Autumnal Equinox

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Autumnal Equinox 2022: First Day of Fall | Facts, Folklore & More | The Old Farmer's Almanac

I absolutely love the autumnal season where everything still is so green and bright!

 

In spite of climate change issues with temperature changes already altering weather records, and higher prices than most areas of the U.S. it continues to be a lovely place to live. 

Forty-three years ago we built our home with a lot of sweat equity and a $37,000 and a 30 year mortgage saved up with nickels and dimes and lots of hard work! I still love it aging issues and all.

After all we have aged right alongside the house we built, the fruit trees we planted and hundreds and hundreds of trees and shrubs and perennials. And now we constantly reap the rewards of those efforts by being the best stewards of this piece of land that we still can.

My wisteria vines are a delight in the summer and early fall. Here they are so full they are in need of another pruning to allow the centerpieces plant and decor to even show! 

This is a favorite decorating opportunity for the 5 and 6 year
old grandchildren to scout out my hodge podge deck decor and make little scenes everywhere.

Here a real birds nest recently discovered having fallen from a tall tree is joined by 2 chickens, one wooden and one metal but still getting along famously without disagreements at all!  

Look closely above, and you'll see that a 2nd birds next joined the decor! No wonder Jasper was staring at it!

In the wee hours from 3 to 6 a.m. when I am already up and about, their tiny Christmas lights (purchased every winter and twined anew onto bare vines before leafing in the Spring) cheer up my always awake and sleepless nights. 

And unfortunately with cloudy skies at night I am happily bringing in my own lights. 

There was a spectacular harvest moon weeks back,  but now I must be content with my 3 a.m. walkabout to see a delightful crescent moon and some tiny but lovely stars. Photos even "night" selected were just a blur but I can picture them in my mind. Meanwhile I know they, the moon, and the sun still shine!!! 

The rest of my very long busy days and restful but awake hours, Jasper keeps me entertained under artificial lighting. Here, he appears to be making his shopping list from a Wilco Farm Store flyer.

 

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands  

Sharing an imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon.

 "Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands."

After Apple Picking: Apple Cider

After Apple-Picking

By Robert Frost 

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

Phew!  Eight adults. Four grandkids ages 2 to 7 and several granddogs all helping with our continued apple harvesting!

We picked many wheelbarrows of apples from our orchard. Washed them, chunk sliced with knives and cutting boards to make the pieces small enough to fit through the apple grinder one chunk at a time, then pressed them through an apple press to get the juice forced out and reject the mash below.

The juice was funneled into two giant carboys (bottles) with thermal canisters besides for each family to enjoy at home fresh squeezed now. The giant carboy bottles are off with family members to undergo the process of fermentation that will result in home made hard apple cider. 

What a lot of work each year but great, great fun to work together with our 3 grown kids and their partners, 4 little grandkids and all of our apple antics and laughter! 

Another "Autumnal Harvest" family gathering of nature's continuing bounty!

Happy September!

Did you know that September 1st is the official start of our

"Meteorological Autumn"? 

Why Meteorological Fall Starts Before Astronomical Fall | AccuWeather

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/why-meteorological-fall-starts-before-astronomical-fall/344058

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands

Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 

Where knowledge is free ‐‐ Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.





Where words come out from the depth of truth 

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection 

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit





Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.





Rabindranath Tagore's words from 1910 and his call for peace and freedom for his beloved India resonate in my heart and my own fervent belief in our need to call out for equality and freedom and a better life for all people in our own countries, nations and our much bigger world.





We must simply and complicatedly open our hearts to one another with love for all of man and animal kind and with the deepest of true sentient caring, compassion, and most of all, mercy.

We must direct our minds and our hearts through the energies of this love and compassion to envision, create, and bring forth into reality a new and better world.

The true world of sacred communion and all encompassing community that in our hearts, minds, and souls we all dream of within our deepest dreams within a dream that we call reality.

We strive to reach across uncertainties to our own basic truths and desires for a happy, healthy cohesive family, country, nation, and most of all world.

And we have really good days filled with really good fun while still working towards our individual goals and desires manifested for all. And for one not limited by and not just through and for our own selfish egos.


And that my dear friends is not always easy to do. This is the hardest lesson, learning and truth





And for me it's always starts with hope, faith, and charity--and always, always begins with love for family.





And we all have really good days filled with really good fun while still working towards our individual goals and desires with an immediate goal of being as happy and healthy and productive in living our days and weeks and months, and lives as we can.





With all of these wishes, all of these dreams and all of the otherworldly pains and challenges we can still celebrate each blessing of a new day.

On one such lovely day, we collected apples from our apple trees in our back orchard and using nature's bounty and our eldest daughter's creative  gifting a handmade by her cider press, we made homemade apple cider!

But don't worry, my chickens there's lots more where these apples came from and more again to come from other apple and fruit trees!












Our trial run with 8 adults and 3 preschoolers (plus all 7 chickens wondering where their apples were going!)


All helping, each at their own ability, interest, and energy level. The littlest ones (with occasional supervision from their parents and grandma) used their hands to clean the apples as they bobbed around in a big plastic storage bin of clean well water.


The Littles removed them when clean and placed them withing reach of a dad, granddad or uncle, or the moms and dads or grandparents and up onto a sawhorse and planks table.





The rest of us worked at this first station where we took turns feeding the grandkids' washed apples into the hand wheel cranked scratter part of the  apple cider pressing process #1 as son and son-in-law took turns turning the hand crank "steering wheel".


Note: In less than a week we now have an old motor (recycled by my husband)  as our new and improved motorized scrabber for our next apple cider day! Hand cranking is not easy especially with little ones wanting to help 😊





At station #2 my daughter fed that mixture into her apple pressing unit where pure clean juice poured down into clean pails. Transfered into pitchers, decanters and thermal hydro flasks with the help of all but grandma and grandkids who were now playing and trying very hard not to jump on beds with cider glasses in hand!The proceesed cider was from our own trees, organiclly grown, fresh, and quite delicious!


And now, this weekend, we are gathering one again. More apple pressing into cider, more mashing into canned appleauce or mixed with our plums or wild blackberries and dried in our homemade food drier into fruit leather. We have pears out back and even some Asian pears out to our neighbor's orchards to try in pear cider if we so choose.

It's all a lot of work, but working together and sharing our hard times along with our good brings forth far more laughter than tears. The gifts of Mother Nature's bounty along with our own labors of love!





Making memories to record and to treasure by doing what you can, when you can and working and having fun trying something new makes for a very good day and a very nice break from the rest of our lives of work, worry, and challenges, for all of us.


And with meaningful thoughts and words and best thoughts that others may also be blessed and free from anxiety, fear, pain and suffering and one day be free to have even one day of love and happiness¡





Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as sharing an imaginative,magical and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon.
Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting from my heart and with my hands.