Pictures, Now with Words

We made these candles the other day. I cut out the letters, B,O,O out of some dark colored paper, then glued them to the back of white tissue paper. We then wrapped them around some jelly jars and glued the ends together. Later we put candles inside and lit them. The burnt edges were purely accidental, one stray match caught the tissue paper on fire, we decided we liked the effect and made the others match. The kids had a fun time helping, plus it was very easy and low mess!
Michelle's class when to the pumpkin patch on Tuesday. Notice her cute new hair cut?
Crissy really enjoyed sitting on pumpkins, her back side was pretty muddy by the time we got home.

Get to Work, Part 2 of Harvest

My mother in law came out the last few days of harvest to help us pick our forrelle pears. She is a work horse. After taking this photo, she told me to stop taking pictures and get to work. She also kept telling me that every pear we pick is one our workers didn't have to pick. My thoughts were the exact opposite, every pear they picked was one less I had to pick. Did I mention I had a horrible cold and felt like and elephant was sitting on my chest?
Here she is again, this time she is picking from the top of a 10 foot ladder. I'm above her standing on a 12 foot ladder. Once again I wasn't picking, just taking pictures and enjoying our beautiful view.
Yesterday Abby came running into the house, so excited because she was picked as "Wildcat of the Week". Her school picks one boy and girl from each grade to be the Wildcat of the Week. The school takes a picture and interviews the student asking them their likes and dislikes. One of Abby's likes....High Sch00l Musical. We watched it many times this summer. My kids are obsessed. Abby saved up money to buy the cd. In the photo above, she is dancing to her favorite music. One small coincidence; their school is called Eastside, while ours is West and both have Wildcats as their mascots.

Harvest-Part 1

Here's a few photos from our harvest. I took pictures of most varieties of pears we grow, but you'll have to imagine how beautiful our Bartlett pears were this year. D'Anjou pears. These are hard to figure out when they are ripe, but if you get it right, heaven! A few weeks ago, we went to a small local restaurant. I ordered the pear and Gorgonzola cheese salad, with pine nuts and arugula. It was so good, much better than the main dish I ordered. Need to figure out what type of salad dressing to use, think I may make this for dinner tomorrow night.
Bosc pears. I think these are beautiful, sleek looking. I have a recipe for blanched pears with chocolate sauce. One of these years I'll get around to actually making it.
Forrelle pears. This was only our third actual harvest of these pears, we planted them when Abby was a baby. They are smaller than the other pears we grow and a pain to pick! It always seems like we will pick these forever since it takes so many to fill a bin, but in reality, it only took 5 days.

Bins of anjou pears waiting for me to haul in.
This is my tractor. Isn't it cute? I love to race around the orchard on this. I think the workers like to laugh at me as I bump along. I'm probably not as fast and efficient as some people, but they tolerate me, my tractor and my broken Spanish.
Anjou Pears in a bin.

Harvest was great this year. We had more workers than last year, I only picked had to pick the last 4 days, which was great. The weather was nice the entire time, which was a blessing, picking in the rain stinks!

Get ready, more harvest pictures to come!