Summer Wrap Up

Happy first day of fall! Though there's been days of snow here, that's what the calendar says it is. :) 

Though it's not firewood destined for my little stove obviously, here's a quick video showing some of the huge variety of chores I help with around the property where I live which vary constantly with the seasons. (If you are new, I do not own the ground where my house is parked, I trade work to the owners for being able to park here.) These logs are headed for a much larger stove in a very much larger house, but firewood is something I really enjoy doing.

As summer wraps up, I've have a few friends over for dinners with a bonfire.

I'm not sure if the weather will allow any more of these this year or not, but maybe if everyone brought a good warm jacket!

And sometimes even in the summer, the cool temps late in the evening make everyone want to hang out inside instead.

The garden and flowers overall have continued to look wonderful this summer. Maybe partly due to having no freezes through out the summer which is more normal.

As things wrap up, I've been busy preserving all the food I can. Pickling, canning, drying, and fermenting as much of what I does grow here as possible. Some day my goal would be to eat almost nothing that is not produced on my own property, but in this cold climate, I don't think I will quite pull that off.

I baked bread for the first time in years. Due to several food intolerance, I'd pretty much stopped eating it for a while. But I do love eating and making fresh bread so I decided to experiment with a much older variety of wheat and see how that made me feel. It turns out I experienced none of the lethargy, brain fog, or indigestion I have normally had when eating most wheat products so this is an experiment I might have to repeat!

While most things are still green, and fall colors never really appear around my house with almost all the trees being conifers, you are starting to be able to see fall colors in the small brush and weeds.

Smoke continued to blanket the area for much of the summer, mostly from more distant fires as there were none very close to my house. And thankfully the smoke was not as thick or choking as it has been in many other places in the west. But still, midday should not look like the above photo. 

This is a no filter shot of the setting sun where you can see the smoke is thick enough to even allow you to see sun spots on the lower right side!

And then it turned to winter as you could see in my last video. Washing much of the smoke out of the air and putting a damper on most of the fires thankfully.

And the snow sped up my need to harvest as much as possible from the garden. :) So that's been keeping me busy all week as I try to juggle what to harvest now so as to not loose it to freezing, and what to wait on because if it survives under the garden covers, it may grow and produce a little more.

Enjoy the start of fall whatever the temps in your area!