Summer's End

With many farm chores completed early today, this first afternoon of a long holiday weekend is comprised of; the kids hanging with friends, a bright blue sky that suddenly fills with dark clouds that burst and disappear, warm temperatures speckled with golden early fall light, Murakami, foul watching, and a glass of red wine.  Yes, this is how summer's end should feel.  Happy weekend!

#tbt Cowboys

What a difference almost 30 years makes.  After a wonderful week at the Alisal last week, I found this picture of my brother and I right around 1986 with Cowboy Dick.  Below is the photo I took last year of him with Charles.  This year we saw him out working cattle, gotta love cowboys!

Summer's Sunset

We have taken the last week to catch our breaths and get back into the routine of school and fall sports.  With harvest also upon us each day has been fast and furious as always.  This morning I feel like we are catching up and getting a handle, so I have a moment to look back.   I took this photo on the last night of our vacation.  A perfect view of our favorite place.  A fitting image as the sun set on our summer.

Re-Entry

Late August brings us not only an amazing shift in light, but also seas of goldenrod beginning to bloom.  The sun hitting this beautiful weed and the sound of cicadas greeted us when we returned home mid-week.  I was thankful for that glimpse, what with school and sports practices starting immediately.  My friend emailed me a welcome home, and said good luck with re-entry.  I'd never thought about it that way, but man is that true!

As much as we relished the special time away with family, we came back ready and eager to dig in and see how the garden had fared.  No surprise we had squash the size of pumpkins and loads of everything else.  The tomatoes delayed slightly for us and are just beginning to really produce. We planted mostly paste and drying tomatoes this year in the hopes of a good canning year.  It looks as if we may have gotten lucky!  I wanted to have a stocked pantry this year, especially so after I saw the latest predictions from the Old Farmers Almanac.   To top if off, our crocked cucumbers were perfectly ready for canning when we got home!

Of course since we have had such a mild summer, we have come back to hot and very muggy.  In fact after boasting to the family all last week that we had not seen a single 90 degree day this summer, it appears that is what is in our forecast over the next several days.  Between this and the almanac's thoughts on our upcoming winter, we stopped procrastinating and set the wheels in motion to replace our elderly heating unit and non working a/c.

And then there were three.  Yesterday morning we gathered our meat ducks and took them to the processor.  This was our first foray in to sourcing our own animal protein, and I must say that though we were somber, we knew it was right.  One of our goals when moving to the homestead was to teach our kids and better appreciate ourselves where our food comes from.  We knew that they had had an amazing life romping in large open spaces with room to swim, and weren't cooped up in some large facility.  The three remaining are mascots and hopefully an egg layer or two.

My mind is spinning after a week away, re-entry accomplished, now to write.

A Chili Saturday

Seven years ago when we moved to the farm we wanted to have a kind of welcome party and decided to make it a chili cook off.  Over the years it has developed into quite a party and something we look forward to hosting and attempting to make bigger and better each time.  This year's chili cook off was a wonderful event!  Each year we try to dial it in more, so that it becomes something very manageable, yet with some fresh new ideas.

This year was especially exciting because we had a blogger from The Boston Store come out to feature us in a little farm to table spread that they will be blogging early this fall.  So much fun, I cannot wait to see it!

Of course, I could not resist taking a few pictures of them taking pictures of us.  Hi Lisa! :)

Since just more than half of our 111 guest this year are kids we added a couple of new games to the standard  basketball, badminton (I had absolutely no idea it was spelled this way!), volleyball and trampoline.  We did a lawn painted twister game, and a space for giant Jenga.  Both of the new areas were well used, and fun to watch.

We had nine chilies and six pies this year and I have to say that all of the contenders out did themselves!  The winning chili was a chili verde and the winning pie was key lime.  Each of the winners got a couple of goodies to take home as well as bragging rights and the trophies (the stuffed pig and golden rolling pin in the first picture) for their event which they will sign and bring back next year.  I wonder what little touches we will add for the next one?  Stay tuned.