Autumn happenings.........

Common Ground Country Fair logo for 2008

Shane and I had a great time at the fair but it's wonderful to be home!!!! I'm still dealing with "jet lag" for lack of a better term but finally have enough energy to post. We returned late sunday evening from a four day stay at the Common Ground Country Fair in Unity, Maine. If you ever have the chance to attend, you will be happy that you did. It definitely is an educational adventure in sustainable living. I've attended for many, many years and learn so much every time I'm there.

We have a booth in the Maine Fiber Farms tent. All of the vendors in this tent have some kind of fiber animals and everything in their booth are items created from their farms. It's a wonderful assortment of folks and it's always fun to connect with friends you only see once or twice a year.

I hurried like a mad woman to get all the yarn died, the soap felted, sheepskins, and gourds ready and everything else packed for three weeks before we left. The weather was grand. Cool and sunny. Perfect weather for selling wool and warm weather items. The biggest turnout ever - almost 60,000 people in three days! I came home with empty supply boxes. Yippeeeeeee. I do have a small amount of yarn that I will sell on-line or at the farmer's market. I will use some for christmas gifts as well. A successful weekend all around for everyone.

Autumn has definitely arrived in the Northeast and the harvest is slowly coming to an end. We have had several hard frost and the growing season is pretty much over. The winter squash has been picked and is now stored in wooden boxes in our crawl space basement. The temp is perfect and we should eat fresh squash for a long time to come. Yesterday Tom and I harvested our kennebec potatoes and our sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes did very well and I will definitely plant more next year. Next week we hope to have time to pick apples and can applesauce. The last on the list is to pick and can our shell beans. It will be nice to put the gardens to rest for the winter season.

Winter squash ready for storage

We are starting our winter preparations. Sheep and goats need to be sheared and three cord of wood needs to be stacked in the wood shed. We are raking acorns for the pigs and they are plentiful this year. I'm hoping that's not a sign of the type of winter we are going to have. We need to clean out all of the gardens and all the leftovers go to the pigs as well.

My DH is home on vacation this coming week and we are installing a new woodstove in our livingroom. Should be a fun project :)

Fall colors

This isn't a great photo but our trees are changing colors quickly and the foliage is beautiful. We lost our sun today as a tropical storm is making it's way up the coast and is supposed to dump 4 inches of rain on us by saturday evening. We sure didn't need that! I hope to have better foliage photos to share in the days to come.