It has been a long, busy, beautiful Summer here at Stone Soup. The horses are fat, the garden was fantastic, the broiler chickens are coming along nicely(except for the five that the fox bit the heads off from), the days are getting shorter and cooler and the full weight of the Fall harvest is upon us.As our days run on into the night, sometimes till 11:00, we are thinking of winter.
  Winter is a little quieter around here when the long nights drive us inside by 4:30, but there is still plenty to do. Aside from the usual daily chores there will be the Winter chores to prepare us for the Seasons ahead. This Winter we will be cutting and splitting firewood for next Winter and selecting the trees that we will need to saw  into lumber for a new roof for a barn that we took down in Topsham last Fall and will re-construct next Summer here at S.S.I. The horses have been on light duty all Summer and I think that they will be happy for a daily routine of logging. We are currently accepting applications for four students for a Winter semester that will focus mainly on Horse Logging. Anyone interested in applying can take a look at the full Course Description on our web-site at www.stone-soup-institute.org

Highlights of the Past Year

Well, it has been along time since I wrote a post, but a lot of wonderful  things have a happened- the garden is in amazing shape, its been the best year for berries that I have known, and there has been a number of building projects in the works. Notable buildings are a pig pen, and a mobile chicken tractor.   Thirty-one "Freedom Rangers" broiler chicks arrrived about a week and half ago-they will be the first residents of the chicken tractor. I picked them up from the post office, where they were making quite a racket. 

The garden is just about to go into heavy production- with massive amounts of pickling cucumbers getting ready to come on, and an even more massive amount of tomatoes. An ample supply of canning jars will be critical to a successful year. I plan on making a lot of tomato juice, sauce and salsa,  and a couple jars of ketchup. I love making tomato sauce in mid-October on the wood-stove, when you can just leave a pot on top of the stove and it fills the whole house with the smell of tomatoes. We are just entering into late summer  now- as evidence by the deeper color of the sun, and the deep green of the leaves. Nature always goes in that familiar pattern- things are just a little bit different each day. You don't notice it, then one day, you look and everything is different from the way it was.