In which our Usual Suspects ride together and we get well-squashed

I guess I need to remind readers that a few years ago,

Fiddle had to be kept out of "striking distance" of all

but a few horses.

Rhythm, aka "Pony," was not one of the safe few in the olden days

Today was one of those days where I might have ridden out on the trails, if the rain didn't start dumping down just as I was approaching the intersection.  

Turn right:  go to the trailhead.  Turn left: go to Fish Creek Farm.

Dumping rain = turn left to FC and the covered arena!

Fee was so happy to see her friends!

With a few exceptions, the Dragon and I have been solo on the trails for the last few months.  We mostly don't mind.  Trails can be a nice quiet place for us to hang out together.

But we both missed this! 

The unmistakable nose of Hana Banana Wannacookie

Meagan took some pictures while we rode around the arena.

You can tell the weather has changed:  suddenly I am wearing All the Clothes to ride.

Flower came into the arena for evaluation.  Status:  less lameness, but still not time to ride her.  

So Flower got a bath and a light lunch, and then Patty came in to watch for a while.

The Dragon didn't used to be so friendly to people in the olden days, either.

For many years, Patty maintained a healthy and respectful distance from the Dragon's bad 'tude.

Now, not so much.  There is no tension in this photo,
even with Eleni and Chase cantering around the arena as the camera was clicking.

Patty also wanted help with "a little project"

The Fish Creek squash harvest was...prodigious

About two years ago, the ginormous manure pile at Fish Creek Farm was replaced by a concrete building with a roof, the better to avoid contaminating nearby surface water.

But what to do with the ginormous manure pile? A fair question.  Patty and I had a great idea:

The bulldozer shoved it over a bit and flattened it out. 

The "garden" as the old manure pile is now known, is about 20 feet wide, 100 feet long, and 5-8 feet tall.  In the spring, we skipped all over it and stuck in seeds.  

We did not do any other soil work.  We didn't stir it.  We didn't mulch it.  We did water it, but because of the high organic content it needs much less water than you would expect.

We didn't even do much weeding, truth be told.

Result:  the garden grows good vegetables.

We harvested squashes into laundry baskets

It grows a LOT of vegetables.

We planted corn, carrots, beets, tomatoes, beans, onions, leeks, cucumbers, and I forget what else.

Because mostly what that garden grows is SQUASH.

These are all winter (storing) squashes:  delicotta, hubbard, butternut, acorn, and spaghetti squash

Sweetmeat squashes, each weighs 5-10 pounds.

Sweetmeat squash is what you really want when you think you want pumpkin for pie.
These were grown from Haiku Farm seeds!

The rest of the garden is still making a few vegetables, but we are definitely sloping towards winter.

onions, leeks, beets, beans, and inevitable zucchini

I grabbed a few onions for soup.

Sungold cherry tomatoes

Dick very kindly hauled the truck full of squashes over to the storage shed for us.

squash-squash-squash

Over by the shed, we cleaned each squash 

Usual Suspects make tedious jobs more fun

and sorted them into piles by type and degree of ripeness

Sweet dumplings (an acorn variant) in front. 
Delicottas in the middle.  Hubbards in back.

and then stacked baskets and buckets onto shelves for storage.

We each took home a large bucket of immature squashes to be cooked or processed promptly.  I made soup from a bunch of baby butternuts and delicottas, plus a huge handful of garlic cloves and some beans from our garden.

While the soup was bubbling, I played with Rumplesomething and his dog.  

Have I mentioned that the Rumplekitten considers Foxie his very own pet doggie?

A cat on my lap, soup in my bowl, a fire in the stove:  we've skipped over autumn (as usual) and gone straight to the nice parts of winter.

And that is just fine.