It was a blustery October weekend here. Windy enough to strip the autumn colors from the trees and make me appreciate how quickly autumn is passing. Feeling the pressure, we packed a lot of projects into the last two days.

Although it was just two-and-a-half months ago that I harvested my garlic, it’s time to replant for next year. The general rule of thumb is to plant about a month before the ground freezes. So I planted 64 cloves alongside my fading Black Eyed Susans.

Then I planted another 70 cloves in a raised bed. I’ve not planted garlic in a raised bed before, so this is a bit of an experiment. Since you can plant closer together in raised beds than in the ground, I packed them in. All in all, this is a 50% increase in planting over last year.

Part of the weekend was spent working on firewood. Here’s Paul loading a maple onto the trailer. Once we have as many trees as we dare stack on the trailer, we haul it to the house and cut it and stack it. (Notice the total absence of leaves in this picture? A clear sign that we’re closer to winter than to summer.)

This afternoon we finally started the ducky house makeover. When the ducks arrived, we re-purposed a chicken run for them. It turns out that the flat roof of the temporary chicken run isn’t conducive to egg collection (not that we have any eggs yet…) or snow maintenance. We’re building up with a sloped roof and an access door. The project is dried in and we’ll finish it up tomorrow.

Last, but not least is an update on the Turkey Dudes. They look fairly suspicious of me. I can’t begin to imagine why. Think they like cornbread stuffing?