RhinebeckFarm.com

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.

We had a splendid time at the 170th Dutchess County Fair.

Sarah met a Doberman-colored bunny, while local matrons looked on in horror.

Jen took to the air.

I got the chance to bump Sarah.

And vice versa.

We triumphed in the culinary arts.

(No, really, we killed it this year.)

And, at the Miracle of Life Dairy Birthing Center, we saw this calf just a few minutes after he was born.

We cheered as he stood up for the first time.

I was awakened Saturday morning by this pileated woodpecker — not by his hammering away at the maple tree outside our bedroom window, but rather by the sound of wood chips falling on the hood of the car parked below.

It’s just as well we had an early start.  We harvested peaches from our nano-orchard.  The peach trees were Jen’s mother’s day gift in 2012, and this is the first year we got to them before the deer did.

Jen made a peach buckle.

Daisy rested after many hours of agility training with Sarah.  We’ll have more on that soon.

We just finished a two-week vacation at the farm.  (Or, rather, I finished it.  Sarah and Jen continue to vacation.)  Here’s Sarah having a sip of water after hiking through Ferncliff Forest, just outside the village of Rhinebeck.

It’s part of the old Astor estate.  Jen and I climbed the fire tower, which gives spectacular views in every direction.  Behind Jen you can see the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge.  Sarah, not having any of it, remained on terra firma.

During the first week, Sarah attended Camp Kindness, operated by militant vegans at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary.  The campers spent a week caring for rescued animals and being brainwashed as to the evilness of all farming.  Sarah was forced to sign a written pledge that she would try her hardest to become a lacto-vegetarian.  At one point, a bacon-eating child was told that he was “outside the circle of compassion.”

We had lots of visitors.  Lauren, Sarah’s babysitter emeritus, stopped by for the weekend with Hamilton, a sweet and energetic Black & Tan Coonhound.  Hamilton and Daisy got along swimmingly.

We also saw the Harris boys, and took them to pick yellow donut peaches.

Erica and Geoff spent the night on their way to Maine.  They were game for a jam tasting.

The second week, Sarah attended Mill Street Loft, where she created works of art without the benefit of air conditioning.  (Fortunately, it was pretty cool last week.)  The week culminated in a camp-wide stage performance, in which Sarah was a box.

In between all these camping adventures, she and her mom swam in the pond.

Jen cleared phragmites from the front of the pond.

And our Bee Balm bloomed.