Autumn Days at My Cabin: Splitting Wood, Canning

Autumn is alive in the countryside. You can feel it on your skin and see it in every direction. Cool, crisp air and warmly colored trees. Sunlight becoming slightly more scarce each day as we step into this new season, or rather, the return of one. An ongoing transition in the continual cycle of life, and I can't help but notice how everything has a deeper meaning. As the leaves turn from green to orange, we know that change is natural and necessary, and as they release, the message of letting go floats through the wind, telling us we can drop what we no longer require. And in the ripe gardens, we are reminded of gratitude and appreciation, and that urge to slow down starts kicking in. But for now, there is also that instinct to prepare, carrying out the remaining tasks before the first snowfall, balancing work, and witnessing the stunning spectacle. This is early autumn in rural New England. The sun just set and I just finished up foraging a couple handfuls of rose hips. These ones are quite tiny because they're off of the multiflora rose, which back a couple months ago I did gather some of the petals from those, made a really nice perfume with that. Now the season has progressed, and where the petals have fallen off naturally, now there are the rose hips, and they're stuffed with vitamin c and antioxidants. They're good for you internally and externally, and in my small batches of different oils and salves, a lot of them do feature rose hip oil, so I want to get these infusing. Like I said, these are pretty small, so you do need to gather a bunch, but you always want to be mindful. The birds like snacking on them, so leave over half of what you find always. They keep moving around, so it's hard to show what I got all the way, but over the span of the last year, I've grown really fond of these and close with them and worked with them a lot. I can't wait to get this magic infusing. What's that noise? Something's behind me. You've just been splitting these ones. Look at the size of that one. I know, it's crazy. Wait, how much we're gonna have to split when we have two stoves, and how much more kindling we're gonna have to make, and like splitting of wood. Today's our first morning of the season doing firewood. We just filled up the first cart, so we're a lot more ahead than we were last year out in the snow, in the mud, chopping throughout the season. How many loads are we gonna do today? Just enough to fill the inside and outside. The shipper is not working at the thing though. Really? I don't know if it already dulled itself, like when I stopped using it, it wasn't working very well. And we could borrow the splitter from my dad if we need it for some of the bigger pieces, or to just pump out even more. Yeah. We've also got to build two woodsheds this year, is the plan. We built one at the cabin last year, so probably build one similar to that over in this area that Kyle made for all of our lumber. I guess it's full. There are two points in the year, fall going into winter and winter going into spring, where your boots are going to be up against the elements. So if you want them to last and also keep them waterproof, it's really important that you hit them with a boot balm or a leather conditioner. And I've been working over the years on developing a really effective, completely natural formula for this right here in my small office in my house. All the while, the bat that has been living with me for a month in the window has been watching over, seeing it all happen. But yeah, beyond factors like money and sustainability, another huge thing for me with my leather is that it holds memories, whether it was my gloves, chopping wood, or my boots out on my favorite trails and the things that happen along the way. I want to be able to make these last for years and years and stay durable. And that being said, I think this is my favorite thing to make and use at this time in the year. Cutting circular labels is not my specialty, but I'm getting a little bit better at it as time goes on. This week, I've been spending a ton of time right in my office making sure that the candles and scrubs and oils are stocked. But I also have been running some tests in here because the cold season is coming up and I need to make sure that this room stays operational when the power goes out. I want to be able to reliably power this whole room. So my solution to that has been the Jackery 2000 V2 solar generator, and they are the sponsor of this video. Jackery's 2000 V2 solar generator is an effortless solution for home power stability, instant power, no installation. This generator is designed to replace traditional fuel-powered generators. It's cleaner, quieter, and more user-friendly. The size is convenient, it's portable, I can take it around with me wherever I need it to go. With 2042 watt-hour capacity and a 2200 watt output power, it's suitable for large household appliances like your fridge. And for me, all the electronics in my office. It's also got a flashlight so you can navigate in the dark and on top of this, it has a two-hour solar charging speed, which is an industry-leading rate. And when it is charging, it's under 30 decibels. And you don't have to worry about the cold. It's got low temperature resistance up to negative 20 degrees Celsius. The instant 20 millisecond UPS switching ensures uninterrupted power for critical devices, keeping everything going during a sudden outage. Beyond this, it has a five-year full warranty. Jackery makes me feel extremely secure and I couldn't recommend this generator more. So whether you just want to move towards a more greener and sustainable lifestyle, or you'd like to see what Jackery can power for you, you can click the link that's most applicable to you in the description below. And again, thank you to Jackery for sponsoring this video and keeping me up and running. First fire of the year. Harper's first fire ever. So it's really cozy in here right now and warm. Perfect time to do boot balm. I'm going to let this start warming up. Putting it right here. You want to start with whatever leather you are applying it to. It needs to be clean, dry, and warm. Once the balm does become malleable, it doesn't have to be completely liquid, but when you can work with it, take a rag that you don't mind getting oil on and scoop out. Start rubbing in a circle onto your leather, working it in generously. Get a nice thick coat on there and then let it cool. Once it cools, then you can buff it gently to get the excess off. And if you really want to take it a step further, you can repeat this one more time, but one round should be sufficient. Okay, here we are. This is what the boots look like when they're done. You can see they're a little bit darker in color because they just absorbed all the goodness that came from the balm. That will fade with time. Also, you don't need a wood stove for this. You could use a radiator, a hairdryer, whatever's best for you. So if you, a friend, family member are interested, especially with the holidays coming up, the small batch that I just made is ready to go. I'd be really excited to share it with you. This round of apples is so much better than the last one. I mean, the last one was delicious when I made the apple pie, but now that they've had time to fully ripen, they're much more of a deeper red too. Today, I'm going to do applesauce so that I can store it for a long time and still enjoy our apples throughout the seasons. When I do bake with them, the whole house fills up with the aroma of apples and cinnamon and fall spice. Just really puts you into the autumn spirit. Out here in the side yard, I've got the three-bin composting system. Behind me is the garden and then the house. One of my favorite things has been, for the compost pile, getting to throw our kitchen scraps that could have gone to waste in the past right into here to help nourish the crops in the garden in the future. So all of the apple skins that just came off of those apples, I'll sprinkle all over the top and mix in. The consistency on this batch is actually perfect, but if it was to be a little liquid heavy, you can remove the top, let it keep going for a bit. A way to add nutrients and fix the texture would be to add ground chia seeds. Not a lot, just a little. Stir it in really good, give it some time to absorb and expand and change what's going on in there. But yeah, this one's good to go. I'm gonna start working on some yard work today. I've got to mow the lawn. There's a lot of leaves in there that have to get broken up too. The whole side of the garden has weeds that need to come out and I want to start transplanting things I want to grow onto the side, so I've got comfrey behind me and start doing more stuff like that next year. The thing is, I've never mowed this lawn with this before. I've only done the handheld, so I think I'm going to do like a big spiral around the yard since this doesn't make very sharp turns. Get this trailer out of the way. Okay, I'm looking a little crazy right now. I just wrapped up one of our side yards and only missed a little bit around the tree that I'll have to hit with the handheld, but this has saved me so much time and effort. It's amazing. I just have to hit this area behind me, a little bit of the front spot in the house, and then next to the garden. You can see there's still these big tents here that we put up. We needed extra storage space while we renovate the basement. Those will be going soon. We're going to start diving in on the house soon, so in the meantime, I just got to work around it. Then I moved on to the handheld mower, which has been quite hard to start lately. Got those patches I couldn't hit with the bigger mower, and the lawn is a little sparse right now. We've been planting seeds and then having to dig it up for other projects, so I think the goal is that next summer we'll have an even and lush lawn. So the comfrey I was talking about is scattered along the driveway and the yard here because a previous owner we actually found out was also an herbalist. You can see that this one's coming out of the driveway. I want to get this one out. Anywhere I put the littlest chunk of a root, a new plant will come and flourish, and comfrey is amazing for your skin. I infuse it in oils and use it in a lot of my salves, and I want to get a row of it going along the outside of the garden, but the game plan is that I'd like to have more herbs and beneficial plants growing along that back wall since it does get really good sun. This is the back wall I've been talking about here. You can see there's like asters, burdock, goldenrod, so on and so forth. I'm going to wear these gloves because I don't know what's in here, and I've seen snakes and spiders that are the size of my palm. Hopefully I don't encounter too much of that. These roots are putting up a fight right now, so I'm going to try an old trick. Wet the soil, see if I can loosen up the roots, but I feel kind of bad. It's been a drought, so I feel like I'm giving the plants a little bit of false hope. It's 4 30. I'm drinking a coffee because it's a Sunday, and I can because I'm weeding, and I don't want to be. What? What? What do you mean what? Did you just flip off the camera? No. I think Kyle's about to work on the yard and take away all of the peaceful ambiance. All right, I feel pretty happy with what I did. This is sufficient for now. This area is established to not weed, and that's another battle for another time. This area is pretty much clear. Now I can see what I'm working with and bear with me. I know the excavator is pretty loud in the background, but we've got to get stuff done here. These are the roots that I just pulled up before I weeded. These are some examples of what will start coming out. I started these maybe a month ago. These will also be going in. I'm just going to evenly space everything out. I'm really, really excited. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. As I was wrapping up, I came to the conclusion that this side area will probably never be perfectly manicured, but as long as I have some of the things I want growing in there, then I'll welcome the natural medicine that ends up growing in the soil alongside that because, honestly, I do work with burdock root and goldenrod and plantain, and believe it or not, even the Japanese knotweed has its place in herbalism. Nice. Okay, we've got the multiflora rose hips and the jojoba infusing together, and I wanted to show an old batch with a different species of rose and a little bit of a different chopping technique. You can see there's a really rich color going on in here, and it's ready to get strained and used in different salves and oils. The reason I chose jojoba oil is because it is so similar to the makeup of our own sebum, therefore it works in harmony with our skin and can absorb in and provide all of those beautiful benefits, and then on top of that, to have the rose hips infused into it just makes for this liquid gold, honestly. Similar to tallow, but tallow is solid at room temperature, so I wouldn't be able to use it for an oil. To be able to wild forage and prepare these and then share them with you, it's really, really special. We're out looking for the harvest moon tonight, which is the full moon in September, and it's also a super moon tonight, so it's going to appear way bigger. This moon signals the time to gather what you've grown for the season, a time of transformation and completion. A little hazy, but we should be able to see it really good tonight.