We have a month of summer left, officially. Somehow, it's become clear that this is the end of the season. Mornings are almost chilly, and even though afternoons can be warm, verging on hot, the air feels different. It's more refreshing. The sun rises later and sets earlier. As we used to say when I worked in Silicon Valley, "change is our friend." Fighting it is counter-productive. So bring it on. Get on with things.
We are preparing for autumn and winter. Yesterday we made another six quarts of tomato sauce for the freezer and our winter meals. I've stored a lot of summertime foods in the freezer, and they'll comfort us over the cold months. We still have to figure out what to do with all the rest of the tomatoes growing out in the garden. Paste, probably. Next year, Walt says, he'll grow fewer of them so that we won't feel so overwhelmed by the huge harvest we have to deal with. I don't know about you, but I hate to see good things go to waste.
And we are laying in stocks not just of tomato sauce and summertime foods, but also firewood and heating oil. Living out in the country means we don't have piped-in gas. We have to be proactive about getting supplies ordered and delivered. Our boiler, which heats water for the radiators all around the house, is oil-fired. We expect a delivery of 1,500 liters of oil on Friday. That's about 400 U.S. gallons and should get us through the winter.
And yesterday I called our supplier and ordered four stères (cubic meters) of oak logs to burn in the wood stove. That's just over a cord of wood. It's our fall-back in case the electricity is cut or the boiler fails. Yes, the boiler needs both oil and electricity. We really need a new wood-burning stove. The one we have is 12 years old and worn out. We think we might have found one yesterday that will meet our needs (photo above). It has to fit inside our fireplace and the door has to open the right way. Our winters are usually mild, but it would be difficult to live without a good heating system.
And yesterday I called our supplier and ordered four stères (cubic meters) of oak logs to burn in the wood stove. That's just over a cord of wood. It's our fall-back in case the electricity is cut or the boiler fails. Yes, the boiler needs both oil and electricity. We really need a new wood-burning stove. The one we have is 12 years old and worn out. We think we might have found one yesterday that will meet our needs (photo above). It has to fit inside our fireplace and the door has to open the right way. Our winters are usually mild, but it would be difficult to live without a good heating system.
I am looking forward to autumn. The summer has been very hot and dry, and I'm tired of it now. It gets kind of boring after a while. And the life style we've fallen into since we came to live here 15 years ago requires us to do a lot of work from spring through fall. In winter, we can relax again. It's not so much that we work really hard in summertime — it's more that we realize all the things that need to be done but are being neglected. It's a race to finish everything before the rains come back and the weather turns cold.
I always feel a certain excitement at this time of year - perhaps because school was often beginning then...This post reminds me of Greg Brown's song Canned Goods - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-0ZCqga48
ReplyDeleteIt's very satisfying, this getting ready for winter.
Some great photos of your Loire Valley lifestyle here. The last one is so like a painting - that golden light!
ReplyDeleteThat was a very pretty evening, with all that golden light.
DeleteDo you usually manage to use up all of the tomato sauce and tomato paste that you put up in the freezer, Ken?
ReplyDeleteWe still have a few containers of tomato sauce, and a few jars each of tomato paste and dried tomatoes from 2017. But last year we had 36 tomato plants; this year just 25. Next year the plan is to put in just 18. I used 2017 tomato paste in the zucchini dish I made this morning, along with some fresh 2018 tomatoes.
DeleteThis post reminds me of the time we spent in Vermont. By mid-August the wild cherries and sumac were turning red and mornings definitely required jackets. Seems to me that Walt has made that resolution in the past, but come Spring it's hard to resist planting all those seeds. I know the feeling.
ReplyDeleteWe are farther north than Vermont. The maritime influence (Gulf Stream) keeps us a little warmer, but the days get very short toward December. I'll let you know next summer whether we were able to keep the number of tomato plants down to 18... I wore jeans and a flannel shirt on my walk with Tasha this morning. It was pleasant.
DeleteThat stove looks just right. Love the last photo, I enjoy the feeling that the season's changing brings- my favorite is the one that comes with Spring, but Fall is nice too.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I'm going to the Bricorama store in Saint-Aignan that has that stove. I called the man who would install it for us yesterday and he said it might be necessary to put a new liner in our chimney because the old one is too small for the new stove. That could get expensive but I'm thinking it might be worth the cost.
DeleteEach year as we get older it is more taxing to do all the things in Summer that we dream about in Winter. This year my husband had hip surgery so we planned less and even with that we wish for even more simplicity. I do miss our own tomatoes but the squirrels discovered them last year so I'm not feeding them again this year! We have a fireplace insert downstairs for when the power goes out. We got the kind that has a little oven on top so I can cook, too - very handy. It was a few power outages before I remembered that with a gas hot water heater we could still take hot showers without power! You would think being in the middle of "civilization" power wouldn't be a problem but we have had many "quiet evenings" each year. My one wish would be one powerful light at those times so I could read a book.
ReplyDeleteWe had a power outage that lasted 4½ days back in 2010. Things in our chest freezer stayed frozen all that time and we didn't lose anything. When the power went out, I moved everything out of the smaller freezer in the kitchen to the big one so that it would be a larger mass of frozen food, and that turned out to be a good idea. Water in our big water heater stayed hot for a couple of days. We have a gas stove in the kitchen and a wood stove in the living room, so we could cook. That was our longest outage but not the only one. Many others....
DeleteLove the picture of the grapes. We're looking forward to summer being over as well. It has been in the 90s much of the time with humidity over 60%.
ReplyDeleteThis summer of 2018 will be an excellent memory. But it's time for a change. It was pretty hot yesterday afternoon, but closer to 85 than 90. Not too brutal.
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