September newsletter
Finally the hot weather has subsided and we had 3 inches of rain to green things up a bit. Now the nights are cool and the days are pleasant. I tried to make my first jelly from wild plums. It turned more into syrup, but the taste is superb on pancakes. I also made wild plum chutney, tomato relish, and various salsas and pestos. In exchange for my eggs and vegetables, people give me apples and pears so that the next weeks will be filled with pie-making.
Next year I will be less exuberant with vegetable seeds and
concentrate more on the cutting flower garden since the bouquets from my garden
seem to be very popular. I have been furnishing all the altar flowers for our
church here since we came back from
David is more active in the meat department, i.e. hunting. He purchased a muzzleloader so that he could go deer hunting now already before the official deer season for rifles opens. Hunting season for ducks and turtle doves is also in full swing.
For us this is all just fun and experiments, but it is truly amazing how busy you can be if you just want to provide for your own food. Add to that making your own clothes, no washing machines, making your own shelter, furniture and pottery and you can really appreciate how hard people worked that lived before us. Luckily, we do have a washer and dryer and a furnished house and can spend some of our time in a leisurely fashion.
September is a nice time to go walking and bike-riding again. And to make this more pleasant, we have a new puppy who likes to come along.
Meet Lilly:
Lilly comes from the Humane Society in
David also spends a lot of his free time restoring his 1964 Ford pick-up truck, literally piece by piece. Unfortunately, a good many of these pieces need to be replaced and the amount of packages arriving from all parts of the US containing this or that old automobile part is truly astonishing. I have resigned myself to the fact that this pickup will be just as expensive as buying a new one. We’ll have to buy an old ramshackle house again after our two years here so that David can go back to that kind of fixing. I think I will appreciate his abilities more in the house restoration realm.
Last week, we took the kids out of school for one day and
drove with David’s parents to the Kansas State Fair in
My favorite was the poultry barn
where you could see every variation of chicken, duck, goose or turkey. Some
chicken breeds like the naked neck or the crested Polish varieties look like
good nature jokes:
Next week, I will be driving to
Here is a picture of my nephew with Christina and Cecile in front of a growth chart at the State Fair. Since he is off the size chart, I’ll give you the answer: He is 6 foot 7 inches tall.
Greetings from the whole family!