Our big squash-o-lantern

On Saturday we had an autumn/early Halloween squash carving party with some friends.

The guest of honor was the 570-pound squash we picked up earlier in the month at the pumpkin festival; here it is getting loaded in our truck for the trip home,
















The squash spent most of the month in our shop, and on Saturday morning Tom brought it, on a pallet, with the tractor to our garage, so everyone, including the squash, would stay warm in the rather chilly temperatures.

Tom tried a knife at first, and for the features, it wasn't too bad.


















But for the top, where the flesh is six inches thick, Tom decided
that Daniel's small hatchet was better,































It's the Great Squash, Charlie Brown!


















Tom transporting the Great Squash to its final resting place,
at the end of our driveway,














Carefully sliding out the pallet,



















After the carving, we went indoors to warm up with apple cider, chili, curried pumpkin soup, carrot cake, and goblins' toes,





















The view at night, with the help of a trouble light,

Poetry Friday: something in October

A Vagabond Song
by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood --
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

* * *

Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating is hosting today's Poetry Friday round-up with Keats's Ode to Autumn. As Kelly, and Robert Frost, write, "I believe that today, I'll take a walk and see what autumn has to offer. I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too." Take a walk over Writing and Ruminating and join Kelly for a promising Friday.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Because our harvest is over, we've been enjoying a beautiful, relaxing Thanksgiving weekend.

On Saturday, we went to the big pumpkin festival and weigh-off in the province. The kids got to see one of the biggest pumpkins (this isn't the grand prize winner, which weighed over 1,100 pounds)






















and while my back was turned (buying a couple of slices of pumpkin for starving children), Tom decided to bid on one of the giant squashes. He ended up with the second place squash, all 570 pounds of it, which he and the kids plan to carve for Halloween.

Laura examined some of the other squashes,


















while our our new pet got loaded for the trip home,
















We got home in time to have a quick supper and then head out to meet the fruit truck from B.C., where we picked up a 40-pound box of Macintosh apples; 25 pounds of onions; some blue grapes; three gorgeous summer sausages, very similar to Italian dry salami, made by Mennonites; and two wheels of cheddar cheese from a small Alberta dairy.

Yesterday we had our big Thanksgiving meal with Tom's family, and today we've all been puttering around, Tom and the kids doing various farm chores (Tom helping a neighbor load up some of the hay bales we're selling, the boys using the grease gun for the first time, Laura riding the horse and rounding up cattle), and me canning pears,


















The vegetables and fruits have been cleared out of the garden. I have a few more tomatoes to turn into sauce and freeze, and in a few weeks we'll cover the strawberries with a protective layer of straw. I still have to clean out the flower garden, though.

* * *

By eleven o'clock on Thanksgiving Day the aunts, uncles, and cousins had all arrived. The uncles and Big Kids usually stayed out on the front porch discussing cars, animals, crops, politics, and the price of hogs, soybeans, and corn. Then they would gravitate to the back of the house or, if the gathering was on a farm, to the horse barn, ostensibly to see a new foal or check out a new stall (and leaving the women and the Little Kids to do all the work). It was years before I discovered the real reason: Someone had stashed a bottle of Old Grandad in Old Jude's grain box.

The aunts and Little Kids gathered in the kitchen. Each aunt would have brought her specialty. Green lima beans, mashed potatoes, apple salad, cabbage salad, bread-and-butter pickles, vinegary beet pickles, baked acorn squash, ground-cherry, apple, and raisin pies, devil's food and angel food cakes, charlotte russe, and jams of all kind were unpacked and put on the table.

All of a sudden the kitchen was buzzing with laughter and chattering, questions and answers, orders and suggestions. Everybody pitched in. There were Wealthy apples to be peeled, cored, and sliced, boiled milk dressing to be assembled for that apple salad, gravy to be made, potatoes to be mashed, cakes and pies to be sliced, cream to be whipped, a goose to be carved. Even the littlest ones were pressed into service to bring in more wood for the kitchen fire or fresh water from the pump. They knew that they would get an oatmeal cookie for their efforts.

from Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. And what's Thanksgiving without Grandma's Apple Cream Pie?

Poetry Friday II: When leaves depart

Autumn
by Roy Campbell (1901-1957)

I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive,
Winter, the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.

Already now the clanging chains
Of geese are harnessed to the moon:
Stripped are the great sun-clouding planes:
And the dark pines, their own revealing,
Let in the needles of the noon.

Strained by the gale the olives whiten
Like hoary wrestlers bent with toil
And, with the vines, their branches lighten
To brim our vats where summer lingers
In the red froth and sun-gold oil.

Soon on our hearth's reviving pyre
Their rotted stems will crumble up:
And like a ruby, panting fire,
The grape will redden on your fingers
Through the lit crystal of the cup.

* * *

For a Poetry Friday round-up full of wit and whimsy (and turtles), head over to Emily's Whimsy Books. Thank you, Emily!

Combining combining and pirates

We started combining the crops, wheat and barley, today. And I understand tomorrow is supposed to be Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I'm not the first person to notice that combines look rather like ships, sailing steadily and majestically through waves of grain. And while you wait on the truck, or run up the combine ladder to check how the wheat is coming in, and the warm wind blows through your hair, you do feel as if you could be on a ship or even up the mast, especially when you scan the horizon to see if you can spot your neighbors in their combine.

So for all the western Canadian pirates out there, I offer hearty harvest wishes, and the words of this little ditty, written and performed by the Canadian musical comedy group The Arrogant Worms; and also performed lustily by the Edmonton band Captain Tractor (you can't combine farming and sailing any better than with that moniker):

The Last Saskatchewan Pirate

Well, I used to be a farmer and I made a living fine,
I had a little stretch of land along the CP line.
But times got tough, and though I tried, the money wasn't there.
The bankers came and took my land and told me, "Fair is fair"/
I looked for every kind of job, the answer always no.
"Hire you now?" they'd always laugh, "We just let twenty go!" (Ha ha!)
The government, they promised me a measly little sum,
But I've got too much pride to end up just another bum.

Then I thought, who gives a damn if all the jobs are gone,
I'm gonna be a pirate on the River Saskatchewan! (Arr!)

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

Well, you'd think the local farmers would know that I'm at large
But just the other day I found an unprotected barge.
I snuck up right behind them and they were none the wiser.
I rammed the ship and sank it and I stole the fertilizer.
Bridge outside of Moose Jaw spans a mighty river
Farmers cross in so much fear, their stomach's are a-quiver
'Cause they know that Captain Tractor's hiding in the bay.
I'll jump the bridge, and knock 'em cold, and sail off with their hay.

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

Well, Mountie Bob he chased me, he was always at my throat,
He'd follow on the shoreline 'cause he didn't own a boat.
But the cutbacks were a-comin' and the Mountie lost his job,
So now he's sailing with me and we call him Salty Bob.
A swingin' sword, a skull-and-bones, and pleasant company,
I never pay my income tax and screw the GST (Screw it!).
Prince Albert down to Saskatoon, the terror of the sea,
If you wanna reach the co-op, boy, you gotta get by me! (Arr!)

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

Well, the pirate life's appealing but you don't just find it here,
I hear in north Alberta there's a band of buccaneers.
They roam the Athabasca from Smith to Fort MacKay,
And you're gonna lose your Stetson if you have to pass their way.
Well, winter is a-comin' and a chill is in the breeze,
My pirate days are over once the river starts to freeze.
I'll be back in springtime, but now I've got to go,
I hear there's lots of plunderin' down in New Mexico.

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!

Harvest jubilee

Evans cherries before pitting:













and after:

Poetry Friday: the week that was

Harvest started this week with swathing (cutting the crops -- the row they fall in is called a swath), and the first killing frost arrived Wednesday night. The second one, last night, and the furnace kicked in for good measure. Goodbye tomatoes, cosmos, and zinnias, and hello, happy pantry and busy days. Or busy pantry and happy days. My week in numbers:

Poem for Poetry Friday: one, and it's a short (anonymous) one:

There was once a young lady of Ryde
Who ate a green apple and died;
The apple fermented
Inside the lamented,
And made cider inside her her inside.

Oh heck, make it two:

A maiden caught stealing a dahlia,
Said, "Oh, you shan't tell on me, shahlia?"
But the florist was hot,
And he said, "Like as not
They'll send you to jail, you bad gahlia."

HipWriterMama is hosting today's Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, HWM!

The rest of my week in numbers:

Apples and crab apples picked in the past week: 15 boxes

Cider we pressed ourselves the other night on the deck: 16 four-liter pails, stored away in the deep-freeze

Evans cherries picked Wednesday night before the killing frost: three four-liter pails. Today I'll make cherry preserves, to use later on as pie filling or sauce for ice cream or cheesecake.

Vases full of cut flowers from the garden while I can still enjoy them: eight

Apple pies baked: two

Roasts cooked: three (two chickens, and one enormous pork roast, served with homemade apple sauce)

Boxes of tomatoes in my kitchen: three, one with green tomatoes, one with red ones, and one half-and-half, on the way to red, one last big box picked before the first frost.

Remaining cucumbers and zucchini left on the vines, discovered before the frost: one each.

Pumpkins we are trying to keep warm and growing: three

Number of meals featuring freshly picked or somehow preserved apples and/or tomatoes and/or berries: all of 'em

Enormous "Farmer Boy"-style meals prepared to feed the swathing crew, around the kitchen table and hauled to the field to be eaten as a tailgate supper: three

Evening meetings out of the house: two, last night and tonight.

"Nice Matters" award from Frankie at Kitchen-Table Learners: one, which made my week. Thanks, dear. It's always nice to be nice, especially when people in town seem to be giving you sidelong glances because your fingernails look black (but are really stained from chokecherry juice) and your palms are green and smell funny (from picking tomatoes), no matter how hard you scrubbed with the nail brush and half a cut lemon.

Autumn is a-cumin' in

Saturday evening we headed for town to help celebrate our little town on the prairie's 100th birthday. Not a great age compared to many, even in eastern Canada, but quite an achievement and a thrill for the kids especially to be a part of the occasion. There was a big dance followed by fireworks, then more dancing, and oodles of food throughout. And a chance to remember the pioneers who started it all with their hard work, and those who carry on. To whom we all say a well-deserved thank you.

Speaking of thank yous, Tom arrived home on Friday with a case of very, very ripe peaches. I've come to be very wary of this sort of gift when I'm least prepared and usually up to my armpits in some other garden preserving activity, and I've told Tom in previous years on various occasions that yes, dear, I will buy and can cases of peaches and pears -- Davy calls them "hot sugared fruit" -- but on my own schedule, dear, since that I had planned to deal this weekend with the last of the green beans, rhubarb, and a few other housekeeping projects. The peaches were well on the way to beyond ripe, so I had to do something fast. And quick and easy, to, which meant one cobbler, one pie, and peeling, chunking, and sugaring the rest for pie filling.

The leaves on the Virginia creeper have turned bright red already, harvest is in full gear in the fields around us, geese are honking and ducks gather on the dugouts and sloughs and the hunters from the U.S. are starting to circle too, our neighbor's famous end-of-summer "corn supper" is next week, and though it's still unusually warm for this time of year (we watched the fireworks at 10:30 pm in light shirts), the light definitely looks like autumn. I'll miss the carefree summer weather and schedule, my garden especially -- I'm enjoying great big blowzy bouquets right now, zinnias, cosmos, hollyhocks, cornflowers -- but there's something exciting about the change in seasons, especially this next season. Autumn usually means a withering and a decline, but as someone who always loved school (Tom and I decided to homeschool Laura in part because we wanted her to love school and learning as much as we had), this time of year to me signifies not only an ending but also a beginning, marked by kraft-paper covered books, new knee socks and art supplies, the excitement of new friends and activities. Now that the days are dramatically shorter -- it's getting dark before nine now -- even the kids are starting to show a bit of curiosity and interest in our new schedule, not as freeform and out-of-doors as it's been. Where and when will the 4H meetings be held? What will the new piano and voice teachers be like? What new books will be using? It's all part of the new adventure!