Fall arrived, Ending Summer Projects, Rain Barrels and Planning Next Year

Fall Arrived

Whammo, September 4th, 2010.  The sun didn't come up for forever.  The temperature was in the 40s for the first time since May.  The humidity was down near 50% for the first time since May.  Leaves began to fall.   It turned to fall.  Just like that.  Over night.

Ok, not really.  I know we will have more hot steamy days this year but for this weekend it seemed like it was late fall.

Ending Summer Projects

Elizabeth, with help from our chickens, is finishing up painting our purple fence.  I have to replace and repair a section of it. But we are close to completing that project.  The fence was in need of new paint when we moved in.  It took awhile, and possibly all my butch credibility, to find the correct color purple but there it is.


I have started the process of closing up the chicken coop for winter.  I count that our chickens are about 16 weeks.  So we have another month before eggs start showing up and even then I want them to have enough light and enough warmth to produce through the winter.   That means putting proper frames together for the windows and closing up the underside of the roof.

In the garden we are dealing with the march of the squash.  Acorn squash and Pumpkins have begun winding their way through everything, even through our fence out into the drive way.  We are working to expand the gardens for next spring.  This will allow more planting area that we know we need.

Rain Barrels
 
Finally!  Just in time for fall...rain barrels.  It took awhile to find some that were appropriate.  The installation of them seems to be easy for stage one: a barrel at the end of the downspout with spigot and over flow pipe.  State two will be to hook these together in some way, including our sumps, and feed that water into a barrel where we can use a pump to water our garden.  Sounds easy - I'm getting there, just not as quickly as I would like.

Planning for Next Year

We are planning crops for next year.   We want more tomatoes and better onions, we want to grow some sweet corn and we want more cucumbers.  In short, we need to make more garden so we can have the room we need to plant more food.   I will explain this in more detail later.