September the 26th

If you pop over to the PAGES of this blog (you click at the top of the HOME page) and look at https://viewfromrhoshill.blogspot.com/p/wheel-of-year-at-rhos-hill.html

 you'll see a new account of our latest ritual celebration, this time for the autumn equinox. In it, I say... we all had our own process of moving from the scurry of getting ready for winter, down into gentle hibernation until the warming of spring…and that is true of us here. We're scurrying about like harvest mice, getting the provisions in, ready for the quite time of winter. Just look at Jim, with saw and axe he's filled bag after bag of split logs ready for burning. Our log shed is bursting with seasoned wood.

Windfall apples and toms ready for the pickling vinegar

The garden is bursting, too with produce ready to be picked. Most of it won't get any bigger, or riper, now the autumn is upon us. So I'm picking, peeling and pickling. I've got peach wine on the go and Jim's just barrelled up some of his honey beer. I'm hoping to make rose hip syrup, as I did last year, from my Rosa Rugosa. And I've got the problem of all the tomatoes ripening at once. Apart from giving them away (and everyone's got toms), there's chutney, or I could try freezing salsa, using the lovely chillies we're growing, or perhaps layering them with our potatoes and onions crop to freeze as a cheesy bake. Jim's brought home some sand for us to attempt the traditional method of storing carrots, and we have our hessian sacks (last job a sack race) ready for our entire plot of spuds. The other outstanding job is empying all the lovely pots that flowered so beautifully on the patio and the front wall all summer long, and using them to plant spring bulbs and winter colour.

Sadly, the hens are in opposite mode, and not laying well. I had to buy Jean's eggs, when I saw her at the Newcastle Emlyn market last week. 
"Ah, what you need to do," she said, "is feed them layers mash instead of pellets. I did it and my production shot up. It's the extra fluid, you see."
So we bought a sack of mash and started feeding it and the result was miraculous; that very day we found six eggs in a hedge!
What, I have to ask Ceredwin and Olwen (the culprits), is wrong with the lovely, dark, warm dry and comfy nesting boxes we provide free of charge? "Cluck", they replied, wisely.