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We had a lovely Christmas vacation at the farm, with highly variable weather (often unseasonably warm, as above, but it also snowed) and lots of visitors (Lew, Rinda, and Lewis, for Christmas; Erica and Geoff, for New Years; Lauren (Sarah’s babysitter-for-life), and her dog, Hamilton, for the weekend after New Year; and a drive-by Saturday lunch with the Dizes).

Sarah vamped in front of the tree after making gingerbread houses with her friends Anna and Michaela.

On Christmas morning, Sarah found the vest of her dreams under the tree.

Sarah made presents for everyone.  Mine was a mason jar filled with origami stars — a Jar of Luck.  Here is Jen opening her Memory Box, filled with handicrafts of Sarah’s youth.  It got dusty pretty quickly after that.

My father made a serious bid to win Christmas with this air hockey table (shown after assembly).

We did lots and lots of cooking.  Here are Jen and Lauren making a phyllo covered mixed vegetable throw pillow.

Happy new year to all!

The Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market operates year round, but I’d never stopped into the Town Hall where it spends the winter.  It looks about as you would expect.

On Saturday night we attended the Sinterklaas Parade, the centerpiece of Rhinebeck’s annual crypto-Christian holiday celebration.   Some more images are below.

Sunday was foggy.

Soon it will be Thanksgiving, which means it will be time for Hickory Nut Pie.

We will have to take them on the road, as we’ll be spending Thanksgiving in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I suppose people have traveled farther.

Now that the leaves are down, you can see all sorts of interesting things up in the trees, including this large wasps’ nest in our back yard maple tree.

The Ravens played a very competitive game against the Mahopac Force today.  The Force edged them out 5-0.  I tried to get Sarah fired up by telling her that Mahopac was an Indian word meaning “horse beaters,” but I don’t think she believed me.

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.