As I sit here typing away in the office, its raining outside! Beautiful heavy rain, complete with rolling thunder. I love the cooler months here on the farm, in fact I prefer the cooler weather full stop. I love the food, the clothes, the smell of the wood fire, frost on the ground and, the slightly slower pace of life. 

We should start to get a few cooler nights, and perhaps the odd morning that will require a jacket when feeding the horses. The horses also seem to sense the change of season. There has been lots of galloping, snorting, kicking, biting and bucking as they play in the paddock, all of which seems to make them hungrier than usual. I hope they keep this behaviour for the paddock and not when I’m riding! Sadly, I have not been riding as much lately as Cryptic injured his leg back in January. He’ll make a full recovery, but it will be a slow recovery. In the meantime, he has this odd shaped shoe that has been hand- made to help relieve the pressure on his hoof and speed up recovery.   My vet estimated it will be the end of April before we even start to think about putting a saddle back on him. Doubly disappointing because trail riding in Autumn is beautiful. 

I’ve started to prepare the vegetable garden for winter. I was so proud of my vegetable garden this year. It’s the first time I’ve really given it a good go, so I’m excited to see what I can grow over winter. I’ve already planted the brussel sprouts, broccoli and cabbage seeds into pots and they are coming along nicely. I also seem to be getting a late run of zucchini.

I’ve been researching what to plant and my lovely friend Linda gave me this great planting chart from Diggers. Things are getting serious here people! 

I also need to pick these cumquats. I made a lovely cumquat marmalade from the last batch so this time might try a cumquat paste to have on a cheese platter…..and a glass of red wine, naturally!

Autumn also means that the grass should stop growing. Oh boy, the grass is literally up to our waist in the paddocks. Excessive grass would normally be a good thing, but we don’t have cows at the moment, so it’s a fulltime job keeping in under control. The horses are more than happy to help out with eating the grass, but I have to monitor how much they have because too much is never a good thing. 

The weather forecast is for continuing heavy rain all week! Looks like I will have to put the gardening on hold for a few days and keep myself busy inside.