October 2016
After my first series, I realized how much I liked its sequential format. It allowed me to not rush through describing our daily homesteading life. We do so much on a monthly basis, it would be easy for me to get lost in the details, rushing through as fast as I can through what I want to say. This will be the start of a new series, a monthly newsletter of what we have been doing, on our 50 acres of beautiful Vermont, without rushing through it, giving you a piece of our homestead at a normal pace.
October in Vermont is renowned for its beauty. I often walk in our woods, and I am so alive I feel like I am going to burst. The air is crisp, I can feel my lungs expanding with each breath. Fall is so short, it doesn’t feel like a real season. From one minute to the next, you wonder if it’s summer or winter. I often say to my husband I want fall to stay in perpetuity, maybe because it is so variable, and never uncomfortable. It is just this liminal season, allowing me to ponder about the summer just passed and the winter ahead. And I feel so alive in contrast with trees and plants taking their last breath.
October is a busy month on a homestead. It’s the last chance you have to get ready for the harshness of winter which you can glimpse hints of in the crisp air. The weather is dry and clement, but the wind is making its presence known, and the leaves are turning a beautiful yellow/orange/red. The hills surrounding us are on fire, and I have neck pains from staring at the foliage (I am not kidding).
Harvesting apples
We have 27 apple trees on our property, that we deemed good enough to eat. Some are definitely better than others, we made a point of tasting and judging them all last year. Only 3 trees made the cut for the-most-delicious-apple-ever last year and we were so disappointed that none of those trees bore fruits this year. The other 24 apple trees produced a bit, but not enough to make cider. We decided we would not harvest those, and let the wildlife have at it instead, pushing our first attempts at cider-making to next year. We instead went to our favorite orchard just up the hills in Pomfret at a pick-your-own (from the ground, at $.50/lb) and had our annual chat with the owner, who has become a friend through these short interactions. We wondered why kids need to grow so fast, talked about what has changed around the orchard operation and reminisced about better apple years. We promised that we were going to call each other to have a beer some day, when things slow down, knowing full well that things never slow down, and that the next time we will see each other will be next apple season. Because we don’t have a root cellar, and the weather has been too warm to fire up the stove to make applesauce to can or dry the apples, we only bought 30 lbs for immediate consumption. I was a bit sad, feeling like we are losing a season of practice, but I need to learn to be ok with changing circumstances. Nature sometimes gives you more than you can handle and sometimes doesn’t give you anything. I am learning to embrace the unpredictability of our life.
Making soap
Four years ago, my good friend Jody had goats she was milking. She had an abundance of goat milk that she was selling. The same summer, she gave me some freshly rendered lard she made from her family’s pigs. There was so much we could eat of fresh chevre, and so many pies I could make out of lard. I decided to make soap, and I have been hooked ever since. The operation is dangerous enough that I wait for my son to not be around me for an extended period of time, which seems to happen only once or twice a year. I make enough for our personal use and Christmas presents. For the past two years, I have also sold the extras at a Christmas fair in the neighboring village. Because soaps take 4-8 weeks to cure, October is my deadline to have it in time for the fair/Christmas presents. This year’s selection: Vanilla lavender soap and Our Honey soap.
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Rendering lard to use in soap
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Soap, before it becomes soap
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What the soap will look like in a couple of weeks
Planting garlic & putting the garden to bed
I love garlic. I love love LOVE garlic. We have been growing garlic for only a year, and if you have not tried growing it, please stop reading right now, and go plant some before it’s too late. We follow the strict recommendation of our friend, Peter, who is a garlic connoisseur and an authority in growing garlic in our village: plenty of compost, plenty of love, add a ton of leaves, and pray for snow. We planted 200 garlic cloves last year (which gave us 200 garlic bulbs). We planted 400 cloves this year, hopefully doubling our yield next July.
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Separating and counting the cloves
After the long winter, when spring comes around, when you are planting seeds in the ground, seeing the garlic shoots green and tall gives you so much hope. It brings you out in those cold first days of spring, to sow seeds in the still cold ground. With so much decay around you, a glimpse of green is all you need for hope. October is also the time to prepare your garden for the spring, adding compost and chicken manure to your beds, adding leaves and straw in your rows to prevent weeds of growing next year. And watching our plants that gave us an abundance of fruits, die. Watching things grow and watching things die, I am celebrating life in the garden.
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All the tomato plants and corn is gone, and all is brown again.
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Adding garlic beds to increase production
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Getting leaves for the garlic beds, with the help of my little helper
Last bee inspection
We had a weird bee season this year. We didn’t do bees last year, we were too busy building a house and moving to our homestead. We decided this year that we were ready to start again, with a nuc from Vermont. It was acting a bit aggressively at first, making us wonder if they had a queen. We inspected them regularly during the summer, and they were doing fine, not exceptionally, but fine nonetheless. We did a last inspection for the season, in the early first few days of October. We also feed them at that time to give them that extra boost for them to survive the winter. We were happily surprised to see that they filled the hive, and were running out of room to expand. We only took three frames to leave behind plenty for them to eat in the winter. Three frames gave us about a gallon of honey, which should be more than enough to feed us all year (added to our 6 gallons of maple syrup).
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Even with a suit, and knowing full well I am protected, I still feel very vulnerable. I don’t complain when they attack me, because, well, I am kind of a big creature robbing their food.
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Deliciousness in a jar.
Start of hunting season
My husband and son have been waiting for the turkeys to come, target practicing every day. The turkeys only come during the weekdays at around noon, right next to the kitchen window, they must know I am the only one home. It is very frustrating, as I cannot for the life of me use a bow.
Knitting
The days are finally cold enough to fall in love with warm yarn again. I went to the annual Sheep and Wool Festival in Tunbridge and dreamt about spinning wool, having sheep, and weaving. For now, I will need to content myself with yarn spinned and dyed by someone else. I have been knitting socks and sweaters for all my friends’ babies (or had a baby months ago, and I am finally catching up on those gifts). I have also been working on a pair of socks for my father-in-law, but it’s taking me forever to finish. Something I learned from that project: knitting with black yarn in a house that is not well-lit at night makes for a very frustrating project.
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Knitted baby socks are the cutest thing on earth!
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Super cute baby sweater, with a zipper in the back started in May, and finally finished yesterday.