Here is a little bit of the fall foliage. This clump of maple is just one of hundreds showing off great color this week. There is not much rain in the forecast so the leaves should hang on for a while.We have been out foraging a lot the last few weeks. The hazelnut crop is very disappointing this year and the bears are really working them hard so it was a race to see who got them first. Sorry to say the bears beat us by a mile! Oh well, that is how it goes. We scouted a grove of butternut trees but it was another disappointment. Most of the trees seem to be suffering from butternut canker and probably won't survive much longer. None of the dozen or so trees appeared to be bearing any nuts.
We did score on a huge patch of wild mint while looking for those butternuts. The native wild mint makes a great tea.
We have gotten some nanny berries but were late going for elderberries and found most had already been eaten by the birds.
Our foraging timing has been off this year and we have not got out in time to harvest several things like the elderberries. We did have a good wild rice harvest bringing home about 500 pounds of green rice. That should finish out to at least 150 of finished rice. Our biggest problem was the constant rain which made getting the rice dry next to impossible. Some of it ended up being dried over a wood fire in my maple syrup pan.
I'll work on finishing the rice after we get done bringing in our firewood for the year. I will be putting up a new shed for our rabbits yet this fall. It will be built mostly with pallets so I'll be doing a post on that and I want to tell about our blueberry season and my DIY berry rakes. We also have a miniature pig due to litter within a few days so that should make a interesting post too. That's about it for now except here is one more pic of Lily waiting for me to throw a stick for her.
