Happy Fall!

This has been a very productive week!  We harvested many of the pumpkins and gourds earlier this week.  Teresa once more set-up her roadside pumpkin and gourd sale.  Mr. Harvey was giving all of the pumpkins a nice snuggle.

We also dug the potatoes this weekend, picked acorn and butternut squash, and harvested some straggling pumpkins, gourds, and tomatoes.  We even picked a zucchini...those things never stop growing!  

Eric has been working on building the new Whizbang cider press.  The refrigerator is FULL of apples, waiting to be turned into delicious apple cider.   Teresa has been decorating for fall and everyone is all smiles.

Happy Fall!

Death of a chicken (or shall we say chickens)

This week we processed our 20 Cornish Cross broilers.  The whizbang chicken plucker was both fun and helpful.  By then end, it only took about 5 minutes to process each bird!  We ended up with over 100 pounds of chicken, with the largest guy weighing in at 7.2 pounds and the smallest 4.9 pounds.  Needless to say the freezer is FULL of chicken.

We're back!

Ireland turned out to be the perfect location for a much needed break.  

We managed to hike, sleep in, and relax.  

We enjoyed great scenery...

great food...

 great lodging...

 great company...

and great laughs.

 Eric is simply taking a moo-ment to moo-urn the loss of Tommy the cow and his wife, Magic. 

The great garden harvest!

Busy, busy, busy!  

The great green bean harvest happened a few weeks ago.  This is just our first pick of beans and WOW did we have a lot of beans.  Most of them ended up in the freezer.

We've also continued to have zucchinis out the wazoo.  Last week Teresa picked 9 zucchinis in one day and two days later picked 5 more.  We have become very creative with eating zucchini and tomatoes in our house:  zucchini omelets, Italian zucchini pie, zucchini bread, baked zucchini, sauteed zucchini, Ratatouille without the eggplant and only zucchini...

Two weeks ago we had a great carrot harvest and had a Pickling Party with our friends.  We made delicious jars of pickled carrots to be enjoyed during the winter months.  They looked so pretty with the garden sunflowers that I had to take a picture.

Soon to come: 

The great potato and pumpkin harvest...stay tuned!!!