Tomato soup: Before/After

With all the main ingredients grown on the hill, some excellent veggies were roasted yesterday. They became the best tomato soup ever after a day in the crockpot.

90 minutes of splitting

We had another wonderful morning for our favorite exercise in the woods: Splitting!!! We've been processing some white ash, paper birch, and hop hornbeam.

Beautiful morning for work

The first two pics from today are a before/after of the cutting we completed, mainly yellow birch. Then there are two more pics of our wonderful wood. The conditions were splendid. Low was 52 degrees.

Harvest color variety

Joy arrives with every harvest, regardless of the colors involved. We recently got some corn and cucumbers from the neighbors. This green and yellow looks spectacular!

How about the beauty of these very tasty, albeit small, onions from our raised bed?

The last bit (and biggest wood) from the yellow birch project came up the hill today. This harvest won't deliver taste, but rather wonderful heat from an excellent firewood.

Recent activities

These photos show some of our recent activities. Temps and humidity haven't been too bad for this time of year.

Craft color planning

Wood cutting/moving

Berry picking

Microburst cleanup

That intense storm a week ago Thursday likely brought a microburst to the hill. Several paper birch became the victims. It was a strange site, with so much damage in an incredibly small area, with neighboring trees totally unaffected -- not even any branches down! 

We cleaned up the birch on a truly beautiful morning. The low was 55 degrees. Losing some nice young birches has a downside for sure, but several other trees, especially a really lovely young sugar maple, will now have more sun. And we'll have some more excellent firewood.

Big wind, falling pines

Another big wind storm dropped more pines, an unsurprising result.