I Love Fall

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Growing up on a farm, I have many sensory experiences that bring back memories: the vision of the "golden waves of grain", rippling (really, truly!) across massive fields. The smell of newly cut grain, the chaff floating in the wind as the trucks roar past the house on their way to the granary. Watching herds of combines travel close together down our country roads on their way to harvesting a farmer's fields. The smell of the moist overturned earth as monster farm machinery uproot potatoes from their summer homes. Burning stubble fields (not necessarily pleasant, but a memory nonetheless). The smell of raked leaves (Did you know there was a smell to that? Get your nose down there and try it sometime). Looking across the landscape in almost every direction and seeing trucks hauling their full loads to cellars and granaries. Driving over the bumpy roads, where the dirt clods from trucks pulling out of the fields get smashed into nature's speed bumps . Smelling the moist, earthy potatoes in the cellars, as the trucks spill their loads onto conveyor belts, which in turn make massive mountains of potatoes in the long, cold and dark cellar aisles. Smelling someone in the neighborhood burning their piles of leaves. New school clothes, football games, the local fair, taking our 4-H pigs to that fair, the water fights in the pig barn . . .

Well, that was "yesterday". Today we are creating new memories for our next few generations. Fall means:

Soccer, of course!

Not quite sure what was going on here, but Chloe sure got disgusted . . .  

. . .but our little gazelle must have gotten over it,

because she sure got in gear!

Charlotte enjoys the treat provided for Chloe's team after the game.

It was a little cold outside . . .

Fall means it's time for Katie and me to hook up in Boise and

party for a long weekend while her husband is off hunting.

Three generations!

. . . where we eat at a fondue restaurant (always, even though the

nationally known fondue restaurant was closed this year for

remodeling . . . but we found a different one!)

. . . where we find other funky restaurants . . .

Donnie Mac's Trailer Park Cuisine. Yep, the cuisine really was

"trailer parkish" - mac & cheese, burgers, etc. Fun place to go!

. . . and where Meemaw gets to spend extra time

with her "girls" who live too far away.

 

Annie Fannie Foo Foo

Fall is when we get to bake Halloween cookies.

They were oh so yummy!

Fall is dressing up for trick or treating . . .

A zombie and Elmo

. . . and going to parties where we try to eat donuts on strings . . .

Success!

You can see why . . . fall is still my favorite time of year!