We Are Diggin' Fall!

As I mentioned before, Adam has been push-mowing this big field. The tidy piles look cute, but that tall stuff on the left/top of the photo? That's the chest-high goldenrod weeds he still has to tackle. Thankfully, a friend with a tractor offered to bush-hog the rest of it for us. He came today.

Today I reminded Adam it was time to check sweet potatoes. They've been in the ground since mid-June. Sure enough ...

 

That's only 5 plants' worth. There are many more to dig. Yay!! I love sweet potatoes. I wonder how long it will take me this winter to tire of them? I think I need to find a good sweet potato pie recipe.

For lunch today, I made some avocado dip with a few things off the farm: egg, a few last tomatoes, and beautiful cilantro:

Our self-seeding cilantro is just lovely:

And my newest hen Autumn laid her first egg this morning!

 She's just a teenaged hen, so her first egg is small. It's on the left, below. Next to it is one of Punkin's eggs. Punkin is a year older. Hens' eggs get larger as they grow older; however, they lay less often. Your "jumbo" eggs in the grocery are from older hens.

Adam continues to lay thick mulch on our house beds. It's like putting the plants nighty-night for the winter.

 A wonderful addition to our farm this weekend is this nice extension ladder that we bought from a friend for $50. It's so good to have it; now we can begin to work on our house eaves/roof/leak. 

 We've had no rain in weeks, and everything's quite dry. But the sky is darkening today, and the clouds are billowing, and it feels like rain. My poor mum (from last year) is trying hard to bloom.

 Yesterday afternoon was nice enough outside to sit in the pecan orchard with the dogs. I've been picking up pecans every day. It will be a banner year.

 That's Ned's head. We looked out over the big field and listened for geese. He and Baby wrestled and competed for my hand. They're just playing.

I have a good friend who's a potter. We both sold our wares at the music festival in Oriental on Saturday. She pulled out this exquisite chalice -

She offered it to me as a gift because it had a hairline crack. Wow! I just love it. It looks like fairytales and Tolkien's world and tree nymphs. I put a small candle in it today while I painted.

That's it from the farm. We're still drying loofahs and picking green beans and wondering how the white potatoes will do. But right now, things are pretty good on the farm.