Autumn weather arrived this past weekend and the long-range forecast suggests it may stick around.  Luckily, we're mostly in gravy mode in the garden --- we've packed away enough vegetables to last us for the winter, and are just enjoying eating the rest of the harvest (with occasional bouts of tomato drying or pepper freezing for variety later in the year).  The figs are still dragging their feet and refusing to ripen, but the blueberries are winding down and the red raspberries are in full swing.

Mom asked what I planned to do if we get an early frost and I said that, really, we're ready.  Not that I want summer to end, but when freezing temperatures are forecast, we'll just let them happen.

One experiment hasn't quite reached it conclusion --- the sorghum plants I seeded at the beginning of July.  Just as our current cool spell came in, the plants shot up even higher and pushed out flower heads, which may or may not have time to turn into seeds before the frost.  I took the photo to the left with the zoom feature since these heads are way out of my reach, making our tall sunflowers look like midgets in comparison.

Cooler weather also reminds me that it's time to pay attention to the bees.  I did a second varroa-mite count last weekend and was extremely pleased with the results --- 2.5 mites per day in the daughter hive and 3.5 mites per day in the mother hive.  Our Texas bees continue to be worth their weight in gold.

But are they worth their weight in honey?  Now that the humidity has dropped below 90%, I'm hoping for a sunny and moderately warm afternoon to harvest honey from the mother hive.  (The daughter will have the empty bottom box removed but will otherwise be left alone.)  Maybe Friday?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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