November was a very windy and rainy month with power outages. A lot of wind. The rain was heavy, but being we are in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains we saw far less than the mainland, where it flooded badly.
The month started off with nearly 10 hours of daylight. We are still stuck in Daylight Savings – even though our state has passed to stop it – but Washington State cannot change it without Federal permission. Not long after this, we did fall back so we could pretend an extra hour of light means anything. Even though you will see that by the end of the month we lose most of that light….
I dug up the potatoes I planted at the end of summer. These were Ozette potatoes.
Just like spring potatoes, these are smaller but packed with flavor.
Fall settling in, the trees hadn’t shed yet.
When a wild cottontail rabbit moves into a chicken coop and acts offended that you are evicting it….
One of my coops (the one we got from our neighbor) has a roof leak. I put up a classy tarp, but alas, it needs a bigger tarp. The inside of the coop upstairs leaks on one side.
The rain comes from the South Pacific, and is warm. Only a couple of days have been cold this past month. Strawberry flowers were setting all month. No fruit though, not enough daylight.
The strongest of the storms had one Hemlock snap halfway up.
It fell as good as it could have.
A few more Hemlocks fell over, root ball tipping.
Kirk out cutting it.
Blackberry blooms at the end of the month.
Tiny, the rooster, that showed up one day on our homestead, disappeared just as suddenly. We didn’t find any feathers showing he had been grabbed.
However, this chicken was finally maturing into a rooster. He was natural born and raised by Rosie. I have wondered if Tiny took off because the other rooster matured. Raven Jr (named for his Dad, who went to another homestead to produce babies) is now about 4X the size that Tiny was. Tiny was in the Bantam family and all my hens are full sized.
Raven Jr on the far left. Enjoying grapes in the fall sun. The ducks hang out with the chickens all day.
The month slipped by and soon an hour less light.
Between storms the skies were amazing at sunset over the Olympic Mountains.
The dreary days were great for making bread though.
But those sunsets…..
On the last day of November we had dropped to 8 hours and 41 minutes of light. The Winter Solstice will occur on December 21st so there is that to look forward to. The quiet months flow quickly, and next month will be the start of the growing season, where I must start thinking about 2022!
~Sarah