The work outside is slowing down, as it does every year at this time. There is still plenty to do, but the pace seems more workable. We are done with most of the fall planting, and in another month we’ll be getting into winter crops, mostly hardy greens.

We got over 3 inches of rain this week, which relieved us of many hours of waterin

The fall crops are looking great, except for some broccoli and cabbages which were invaded by flea beetles when still young. Tomatoes are still producing a lot right now, but the leaf mold fungus is advancing and we expect to have a shorter overall production season this year. I’m not happy about it, but neither am I as upset as I thought I would be. I think it’s because I feel like we’ve been taught a valuable lesson through this problem. We have some ideas as to how to try and avoid the fungus in future years, such as planting resistant varieties and increase night-time venting of the greenhouse.

The melons and fall cucurbits look amazing. This may be the best harvest we’ve ever had, assuming nothing goes wrong between now and then.

This month of August has been so cool, that we started fall spinach weeks earlier than usual. It’s coming along nicely, and hopefully we’ll have spinach for the CSA in early fall. Spinach is a very popular but temperature-fussy crop, so anything we can do to have it longer at the CSA is good.

I’ve had my first Asian pears this past week. The trees we planted last year are producing a little, and I am very impressed with the taste of the fruit. I was not too sure what to expect from Asian pears. I’ve had them from the store in the past and found them kind of bland, but ours taste much richer and sweeter. The trees won’t come to full production for another couple of years, but we’ll still have some fruit to enjoy before then.

The vet came to dehorn Olive this week. It went very well, as well as could be expected I guess, but still it was traumatic for Opal and Olive, who had to be separated, and poor Olive had her horns cauterized. It made me sad to look at her with two big burn marks where her horns were. I think we made the right decision to have her dehorned, given that she could hurt herself, the other cows or us with the horns if they grew, but I always wonder. Anyway, she seems back to normal now.

I’m almost done making pickles. I canned 14 quarts, which we’ll have for the winter. I still want to ferment some for eating right now. My first batch came out very well, and we already finished them. The dilly beans came out ok, not great. A little too vinegary for my taste. I might have opened them too early so I’ll give them a couple more weeks for the taste to develop.

Still have a lot of work ahead for putting up food for the winter: tomato sauce, sun-dried cherry tomatoes, apple chips, apple sauce, roasted red peppers, pickled jalapenos, and weekly cheese, still have to be made. It’s a lot but hopefully with decreasing work-load outside, I can devote more time to food preservation.

I’ve been thinking about homeschooling too. I want to devote more time before we start again this year to come up with a plan and with resource materials. I already asked Sena and Aiyana for their input as far as topics of study and they were eager to let me know. History was, as expected, top of the list, but grammar was also in there and languages were in strong demand too. I have my own plans, so I need to work on putting it all together into some sort of daily schedule and material list we can follow.

I'm loving these cool, fall-like days. I’m sorry for the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, who would like more heat, but for myself, and the cows, this is just lovely.

Peace