Sign's of Fall

   We all recognize the sign's of Fall, the tree's leaves are taking color, the yellow school bus goes by, the arts and crafts stores are full of fall materials to make your home colorful even Halloween crafts are displayed. For us here at Shaw Acre's it means the winter birds are coming to the feeder and the fat has been hung out for the woodpeckers. Our tiny nuthatches and chickadees still come to eat out of our hands when ever we come out to sit on the deck, they prefer we feed them by hand then to go to the hanging feeder. The grass has slowed down so that mowing is less frequent and I heard the furnace come on so it is definitely cooler outside. Don busies himself with getting the wood piles covered with tarps to keep them dry when the fall rains come. His piles of wood are a work of art with each chunk of wood stacked just so and in long neat rows. There are many cozy warm days inside those logs when the snow is blowing against the windows this winter. I love to go down to the furnace room and throw  a log into our Daka wood burning furnace, it means that as long as it is heating our house the fuel oil furnace won't come on and that is quite a savings. Wood is a different heat , more comfortable. Also a pleasure to watch as we snuggle together watching the logs burn in our fireplace in the family room. Don keeps our woods free of dead and dying trees by adding them to the wood pile and a bonus is that Don keeps fit and trim as well.
   Fall is here when the White Pine Harvest Show is on. Sunday before last Don and I stopped by and picked up our friends and neighbors, the Nelson's and we drove to the show. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was a terrific turn out, we found some very good seats and watched over 200 tractors go by just feet from where we sat. Mary Ann and I sat together and talked of many things while the men sat and discussed each tractor as it went by. Marv and Don have so much in common and their knowledge of tractors astounds me. Marv said " that is my dad's old tractor" as one old tractor passed by and he was right but what amazed me was he recognized it by a small bit of welding on the grill. We walked around the park and went into the various buildings to watch them making wooden kegs, sawing logs, making horse shoes and in one house we watched a lady cooking on her cast iron stove while the scent of warm cookies filled the air. We watched them harvest grain and chop corn using vintage machines. We strolled around to see the wares of the vendors and stopped only long enough to eat lunch. At the end of a long day we decided to go to Finlayson for our supper at the town cafe. What a fun day it turned out to be and for me Fall is now officially here.