Winter's Coming,,,,,Winter's Coming

Chicken Little used to run around saying "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". Instead of that I am staring at Richard and saying "winter is coming, winter is coming"

Yes, I am fully aware that according to the calendar and the weather guessers it is not even really fall yet, but up here we always and I do mean ALWAYS get a light snowfall before Halloween. So while the weather is gorgeous we are getting ready for the upcoming colder weather.

About 2 weeks ago I harvested all the basil and then hung it to dry. Once dry I picked off the leaves and put them up to be used in the future. I also made some tomato-basil jam which has a kick to it.


Now that I had the basil out of the way I brought in all the rosemary (sorry for the blurry photo). The stuff on the left is regular rosemary. On the right is a curry variety which can be used to flavor eggs, soups and such. We love curry and I want to try it on the Rosemary Chicken legs I made a few weeks ago.


Our cayenne pepper plants are dropping their leaves and the mass quantities of peppers are starting to turn red. Richard will not let me pick all of them until they are red even though I read that they will turn red once picked. Here are a few on the counter.


We took down another tree yesterday, cut it, stacked some fireplace lengths and split some and stacked a small amount on the porch to be used during the next few days.


Once we had wood on the porch, Richard sat in the last of the day's warm (63 degrees and dropping) sunlight and chopped up a bunch of kindling while enjoying a beer to quench our thirst after a hard day's work.


The woodshed is now full except for one small row near the far left. Just so we are on the same page, each row is stacked up to the peak of the roof. 2 rows equals a full cord of wood which is 4 feet high by 4 feet deep by 8 feet long.


But we have a whole lot more wood to be split once it dries out some and we still have 2 large trees on our property to take down and the Village has promised us a truck load of 5-12 foot lengths of wood once they start cutting all the dead trees along the main road and side streets in the Village limits. Note to Fred: you may have missed this summer's splitting but there will be plenty to do next summer.


Here is a pile of small stuff which will help fill the only open spot in the wood shed.


After a hard day's work I made us some really good, hearty soup for dinner and that ladies and gentlemen will be my next post.

Also before I harvested the basil I put up 4 pints of pickled Banana peppers and some pickled jalapenos.