The Arrival of Autumn

Baking apple pie, collecting mushrooms and garden plans, September 2024

On the very first day of autumn we woke up to a chilly morning, and we were all bedazzled. Acting as if we had never known chill before. But we have. Last winter was the coldest in many years and the first in our 100 year old farmhouse in the countryside.

That cold morning was an immediately reminder of the coolness that is to come, a thought we had happily packed away alongside our snow boots and winter coats in spring.

The year is about to close in on it self, but before it does, we have a lot of plans for this autumn and we want to make sure we make haste before the winter months arrive. September, when the air still gets quite warm in the afternoon sun, it is time to finish up our outdoor projects before October and November forces us to stop and move our work inside.

Herluf is putting up posts for the fencing that is to protect our ducks from the road in the background.

Firstly, we want to tackle the fencing in our cottage garden, in order to keep the ducks that arrived in July out there. Sometime in November we will slaughter them to eat for Christmas Eve, but before then we want to give them a nice and open space while also taking advantage of their wonderful fertilizer to fix some bald splotches in the garden. Compared to chickens, ducks will only stamp on and eat down the grass, not uproot it. In a matter of weeks the most beautiful light green grass will grow where ducks have been held.

Secondly we want to plant our berry bushes, move some of the plum trees that stands too close together to truly bloom, and prune some of the trees that have been pruned once and then left to their own demise for years. Autumn is really the best time to plant and prune bushes and trees because it will keep tender roots wet and therefore near the ground, and will keep the plant dormant through winter in order to develop a strong root system to bloom in the spring.

Lastly we want to fence in our vegetable garden and chicken coop, if the sunny days will let us. This is mostly in preparation to next spring, as we want to grow even more of our own food and get some spring chickens by then.

For me, autumn has always been a time to turn back into productivity and everyday schedule. It is a time to say goodbye to endless afternoons laying in the high summer grass and watching the skies go by. Autumn is the season of making, of preserving, and of ending projects that has been staying idle in the sun for far too long.

In my kitchen, making apple pie.

On that very first day of Autumn we went to the woods to pick mushrooms for a hearty mushroom pie, and later in the week I plucked the last apples off of our apple tree in order to make an apple pie. Needless to say, it is pie making season.

Around this time of year I am scrambling to make the most out of all that harvest season have to offer. We are still plucking some red tomatoes from the green house to make into boiled tomatoes, but soon we will have to pluck the green ones too and make some green tomato jam. I have a freezer bag full of blackberries that I want to make into jam as well, but not before we go and collect some more, just one more harvest, and they too will be gone as everything else will be come winter.

Autumn is really a time to say goodbye, and I was never any good at that if I have to honest. I like good mornings and new beginnings, and I love the winter and early spring, when everything is still only a dream of what might be. Autumn feels so finalizing. It is a time for compromising, on settling and saying: This was all we could do for the year, and we did well. Oh, how I hope to able to say those exact words some day this autumn.

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