Autumn is my absolutely one of my favoritist time of year. I love the colors, the smells, the crispness in the air, apples, ciders, pies, and finally being able to wrap up in a quilt and not swelter! One of my favoritist because I love Christmas time...it's definitely a close tie between the two.
Last night I spent about 2 hours prepping the front flower beds. I weeded, I ripped out shrubs, I planted mums, I pushed wheelbarrows of sawdust up the back hill...I'm glad it's done. In some very exciting news my hibiscus has FINALLY! bloomed, and it is beautiful!
Sunday and Monday we spent several hours outdoors splitting our woodpile. It's not "hard" work, just time consuming and tedious. All I can say is Matt is phenomenal! He cut the entire
tractor-trailer load of logs himself...Last year he could barely walk and this year he was out with a chainsaw for 15 hours a week cutting up logs. I'm certainly blessed to have such a husband and we are blessed by his recovery!
Back to the wood pile: Some of the pieces are huge and probably weigh close to 50+lbs. It felt good to work though. Growing up (both Matt and I) our entire summers were spent splitting and stacking wood for the winter. There's something to be said about a day of physical labor, at the end of the day you feel like you've accomplished something, something that will have a lasting impact (ie. our house will be heated this winter).
We are nowhere near done yet. We only got about a 1/4 of the woodpile done and it still all needs to be hauled up to the house and stacked. I'm hoping that we can get some of the boys (18-20 years old) that we know to help with the stacking. When the whole pile is done, we should have enough wood to heat our house through the whole winter and into next winter.
Of course, there is a bit of a time crunch on the completion: 1) the snow 2) still need to fence in our yard and 3) we have a second load of logs coming this fall. We paid $575 for this load (not including the cost of fuel and chains for the saw) and already the price for the second load is at $625. Next year I'm sure it will be even higher. The average person spends about $3-5k to heat a normal sized (1000-1500sqf) house where we live (whether oil or gas). We save a good amount of money by burning wood.
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I think my garden is at it's end. We had some big rainstorms come through over the past few days and it pretty much flattened anything left out there. We did get quite a few butternut squash from our garden....enough to have for dinner last Saturday. I plan on buying a bushel of them, as well as acorn and spaghetti squash, at the market at the end of the month.
For how big our pumpkin plant was we have one measly pumpkin. It's just starting to turn orange and is not all that impressive. I guess we need to plant more of those next year. Supposedly we're getting the first frost tonight (which is late for us...first frost is usually fair week [Aug20 or so]). I have to remember to cover everything.
I'll be having another huge post in the next few weeks devoted entirely to our garden.
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The chickens are doing well: Still no eggs, but I figure the end of the month. The hens are certainly spending more time in their house nesting. Louie is big! He may very well be the biggest rooster I have ever seen. He's cleared up his cock-a-doodle-do. During the summer it sounded like he was trying to crow while gargling: It was pretty funny!
Of course, Louie is now crowing quite a bit and quite loud. The earliest I've heard him is 5:45am, but he's still locked in his house then. The house mutes him a bit and our neighbors have enough barriers between us and them that I don't think it's an issue. If it is, I'll complain about their dogs barking.
Last night I spent about 2 hours prepping the front flower beds. I weeded, I ripped out shrubs, I planted mums, I pushed wheelbarrows of sawdust up the back hill...I'm glad it's done. In some very exciting news my hibiscus has FINALLY! bloomed, and it is beautiful!
Sunday and Monday we spent several hours outdoors splitting our woodpile. It's not "hard" work, just time consuming and tedious. All I can say is Matt is phenomenal! He cut the entire
tractor-trailer load of logs himself...Last year he could barely walk and this year he was out with a chainsaw for 15 hours a week cutting up logs. I'm certainly blessed to have such a husband and we are blessed by his recovery!Back to the wood pile: Some of the pieces are huge and probably weigh close to 50+lbs. It felt good to work though. Growing up (both Matt and I) our entire summers were spent splitting and stacking wood for the winter. There's something to be said about a day of physical labor, at the end of the day you feel like you've accomplished something, something that will have a lasting impact (ie. our house will be heated this winter).
We are nowhere near done yet. We only got about a 1/4 of the woodpile done and it still all needs to be hauled up to the house and stacked. I'm hoping that we can get some of the boys (18-20 years old) that we know to help with the stacking. When the whole pile is done, we should have enough wood to heat our house through the whole winter and into next winter.
Of course, there is a bit of a time crunch on the completion: 1) the snow 2) still need to fence in our yard and 3) we have a second load of logs coming this fall. We paid $575 for this load (not including the cost of fuel and chains for the saw) and already the price for the second load is at $625. Next year I'm sure it will be even higher. The average person spends about $3-5k to heat a normal sized (1000-1500sqf) house where we live (whether oil or gas). We save a good amount of money by burning wood.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I think my garden is at it's end. We had some big rainstorms come through over the past few days and it pretty much flattened anything left out there. We did get quite a few butternut squash from our garden....enough to have for dinner last Saturday. I plan on buying a bushel of them, as well as acorn and spaghetti squash, at the market at the end of the month.
For how big our pumpkin plant was we have one measly pumpkin. It's just starting to turn orange and is not all that impressive. I guess we need to plant more of those next year. Supposedly we're getting the first frost tonight (which is late for us...first frost is usually fair week [Aug20 or so]). I have to remember to cover everything.
I'll be having another huge post in the next few weeks devoted entirely to our garden.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The chickens are doing well: Still no eggs, but I figure the end of the month. The hens are certainly spending more time in their house nesting. Louie is big! He may very well be the biggest rooster I have ever seen. He's cleared up his cock-a-doodle-do. During the summer it sounded like he was trying to crow while gargling: It was pretty funny!Of course, Louie is now crowing quite a bit and quite loud. The earliest I've heard him is 5:45am, but he's still locked in his house then. The house mutes him a bit and our neighbors have enough barriers between us and them that I don't think it's an issue. If it is, I'll complain about their dogs barking.
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