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Sarah and her fellow Ravens fought mightily to keep the Philipstown Raptors from scoring, even resorting to this unusual defensive formation — but score the Raptors did, and the Ravens were unable to put one in the win column.

Sarah certainly earned an A for effort.

On Saturday we harvested our Brussels Sprouts and some apples, made minestrone soup and a tarte tatin, and had a fine supper.  Daisy got a bone out of it.

We had a beautiful sunset before returning to New York this evening.

We returned to the farm after a weekend away, for Halloween.  This blue jay seemed not at all put off by the 78 degree temperature on Saturday.

While Sarah had soccer practice, Jen, Daisy and I were at the Red Hook dog run, in between the Rhinebeck Aerodrome and the soccer field.  We thought it at least possible that this biplane would crash into us, but it did not.

We brought Daisy to the New York Military Academy, recently bankrupted alma mater of Donald Trump, so she could watch today’s soccer game between the Rhinebeck Ravens and the Cornwall Copa.

I’ll let you all guess how the game went.

We had a very beautiful weekend, with pleasant days and changing trees.

If this was not the peak weekend for fall foliage, it wasn’t far off.

Well, you get the picture.  On Friday night, though, we had our first frost of the year.  Jen and I had to pick all remaining vegetables from the garden, using flashlights.

For dinner Saturday we stuffed the three big poblano peppers we harvested.  Jen saved the seeds for next year.

We are really quite high on our free-range apple population.  Jen gathered some more of the Bogmere Pippins and made them into a tarte tatin, the recipe for which can be found here.

There were not many smiling faces after the Ravens’ latest defeat, a five-zip shellacking by the Shrub Oak Xtreme at Lakeland High School, which, by the way, prohibits all dogs other than service dogs from being anywhere on school property (Daisy had to stay in the car).  The team gets next weekend off, for Columbus Day.

We continue to find old apple and pear trees from the farm’s former life as an orchard.  The fruit they produce is not beautiful — and, in fact, not always tasty — but there is some high quality fruit out there.

Jen is now able to reach such fruit thanks to our new Flexrake LRB190 Fruit Picker.

Jen also tends the less free-range of her crops.

It is tomato season, which we’ve been celebrating with many colorful tomato salads.  From left to right are Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Pineapple Hawaiian, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, and Sungold, all from Jen’s garden.

Our weekend was truncated — cut in half, more or less — as a result of an away game against the Cold Spring Raptors.

The Ravens did not prevail, but they got plenty of support from the crowd.

Sarah had her first soccer game of the season on Saturday.  The Ravens (f/k/a Fireballs) played the Red Hook Storm.  Sarah played defense with gusto, élan, and vigor.  The Ravens fell to the Storm 2-1, but there wasn’t a moment when we doubted that the Ravens could win.

Sarah and her friend Anna congratulated each other on a game well played.

Jen cleared the brush surrounding this ancient apple tree, which has produced a great many smallish, tart, yellow/green apples.  They were delicious with honey for Rosh Hashanah.  We are calling the variety the Bogmere Pippin.

I celebrated Labor Day weekend by laboring — I mowed our biggest hayfield.

Most of the Burleighs visited.  Lew also labored, reading emails on the back porch.

Rinda tucked into Middlemarch on the lawn.

Erica seemed skeptical that Sarah was in fact laboring.

On Sunday there was a ladies’ swim in the pond — not much of a labor at all.