Before I tell you about our weekend, I thought I'd share one last remnant of damage from our lightning strike. Joel had turned on our air conditioner late last week so we could work in the kitchen in comfort. NO AIR. Yup, we had to have a new compressor motor and computer board put in our unit outside.
Fortunately, the same company that did our drywall in the studio has a division that takes care of heating and cooling and they were able to get it all covered under warranty. Whew! Hopefully, we are completely cured of all our lightning issues.
Early Friday morning, our friends Joyce and Dick from Florida arrived for a quick visit. They were on their way to their retreat in GA and made a little detour to see us and check on all that we've accomplished since their last visit in May. It was so great to see them again.
It's funny how you can go a long period of time without seeing good friends and as soon as you sit down with a cup of coffee and start chatting the months just melt away and it's as though you saw them last week. That's how it is with Joyce and Dick. While the guys hung out at the farm, Joyce and I ran to our local yarn shop....twice! Yes, it was so much fun the first day that we went back there the second day.
One of the stops Joyce and I made on Saturday was at Miss Miller's doughnuts. Dick just couldn't get over how huge they were. He said they were big enough to be a life preserver. It rained all weekend so we stayed indoors most of the time, but the guys did eventually take advantage of a break in the weather to do a little shooting down into our woods.
And sweet Joyce kept insisting she was serious about helping me unpack some of the remaining boxes of our kitchen stuff. During a break in the rain, the guys went down to the pavilion on Saturday afternoon and they hauled up 6 boxes for us. We got them all unpacked, and washed and dried the dishes and put them all away. Whew! Thank you so much, Joyce, for jump starting my final unpacking!
All too soon it was time for them to head to GA and we reluctantly said our goodbyes. We hope they both come back to see us again..... soon!
I was sad to see their white car disappear around the bend below our farm, but at least we had a few days of great fellowship together. While Joyce and I had been driving around in the mist and drizzle, we both kept remarking about how much the leaves were changing each day. And of course, I didn't have my camera with me when we were driving around. So, Sunday afternoon during halftime of the football game, Joel and I jumped into the car armed with my camera and I snagged a few shots of our fall foliage in the misty weather.
This is part of the curvy country road that leads up to our farm and I think it looks particularly pretty dressed in fall colors.
I hope the leaves stay pretty until we have a sunny day with blue skies so I can get some more pics of the local color. It's still very foggy and misty today as I type this and we are expected to get some bad storms again tomorrow. So, I'm not sure if the leaves will stay on the trees if we have high winds again.
The local cows seem unaffected by the weather. They just kept looking at the crazy lady with the camera who was talking to them as though the bovines would understand what she was saying. Hey, I just wanted a pic of the cuties.
"Cutie? Are you talking about me? How flattering!"
"Who are you calling a cutie? Get back in your car lady!"
Gotta love the pretty lime green field of newly sown hay with a little cabin and fall treeline behind it.
As we pulled into our lane we could really begin to appreciate the changing leaves of one of the oaks near the potager garden. Our other oaks have barely begun to turn color, even though they are pelting us with hundreds of acorns as we walk under them. The wind keeps blowing the acorns off the trees and when they hit the metal roofs of our outbuildings it sometimes sounds like gunshots going off.
The black walnut trees have yellow leaves and they are almost half off the trees. Last year we had hundreds of black walnuts and this year we only have dozens. The trees alternate years of plenty and little, so, this must be a year with little yield. How disappointing. Well, we'll harvest what we get and wait until next year to see what comes. The freeze and snow on April 15th really decreased our yields as the pretty blossoms froze and it's those blossoms that become fruit. No flowers, no fruit. And so it is on the farm.
And I love every single minute of it,
Debbie
