The early spring and hot dry weather have the leaves turning early here. But one last weekend before school starts, so a bit more summer.

We came from here: The thread "August, We've come full circle" in Farming forum

School starts here on Tuesday. The grands were just here for a few minutes with their dad. I had to take Aleigh down so she could see the snake gourds and how huge they are.

The kids made it on to the bus. I thought their mother would get to stay and wait with them, but she had surgery this morning (assisting, not having), so had to leave early. Maybe tomorrow, she'll have a few minutes.

It is hot and heavy today. There's a chance that we might get some of the leftovers from Isaac, but I'm not holding my breath. It was 70 at 7 am - not a normal temperature for that early in the morning. Yuck.

80 here at 6:00 - unfortunately normal, at least this year. The days are noticeably shorter: it is also now dark at 6:00, so I'm not looking forward to winter. October is usually nice, however.

I was looking at my light yesterday, thinking that it won't be too long before I set it up.

Dark by 8pm here. Light about 5:30am. I've been doing my neighbor's chores and hurrying every evening to try to be finished before dark. They'll be home in just a few more hours, and he will do the milking tonight. I have kept everything watered on schedule, so all he has to do is turn on his drip lines tomorrow. He'll be rushing to get produce picked and to the farmer's market tomorrow afternoon.

Drip lines - - - that reminds me; I forgot to turn off a soaker hose for the roses! Thanks MaryE!

We just had a thunderstorm mosey through. I think it was more light show and noise than rain, but ANY rain is welcome here.

We had rain at choretime, but it was gone by supper. There were puddles, though, and that's the first time that's happened in awhile. the sun is up this morning and every thing looks shiny and refreshed.

Stan put the doors in the little silo yesterday and put the silo unloader up. He's going to try to get the millet on the rented ground in and any 'hay' that looks bigger than the grass in the yard.

The milking job we had this morning is done. None scheduled now till Sept. 28-30. Whew! I'm pooped. LOL

Stan's out mowing some more hay. I walked back to the woods with the noise of tractor and discbine singing around me. It's a beautiful day, sunny and warm with a nice breeze. Tomorrow, maybe rain, although yesterday it missed us again. We'll see.

This morning I noticed some orange leaves on the Virginia Creeper vine on our fence. The leaves will turn bright red before they fall. I see tinges of yellow on the poplar and another tree. Fall is starting to fall, so far in slow motion. The difference in the daytime temperatures is noticable, nights are about what they have been for the past 2 weeks. That's fine with me. It's a comfortable time of year, with less wind than we get in the spring.

I helped the neighbor with the sheep, doing sorting, loading and hauling some to the sale. He sells a lot of locker lambs, has the slaughter truck come to the farm for that, but had more lambs than customers. Same with the beef, so he also hauled some steers and heifers that were close to butchering weight. Pasture gets short and dry at this time of the year with no more irrigation water flowing, and no rain since June.

My elephant garlic has been resorted and weighed, boxed and taken to my neighbor who will resell most of it to the man who buys several hundred pounds per year from him. He wanted seed garlic, big clumps that don't have to be pretty. The income from that will pay for the new garlic varieties I ordered yesterday. I have some to sell at the farmer's market, some to eat, and saved about 25# of the biggest clumps for my own seed stock. It's pretty good when I can recover my initial investment the first year!

I was just reading an email sent through a newsletter that I get and the point was that I should buy tickets to an event in NYC and that it was a perfect time for this as fall was the season of new beginnings. When did that happen? Fall has always been the time of harvest and the beginning of the end - a season of small endings. Another manifestation of the divergence between the rural and urban parts of our society.

Stan is working at haylage, a little bit at a time as the weather is again dry and sunny and the grass dries too quickly to mow a lot. He's got the millet down on the rented ground to get to maybe this weekend or early next week.

New beginnings? Probably the merchants looking forward to the Christmas mania.

How many acres do you hay? We lost our hay lease but due to our understocking we seldom have to buy much - except last year...

The beginning of the week felt like fall here: lower humidity and cool at night, however, the humidity is back today. It's still in the 90s every day. I will shred a couple of paddocks today, probably for the last time this year. I won't know until next year whether I have managed to discourage the weeds brought out be the drought. I am still surprised by the amount of grass that has survived.

Almost frost the past 2 mornings here, with a breeze both times so nothing settled on the plants. Yesterday at daylight we had 34, with 32 this morning.

We finally have corn to eat. I sure hope the frost holds off. Have lots of green tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini still coming on strong, and the winter squash need to ripen. I won't water the winter squash any more to encourage ripening and discourage new growth.

Fall might be a time of new beginnings for some farmers who plant winter wheat. Garlic is also planted in the fall. Probably other crops I do not know about. Plus, there are all the fall planted bulbs, and many gardeners also plant shrubs. Probably other things too. Kathleen, I'll admit that it does sound a bit strange. What kind of an event is it?

Yesterday I put in a few hours at the co-op, which included working with the produce delivery until 8pm. We shopped for groceries after that and didn't get home until after 9pm. We were surprised to see a skunk leaving the back porch in a hurry and running right in front of the car in his haste to get away. He was too busy running to leave any unpleasant smell.

This morning I'll be helping my neighbor harvest produce for the farmer's market this afternoon. He does a market in another town on Saturdays as well.

Porkpal, with the rented land and the land up on the hill we have about 100 acres of hay, plus or minus. We don't plant any corn, so that is the total of our crop land. The rest is pasture and woods.

It's been down in the 40s here at night, today we're supposed to be near 80. Yesterday was nice at 75. Stan's chopping what he mowed this morning and I'm clearing the backroom, again. A friend is coming over tomorrow and we're going to make some paper. I've done it once, she's watched the kids at the Audubon do it, but never participated. It will be an adventure. I watched a video on YouTube that had some interesting methods, so we'll see.

Fall seems to be here - mid 40s overnight and a high of around 64 today. The sky is full of lake effect clouds and the combination of last night's rain and dew has everything sparkling.

Stan got the little silo about 1/3 full, and that's pretty much that for this year. The cows will get to harvest the side hill the next time the grass grows and he's pretty sure we'll have enough haylage for the year. He bought 100 ton of corn yesterday. It cost 1/3 more than last year, and last year, he bought 120 ton. The guy we get it from lives right on the PA OH border and he said out there, there are some 4 and 5 generation dairies selling their cows - can't afford to feed them. Stan's of the opinion that we can't afford to sell ours right now. It seems to be all most as hard to get out as it was to get in!

Happy Fall! it's starting in a most fall-like manner here: cloudy, damp. The last few days the leaves have really started to color up in spite of experts warning that because of the dry summer, we would be short on color. I guess the rain that we've had this month ( about 2 inches) has changed that.

One of our Amish neighbors is having an auction today. He lost his wife a couple of years ago to breast cancer, she was one of the neighborhood girls that my girls had grown up with. Apparently, he's met an Amish widow from Ohio and going to marry her and move out there. Most of the Amish in Clymer either came from eastern Ohio, or from western Pennsylvania. One of his brothers-in-law is buying the house and land. I asked Stan if he was going down, and he said probably not, they are kind of cutthroat at this type of auction. I did notice that he took the check book with him when he went to check the heifer at my mom's, though.

Sun has been red for the past few days due to a lot of smoke from many forest fires. Added to that, we had a brush and grass fire that started about a mile from us. One house was theatened, the fire burned all around it. Wind was whipping the flames and scattering pieces of burning brush. The owner has a considerable green belt around the buildings and heilicopters dropped 2000 gallons of water. A man who rents a trailer on an adjoining ranch picked the worst conditions to use his burn barrel. Our local fire conditons have been in the extreme range for about 6 weeks, the temperature was 90, wind at about 30mph, humidity about 10% and he burns trash! Some people shouldn't be allowed to have matches!

The fire took off and spread like a fan. It missed us by half a mile. Every available neighbor, our local volunteer fire department, neighboring towns' fire departments, the Forest Service and BLM were all involved before it was out. Two heilicopters, on their way to another fire with 500 gallon water buckets, saw the fire near the house and diverted to drop their loads on it, then brought another 2 loads within half an hour. One of the ranchers with a large tractor and disc made fire lines. I'm not sure how much they helped, as the wind was scattering burning embers and the state highway didn't stop it. We are all very thankful that it was discovered and put out quickly. It could have been so much worse.

We still haven't had a killing frost. The current air inversion is holding our daytime heating in and giving us nights in the upper 40's. A few leaves have started turning yellow, and the Virginia creeper on our yard fence is bright red! Fall crocus are blooming, gailardia and giant catmint still doing their thing, and everything else seems to be shutting down for the winter. I should be having asters about ready to bloom but I didn't water them enough and they are small. They'll survive.

Last week felt more like fall than it does today. It had been sunny and dry with days in the 80s and high 60s at night. Now the humidity is back so this week will be back in the 90s with minimal cooling at night. Sigh! It was nice while it lasted...

Mary, I did not know there were crocuses that bloomed in the fall; here hardly any bulbs do well as they usually rot over the winter unless dug up and stored until spring.

Kathleen, let us know what you acquire from the auction!