Homestead Life

Autumn on Our Homestead

Don't you just love harvest time?

Autumn on Our Homestead

Our weather is gorgeous, with sunny days and crisp nights. Jack Frost has yet to visit and my tomatoes, beans, peppers, eggplants, and squash are still filling our table and tummies. I have yet another batch of spaghetti sauce cooking down in the kitchen as I write. The wild apples across the road are ready for harvest and the apple orchard down the road is in full swing. Volunteer gourds from my compost produced a bumper crop of fall decor for my front steps this year.

This turkey hen is one of the lucky ones. She'll stick around to raise our turkey for next Thanksgiving.

Our young turkeys are growing quickly. I think we have 3 toms and 1 hen…go figure. I’ll wait until closer to Thanksgiving to pick the keeper tom and roast the others. I have extra male ducks and old laying hens to cull soon. I’ll wait until the yellow jacket population has succumbed to the cold weather before I attempt a butchering session. Each fall the old hens and extra roosters are processed to reduce the feed bill for the winter and put fresh meat on the table.

Autumn on Our Homestaed - The Self Sufficient HomeAcre

Flocks of starlings have been settling down for the night in the woods south of our homestead for over a month now. The flocks get larger as their migration approaches. Thousands of them rustle and chirp in unison as the sky grows pink with each approaching dawn. The young hawks watch for stragglers and I sit in the chill with my coffee on our deck. All too soon the birds will leave on winter vacation and our lawn chairs will be stashed away in the garage.

Autumn on Our Homestead - The Self Sufficient HomeAcre

We all pitched in this weekend to stack our firewood for the winter. My back is still complaining about those 6 cords of wood. There’s still more wood from trees we took down this year…victims of the Emerald Ash borer. We’ll need to split most of it soon, so the work isn’t over yet. But it is a good feeling to have a wood stove and plenty of fuel ready for the cold winter ahead. If the electricity goes out in an ice storm, our home will still be warm and a pot of soup will simmer on our stove. The other day I rotated our home canned goodies and did a quick inventory. We could go close to a year without starving if the stores closed down tomorrow.

There are quite a few jars of beans left in my Canning Cupboard (made by my Dad)!
Some of our canned goods, waiting for the end of gardening season.

Although I enjoy summer and the bounty of food from our garden, I love autumn and the cool weather it brings even more. Until the killing frost ends our season, we keep picking and storing food away in anticipation of the long, dark winter. Living on a homestead keeps our lives centered around the seasons. There’s a certain comfort in knowing what needs to be done to keep our home and hearth running smoothly and in unison with the cycle of life.

 

Are you busy preserving your harvest this fall? What is your favorite fall crop and how do you prepare it?

8 Comments on “Autumn on Our Homestead

  1. My favorite fall crop would be apples followed by maple syrup. My gardens didn’t fare too well this year thanks to strange weather patterns but being our first year I’m happy with the perennials that did well and will produce even more next year.

    1. Hi Lois,
      I think apples are my favorite fall crop too. 🙂 I’m sorry that your garden didn’t do very well…I hope you have a much better crop next year! Best wishes and thanks so much for stopping by!

  2. Tomato sauce from San Marzano tomatoes – I may never buy commercial again! The flavor is amazing and so easy to make.

  3. Not everything does well every year. So my favorite fall crop is what ever does well. This year is the year of apples. We have apples coming out our ears. 🙂 Time to make dries apples, apple butter, apple sauce, and fruit leathers. Yum

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