Autumn
Hello friends and welcome to Toad’s Stool. It is just so hard to believe that another month has passed us by and here it is October. Fall colors are sure later than usual. I normally gauge the turning of the leaves by my mothers and my wife’s birthdays, September 14 and 28. By the fourteenth each year several Maples have usually changed and by the twenty-eighth most of the trees are colored, but this year things are a bit slower. Well except for the passing of time which seems to be flying.
I hope that each of you were blessed with a garden producing the way ours has been. Lots of summer squash and many tomatoes. We even got a few hills of spuds to do well this year. Only a few but them fresh redskins were sure tasty.
We have been seeing some birds gathering together for the trip south. My wife’s parents are from Prescott and on one visit we saw several hundred Sand-hill Cranes in the fields north of town.
I was serenaded by a group of owls the other night, seven or eight Barred Owls were carrying on quite a vocal demonstration. Their sound to me is as great as most near any singer that there is and five to ten minutes of their song sure makes a guy feel blessed.
I have not been seeing as many Gross Beaks this summer but then I have not been as diligent as I should be with the feed.
With the last part of Zimowske Road being paved the road crew brought in several loads of back fill and have increased the size of usable property immensely. I hope to have the Kill Deer family back again next year and with the extra room maybe even another family will join them.
Fall mushrooms have sure been abundant this year. All of the rain and humid weather has made them pop up everywhere. While some are very easy to identify and have no look alikes I would like to caution everyone to make sure that you know what it is when you are foraging for food. A mushroom no matter how good it tastes is not worth dying for.
Deer season has started with the early hunts and I would like to wish all of the hunters good luck. I would also like to remind others like myself that are not hunting to keep the hunters in mind while you are traipsing around the woods picking all of that free food, we need to be respectful of others using the resources in our great state.
While I am mentioning being respectful I need to apologize to the person riding a four wheel ATV on Mapes Road by the CCC camps. I should not have lost my temper but it sure does aggravate me when I see someone spinning doughnuts in the road and making ruts that we have to drive through. It is also an added expense for the county to have to send out a truck just to blade the area smooth. That being said I still could have been nicer, I am sorry.
My family has finally joined the Instant Pot craze. While it is a good machine I still feel that most stuff people do could be done in a good crock pot. One thing that it does do awesome is make yogurt, that is if you have the yogurt feature. I love yogurt and we make our own Muesli and when mixed together with honey, fresh jam or another sweetener is better than any I have ever bought premade.
Well I guess that I should shut up and let ya all get to another story here in this paper.
Take care in the woods and please help keep our great state clean.
Warren “Toad” Stutesman
