Finding the perfect tree 2013

Once again we enjoyed our family tradition of going to chop the perfect tree.  Over the years our tree chopping party has expanded and contracted.  What used to take all day we now can knock out in a few hours, but it is still fun.  This year Peter and Roque joined Fay and Vance and Calvin and I.  With the exception of Roque, we are all veterans of the hunt and our trees were chopped and loaded in record time. It was a beautiful time to be in the forest.  Just enough snow to add a touch of winter to the scene.

There was not much competition for who got the last chop. Calvin felled the tree this year.

The Gabbarts are chopped and loaded.

Peter and Roque really are more interesting than the rest of us, so they got more pictures.

Here they are with their first family Christmas tree.

And kisses for a job well done

And the group picture for 2013

We just keep getting better every year!

Autumn Harvest

We have occasionally seen deer in our yard over the last few years.  They are attracted by the fruit trees, but they browse on the roses on the way to the apples.  This year they moved in and made themselves at home.  They ate everything in the garden!  Usually at this time of year I am making batches of tomato sauce, tomato soup and dried tomatoes, but this year we only got the few tomatoes that were so deep inside the wire support cages the deer couldn't get to them.  I really don't my sharing, but the deer were over the top piggy this year, roses, grapes, tomatoes, carrots... you name it they ate it.  What they didn't eat were the potatoes because they were hidden under ground.  So here is our fall harvest of potatoes. We had a lot of really good looking potatoes.

We also had some lumpy potatoes

One in particular that looked amazingly like a fish

We also had a glorious golden fall in the orchard

The leaves were so pretty we thought we might look good in them too.

And within hours of these pictures all the leaves fell off the trees.  As Clare would say "Winter's coming."