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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Fall is coming to an end...



The geese and Sandhill Cranes are gathered at Creamer's Field for a stop before heading south.  The trees are nearly bare.  The woodshed is almost full.  The raised garden beds and greenhouse sit empty.  The frenzy of summer is coming to an end and our short fall too. 

 Fall is only about 3 weeks long, and every minute of it is planned to be ready for winter.  Even though we plan to spread woodcutting out over the summer, we don't,  and end up going every weekend until we have 6 cords.  There is the rush to get the garden and berries picked and preserved.  The furnace serviced, summers toys packed away or buried under the snow until spring, and the random projects... like the heater core my son's car needs.

As much as I adore the 24 hours of sunlight, flowers, gardening, and the absence of snow, the frenzied pace of summer is exhausting, and I love the slower pace of winter.   Shhhh don't tell anyone I said that.  Be sure you don't remind me of this post when I complain about -40 this winter.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Fall Is Here


Wow really my last post was in May?  That’s terrible.  I have a plan to get back on track.  Really this time I mean it!  Thank you for loyal followers sticking around, and for the new followers!

What have I been doing?  Well who knew that starting a business (um, yes, while working full time even though my husband is doing the bulk of the actual work) would take all my time?  Yeah, I know, any of you who have started a business probably could have told me that.  So wild rose cupcakes (and now cakes too) has continued all summer and now into the fall.  We have several orders scheduled for October getting us off to a good start as the Farmer’s Market season comes to an end.   

Here are some of our cupcakes


 
Here is my favorite cake I’ve made so far, a princess cake for a 4 year old, the doll was provided by the customer.
 
What else has been going on?  Well my sister got married and we had a lovely trip to Bellingham for the wedding, and to Oregon to visit family.  Yep we did the wedding cupcakes. 

The garden went totally crazy while we were gone. I really didn't give it the attention I should have this year, maybe because I knew we were going to be out of town during the prime picking time. So chickweed took over, many things bolted, it was kinda ugly.  We are busy digging potatoes, carrots and still need to get the last of the cabbage, kale and swiss chard from the garden before a hard freeze takes everything. 

Yes we are in full fall mode now, the hard frost is just around the corner...


There have been hard frosts near us, but so far it hasn't hit us.  My homegrown, misguided Delphinium finally decided to bloom?  

Finally my tomato update!  Yep we got tomatoes this year!  Ok so they aren't ripe, but there are definitely TOMATOES!  Ok, and so the ones I grew from seed died, and we bought these already started from Hawks Greenhouse, but whatever, we have tomatoes!!  We have taken the tomatoes from the green house and they are hanging in the garage to hopefully ripen.  How do you ripen your green tomatoes?


Our new layers (this is one of our two Delaware), we also have 3 new Ameraucana and they have started to lay cute little eggs.  We have yet to add a few of our older layers to the stew pot, but that will be coming before winter.

     
We have been adding to the woodpile, looking forward to our first fire of the year, but then again, that really means winter is coming, so we haven't got the stove going yet.