Some aspects of harvest time are very satisfying. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I load a wagon full of pumpkins or line up a dozen cabbages. They look impressive, substantial, a big deal. Other aspects of the harvest involve tiny, tedious things. On Monday morning I sat at the dining room table and sorted beans. For almost three hours I poured beans, four cups at a time, onto a cookie sheet and picked out the stems, tiny rocks, and moldy beans. It was very tedious work. When I finally finished, I filled quart jars with the beans and vacuum sealed them. After all that time and effort, I did feel a sense of accomplishment as I looked at thirteen quarts of beans, but I didn’t want to even think about eating beans for a long time.
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| Jars of beans. |
After sorting beans, I spent most of the afternoon with the chickens. Getting the coop ready for winter is a big and dirty job. The first thing I did was sweep out cobwebs. These are not your ordinary cobwebs. All summer long, spiders spin webs in the rafters of the coop, hundreds of them, thousands of them. The webs get dusty. By the end of summer, they hang in grey, dusty sheets and ropes from the ceiling. To get rid of them, I used a broom. I swiped it over the whole ceiling, between the rafters, down the walls. Every so often, I had to clean the broom, pulling off a thick mat of dusty web. And while I worked, dust and cobwebs fell into my hair and onto my upturned face. It was a dirty job and I was filthy by the time I finished it.
The next job was getting the chicken’s waterers ready for the cold days. I took their two waterers up to the house and scrubbed them clean and bleached them to kill the algae that grows in them – another messy job. Then I brought the two water heaters down from the upper part of the barn and set them up under the waterers. I plugged them in, but I won’t turn them on until the real cold comes.
Monday night, after the chickens had all gone to roost, Stacey and I went down and clipped wings. The young chickens, this year’s grown up chicks, had nice wings and were using them to fly over the fence. They were wandering all over the yard and wrecking the flowerbeds around the front of the house. I had to ground them. With them trapped inside the coop and ready to sleep, they are fairly easy to grab. Stacey caught them and I trimmed off their primary feathers. They hate the indignity of it, but I haven’t had any escapees since then, so it worked – at least until they molt next year and grow their feathers back.
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| A sunrise last week. |
Tuesday was a mild day and I was desperate to find some overlooked garden task to do. Although I’d planned to let them stand through the winter, I decided I would cut down the dead stalks in the wildflower garden – and I would use my scythe to do it. I’ve had my scythe for four or five years now. Buying it was an ambitious and expensive – I hesitate to say folly, but perhaps it was. It is an Austrian style scythe, custom made for me based on my height and the length of my arms. I tried using it that first year to cut the tall orchard grass, but I never got the hang of it. It was difficult, strenuous work. I went back to using the power mower and hung the scythe up on the back porch where it has remained ever since. Until Tuesday. While I waited for the dew to dry, I watched some instructional videos to remind me how it’s done. I set up a peening jig for sharpening it. Then I took it down and sharpened it. I practiced swinging it to try and get a feel for the rhythm of using it. Then I went out to the wildflower garden. The plants in that patch are dense and their stalks are thick. I made the proper stance. I swung the blade, and the scythe went thunk and stuck fast in the first clump of stems it hit. I tried for half an hour to make some headway, adjusting my feet, altering my swing. I stopped and used the whetstone to sharpen the blade edge. Nothing worked. So my original plan stands – the wildflower patch will remain untouched through the winter. By spring, they should be decayed enough to pull up easily. I hung the scythe back up on the porch. I will attempt to use it again next year in June when the orchard grass is tender and needs its first cutting. That’s what I like about husbandry – there’s always next year and another chance to do better.
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| The wildflower patch. |
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| My scythe and peening jig. |
Tuesday afternoon Miriam and I went over to our friends, Bob and Nancy Jones’s, to get a load of firewood and to help split and stack wood. The missionaries came to help and we were glad to have some younger muscle to do the heaviest work. We brought logs down from the woods and split and stacked them. They have a lot of nice firewood. We brought a truckload home and stacked it at the side of the house. We are going to go back to get a few more loads again this week that we will stack out in the pavilion.
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| Working on firewood at the Jones's. |
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| Our expanded woodpile. |
I’m still adjusting to the demise of the gardening season. On days when I’m not called into school during these cold months, I have to find things to keep myself occupied. I’m taking language lessons on Duolingo, so I do my Japanese lessons in the morning, my Hebrew lessons in the afternoon, and my German lessons in the evening. It’s good mental exercise trying to keep the three languages straight in my brain. In the mornings, I also try to spend time doing family history. Sometimes I just putter around the house looking for things to do. As the cold days trudge on, I’ll start resorting to random projects like rearranging books on shelves. More and more I will fuss over my houseplants. I’ll also make lists – things I want to do in next year’s garden, books I want to explore. And I’ll read and listen to music. If the weather is nice enough, I’ll take walks around the property, noting the things I want to do when the growing world wakes up again. If I can’t find anything else to do, which doesn’t happen often, I’ll watch TV. I always feel a little lost at first.
We went down to the Thayn’s house for the weekend. We left on Friday afternoon. By the time we got there, the Fosters had already arrived. Tabor’s mother was also visiting, so they had a full house. The reason for our visit this time was to attend a performance of Fiddler on the Roof that Hazel and June were in. We went to the Saturday afternoon performance. Hazel and June both had parts as villagers, which meant they were in most of the big dance scenes. The boy who played Tevye, who was just fifteen, was very good. The whole production was great.
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| June and Hazel in their costumes. |
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| The tavern scene. |
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| Tevye's dream. |
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| The bottle dance. |
After the play, we stopped for ice cream and then continued on to the Thayn’s house. We spent the evening together and had a great time. Yesterday we went to church. It was their ward’s Primary program so we got to see the children sing and recite their parts. After church we went back to the Thayn’s, packed up, and headed home. We got home last night.
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| Hazel making a crust for an apple pie. |
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| Florence and Sarah. |
That’s why I’m late getting this journal out. This morning it was cold, 16° when I woke up. When I went out there was heavy frost and the beaver pond and lily pond were covered with ice. I went down right away to check on the chickens. I usually ask Kurt to take care of them when we go out of town, but he wasn’t able to. Before we left on Friday, I filled all their feeders to the top, hoping it would last them for two days and they wouldn’t go crazy and eat it all at once. They did okay. There was still some food left in two of the three feeders. They still had some water. They were so happy to see me. I threw them some scratch and collected two days worth of eggs – 44! I filled my egg basket and both pockets of my jacket with eggs.
So we are back from our short weekend trip. It was so nice to be together. We will be together again next week for Thanksgiving and that will be wonderful.
