilogy.  Riveting!)

Napping (okay, that was just me).

And enjoying our favorite two summer foods for dinner: corn on the cob, and pesto.

We feel pretty good about this low- key solstice.  We’ll be back to our favorite summer activities soon enough.

Happy Solstice to you all!

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Cherry Picking

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I’ve been trying to post this for a few days now, but I’ve had technical difficulties.  You know, the kind where your computer develops a nasty case of I hate you and I refuse to do your bidding.

But we’ve solved (fingers crossed anyway) our glitch and I can tell you that we went cherry picking at Spring Valley Orchard and brought home TWENTY POUNDS of cherries.  Sweet, dark, delicious juicy cherries.

You know, at first I thought maybe twenty pounds was a lot. Too much, even.  But you know what?  It takes an hour to get to this place, and it takes a whole lotta cherries to make pie, make preserves, make drunken cherries (more on these to come), give some to friends and family and still have plenty left for just plain snacking.  It makes me wish I could grow my own.

We lucked out that they opened on a day that was not too hot or humid, or too sunny either.  In years past we’ve finished up at the orchard red, hot, thirsty and grumpy.

Not this year.

Of course, stopping at Starbucks on the way and picking up a giant Mocha – Coconut Frappuccino didn’t hurt.

We also didn’t sample them this time.  We realized that they spray the bejeebers out of these trees to ensure decent yields, so we washed them thoroughly before using them.  It was very,very hard to wait.  It would be nice for there to be an organic orchard here, but I don’t honestly think it’s feasible in these parts on a commercial scale.

When I got home with my 20 lbs of cherries I had the idea that they should sell cherry stoners at the check – out stand.  I ended up going into Charlottesville to buy one.

It was hard tearing the girls away from the trees – they would have kept on picking all day if we’d let them.  And I might have, if not for the cost (cherries aren’t cheap!).

It’s quite a remote spot, this orchard.  You feel as though you’re heading further and further into nowhere (though it’s beautiful).  There’s a quaint old cemetery behind the stand surrounded by a stone wall, giving the impression that it may have been an old homestead at one point.

It felt remote and somewhat lonesome, but what a view!

As soon as we got home we ate at least two big bowls full of cherries.  Then I began the arduous task of washing, drying and freezing several bags.  One bag went to Juniper Moon Farm and two bags went to my parents as an early Father’s Day and a Happy Birthday to my mother. Yet another bag became a cherry pie.  The pie barely lasted a day.  Even my husband, who professed a deep dislike for cherry pie all his life, devoured it.  I believe he may have eaten half that pie himself.

And that’s when it hit me.

Twenty pounds of cherries is nowhere near enough.