Last week the weather man called for a possible frost.  This is our signal to start harvesting the hard squash that we planted and the pumpkins.  It took three trips out to the field with the large tractor with a bucket on the front of it to bring back all of the squash and pumpkins.

Once we get them home we put them out on the picnic table in the yard so that the cold weather at night can do it's job of hardening the skins.  This hardening makes the squash last longer in storage for the winter.  (not so at our house since we will have all of them eaten before much winter sets in.

Then it's time for Matthew and I to get the pumpkins ready for sale.  First we sort them.  One's with cracks or any breaks in the skins get fed to the pigs.  Also those that have the handle missing go to the pigs.  All of these flaws will shorten the amount of time that they can sit out once they have been carved.   Then we wipe the dirt off of them so that they look nice for the customers.  After they have been wiped I sorted them by size and priced them accordingly.  Then they got loaded into the wagons and take out front to be put on display for all to see, and hopefully buy.  I made the sign with cut out letters from the craft store that I painted.  Then I nailed the letters to a piece of wood that Matthew cut for me.    Hopefully all who drive by will be tempted by their nice bright orange color to stop and buy a few for decorating and carving.  (way in the back you can see the pumpkins that I kept back for us)  They make a pretty display on the front lawn in the sunshine.

Outside my window..... it is overcast and misty and the temperature is 53 degrees.  No laundry is going to be hung up today.  It's a good day to stay inside and get inside stuff done.

I'm thinking..... about making an applesauce cake.  It is apple time of the year and I'm inspired to do some "apple" cooking.

I'm thankful.....  for a hard working husband and hard working children.  We spent the whole weekend preparing this place for the coming winter.

From the kitchen....  sausage and peppers and onions for supper.  I need to use up the last of the peppers and tomatoes from the garden.

I am wearing...... jeans and a pink tee shirt

I am reading......  only things for school.  I need to stay on top of Matthew's English literature reading and his biology.

I am hoping.....  this mist doesn't turn into full fledged rain.  Ian has hay to bale.

I am hearing......  the washer spinning out the next load, the TV playing Matthew and Brett's spanish lesson

Around the house.... I need to finish the floors and then rearrange the furniture in the diningroom to accomodate the wood stove.

One of my favorite things..... these nice cool fall mornings with just the hint of the turning leaves in the air.  I can even still smell the smoke from our bonfire that we had last night.

A few plans for the rest of the week.....  go to Twin Orchards and pick up a few bushels of apples,  pick the last of the grapes and get started pressing them to make a batch of wine, finish blacking the stove and get it inside before it really turns cold, finish the garments that have been ordered before I get any more orders.

Here is a picture thought I am sharing with you......

One of my favorite sights in the whole world.  Three of my men working toghether and having a good time while they are doing it.  It's a wonder that they get any wood split because they have to consult about how to properly split each piece.  But they are together and that is what matters the most.

Today dawned a perfect fall day.  Cool and sunny with a slight breeze.  A perfect day to work on all of the many things that need doing before cold, wet, weather sets in for good.  My wonderful husband likes to wait till the last minute to start these kind of seasonal chores but I am the type who does these things at a slower pace.  I like to do it all a little at a time and get it done right.  Since he is off to work all day long he leaves the pacing to me and lets me just leave him a list of the things that I cannot do myself and need his help on.

What is this?  Is Mary-Kate going a bit overboard?  Sweeping the roof of the garage.  Actually her dad asked her to. 

Our garage leaks, a trifle.  So he is planning on tarring it to cut down on the leaking a bit.

I think that she liked that job.

After the fire in the barn, Doug and Ian took the wood stove out of the dining room so that Mary-Kate wouldn't be so frightened.  We have decided to put it back this year.  It was cold in the house last winter without it and it was a mild winter.

I don't want to try a hard winter without it.  So I sanded the stove and blacked it in preparation for putting it back into the house.  The last thing will be to fire it up outside so that the smell of the paint can off-gas outdoors.

Matthew shovelled out the pigpen and did some repairs on it.  He built a lovely ramp so that my girls have an easier time getting in and out because they are in a delicate condition and we don't want them hurting themselves.

They also fixed the door going outside so that when the piglets are born we can close it off so we don't lose any of them to the big bad world.

Here are too of the ladies in waiting.  They are due to farrow this week. 

 Where's hunting season when you need it?  I was recently at one of my favorite local places for taking a nature walk and these beauties walked right in front of my car as I was driving in.

I had the uncontrollable urge to have a shotgun in my hands.  I like the taste of wild turkey.  In a few weeks it will be turkey season and then these beauties will be hiding. 

They do like to pose for the camera.  They seem to know that it is not threat to their health.

We heat out house with wood.  Always have, probably always will.  So, every year we have to lay in a supply of wood for the furnace and for the wood stove in the dining room. 

This past week Ian brought a load of maple from the town and dumped it in our driveway.  When he does that it is up to me to see to it that it gets split, sorted and put where it belongs.  The stuff that is small enough for the stove gets stacked in the garage and the larger stuff goes into the basement for the furnace.

So, Wednesday evening Matthew set to splitting some of the larger pieces.  Then the annual strange thing started to happen.  I have observed this phenomenom every year since Ian was old enough to lift a godevil and try to swing it.

Matthew isn't the strongest but he is wiry and he is very determined.  He does a better job than I do and I have split more wood than he has.  Now, I didn't approve of his choice of footwear but he was doing a good job.

He did claim that the flash from my camera was distracting him and making it hard to do a good job. 

You can see that that big piece is slowly being reduced to manageable chunks of stove wood.

Ian has been watching but he can't stand it anymore.  All this while he has been telling Matthew how to properly get the wood split.  So he finally takes over.

He is much stronger and even more determined.  He splits with a vengence, talking all the while.

He gets his chunk reduced to a more manageable pile, still giving advice all the time he's doing it. 

My husband, who has just worked an 11 hour day, works up enough energy to get his licks in.  He's the expert after all and should be able to get this block whittled down in no time at all, right?

Such form and power!!!!!

The wood practically splits in self-defense.

On to the next piece. 

They all have to get in on the act.  Splitting wood is like an olympic event around here.  Once one gets going they all have to get involved.

Even my daughter when she came home from school had to get her chance.

She managed to reduce a pile to stove wood in a short amount of time.  The best part of all this is that no one complains about having to split wood and it all got done and stacked.  Now we just need more.  It takes a lot of wood to heat this barn of a house.

My dear Loquacious Lady from Louisiana, you may regret letting this genie out of the bottle when it is done.  First of all, thank you for the compliment.  My husband is the only one who has ever called me a lady and that is usually accompanied by a raised eyebrow.  Being a lady and what is a lady is something that I have to examine later.  It is a conundrum that I have struggled with for years.  But, back to the question at hand.   Fifteen things about myself.

1.  I have my LPN license but quit school three weeks before graduating with a bachelors degree in nursing.  I was about to marry the love of my life and was wasting my time with RN nursing anyway. 

2.  I majored in nursing in school with a minor in English language.  Since then I have homeschooled my six children and have taught two years in a private Catholic school.  The question is have I used my education?

3.  I can quote whole passages from Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, and CS Lewis.  This to the dismay of my children who were made to study English Literature and memorize poetry and passages from some of the greatest works ever written.

4.  If I am in company of someone who has an accent for more than a day I begin to talk like that person.  No I am not making fun of them but I do actually begin to have an accent.  I think it is funny but my husband finds it embarassing. 

5.  I can watch movies over and over and they are always new to me.  I really do forget the bulk of the movie after I have seen it.  I claim that I don't watch with the same intensity that my family does.  I tell my husband that it makes me a cheap date since all he has to do is take a movie off the shelf and it will be like renting a new one for me.

6.  I am crazy about pigs.  I raise them, have for about fifteen years.  I think that pigs are more intelligent than some humans that I know.  They have great personalities too.  I don't mind their smell and I like to be there when they farrow (give birth).  I never get tired of seeing the piglets come out.  I have told all of my most intimate secrets to my pigs.

7.  We have a dragon on our farm.  It is actually a tree that came down in a storm but it looks like a dragon and I won't let anyone cut it up for stove wood.  I like to walk out to the dragon and visit it once a week. 

8.  At Christmastime my son Matthew and I like to play name that tune with the Christmas music.  He tries to get me to make a mistake naming the artist performing the song.  I am never wrong.  I have a phonographic memory.  If I hear it in music it is there forever.  Every song that I have ever heard I can still sing the lyrics to.

9.  I also have a photographic memory for numbers.  I see numbers in color and therefore am able to remember long sequences of numbers.  I can recite the account numbers of all our credit cards, checking and savings accounts and any other account that we have that has a number associated with it.  I could never work in a bank.

10.  I am a fantastic cook.  But I didn't always start out that way.  I once made a bread dough and forgot to put the yeast in it.  After waiting two hours for it to rise I finally remembered that I had neglected the yeast.  I fed the dough to the pigs.  They loved it and my family never knew.

11.  I can tear apart an engine and put it back together and it will still run.  It has to be pre-computerized.  I can do the same to a sewing machine. 

12.  I cannot back up any vehicle.  My husband has been trying for twenty-five years to teach me to back up without hitting something and he hasn't succeeded yet.  The big dent in the back bumper of my durango is proof of that. 

13.  I have seven children.  Only six are still living.  Sometimes I like to say that out loud just so that folks can remember that there is a soul that is home with God helping us all here on earth to be good.  Her name is Rebekah Ann.

14.  Someday I want to have a house with a porch that wraps around the whole house.  I don't like decks.  I want a good old-fashioned porch.

15.  I like words.  I like to use them and manipulate them and work with them.  There are some words that offend me because of their over use but otherwise I like words, especially unusual ones.  The words that I don't like are; nice, what does that one mean anyway?  fine, there's another one with no real meaning.  I saw in a movie a good definition for fine and that's what I mean whan I say I am fine,  Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional.  I like that.

Because it is the right thing to do.  Because God expects it of us.  How many times in my homeschooling career have my children heard me say that phrase?  I should make a recording of myself saying that and just press the button instead of repeating.  But I repeat it instead.  Why?  Because it is the right thing to do.  Because God expects it of me. 

My son is, as I type this redoing a religion test on the sacraments.  Why?  Not because he failed it, necessarily.  But because his answers weren't good enough, not complete enough.  Am I too hard on him?  Perhaps, if one considers the study of his faith just another subject in school or worse yet considers it not even a subject worthy of study at all.  However, in this school it is considered the single most important subject studied, bar none.  It is the subject that all others revolve around. 

Last evening as I sat and listened to his religion teacher review what was taught last year and give an overview of what will be taught this year I mused on my years in that same classroom.  I meditated on the privelege that my children have had to be taught by the same holy priest that I had for my growing up years.  I recall sitting in that same room and wondering what I was doing there and what good it would do me.  Now in reflection I know.  I grew up in a marginally Catholic family.  We went to Mass and went to religion class but weren't taught at home.  But when I went to college and I saw the abuses at the churches that I attended when I was away from home I was thankful for what I was taught because it was only because of that teaching that I was able to recognise those abuses at all.

And so I say to them again and again, because it is the right thing to do, because God expects it of us.  I want the best you can give.  Later you will understand and it will all come clear.  Right now you are getting the building blocks.  Later you will be able to build the wall and it will be strong because God and I helped you to build the foundation.

Outside my window..... it is overcast, cool, and windy.  Not as windy as it was last night.  We had 60 mph wind gusts.

I am thinking...... it is late for me to be doing this.  We all got a late start this morning because our power went off about 3:00 AM and didn't come back on until about 1:00 PM

I am thankful..... that I have a very loving husband and understanding family that is adaptable and who comes together in a situation like this.  Matthew took care of things here at home while I took MK back to school.  Ian called several times to make sure we were all okay and to see if there was anything that he could do.  Doug came home from work at lunch time to diagnose the problem with our power when the neighbors were back on and we only had 1/2 power.  Now the wonderful man is letting me use the dryer to finish the laundry today rather than make it last until tomorrow.

From the kitchen..... leftovers from yesterday so I can concentrate on laundry and meeting a client this afternoon.

I am creating...... order where chaos once reigned

I am going...... to the fabric store to meet a client for a sewing job

I am wearing...... a jeans skirt and a green polo shirt

I am hoping...... my husband doesn't have to work too late to make up for taking time off in the middle of the day

I am reading....... the Baltimore Chatechism (to prepare for my fifth grade religion class)

Around the house...... order is being restored

One of my favorite things..... is watching my husband making things "all better" when there is a problem around here

I have no picture thought for you.  My camera has been quiet lately.

A few days ago Ian called and asked me if the stork had arrived.  He explained that there was a heron in the pig yard and since all three of the sows were bred  he wondered if they had started having their piglets.  Of course he was joking since he knows full well when they are due.  But we both found it unusual that the heron was in the yard and not in the creek.  saturday morning I went out to get the mail and there was the heron again in the pig yard.  He flew away when he heard me.  Later that day I went out again to watch Mary-Kate's riding lesson and there was the heron again.  So I went back and got my camera and snapped this picture.

I don't know why he likes being there but I am certainly enjoying seeing him there.  There is something majestic about the sight of him and the way that he walks.

Outside my window..... clear, cool, and sunny.  Perfect day for drying the laundry outside.

I am thinking..... how close it is to fall and then comes winter.  (have to stop thinking that way)

I am thankful for..... the wonderful weekend we just had with Mary-Kate home and a visit with Ian.

From the kitchen..... well, I was planning leftovers for lunch but there aren't any so how about BLT's and cheesey corn casserole for supper.

I am creating..... some new skirts for myself (yes, I am actually going to sew for myself unless a commission comes in)

I am wearing..... blue jeans, a white tee shirt and a navy blue hoodie

I am reading...... Quest for Love by Elisabeth Elliot and The First Patient by Michael Palmer

I am hoping.... that we get to see Ian this week before he leaves for drill on thursday

I am hearing..... Matthew studying in his room and the sounds of birds outside my window

Around the house..... all is neat and clean and the laundry is outside.  This feels very good.

A few plans for the rest of the week..... put away outside things that we no longer use, school, sewing, more laundry, lesson plans for my 2nd grade religion class

Here is a picture thought that I am sharing with you.......

The view outside my window.  I bet you all can't guess that being outside is what I crave the most.  It takes a great deal of discipline and love for God to keep me inside doing my duty.  My dream home has walls and walls of windows.