It’s hard to believe, but fall is definitely in the air here in Bellville. Our 165th Street Fair, the oldest in Ohio, begins today and that brings more than 50,000 people to our beautiful village of 1,900 residents! The Fair dates back to 1850 and is always held in September to coincide with harvest time.
Main Street is closed off and some of the side streets are also with huge tents and the rides that thrill the children. Friday is “Kid’s Day” at the Fair so school is dismissed early so the children can enjoy everything from food to animals to rides!
Other signs of fall include more wood, actually whole trees, being delivered by friend Gary Fry. It will be cut and split for the outdoor wood furnace.
The trees are beginning to have a color change, from green to a brownish-green, some losing their leaves before they even change in color. And the hummingbirds are gone, a sure sign of fall. They always arrive the first week in May and leave the first week of September.
My Sweet Annie is ripe and ready to harvest for inside decorations for fall. It has a wonderful smell, hard to explain it, but it’s a great fall aroma in the house. I was told farmers used to plant Sweet Annie around pig sties to mask the odor. It can certainly do that!!
The apples are ripening fast now, the early ones are already apple butter stored for the winter. The late apples will become apple sauce very soon!
My miniature donkeys, Samson and Delilah, aren’t putting on their winter coats yet, thank goodness, but they are enjoying the cool, well COLD, mornings we’ve had this week. Monday morning, the temperature was 43 degrees!
They love their sweet feed! They’ve been together since they were 4 and 5 months old and can’t stand to be separated. If they both go outside, they meet at the fence and if one is in and one out, they bray, a most pathetic sound, until they can see each other.
Ah, life on the homestead! How sweet it is ….
