Happy Halloween!

Terry has been keeping the hens well supplied with pumpkins. He takes of the outermost layer and lets them carve out the rest.

Pumpkins in the chicken run a few days ago

We had a bit of snow overnight. The long pumpkin looked like this today. The trouble with the chickens is they don’t stay in the lines. The smallest of the pumpkins in the previous picture was mostly eaten up by this morning.

One of the pumpkins this morning

The chickens were not keen on going out in the snow. This is the first snow our pullets have seen. There were no chickens out when I ventured forth to do the chores. They were in the coop looking skeptically outside.

I'm not going out there. Are you?

They were curious about me, however, and came out to see if I had treats. I didn’t just then, but obliged them after getting my pictures.

What is this white stuff? It's cold on my feet!

In other news, shortly after Banjo mastered jumping to the top of the bookshelf, Bingo took on the balance beam. We hope he does not accidentally go off the wrong side and end up falling down the stairs. Silly cat.

A cat was on the bannister, and Bingo was his name-o

I am celebrating today. I could not care less about Halloween, but today I put away the canner until next summer. Here is a picture of everything I canned over the summer.

Left to right, top to bottom: grape juice, apple juice, applesauce, pickles, butternut squash (not canned), pickled beets, tomatoes, sauerkraut, tomato sauce.

I made seven batches of jam last week from pulp that I froze over the summer. This is the whole collection, including some red raspberry jam that I made fresh and two batches of apple butter that I’ve done since Terry picked the apples.

Top: red raspberry jam. Bottom, left to right, black raspberry jam, strawberry jam, apple butter

I still have 6 or 8 pounds of apples to do something with. Maybe applesauce, but I will freeze it. The one last task I have to do outside is planting the garlic. We are hoping it will warm up by the weekend so I can get that in the ground. It doesn’t take long, but the soil has to be dry enough that I don’t sink in and not (obviously) frozen.