Well, it’s been what, almost 8 months since I posted here?! That’s insanity. But, this is a perfect example of how I try to live my life… in the moment. We did accomplish some projects this year, but nothing like last year. We spent a lot more time this year just… chillin. Sitting outside with the dog and the flock after work, and simply enjoying our little piece of paradise.

Today we woke up to our first snow! A dusting, granted, and it is all melted by now, but even still. It was wonderful to see those big flakes drifting down early this morning. Summer ended quickly, and Autumn did not hang around long. The leaves are changing and dropping fast, and the temps are dropping into the teens already at night. We made sure we were ultra-ready for Winter this year! We have nearly 6 cords of wood split, stacked, and covered (most of it is seasoned for use this year, some of it will have to wait until next year). As a comparison, we typically go through 2 – 2 1/2 cords during the Winter. However, this last Winter, we ran out of firewood in March. Then it just kept dumping snow. Thank goodness for our neighbors who let us use their firewood stash. We won’t let that happen again. Lesson learned.

This will be our 5th Winter out here! This month we have spent winterizing our property and throughout the Summer we worked on sealing up our house a bit more. We have new siding on the house, all of our windows are freshly sealed, and now with our sunroom, we have plenty of passive solar energy. Over the last week or so we took down both of our greenhouses; two less structures to worry about when we get 6 feet of snow.

We have been working on a deck as well! We were able to knock out the foundation in a long weekend, and this coming weekend we’ll be working on the roof (the whole thing will be covered), and sometime in the next couple of weeks, a railing. Two other projects for us before Winter really hits: some maintenance on the bird coop (needs new roofing before it gets too much more weather), and we’re planning on setting up a legit solar system on the house. We have all the pieces for a nice solar system, just have to put it together. If we’re feeling frisky, we might put a solid roof on Loki’s run too, we’ll see.

And guess what R and I decided we are gonna do next Fall? NOTHING. No more big Fall projects for us!

We didn’t do a huge garden this year, the weather didn’t cooperate at the beginning of the Summer, so a lot of our seedlings didn’t do well after transplant. We did manage to get a TON of tomatoes and tomatillos. The cucumbers did pretty well, and we even got a handful of okra this year. None of the squash or pumpkins were successful. Can’t win ’em all. The egg supply was AWESOME from the ladies this year! The ducks are still dropping almost every day. They are all doing great and they just bring us SO MUCH JOY. Loki and Cedar are buddies and it is just so comical and awesome when they lay down next to each other. So stinkin’ cute (I wish I had a picture).

As I was going through pictures to add to this I realized there was more we accomplished this year, but I’ll save that for another post! Good to be back 🙂