Emily found a cheap you-pick place for grapes so I helped her get 9 or 10 boxes of grapes.
They were mostly Concords...
Emily was really good at filling buckets because she moved around picking the big bunches.
I stayed in one place and picked it clean. So she got about 70% of the total grapes gathered... but I think I helped the grape place clean out their grapes in a few spots.
So I forgot to mention in the September post early in that month we woke up to this... dead and dying bees from a pesticide kill off.
A very sad morning.
We waited a couple weeks to see if the hive could recover but it was so late in the season we didn't have much hope.
In oct Aaron opened up the bees to check on them since we might as well get the honey rather than the robber bees we were afraid had been at work (see the reducer on the landing board in the picture below ).
Gage "helped" (by watching!)
He cleaned out the hive, we took some honey (quite a few quarts actually) and Aaron said he was surprised at how many bees were there. So, we will continue to feed them and hope they make it... there are still some alive so we assume the queen made it (they may have made another) but not sure there are enough of them to keep the hive alive through the winter. Bees need to keep the hive quite warm to grow baby bees. We've got a heater on them now but... we shall see.
Mom and Dad stayed for a while with us and we put them to work... Dad worked downstairs and Mom canned all our grapes! So many quarts... and a couple half gallons.
And then she cut peppers for the freezer.. Hardworking Mom.
We didn't get as many peppers as in times past because I hadn't been out there picking them. Kinda a fail in that department this year.
We got a free gate off of KSL to put in the back.
Funny story, when going to pick it up, Google tried to send us down the canal road behind the house we were trying to get too. The road was blocked off of course! It was a little weird. I was blindly following the directions and should have noticed we were going the wrong way (Emily was driving since I don't do standard).
One Sunday Carly used our glue gun to make a pretty wreath.. which she forgot so I sent a picture to her.
And Alec forgot his backpack. I guess our nieces and nephews feel right at home!
Emily and I chippered up the corn stalks to store as feed for the goats.
It was very loud.
Emily rigged up the board so the chippered up stalks wouldn't blow away.
Unfortunately, we laid the corn out to dry in the garage but apparently didn't turn it enough so it still molded. Sigh. Still learning.
The sunday before Halloween I made my nieces and nephews make halloween gingerbread houses which I had seen on Mel's kitchen cafe blog.
Aaron took pictures when asked.
Forgot to get pictures of the participants..
But the houses sure were cute!
I had made the frosting a little too runny but... live and learn, right? And I do like the burnt sugar for putting the houses together. Quick and strong. It was a little dangerous working with that hot sticky stuff (might have gotten some blisters to prove it) but was way better than trying to stick the houses together with my runny frosting :).
OK, October done!
