Otto has moved on

Otto has moved on to a new life on Long Island.

A woman named Donna and her friend Barbara came to visit him on Saturday. On Sunday, Shanna (former owner) drove and I navigated while we trailered him down to the island.

He has a new Quarter Horse girlfriend named Smoochey.

Making progress slowly

2 weeks to Thanksgiving and I have finally pruned the raspberry bushes. I've got more cleaning to do in the garden.

Sleep issues for my son seem to be done. We've established a routine and an earlier bedtime (8pm). He did have what seemed like a nightmare one morning, but that's to be expected I think.

Otto is for sale. He's just sitting around here eating. He needs something to do. I'll miss him if he goes.

It's cold now.

It's fun to bundle up and hibernate in the house. By February that will be really old but for now it's fun to snuggle with the baby and plan for the holidays.

We saw snow this week. It wasn't enough to amount to even a dusting but it was flying about in the air. At this time last year we had a snowfall of about 8 inches. It didn't last long. I think that was the most snow we had all winter.

If any old wive's tales are to be believed we are in for a doozy of a winter. There are lots of acorns and mountain ash berries. It was a banner year for blackberries.

It's been awhile.

A month just blew by me. I've been thinking a lot about what I could be doing. I'm just running out of time. I just got my son sleeping well. To maximise his sleep he should probably go down around 7:00. At 7:00 I've been home for just an hour and I'm cooking dinner and doing other chores. We settle for a bedtime of 9:00. Not ideal but it seems to be working for the time being.

On another note, my friend Sharon is a Peak Oil activist. She has a blog that makes me think that we (meaning my family) are not doing enough to live simply and reduce our footprint on the Earth. I encourage everyone to read what she has to say (it's very thoughtful and well written). www.casaubonsbook.blogspot.com

Cleaning out the garden.

Lots of stuff in the garden is past it's prime. Most of the cucumber plants have expired. The squash is barely holding on. The tomatoes still have a ways to go and the flowers are a little past peak.

So now the work begins. I have to pull the old plants, weed the asparagus and mulch. I love going into Winter with a cleaned out garden. It gives me hope that I can keep up with the weeding come Spring.

It's time to start knitting. I've got to make a bunch of holiday gifts.

I just love Autumn. I feel invigorated and purposeful.

Winter is coming

I love the change of seasons. It's not even Labor Day yet and it seems like fall already. The temps have been very cool for about 2 weeks. We had rain, wind and mist for 2 days. It really felt like September.

We do lots of winter prep here. The chimney gets cleaned, the old chickens get processed for the freezer, tomatoes get made into sauce and get canned, the garden gets cleaned out, the asparagus gets mulched, the generator gets drained and gets new gas, winter clothes get brought out, the clothesline comes down, the flannel sheets come out, the raspberries get pruned.

A friend asked why we have a generator (or rather, why we have plans for a power outage). The answer is that we can't rely on the power grid to keep us going. My friend never considered the possibility that we may be out of power for any length of time. The fact is that the grid can fail for lots of reasons. In 1991 I lived through an ice storm. I lived in Rochester, NY at the time. I had no power for 12 days. Fortunately it wasn't really cold. I had city water so there was no interruption of service. On our farm we have a well. The well pump needs electricity to get water up from 547 feet. Since the animals need water (we do too, but not as much) we have a generator to make sure we can get along for a short amount of time (couple of weeks?) We also have a wood stove for heat. After Hurricane Katrina especially, we have come to realize that we have to be responsible for our own health and safety, we can't count on "the government" to take care of us.

Lots of flowers...

and Blackberries.