October has ushered in the harvest season...and with that she has flung a brilliantly colored cloak across the fields, valleys, and woods. A week ago I decided it was time to put the garden to bed, and I spent the afternoon picking the last of the peppers (who this year have refused to stop sharing their bounty!) and removed spent plants, then tilled the garden under. Except for the row of peppers...I just couldn't! They still have blooms, and if the weather is just right, we may yet harvest more. While I was working the sun was bright and hot, it felt like a summer's afternoon, but that night a chill set in, and yesterday morning we had our first heavy frost, waking up to a temperature of 24 degrees. Brrr.
When October comes, I feel beset with busyness. It's such a happy time...the temperatures are cooler, the colors are glorious, and the nesting instinct has intensified. I can get more done without the humidity of summer, so I'm tackling chores as the days go by. Quilts are dancing on the clothesline, the porch has been swept and the rugs shaken. It's also time to tuck the honeybees in for winter...this week the feeders need to come off, and soon the hives will be wrapped to keep them as safe and warm as possible. The last of the corn surrounding our farm has been harvested, and in the distance I can hear the corn dryers hard at work.
Wild bittersweet grows along a fence in a neighboring field, so I've come home with armfuls that have found spots both inside and out...mantels, cupboards, vintage buckets, and next to plump pumpkins are curly vines of dazzling orange berries that brighten the days.
It's my favorite month, in my favorite season. For me, a time like no other. Sweet country life...simple country pleasures. October is the autumn idyll.
a goat wrangler, chicken whisperer, bee maven, and farmers’ market baker renovating an 1864 farmhouse. I like simple things, old things, old ways. I'm the definition of "homebody" and you can always find me in an apron. Welcome to my world...stick around, I hope you'll find it's fun!
Things I love...
Sunday dinners
tire swings
the laughter of children
cross-country train rides
barn sales & auctions
old farmhouses
small towns
porch swings
country clotheslines
old-fashioned barbershops
John Deere 4020's
farmers' markets
living in the Heartland
twinkling fireflies
simple country pleasures
the comforts of home
Now Open!
fresh from my farmhouse kitchen...simple, homemade, cottage foods!
I cannot conceivably influence the world's destiny, but I can make my own life more worthwhile.
I can give some help to some people, that is not vital to all the world's problems, and yet I think if everyone did just that, we might see quite a different world in our time!"
-Gladys Taber
"It is not the things you have that make you happy.
It is love, and kindness, and helping each other, and just plain being good. "
-Laura Ingalls Wilder
"The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain
"In all of living, have much fun and laughter.
Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured."
-Gordon B. Hinckley
"Life is short,
and it's up to you to make it sweet."
-Sadie Delany
"The real things haven't changed...
It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong."
-Laura Ingalls Wilder
"Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots."
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