RhinebeckFarm.com

We had a very happy Thanksgiving, and quite a feast — roast turkey, mushroom and hickory nut stuffing, sweet potatoes, strawberry jello mold, green beans with almonds, and, a last-minute addition, Jen’s flash-pickled daikon radishes, broccoli stems, red radishes and carrots, all from the garden.

We had a 2:1 person-to-pie ratio, which in many circles is considered optimal.  Julie contributed the pumpkin pie, while Jen made apple and hickory nut.

Some things never change.

On Sunday, Grandpa revealed to Sarah his Secret Project.  She may possibly have had some idea of what Grandpa was doing spending all that time in the barn, why he kept coming up to the house to measure things, and why he kept making trips to the hardware store — she is very perceptive, plus her Aunt Roxy told her that her grandfather was building a dollhouse.  Nevertheless, it was thrilling for Sarah see it for the first time.  While it isn’t completely finished, it is quite beautiful.  I hope Sarah appreciates it as much as we do.

Astute rhinebeckfarm.com viewers will see that the dollhouse is a pretty good likeness.

At our current billing rates this is about four thousand dollars worth of shelled hickory nuts — about enough for a pie.  We are all looking forward to Thanksgiving!

Here is today’s sunset, which I noticed while on a conference call and slipped outside to photograph.  Fortunately, the cordless phone has pretty good range.

From Saturday evening, here’s another example of the beautiful light that makes everything look like a J.F. Cropsey painting.

When we woke up this morning, there was frost on the high grass.  We returned to New York early to watch the marathon.

We were not expecting to have the season’s first blizzard before Halloween.

It started innocently enough.

Then it snowed harder and harder.

By late afternoon we had a full-blown Nor’Easter.  It’s awful to have wet, heavy snow while the trees still have their leaves, particularly given how wet the ground has been — there’s just too much weight.  I spent a good chunk of the evening pushing snow out of trees with a rake.

When we woke up, we had at least eight inches of snow and no electricity.  Still, it was very pretty.

Del Wolcott and Chuck Kelsoe came over to help us get the generators started.

Now we’ll have to clean up the mess.

For Sarah, possibly the best part of soccer is the post-practice ice pop with her friends and teammates Sophie and Michaela.

Back at home, the supposedly wild animals are getting entirely too comfortable.  On Saturday we found two deer napping on the lawn.

And on Sunday we found these two squirrels hanging out on the porch.

Clearly they didn’t get the memo: we’ve had two casualties in the last three weeks.

We haven’t had a frost yet, and flowers continue to bloom in Jen’s garden.

Yet it is peak leaf-peeping season.

On Saturday we cleaned out our car, now officially totaled.

Before soccer practice, Sarah gathered some of the prettier leaves from the yard.

Our biennial hickory nut harvest is upon us.

We’ve gotten a bit smarter: we now know which trees produce the biggest nuts with the thinnest shells, and we’ve also learned that gathering two bushels of nuts is useful only if your goal is to have mice that look like Alex Rodriguez.

Sarah maintains a laser-like focus on quality control.

On Saturday night, we heated up the heirloom deep-fat fryer for home-made french fries.

And on Sunday we took advantage of the beautiful weather to go for a walk, on which Sarah and Jen captured a frog.

He was not a large frog.

It was an old Colgate joke that upstate New York might not have much of a climate, but at least it had plenty of weather.

That’s what we had this weekend: Sarah’s soccer game was rained out on Saturday, and it also rained on Sunday, but in between we had flashes of beautiful fall weather.

During one sunny stretch, we seized the opportunity by going for a walk.

With all the rain we’ve been having, the stream that runs out of the pond was about as full as we’ve seen it.

Sarah befriended a late-departing monarch.

She also caught a couple of grasshoppers.

Here she is with one of the rather large tires of the cherry-picker Central Hudson was using to trim trees around the power lines.

Tonight we subtracted from the sum of deer in Dutchess County.  Everyone is safe and sound (except for the deer, and, perhaps, our car).  We’ll spend the night at the farm and try again in the morning.