Connie’s pantry is FULL to overflowing of canned tomatoes, tomato juice, peaches, cherries, beans, pickles, jams, et cetera, quite an impressive sight.

Harvest Festival has been going on all week long all over the valley. People are celebrating not only the fall colors and sweet sunny days, but the bounty of our gardens, personal, community, and professional. Connie has been canning since mid-summer. She let me come over and learn some tricks while she helped me can my tiny basketful of tiny jalapeño peppers.

She was pickling beets when I arrived. I dawdled along the road on my way, counting sandhill cranes lifting off the fields east of the highway, climbing and flying in front of spectacular colors on the mountains. I counted 80 on the way, and another 300 or so circling high in front of Mendicant Ridge when I arrived.

You cannot see the cranes in this photo because they aren’t there. I took it as I left, to head home and make some tomato paste.

Half my Fuji apple crop remains on the tree. I ate one too early, too green; ate two just right and shared a third, and one more grows on the other side of the tree. Less than nothing compared to established trees throughout the valley, but the first apples on this little tree. I’m so glad I planted her right by the gate. Just as I planned years ago, I walk by and grab an apple on the way out. A mighty accomplishment.

Last week I built the first fire in the woodstove. The next night I built another, not because I really needed it, but because it was too cold to eat ice cream without a fire.  Anne and Mann’s raspberry truffle, available only on occasion at Ollie’s in Paonia and now gone for the season. I took home a pint from the last bucket I can hope to see til May.

Yum.