Ahh October, my favorite time of the year! I love the colors changing, the warm days and cool nights, when you can finally break out that favorite sweater. The animals seem to be enjoying the cooler weather as well and have more of a pep in their step. The last cut of hay is done and the winter garden is doing fairly well. I just hope I get peas before the first frost.

We got the hives ready for winter last weekend and found that we had lost two more and one was weak and needed to be combined with another to make it through winter. We are back down to five hives and just can't seem to make forward progress growing our numbers. I dread the impact of winter on the remaining hives. We got a meager harvest of about 10 frames of honey or around 35 pounds. Most beekeepers harvest after the spring nectar flow and again if the fall nectar flow is very productive. We harvest just prior to closing for winter to ensure we don't take too much and to protect against lean summers.

This is the time of year were things finally slow down a bit and we can shift our attention to the long list of projects we have been wanting to get started on, which have taken a backseat to the daily chores and immediate must dos. We are looking at fencing our next pasture and possibly getting a few calves in the spring so we can offer grass fed, grass finished beef that people have been asking for.  

We hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather!

Last weekend Nick and I processed our first turkeys for the freezer. Of the six we started with, we only managed to get two fully grown to harvest. Four others were picked off by different predators over the last few months. We were excited that at least two made it. They ended up going in the freezer at 21 and 26 pounds. We will cook the smaller one before Thanksgiving just to make sure we did everything right, since you sure don't want to invite twenty people over for Thanksgiving only to have an inedible turkey. We are pretty confident we did everything right, but you can never be too safe. For the first time in many years of hosting Thanksgiving, we will have homegrown ham and turkey.

A few weeks ago we had our inspection to get our farm based retail meat license and now have a large freezer full of retail cuts ready to sell! This batch of sausage is especially nice and lean!

This weekend, D and I went to a friend's house to pick pears while Nick got a rare morning off to go fishing with a buddy. It was a perfect day for it, sunny and 65 degrees. We came home with 6 five gallon buckets full of giant Kieffer pears and the canning marathon began. So far I have made a case of spiced pear butter and vanilla diced pears and only got through one bucket. The pigs and chickens were pleased to have the cores and skins and will likely benefit from plenty of whole pears once the canning fatigue sets in tomorrow. I put the spiced pear butter recipe up on our recipe page if anyone is interested.