All is gathered in

I received an offering of leaves almost daily during the month of October, which I displayed around the house. 

Garlic planted and five inches high. 

Little man with a stick, always willing to help with any job. 

I usually take more care in my photography but I couldn't resist this shot of Lyra on the giants. 

My little squash shelf. We all get excited about eating a good squash with butter. 

Proud of MY sweet pumpkins they are slowly being eaten in pudding and have stopped taking over the house so much. Thirty six pumpkins on three plants, very good job bees. 

Gathered in, juiced, sauced and eaten. 

The bees & the bear  

This is about as good as my camera skills are at 4 in the morning. My camera reads 4:26 am on September 12th. The black bear had been in the area and I had that feeling. ALWAYS listen to that little voice that says"electric in your hives tonight". Well at 4:20 I woke up Noah and he ran outside, not wearing much I'll just say he got sung, a number of times. Until he finally listened to me and put on his veil, gloves and let me tape his pants to his boots. Honeybees are NOT happy after having their hives pushed over in the wee hours of the morning by a chubby black bear. 

Of course they flew to any light they could find, it was sad to see them the next morning looking for the hives in a dizzy confusion. Most of them did make it back and lucky the Queen survived. The hives are were than zap strapped and electric fenced. And the children woke up. Good Morning!

 I think we made pancakes. 

If your mouth isn't watering you have never tasted fresh honey comb, ask any bear they will tell you. We headed over a friends to extract our honey frames, before anyone else did. 

Here I am starting to uncap the comb. 

Noah uncaps some nice dark honey. 

She got the job of uncorking the honey flow

And than this sea of green tomatoes was brought in end of October . About half of them ripped off the vine. I have box in the freezer of green tomatoes. I'm thinking green tomato mincemeat for christmas.

And finally a plug for the 

Local FOOD Market
Saturday December 7th 10-2
It's what I do to support local food producers, food sustainability and change the world one squash at a time. 

This is me Not really farming

Some days the food just doesn't stop coming in. Thankfully as we now have four of us to feed. Thank you to Mother Earth who just keeps giving and giving. 

Our cat somehow manages to get in almost every photo I take. These apple and pears are now sauced and canned.

I got to harvest this fruit on the south end this past week, thanks to friends. These friends did not plant these trees and I got to thinking about all of the people we have benefited from these trees which I'm guessing are over or around a hundred years old. How many mouths have these trees feed, how many deer, bears, racoons, human families have feed themselves on these trees. Maybe I'm just a bit of a romantic,  I thought of the people who may have planted these trees. Was it Bob Hall who built the first house and started to farm this land in 1888 or was it Viven Noble who died in 1921 at age 36, I thought of her either planting or tending to these trees and harvesting fruit. I thought of her feeding her children and thinking that these trees would maybe one day feed her grandchildren. I don't know who her grandchildren are, but I do know that on tuesday of this week eight little children ran and played as three different mamma's picked fruit for the winter for their families. So if you have ever planted a food tree and have left it to move on, you never know who's children or grandchildren it will benefit years from now. The land that was farmed over a hundred years ago continues to feed my family year after year. I hope that one day someone will pick fruit off my old trees and think about the people that lived in the cement house. 

 A new use for logs of zucinni,  take wooden sword and burn off some steam. Not that your children would never need to express that.

Our Halloween Craving pumpkins are growing ok even with out raw milk 

I love this duck, I think you may out live the harvest. 

The bees are starting to prepare for winter. Collecting pollen that will feed the next generation of bees.

Some capped honey, makes our house smell yummy. 

Apples the best way. 

the fair & fencing

This is the face of a one year old, but you can see what he'll look like when he's an old man.

Helping dada fix our gate fence post that someone hit about a year ago. 

Sad because he thought the hole was for him to climb in 

What am I going to do the first time Morgan has to wear shoes, due to cold or wet weather? 

On Saturday we headed down to the big city of Courtenay B.C for the Comox Valley Exhibition
http://www.cvex.ca/
It was the first time I had been there since I was about 10, it was fun to experience with children. Can't wait for our Quadra Island Fall Fair coming up in a few weeks.

Some prize winning hay 

I was hurried away from the sheep herding by the sound of tractors 

Ok, they are impressive 

He could not get enough of the tractors with lots of Oh, Oh "insert tractor noises". 

Hello Texal Ram nose I see you but I don't have any COB 

this girl is getting her flock ready to be judged 

Youngest tractor drivers 

having fun on the stage with a basket of plums 

Lyra's first carnival ride 

If anyone on Quadra has a lot of fruit these guys travel
Check out their website http://www.pressingmatter.ca/
Maybe something you could sell at the Local FOOD Market
LocalFOODmarket

My childhood flashing before my eyes, repeat with hunters and jumpers. 

These calves would like to know who's idea this fair was

garlic

Like always we have been busy with the farm and working on finishing our house. This past weekend Noah helped a friend slaughter chickens, we picked about five gallons of blackberries, made jam, pie, blackberry vanilla shrub, froze some. Made pesto, bread, and harvested and threshed some of our wheat. The only pictures that where on my camera where these ones. That means I was working more than photographing, or working photographing, either or.
I also have been organizing this Local Food Market running October- April at the Quadra Legion. I've been putting up posters and I have yet to write a press release for the Discovery Islander (look for it in the D.I before the Fall Fair). I'm also going to be at the Fall Fair with a Local Food Market Booth so come and visit me and sign up for a monthly newsletter. It will let you know what kinds of food you can look forward or reserve a monthly table or just bring me some icecream:)

About a month ago we harvested our garlic. Yum, heres to a healthful winter.

"MOM.... I'm making raspberry jam in my mouthI

Over the last few months we've been having a great time enjoying raising children and just scaling back  on our farm. I also updated my photography website and have starting booking again. You can view my page at http://www.pennyapplephotography.com
Sometime we even go the beach in the evening. We have time to crawl around in the shade with Morgan or jump on the trampoline with Lyra. We have our young children for such a short time and we're going to just soak it all in and when we are old they will say... my parents are nuts!

Morgan sits on a back drop of dirt co flowers eating watermelon

Over the last month Lyra and I prepared for the market doing various crafts which we sold today. It was fun to see her so excited and having a good time. We sold out of our pesto pizza's before 10am and   I loved watching Lyra give her pitch on the bath salts and have people smell the lavender sugar.  

Some of our market wares.

Sometimes I think of this blog and will take a photo thinking I'll post all about it. Sometimes I even write the whole thing in my head.  Here are some of the photos I have taken over the past few months. That have collected with mini captions on what they hold. 

The garden about a month ago, sage was great for our bees. We are pulling the garlic tomorrow.
Sadly without a cow the deer have moved right in. It's pretty discouraging, but we are finding food all over the place these days and it's just more letting go. We are getting few raspberries and are enjoying them, everyone. 

 In April - Lyra had her first garden this year, this was her first ever harvest about two months ago. We sat down and ate them all. YUM! 

In March -  she needed to make a flag for the garden in,  It reads "Lyra Grows the Good Food".

In April- We journeyed all the way down island to get our bees from  Moody Apiaries

A heavenly apiary image for you. The bees are very healthy and a good mix of italian and carniolan

Here is the youngest beekeeper bringing our bees to their hive. 

In April and May Morgan was so busy "helping" in the garden that we didn't have to do much:)
Or we didn't get much done one or the other. 

And this would follow. 

A beautiful harvest from our friend Paul's garden. I love heritage strawberries. Not one of them made it to the freezer or jam. Each was enjoyed on it's own. We also went down to Royston and picked about 50lbs at Ash Berry Farms. Those somehow made it to jam and the freezer. I think it's because I froze them all the night I got home. What strawberries??? 

The stress was to great the day we cut our cheese. I just couldn't bring my camera. But it worked out great.
We enjoyed a good swiss style dinner of potatoes and cheese, with a salad from the garden. Thanks to Edith for the photo and caring so well for our aged cheese. Maybe more cheese making when the milk flows again one day.