Catching up - This is why I haven't made a video in a bit

Hey, welcome back. I just wanted to update on, you know, I haven't made a video in a while and this is kind of why because work's been pretty busy and by the time I get home these are the lighting conditions that I'm filming my videos in. Yeah, and then maybe about two weeks prior to that I got a really bad case of the flu and I couldn't even talk so I haven't really been able to get out here and film much and then there's also pawpaws that are coming in so we've been harvesting those. That's been really fun. We've got pears now, I think. Let me just see here. I know it's super dark. I'll do a follow-up, you know, I'll do another video hopefully tomorrow where you can actually see stuff. I'm just checking to see. You sometimes just bend them up and if they want to pop off and they're ready. So these are actually still not ready. We're just gonna pop down to the pawpaw area. Here's the blackberries and they're all done and uh, yeah, the other thing that we did is I took my wife on a trip so we went down to Virginia Beach. I'm just in the forest. It's gonna be really dark till I get out of here. We went to Virginia Beach. One of the things that we've really gotten into lately, specifically like my wife and I because it's a real fun thing to do together and stay fit and happy and healthy is actually play a lot of pickleball. So it's a sport that we've gotten really really into. So we went down to Virginia Beach to watch the pro pickleball tour and that was so fun. The pros were just so kind, so fantastic. Maybe I'll just like link a couple videos here and pictures of us hanging out with them. That was like super super fun. Okay, so I'm down here in the pawpaw area and I'm just looking to see if any have fallen. The trees up near the pond actually have ripened way before the ones down here in the lower area. So I'll just pop around here. So that's kind of nice. It's a nice way to spread your harvest out even though you have the same fruit and the same fruit would normally ripen at the same time. You can actually spread your harvest out a little bit with different microclimates. Just see, I'm feeling for, I'm feeling for softness. They'll get really soft when they start to get ripe. The other ones were almost mushy. These ones are still quite firm. So these ones aren't quite ready yet. There's a few hundred down here too and I know that the deer are gonna, like this is a bit of a wilder area, so the deer are gonna find these in not too long and probably take all of them off the tree and that's why I have them in these little bags. So hopefully they just knock them off the tree. But I have a lot of them that aren't in bags. Sorry for that. I know this is really bad quality video. Okay, so we just got back from that pickleball tour and I haven't checked these since we left. So it's nice to know that I didn't miss the harvest on these. What is this? An empty bag with no pawpaw in it. Interesting. So yeah, we got about another week or two until those go. The last couple years they've been around Halloween. How's this one? So this tree here is about the same. Okay, good to know. Yeah, around Halloween our pawpaws have been ripening, but interestingly enough the ones up here at the pond, those were ripe. Very, very ripe. I could have probably even picked them a week ago. So that's super interesting. So we'll just wander up here. The other thing I've been really kind of distracted by is, you know, the clown show circus that is the U.S. election. So that's been, you know, politics. It's just so super important this election coming up that the world's most impactful country elect a leader that cares for the environment and will be a steward for humanity for the next four years in what might be, you know, four of the more important years and set a good example for the because unfortunately, even though there are much worse polluters, if the U.S. and Canada and other developed nations don't take action, other emerging countries won't either. So this is something we all have to get behind. We all have to act and it's really important that you cast your vote on the candidate, you know, that you think best is going to protect our natural world. And it's probably not the person who, when elected to office, instantly removes all environmental protections from industry. But I don't want to influence people how to vote. I just want you to become conscious and aware voters so that you can help protect our natural world as much as possible. Unfortunately, they're all capitalists and they all kind of want to exploit the world for profit, unfortunately. Just some are worse for that than others. For me, I'm very much would be a single issue voter almost because to me it's just so important. It's really the only thing that's important. I mean, well, there's lots of things that are important, especially things that are specifically going on right now in the world. Just checking on last couple apple trees. Here's one. Because I had a couple apples coming in and they might have been gotten by deer. So yeah, I think we'll cut this one here because I know the video quality is just terrible. It's way too dark. But I did just want to get a video out I could talk to you guys and show you that I'm okay. I can actually finally talk without coughing too much. So I can actually make a video. So anyways, I think we'll leave it there. And we'll touch base again. I do want to get some topic videos going on. It's been a lot of tour videos this summer. And we're probably going to get into some topics, you know, more economic, political climate change, we're going to start getting into that part of the gardening season because we're almost done here. And this is a permaculture channel. Permaculture is about more than growing food. It's about being a steward for the earth. So thanks for watching. I'll catch up with you in a bit.