Autumn is here!

So here we are in the new term and the new year and it's been a restful and enjoyable summer for me...I hope it has for all of you reading this, too! We have been enjoying some of the best of seasonal autumn weather and the fruits of the season are in abundance. On our Sunday walks we have been picking blackberries and eating them in our fruit salads and as blackberry mousse. The elderberries are hanging off the trees and the plan is for Widey Court Primary school to gather them in on the Sunday walk this week. It is a bumper apple harvest this year and Hilary and I have started to pick eating apples for the fruit bowls at Nethercott Barton with the kind permission of Bob and Wendy Barrett. Next week we will be picking for making apple juice and I expect we will make gallons! The potato harvest is safely in thanks to both Prior Weston and Whetstone Field Primary Schools and there has been a real opportunity for everyone to clearly see the route of some of our food from the fields/trees/garden to the plate. The squashes are ready for roasting and form a part of Sunday lunch alongside our own roast pork and all the runner beans are picked and frozen. Three types of chutney have been made, rhubarb, marrow and apple, and will be for sale in the shop.
Four new pigs arrived a few weeks ago and they are already settling in and beginning to nibble at childrens' feet through the bottom of the fence. This time they are very gingery and spotty, two boars and two sows.
The turkeys are sitting on eggs but yesterday and today we picked one out that was definitely full of liquid and not chick, and broke them on a stone to see just what is the worst smell in the world!!!!!!!! Ask the children of Whetstone Field Primary School and they'll have the answer.
On Tuesday we had a great time in the spinney making things out of natural materials; willow snails, wooden medallions with rush rope, charcoal out of burnt willow and bows and arrows which have been played with constantly since then.
So...a lot of fun and a lot of hard work and a lot of food production and collecting...I love the autumn!!!!!!!!