Surely Santa has begun a preliminary tally of naughty & nice kiddos, but my list has naught to do with the song, Santa, or Christmas wishes. (In fact, nothing that I seriously wish for can be purchased, and what I actually need is less of that which I have in abundance: clutter, over-full closets, access to negative news, etc.) Rather, the "list" in my blog title refers to our reasons for thanks-giving, and there are many--big important reasons like good health, comfy quarters, personal safety, close friends, and cherished family. Though turkey and aftermath sandwiches lack such gravitas, they are among my reasons for eager anticipation of this upcoming day of thanks. Also included: raw cranberry/orange relish, baked yams, pumpkin pull-apart bread, and sparkling cider. 

The acorns featured in my previous blog are not on my list of savory reasons to give thanks. Emphatically not! I have concluded that no amount of roasting, butter, salt, or garlic can transform bur oak nut meats into worthy snacks. I reluctantly eat one or two per day and remind myself that many would welcome such grim fare. I love the oak trees that thrive in our yard; I hope the seedlings that I planted last spring survive the winter and grow to robust maturity over the next decades; I continue to nurture six acorns that lie dormant in moist vermiculite and await planting next spring. However, any nutmeats that they and their predecessors produce henceforth will not be harvested for our use. Wild gleaners--raccoons, foxes, or birds--are welcome to them. 

With the exception of those nasty acorns, fresh produce from orchard and garden is nearly gone. The last Macs went into a double batch of apple rum cake. Tail end tomatoes simmered into lentil soup and baked into veggie pie. The few remaining buttercup squash may become compost before we have time to bake them.

As of this evening, ewes and bucks are separated. Ewes will go onto pasture that the cows just vacated, trekking down the driveway and up the county road every morning and returning to the corral each evening--hopefully trimming their hooves en route--until snow cover forces us to start feeding hay. We'd like to postpone that responsibility until 2018.

In between routine chores I am painting, motivated by a commitment to display with other MT Watercolor Society members during Western Art Week in March. That date feels remote, but there is much to do before I will be ready. I envision numerous small paintings of barns. For now, ideas are accumulating faster than inventory.  

Our autumn jobs list has shrunk: 

​Cows are home, after loading cooperatively out of a tired corral on leased fall pasture. Prior to load-out, we spent a long afternoon bolstering sagging rails and rotten posts with fill and fakery--wire here, bits of plywood there, an old barrel elsewhere--blocking gaps, and adding height to create an illusion of strength adequate for getting our docile reds on board trailers bound for home. Our bluff worked. 

Since then, we've marketed steer calves, booster vaccinated heifer calves, poured cows and heifers with Ivermectin, and moved them to fresh pasture nearby.






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A half dozen acorns from the bur oak trees in our yard are stored in the fridge in preparation for spring germination and planting. Additionally, Katrina and I gathered a bagful of acorns, hammered them open, and extracted a quart or two of nut meats. They currently are soaking in cold water baths, changed twice daily, to remove bitter tannins. After their bath water clears, I plan to sprinkle them lightly with salt, roast them to toasty perfection, and give small experimental samples to my siblings at Christmas. If roasted acorns pass muster with family, we'll harvest more ambitiously in the future. Until then, raccoons gather nightly in our yard to plump on remaining fallen gleanings.

As for my fencing project, corner posts are set, brace posts are machine pounded, horizontal wooden braces are nailed and wire X-braces are twisted tight, in-between metal posts are all hand-whammered, both wire gates are in place, the bottom wire is stretched, stapled, and clipped in place all around, and two additional strands of wire are in place around part of the enclosure. Wires yet unstrung, on what is intended to be a five-strand fence, must await better weather, for I have neither the inclination nor the oomph to build fence in snow and single digit temperatures. 

Though bird watching is not among our remaining must-do jobs, sighting a Blue Jay in the shelterbelt was a memorable first for me; frequent glimpses of partridges huddled within our dense chokecherry thickets are always satisfying. Such comfortable, indoor, window-birding will continue until we emerge from our early blast of winter. For now, I'm content with a good book, a cozy lap robe, and time to blog, with only occasional forays outside to chop ice in stock water-troughs and photograph snow laden crab-apples and juniper gnomes.