Autumn Equinox

Thursday, September 22, 2022 at 6:03 pm PDT
The directly overhead sun crossed the Equator, my time, as stated above.

Except for a windy Thursday the weather was great here. Elsewhere in the State there was a greater amount of haze and smoke.

The turkeys have stayed around. The newer visitors have been a pair of large sows.
Our neighbors to the east moved to the place that was occupied by an elderly couple – Mark and Helen, now deceased – that arrived after his work ended on the Alaska pipeline. The new couple Krista and Corkey have farm backgrounds and began raising pigs to sell to the 4-H participants. After 20 years or so of that, the operation is now down to just two older females – sort of part of the family. Pens and fences meant to keep the little ones in have become derelict and the two sows have been roaming over their entire lot – and now mine.
I didn’t have a phone number – dropped landline – for them and the visitors didn’t want to be led or herded by me so I had to walk over and alert the owners. There is a fence that kept a horse in but he is now gone and the fence and the open front gate won’t keep the old sows home.
Until there is “a fix”, I will have to add ‘watch for hogs’ to my warning to visitors to watch for deer. I’m guessing the turkeys will move on, although they were relaxing on the driveway yesterday morning.

Outside I’ve been cleaning up debris piles, making firewood, and doing a bit of landscaping. If I had a dozen workers for two weeks, I’d notice the progress. As it is, I know there is improvement, but it is not yet noticeable to a visitor.

Friday was a bottling event at White Heron.

From left to right Eric (in red) takes empty bottles and places them on filler-tubes (not seen). Phil (gray shirt, no hat) takes a filled bottle and places it in the corking machine (blue). I take the bottle off the corker and pass it to Audrey who places the bottle onto rollers where it spins and gets labels. Garrett is taking the finished bottle and placing it in a carton, that when filled will get carried to a pallet. I think we did 56 cases. Carrying and stacking is the most strenuous part of the procedure. A filled cased weighs about 35 pounds.

Up next in the news is a storm called Ian – expected to visit Florida about next Thursday with winds over 74 mph.
Here, I am expecting a week of nice weather.

Saturday a family stopped by with kids and Brittanys. The GPS led them here looking of geodes. I’ve got lots of rocks but nothing of interest except things we collected. They had an orange & white young adult dog and a smaller puppy of liver & white. I gave them a few things and a little advice and directions and sent them off toward Red Top Mountain. They were from Kennewick, 2 hours south.

Keeping track on the Naneum Fan

John