It’s November and we’re back on Standard Time now. One more vestige of autumn has fallen away. It feels so much more like winter when it starts getting dark at 5:30. November can be a dreary month. The bright autumn colors are fading fast and things are beginning to look a bit severe. The next dramatic change will be when the big snows come, which I hope won’t be for a while yet.
We have four big maple trees in our front yard. They are almost 200 years old. They stand in a staggered row midway between the house and the highway. Over the years we’ve lived here, I’ve discovered that I can use them as a sort of arboreal Stonehenge to mark the passing seasons of the year. Standing at a certain spot in the yard and facing east, I like to note the place where the sun rises in relation to the trees. At the summer solstice, when the sun rises at its northernmost point, it comes up between the furthest tree and the Rapley Road. At the winter solstice when it rises at its southernmost point, it comes up over the barn roof, between the second and third trees. Right now it rises between the first and second trees. I love to watch the sunrise.
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| Dawn on November 2nd. |
The grand finale to autumn is underway here in Gold. The larch trees are turning. They are the last of the colorful trees, one of the few deciduous pine trees. As they lose their needles in the fall, they turn beautiful shades of yellow ranging from lemon yellow through butterscotch to gold. I took a walk up to see them on Friday after school when the sun was shining on them and the sky was clear. I walked out through the field along the front of the grove then came back by the old railroad grade that runs behind it. The colors of the trees and the sky were dazzling. And the smells along the trail were as powerful to my nose as the colors were to my eyes. The thick layer of damp poplar leaves on the ground along the grade gave off their peculiar sweet, musky, fruity aroma. The larch needles strewn upon the trail smelled resinous and sharp. It was a windy day and warm for November. There were juncos and jays in the thickets. It was a perfect day for a walk.
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| Starting my walk: the Middle Branch of the Genesee River in Gold. |
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| Walking along the front of the larch grove. |
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| The old railroad grade behind the larch grove. |
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| Rotting railroad ties along the grade. |
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| The Gold church as seen from the grove. |
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| The larch grove at Gold. |
We had a few days of nice weather last week and I decided it was time to do something about the turkey yard. The fence was coming apart. The turkeys were escaping all the time. So Josiah and I spent two days after school on Monday and Tuesday repairing it. We took down the old chicken wire and replaced it with wood slatted snow fencing. We also repaired the plastic net cover to keep them from flying out. It looks better and is a lot sturdier. Now we will continue on and do the same thing to the fence around the chicken yard, too. Our poultry yards are very close to the road and last year during the winter, the snow plows threw snow against the wire fences and they collapsed. We had to keep all the birds imprisoned in the barn until spring when we could repair the fence. I hope to prevent that from happening this winter.
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| New fence on the turkey yard. |
We started butchering turkeys last week. Butchering time is always a solemn occasion for us. We take the taking of life very seriously. We did the first two on Wednesday evening. They are not big turkeys. The breed I raise doesn’t get big. But they are young and tender and unadulterated. We are thankful for them and the sacrifice they make to feed our family.
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| The first two turkeys headed for the block. |
On Saturday we finished picking the rest of our apples. We got ten buckets of Northern Spy apples. We took them over to Levi Borkhalter, our Amish friend in Bingham Township, who presses cider. He has a nice little chopper and a hydraulic press in his basement. He and his brother Dan chopped and pressed the apples while we watched. I wish I could have taken a picture of the process. Levi’s three little boys, ages six, five, and four, helped load the apples into the chopper and carry the jugs. They were so cute. We got sixteen gallons of beautiful, brown, unpasteurized cider. So that’s it for cider this year. This sixteen gallons plus the thirty we pressed at Lain’s equals a total of forty-six gallons. Not bad for a so-so apple year.
Speaking of cider, we began the second step of our vinegar making on Saturday. The cider had yeast fermented for two weeks and it was time to move it into the big glass jug and add the bacterial mother to turn the alcohol into acid. Stacey went down to the cellar Saturday morning to bring up the glass jug and found two dead mice inside the jug. We spent the rest of the day sterilizing the jug. Finally, in the evening, we deemed it sterile and I siphoned the cider brew into the jug and added the vinegar mother. Now it is covered and sitting in a corner of the dining room where it will remain for three to four months until the process is complete.
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| Step two of making vinegar. |
The arrival of November means Thanksgiving is approaching. I love Thanksgiving. When my brother and sisters and I were little, my mother taught us a song about Thanksgiving. I think we sang it in the car on every drive preceding the holiday. We didn’t have a radio in our car in those days and we sang all the time. When I got married and had children, I taught them the song and we sang it in the car, too. We did have a radio, but we sang songs together anyway. With the arrival of November and the approach of Thanksgiving, I thought about that song last week and wondered where it came from. I searched online and found it mentioned in several magazines for elementary school teachers as a suggested poem to be used in school Thanksgiving pageants. The earliest reference I could find was dated 1911. No author is ever named. Here is the poem with a second verse I never knew. The tune you’ll have to imagine, unless you know it.
Thanksgiving Joys
Cartloads of pumpkins as yellow as gold,
Onions in silvery strings,
Shining red apples and clusters of grapes,
Nuts and a host of good things.
Chickens and turkeys and fat little pigs –
Oh, these are what Thanksgiving brings!
Now is the time to forget all you cares,
Cast every trouble away,
Think of your blessings, remember your joys,
Don’t be afraid to be gay.
None are too young and none are too old
To frolic on Thanksgiving Day.
Good Sabbath.
