HAPPY FALL

Get out your flannel PJs. Turn on the electric blanket. Fall is here and with it the autumnal temps – cool mornings and warm afternoons. Gone are the excessive heat and smoke warnings, and now we have a respite before we’re alerted to freezes and excessive cold.

Just another week and October will be here and we will segue into Halloween, then Thanksgiving and on to Christmas and New Years. For me, it will have its downside as we work through our first year without Milo, but we will weather through. We always do. We must!

The garden here at the farm is still “viable,” to use Mike’s word. I picked 17 tomatoes and 8 zucchini following a week’s absence and two more zucchini today. Some of the zucchini went into the compost bin. I don’t know how much grated zucchini I need to store in the freezer. On the other hand, perhaps there won’t be so many game birds this year and the zucchini will keep us from starving. (LOL)

Times are changing. It’s just inevitable. Sadly, Mike’s hunting partner had to have his dog put down. Besides losing his pet, this is a dilemma because he wants to keep hunting, but his own age is a factor. He’s been searching for a settled, trained older dog with a few good hunting years. It’s a nice idea, but no such dog has stepped forward to serve.

At 11, Bess is still an active, happy hunter, but Mike says when she gives it up, he will, too, and adds, “If not sooner.” If he had successful hunts, it would make a difference, but good places to hunt are scarce and growing scarcer, along with the game birds.

Here at the farm, we see quail, doves, Hungarian partridge, pigeons, chukars, and the occasional pheasant – just not in profusion. And as I always say, they aren’t stupid. They hear a few shots, and they are gone. At least, that’s the way it seems. It’s probably just the time of year.

While Mike was hunting on Saturday, he came upon better elderberries than he found last week, so he picked another six cups or so and I made more juice. Sunday I made jelly – four batches: black hawthorn berry; elderberry; a wild berry mix of haw, elder, and serviceberry; and elderberry / apple. I have 18 jelly jars in all plus partials for immediate consumption. And I’m tired, but I kept at it because once I had organized all the paraphernalia, I just wanted to keep going and get finished. KW