Enjoying Autumn

 As work wraps up on the cornstalks from hell (phragmite), I am relishing in the true Autumn that we are finally having, and the insects and animals are soaking up every last bit that they can as well!

I donned my trusty backpack, and played Dora for the day on my own while Woodchuck did some of his own things. We will meet back up when he is done and do some projects together. I got this backpack for $3 on clearance, and it has been the best damn thing! I pack it heavy, cram it full, set it in mud, hang it from trees.....and she's still going strong.

Being on my own lets me walk and observe in my own time without boring anyone with me. I can listen to the leaves as I walk through them, and watch them fall all around me. Intent only on them, and not having to have a conversation or think about other things.

I can honor Father Sun, and wonder about the health of the pond without making any future plans, just living in the moment.

Nature awaits me, and I usually enjoy it on my own. It's our own little relationship and my safe place.

So much to see and marvel at! Like this Ootheca's (mantis).

There is still a bit of color left to see!

Snacks to be had by the wildlife.

And seeds to blow near and far.

And now I have reached my office for the day and need to get to work. I know you can't really tell from these photos, but it is so much more open now as we remove the phragmite!

And that means I get to find more magick waiting for me!

Delicate fern moss? 😍

The tiniest little mushrooms with caps the size of my pinky fingernail!

And as I reach the border where we have rarely been, a very wide tree in what I would have referred to as a "glen" back in the day before I learned what land feature that was. I don't know what to refer to it as, but it feels magickal here.

Maybe I can make this an art or reading spot one day? With views of the classified forest to the South, and the watershed pond to the West. It would be a lovely spot for a picnic or photoshoot!

I could daydream here for hours, and squeal over the little treasures that I find, but work is waiting for me.

I know already that I won't get to cutting all of the berried branches off of the honeysuckle before the berries fall or are eaten and spread 😔But I have gotten some cut in areas where I am already working, and every little bit counts.

It is time now for Woodchuck and I to reconvene and get some projects done. The first requires me to be on the tractor, so that he could load the bucket up with the willow that we removed from the ditch that had been knocked over by the heavy equipment working on the pond edge.

Woodchuck required me to drive behind the barn, scraping the metal sides with willow 😱The way I do things takes longer and more physical effort, but at least I wouldn't take the chance of damaging the barn, lol. But it is done, the willow fence is filled back up properly, and the willow is up off of the ground so we won't trip on it.

A quick trip to a local discount warehouse looking for high-visibility poles they some times carry (even though they are pretty much the same price at the local home improvement store and he refuses to buy them there), found us on path with a sandhill crane standing in the middle of a country road. I always stop for wildlife! He quickly flew away and was not harmed.

With that work day under our belts, I would spend many more days here at home preparing harvest and getting ready for markets with my art. I boiled down the red grapes for their juice. It smells so fresh and amazing, and reminds me of my grandmother when she would make her jelly from her grapes.

While I could have made three batches of the jelly, I know our youngest likes the juice! So I left the juice of one batch for him to drink.

I made a simmering mix with the chemical-free apple peels from local apples, organic cinnamon sticks, cloves, etc. They are getting lots of looks at the markets, but oddly, most people that are looking at them don't know or understand what they are for. 

I finished a new art piece...that has also gotten a lot of positive feedback, but nobody pulled the trigger yet to purchase it.

The floating candles are turned on every evening! In hindsight, I would not have put the string of lights above them, because I feel like that takes away from their glow, but that string of light also provides some good lighting in the living room.

I also made soap on my own, and will do another batch soon. I rigged up my own system for mixing it right by where I stand. Woodchuck had it low to the floor on his side of the workshop, and I'm all about easy now with my messed up ankle and hip. It is not pretty, but it works really well! The two scents I made this time were Haeddre (Celtic for Heather) and Nag Champa. The workshop always smells amazing when I work on soaps! It is the one part of the current house I will miss the most when we move.

Stay tuned for more homestead things as we move closer to the holidays and Winter! 😍

Cornstalks from hell

 I remember when the beginning of August signified a crazy schedule due to the boys returning to school, but in this stage of life it gets crazy due to plants. When August 1st hits, I start thinking of the Phragmite, the Autumn Olive, the Bittersweet, the Honeysuckle.....but I also start thinking of Harvest season and how to process all of the beneficial things that we are surrounded by! I hit on some of this in a previous post.

 I lucked out by having a local friend have a bounty of chemical-free apples. Lots and lots of apples. If I remember right, they had over 600 pounds. I made two apple crumbles, some applesauce, and some apple butter. More recently, as in a couple of days ago, I took the apple skins that I dried and made a simmering potpourri with them. Added dehydrated orange slices, whole allspice and cloves, and broken up cinnamon sticks and you don't just have a stove-top simmering blend, but also a tea blend!

I also processed some of the elderberry from the land and made an immune-boosting concoction. 

Then it was on the to the hops! Harvested for the first time, I air-dried them for 3 days and then finished them off in the dehydrator. I powdered half, and left the other half whole. All have been frozen. Ironically enough, Woodchuck and I went to a soil seminar at a brewery and when I brought up that I had harvested some hops but hadn't made anything with them yet, the manager of the brewing area told me I should infuse some in gin, and then make lemonade with it! That is on the list for the Spring and Summer of 2026! But I am looking for some Fall and Winter uses for it for this year too.

These look browned in the picture, which means that they would have oxidized and would no longer be any good, but I assure you that they are a bright, vibrant green still and ready to use!

Then it was on to the green grapes here at home! We harvested, washed, then I boiled them down to get the juice and then we worked together to make some white grape jelly. Woodchuck figured out a tip to help make sure the jelly gels and it worked! 

More recently, we harvested the red grapes and I juiced them as well. We will be making jelly with it soon! (they have been juiced now and jelly has been made since I started this post!)

We lost more full days at the land recently due to various reasons, so we had to do smaller projects more often in the couple of hours we would be there on most trips. But when we had time for the big project, it was going to be really transforming for the land! Summer faded to a False Fall, then went back to Sweltering Summer, and now we are in a beautiful, wonderful, comfortable Autumn! It is my favorite time of year!

 Our Aspens are some of the first to drop its leaves, along with the Black Walnut (which, I recently watched videos on harvesting those for the nuts and WOW! That looks like a lot of work! Anyone done it for themselves?) The Aspens line the path cut to get over to the watershed, so anytime we walk on that path to access the other side of the land, we get to walk on crunchy leaves--one of my favorite sounds! These though are on the driveway, which will be filling up soon with fallen leaves.

Mowing *should* be done for the season, and Woodchuck was so sure of that, he dropped the mowing deck from his tractor. I push mowed some areas that weren't getting touched by the mower or weed whacker, and luckily missed harming this beautiful, and BIG, green frog. 

I always have to watch where I am walking now, no eyes to the sky or ground, or else I might walk right into an orb weaver web. 

It's time to walk around the land and make a game plan moving forward for the next few months. So much to see and figure out! Like what these cocoons were....because Woodchuck ended up knocking them down 😒

In the same moment, a very wet dragonfly landed on the door frame! Because we needed to go in that door, it went to fly away, but fell to my boot instead. I gently lifted it up until it was able to fly. 

The mushrooms and fungi are out in full force at this time of year! There is magick to be seen and felt all around us for those that will let it in. I think of the energy and signals and communications that all of nature is doing around us. At times it feels electrifying,

If you will remember from a previous post, Woodchuck and I cleared some fallen Willow from the ditch coming off of the pond. Although at that point it was just stinky, wet mud, rains were in the forecast and we wanted to make sure it was cleared. It all worked out and after that willow dries out a tad and gets cleaned off from the rain, we will move it to the front fence we made from Willow previously. 💚

Many days this Summer were full of sunshine! While I adore Father Sun, it begins to wear me down after too much of it. Give me an occasional Fall-like cloudy day to energize me again.

As we make our way to the area of phragmite, I begin to make mental notes of what to hit after that is cleared. Bittersweet, and more bittersweet, mixed in with a little autumn olive and honeysuckle that is getting its berries. It was absolutely horrendous. Trying to get through the wall of crap was almost impossible, and I had to take time to cut and remove some of it just so I could move forward to the phragmite. We will need to go back in and start removing more of it, as the bittersweet has killed many trees.

What a mind-melt this area is! It feels so massive as you are standing in it, and like you are in some tropical forest somewhere, but as you begin to clear areas, you realize just how small and concentrated it all is! I refer to the phragmite as cornstalks from hell.

It is at this point that I start to not feel good. I'm sneezing a lot. And it stinks. The same wet, boggy, mud that smells like poop. I am so grateful that Woodchuck finally got on board with this task! We made so much progress together, but still I had hoped to finish it in two trips. I don't think that will happen. When I work, I really get into it, and I get dirty, dirty, dirty. These pants are stained now, and I think I have a hole in my boots that let in some bog water. 😂

This was the wall before we tackled it. I really hope I remembered to take an after picture, but for today our time here is done.

I've been watching a local auction and have won a few things for the house we build! At this point, I have saved us a few hundred dollars by getting things this way as opposed to buying from the stores. We went and picked things up, then took to them shipping container to store them until we are ready to use them. It is also my way of manifesting, bringing an idea to reality.

And I keep looking down to the world I am walking on along the way.

And I keep looking up to the world that is above me, providing shelter and raining down magick, love, and protection on me. The leaves are beginning to turn 💛

I am trying to do more joyful things, since I am always in work mode. One of those things was to support my friend, the local librarian, on a paver book painting class! I do not enjoy painting on canvas, but I really, really enjoyed painting on the pavers! Probably reminded my nervous system of painting on rocks, which I always enjoyed doing! For this class, you just decided what book cover you wanted to paint, they supplied the rest. I originally was going to do Little House on the Prairie, because that was the first set of books I ever owned and read as a child, but I can't paint people. So, then I was thinking Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because I loved that movie when I was little, and am kind of living that life that now....minus the dwarfs.....and the dress. But again, I can't paint people. Narnia? Eh. Would a light post in a forest really translate well on to a paver? So I went with Puff, the Magic Dragon! I LOVE how it turned out and had a great time! I just need too seal it and then it will be ready for when we build the new house 💚

I continue to peruse resale shops and local auctions for items for the new home. Every once in a while I find something that might be considered totally useless, but that I find fascinating! Enter the Crockpot Gravy boat! I am just smitten with this thing and am looking forward to trying it out on Thanksgiving 💛

I always start decorating the house in late September for Halloween because I want everything up and ready by the 1st. This year I daydreamed and wondered about what it will be like to decorate the new home for the various holidays and seasons. 🤔

I found this new set up battery-operated lights at a resale shop (there's 6 total), and used fishing line to hang them!

I don't need another coffee mug, but another cauldron is always doable. 😂

I finished this wreath with glow-in-the-dark bats that fell off of garland years ago and I saved them. Yes. I am a bit neurotic like that, but it worked out perfectly! I made this wreath from grapevines that I removed from trees on our land. 😍

Time to let the crows fly! Some times I forget that they are on there, and lift the window, and now a couple of them have broken legs. 😖 I've since moved them to where raising the window won't touch them.

One of my favorites! I bought this from a resale shop that I used to work at. 

I continued to prep for October markets, but oddly, hardly any of the Halloween items have sold. Two pairs of the Witch Pumpkin earrings, and the cross-stich rat picture. That's it. Which is, just bizarre to me.👻 Earrings are always subjective and a finicky thing to sell at markets. People think they are too long/too short, like hooks when I have posts on them or like posts when I have hooks on them, they don't want to pay my already low prices, etc. But they are one of the things that I love making the most, so I keep beading, lol. This was the first time I made these black earrings. Difficult to get everything lined up right using seed beads that you have to sift through to get the size and shape you need, but turned out cute!

 I do also try to make one "every day" item for each market as well, like these Tree of Life earrings. I keep the price very low on ones like this ($5), and sure enough, they sold.

A friend and I took a trip to South Bend, Indiana to check out a salvage business she had been to once before, and a new witchy shoppe that was having its grand opening the same day. I picked up these things in the hopes that Woodchuck could use them to make crystal/rock trays for table tops at the new house. If not, I didn't spend much on them.

My friend is pretty awesome, and has a wicked sense of humor!

Look at that detail! This is what Woodchuck and I are aiming for in the new house register covers, but we will be buying new from the home improvement store.

I LOVE old buildings like this! I won't be able to bring Woodchuck though because it is SO musty smelling that I could barely handle it. He would go into anaphylactic shock just outside of the door.

Back to the land on the second trip to deal with the phragmite. I can't believe how much faster it went with the two of us compared to when I would have to do it alone! And now that it's open, the area seems so much smaller than it did when it was inaccessible! 

I accidentally knocked this Nursery Web Spider into the bag with the phragmite seed heads. The bag was too slippery for her to get out on her own, so I lifted her out and to safety. It must have tuckered her out because she stayed where I put her for a very long time and in a weird posture. Isn't she lovely?!

Done for the day and walking back to the car, another mantis flew right past Woodchuck's head! I am starting to find their Oothecas now. Have you seen a mantis fly? They literally look like faeries!

We should be able to get the phragmite done in one more trip, then we need to start focusing on cutting things down like: some trees by where the house will be built, invasives, and the Tree of Heaven we treated last month. Stay tuned!