Pumpkins, Colors, and Family

The pumpkins in the mud hall are reducing in number, family came and left, and the colors keep changing.

I picked over 30 pumpkins from the hugels.  Most of them have been hanging out in the mud hall and one by one going off with friends and family or feeding those who visit through pie and muffins.  I wrote a story about the pumpkins on the hugel and the free range chickens.  It is basically a story about reciprocity, caring, adventure, volunteering and all the things pumpkins do when they grow up.
I hope to have it published for next year's Pumpkin Walk at Boxerwood.

Judy and Randy stopped by on their way to D.C. and the Smithsonian. Jan and Don stopped by on their way home from Delaware.  The two visits overlapped and we had wonderful conversation, plenty of laughs and I learned so much about the outside world (outside the farm world).

I have been taking in all the Color I can.  It seems to be a bad year for fall foliage but subtle is good and I think things are later than usual this year.  I want to dye with new plants and barks and lichen and mushrooms.  So much to do but my new apprentice is helping.

Henry is only 9 but I think he is a wizard.  We were looking at a future land project and were admiring the milkweed pods just opening when we came up with a brilliant idea.  Milkweed seed is carried by a wonderful downy fluff that was once used for stuffing in jackets (think down substitute). It has some of the qualities of silk,

so our brilliant idea was to blend the milkweed fluff with wool.  Henry carded the fluff and wool and some silk and wool and I spun both.  The next step is to knit  or weave a sample of each and do a survey to see what people think.

Cathy and I have just started taking Cabin Spring Farm Yarn and Cathy's weaving to our local farmers market so that might be a good place to get some feed back.