Autumn Colors

Last week I cleaned up the garden - and just in time!  The frost hit really hard the next evening, and everything would have been toast.  I brought in seven bell peppers, a bowl of tomatoes (a bag of green ones are still reddening up in the pantry), a crisper full of carrots, a dozen pumpkins, and seven cucumbers.  The last harvest.  In some ways, it really saddens me to say, "The last harvest", because I will miss watching my garden grow, and I will miss eating fresh garden produce.  But alternately I feel a little relieved to have it all cleaned up and gladdened that we got through a successful season, and now get the rest Winter necessitates.  Oh how hard work pays off: in fruitful harvests, and glad rest.

Too Many Favorites; Seamus's First U.S. Thanksgiving

Like the collection of food on this plate (which I licked clean!), I had too many favorites among my Thanksgiving collection of photos, so you get LOTS.  We had a wonderful day, watching the parade in our jammies, eating turkey at a beautifully set table, eating pecan pie, playing in the lovely Fall foliage, and visiting with dear family.  A first Thanksgiving for Seamus, and a Thanksgiving to remember.

 

 

Happy Chicken Day: do not look closely at the following photos if you get queasy at the sight of blood

It is Thanksgiving here in Canada, and we found an appropriate way to give thanks.  Butchering our own chickens.  Our friends, Mark and Katie Elias, raised chickens this year and we bought some of them.  We visited the chickens once or twice this summer and watched them growing.  Then on Saturday, we participated in their demise.

You might be surprised to learn that I was expecting something a little more unpleasant than what we encountered.  The hardest part for me was training myself to think of the dull thud of the hatchet as just chopping wood.  My first experience cutting off chicken heads (when I was twelve or thirteen) was rather traumatic, and I vomited, and somehow the sound is what stuck with me.  But once I got over the sound, the entire experience wasn't so bad.  Without their heads, they're really well on their way to the table and it's very easy to impersonalize the experience.  I think I just made up the word impersonalize.  But it's what I mean.  And you should know that it's much easier to get over chopping their heads off when you remember that they poop in their own beds, lay their eggs in that poop, and often peck weaker chickens to death for no apparent reason (hence the term "pecking order").  It's way easier than killing a thoughtful, hygienic, cuddly creature.  And when you think of the delightful dinners we will enjoy on the other end of the experience, it seems worthwhile.

There is much more to say about this experience, but for now I will leave off by stating my conviction that everyone ought to experience the process and understand where your food comes from.  It will remind you that the food you need to survive comes from the earth, not from the grocery store.

photos at last

on the way home from the airport Luke tries on Grampa's assortment of hats.

the last rescued veggies were made into the most delicious turkey pot pie.  um - yum!

Like mother, like son.  When a mother goes around half-dressed and doesn't bother to do her hair, what can you expect from her precocious two-year old?

what are they making?  now that's a silly question.

Grampa and Luke go for walks to the park.

race cars need somewhere to crash...playdough!

sorry for the crazy eyes.  just had to wait too long for somebody to take the picture.

oh but you should see it.  it's a thing of beauty.  all cleaned up.  yucky old stuff that I never harvested tossed away - never to be seen or heard from again!  and tomorrow's task:  buy and plant the perfect apple tree (requirements: hardy, good for pies AND juice/cider, and preferably something that will grow several feet per year - we're in a hurry for apples).  All of this thanks to my Dad who claims, "I know nothing about gardening!...in Manitoba."