To Bring Shalom: fall photo update

Sorry I have been absent from the blog lately. Justin and I have really been doing great in our job here at GPF, enjoying life here, but staying very busy with all that we have on our plate. We are loving it and we are usually happy and very tired. We're planting under row cover these days in preparation for fall frosts (we've already had a couple and expect more next week! A pretty good sized greenhouse aught to be completed in the next few weeks and if it isn't too late, we'll plant in there as well! I have tons of seedlings ready to go in my small greenhouse waiting a spot in the soil. Lots of lettuce, onions, kale, and possibly broccoli if it isn't too late in the season once the greenhouse is complete. It's been suggested by other local farmers that it's possible that it's too late to plant some of those crops and have them get large enough to harvest- EVEN in the greenhouse. With how short the day length gets this far north on the globe, it gets hard to grow, even if you can keep the night time temp above 40. But brandon is willing to give anything a try and we dont really have a clue what growing will be like in the winter here.

My parents visited at the end of September. I was hoping that the fall colors might be starting when they arrived and luckily they had JUST begun to change for them. Then 2 weeks later Justin's parents were here (they left yesterday) and the colors were really perfect for their trip. It's crazy how fast it all goes too. you could miss it in just one week's time if you plan a vacation up here and the weather isn't in your favor. The day the Bullocks left (yesterday) a huge wind blew through and almost every leaf in our valley was blown away. it went from fall foliage to winter skeleton trees in just a few hours. Crazy!

I don't have a great update for you guys, but i do have some photos. enjoy!

My mom and I made soap together while she was here. I'm sure you know where the last names Taylor, Baker, and Smith come from, but did you know that a Fuller is a soap maker?

This is me carefully pouring the lye into water

adding the lye solution to all the oils

mixing and waiting, mixing and waiting until the mixture comes to what us fullers call "trace." a thin custard consistiency

here's the batch devided and poured into the mold. we've got patchouli orange vanilla on the left and milk honey and oat on the right.

Justin put some pants on Olga. it was funny. she hated it.

We're growing some REALLY lovely varieties of heirloom lettuce. here's some Gold Rush, Tennis Ball, Bunte Forellenschluss, Grandpa Admire, and Flame. All the seed was purchased from Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah Iowa- a GREAT place to get heirloom seeds

Justin makin stuff

Winter Squash! How many varieties can you identify by name?

We've also got lots of onions and potatoes in the background.

The best nap spot. Nice and sunny, but almost too small.

One of Olga's favorite pastimes. shredding stuff up.

These are some medicinals I either grew myself this year, or wild harvested from around the farm. Many of you probably don't know what they're for so i'll tell you some of their beneficial properties. Most of these things are good skin healers: plantain, comfrey leaf, calendula. Rose hips are very high in vitamin c so they make a great winter time tea. They also, when applied topically, help with rapid cell rejuvenation so they are great for face creams, hand creams, acne, age spots, etc. Cayenne helps fight infection, stimulates circulation and opens up small capillaries whether taken internally or applied topically so it helps to more quickly transport other medicines. it doesn't burns when applied topically, if put into a cream at the right amount. Nettles are high in so many nutrients and are great to drink in a tea all winter long when you're not getting fresh vegetables or soaking up much sunlight energy.

This i dug up around the farm, dehydrated, and will use all winter. back left: Comfrey root (good for healing skin, and bones and sprains. traditionally called knitbone. also a good cough medicine). back right: Burdock root (great liver clense). Front center: Yellow Dock root (another great liver clense)
those two plants really help the liver better filter out all that nasty stuff we carry around with us from those McDonald's french fries, Oreos, and DrPeppers... or beer and cigarettes- whatever your vices are. Most things that we indulge in really cause our livers to suffer)

THIS is our poultry processing building! I chose to get pictures in the morning while the room was still clean and it didn't yet look like a horror movie in here. You can thank me for that.

Two rooms. first room you see here is for the slaughtering, scalding and plucking. and that process moves from right to left in those 3 devices. the cones for killing, the square bin for scalding which loosens the feathers (148 degrees for 55 seconds!) and the round drum (which spins!) for plucking all the feathers of really quickly.

The chickens then come naked and clean into this room through that tiny window. Here we eviscerate, cool in an ice bath, then weigh, bag, and transport to the freezers next door.