We been so busy this fall.  Lots of adventures on the property and out and about.  I put together a small homeschool group at our local library.  We meet for book clubs,  crafts, board games, projects, etc.    Yesterday was our first meeting and we all had so much fun.   At the suggestion from one of my friends,  I also started a local group of Earth Scouts for the kids.  Our first meeting is coming up in a couple of weeks.  We are really looking forward to it.  

Joshua and I have been busy making leaf piles and hauling the leaves to the garden for mulch.  We've had some leaf jumping fun.



 


 
Joshua loves birds.  He especially likes to make nests for himself when he is pretending to be a bird.

 



Joshua and I have been planning our Thanksgiving menu.  We have a large dry erase board on which Joshua has been writing the choices on it.  We are researching recipes that will utilize our homegrown veggies.  We want to make our special dinner from Perry Hill Farm produce/products as well as from other local farms.  For example,  our flour comes from wheat berries that are grown organically on a local farm.  We stone-grind the flour in our micro-mill.  As a matter of fact,  Perry Hill Farm is now selling stone-ground flour and polenta.  Let me know if you want to purchase any.  Once you start using freshly stone-ground flour and polenta,  it will be hard to go back to store bought.

The Thanksgiving Holiday can be difficult for Joshua.  He loves turkeys so much. It is very upsetting to him when he hears so much emphasis put on eating turkey versus people being thankful!  He strongly says,  "Thanksgiving is not about eating turkeys,  it's about being thankful."   Each day we enjoy our rescued factory farm turkeys and we also get to enjoy the many wild turkeys that live at our farm.  The wild turkeys hang out all around our property.  We watch them roost in the evening and some mornings we watch them fly down from their roosts.  This morning some of the turkeys were fussing and we noticed Tiger,  one of our rescued cats,  was hunting them!  I think he was imaging he was some huge mountain lion or bobcat.  It was very comical to watch.  The turkeys are way too large for him and too fast but there is nothing wrong with dreams. 

Joshua loves his girls. 

 





"why don't I feel the warmth from this fire?" 

I think the Autumn brings such beauty.  Although most of the trees have lost their leaves,  our Japanese maple trees seem to be at peak.






Autumn is an amazing time to me.  We've had some hard freezes but we still have roses in bloom.







 

The weather has dropped to the mid-to-upper thirties over the past couple of weeks.   We  have managed to not get a frost.  Last night's temp was to drop to thirty-one.   I knew I had much to do to save some plants.  Since I planted pretty late in the year, I have eggplant plants with baby eggplants and lot's of lovely baby peppers.  I dug  up five eggplant plants and five pepper plants and transplanted them into the greenhouse.  I also transplanted some celery plants and  my rosemary plants.    I planted  cimmaron lettuce,  garden cress, miner's lettuce, spinach, and onions. I still have carrots, beets, collard greens, kale, more onions, broccoli, cabbage I want to plant in the greenhouse.   I also have three varieties of garlic to plant outside.

 



More of the bed just waiting for seeds.



Transplants



Another shot of the transplants.


I am still harvesting beans and still have  a lot more drying on the vines.  I harvested basil, sage, dill for drying and making pesto to freeze with the basil.  








Popcorn and sunflowers drying out in the greenhouse.

We feed our animals local, organically grown grains.  We use their poo in our garden.  Sometimes  when the grains do not get completely digested,  some of the grains will seed and grow.  In the greenhouse from the animal poo,  we have one stalk of feed corn, some wheat, and oats.  I think it's amazing how mother nature works. 


 
Wheat

We have a five year plan on changing the pasture layouts,  adding more fencing and pasture, putting in some drainage in the low laying barn area,  and adding water to the pastures. As we do that, we are also creating space to plant more  veg.  Hopefully,  by next Spring we will have two new areas.  I want to grow oats and wheat in one of those areas.