This sure flew by

I am totally in denial, which is hard to do because I'm typing this wearing a wool sweater, snuggled under a fleece blanket. I am going to have to face the facts, namely that it is fall.

When I went through August's summer photos to put them on the blog, I realized how little I shared with you from our most glorious, productive month because we were insanely busy. 

So that's why I want to share the pictures with you now. I look at the images of us swimming in creeks, rivers, and the ocean, while currently shivering under my fleece blanket, and I marvel at how much time we spent by the water in this droughty, hot month.

But don't be fooled.  We didn't just play by the water all summer long.

Oh no! One of the reasons I'm feeling fried is because we packed so much food preserving in.  I have to do a separate post about it, but for now, here are some highlights.

~ Harvesting potatoes with my crew

~ Gathering apples and pressing them into apple cider

~ Collecting eggs from our chickens

~ Picking figs and making them into fig jam

~ Harvesting tons of vegetables from the garden and cooking, pickling and canning them

We also slaughtered our 20 meat chickens.  Our kids have to help with this task every year.

I can't tell you how much social media interaction I got on the photo of Kai dipping a dead chicken in the hot water.

Most people were pretty positive about it, but there were some folks that freaked out and told me I was cruel for making my kids help with killing chickens.

To this I say: we don't run a petting zoo around here.  We raise some animals for meat, and my kids know that they will end up as such. ("They" being the chickens. Not the kids).

Since my children eat, they have to help.  They don't mind at all.  In fact, Luke takes pride in telling people at our homesteading and wilderness retreats in great detail how to pull out guts from a dead, still warm chicken.

We are homesteaders.  We get dirty.  We get bloody.  We grow and raise our food, and our kids know that chickens don't come from the supermarket neatly wrapped in plastic.  There's blood and guts involved, yo!

I will leave you with some fun images in case you are traumatized by dead chicken pictures.

The one below is Luke and me on a mountain bike ride.  He's dragging me up and down some vicious hills and teaches me mountain bike slang, like "Shred the gnar, dude."


I'm trying to shred, people, I really am.

This one was a particularly lovely sunset.  Or it might have been a sunrise.

And lastly, some of our plums.  There's more to come.

If you missed our video highlighting August, you can watch it HERE <----

And if you want to watch the tutorial I made on how to make pickled beets with honey and allspice, watch it HERE <---

How was your summer?