Kids, cows, crops, canning, chaos

Fall is always an interesting time of year. The end of September could be 75 and sunny or 45 and cloudy — one just never knows what to expect.

However, one thing that is a guarantee for late September and early October is busyness. Between the kids’ school and activity schedules, harvesting crops, managing the cows, canning and preserving produce from my garden, and keeping the house clean, I can barely keep up.

School started up, and we officially have school-aged children. With this comes school activities. We have just one child in after-school activities, which means just one night a week, so that part of our life is manageable thus far.

With the cows, there is always someone calving or someone needing to be bred or dried off. Since we calve year-round, those are always a constant.

It is the next set of items on the seasonal to-do list that make the next few weeks the busiest time of year: harvest.

We farm enough to make feed for our cows, plus a few extra acres as additional cash crop income. Jason also has four extended family members that farm, and they all help each other by sharing equipment to get everybody’s fields taken in. We have corn silage done for this year, but we still have to combine the dry corn. Now that the weather has decided to turn cold and damp instead of warm and sunny, it has delayed the start of the tractors and wagons. The time will come sooner or later, and as always, it will go by in the blink of an eye.

Besides harvesting the fields, I have started collecting produce from my garden. I canned a couple of batches of tomatoes and dug up potatoes a few times for supper. I have a couple of tomatoes still on the plant that are slowly changing from green to red. I will do salsa next and then see how many I will get before it freezes. I’m not sure what happened to my carrots, but there are only about 15 after what seemed like planting 100 seeds. The same goes for my pumpkins; I know I had at least eight plants at one time, but most of them have died off. The kids and I have only found one pumpkin, which they are already arguing over who will get to pick it and bring into the house.

We have picked all the apples off the trees, a task the kids enjoyed helping with. Last year, we got about 20 5-gallon pails off one tree alone. This year, due to the drought and being the off year for our biannual trees, we got maybe one 5-gallon pail. They still made for good eating but were definitely on the small side.

As the days get shorter and the temperature continues to drop, the kids and I are not spending as much time outside and therefore are spending more time inside. Anyone with kids will know that means it is harder and harder to keep the house clean. I keep reminding myself that it is just the phase of life we are at right now. Another year from now, the kids will be better at picking up their toys (hopefully). Allison is decent at picking up her toys, and anytime I ask her to clean her room, she does so. Carson is starting to catch on, but most of the time, five minutes after we get done cleaning his room, he gets a box of toys back out and dumps it out to play with. Madison is only 2 years old, so she is still learning that we need to pick up our toys.

Someday I will have a clean house again. Until then, I will be surrounded by kids, cows, crops and chaos.