This is the day that never ends and it goes on and on my friends......

Today was rabbit day. 23.5 lbs of rabbit harvested today. We have now moved all the babies that were in the temporary grow outs into the nicer grow outs to give them better accommodations. Our team of three (Edward, Nick and I) did great today! Nick did two of his own, almost completely by himself. It was a bit rocky starting off but before you know it we started picking up speed.

And it was honeybee day.

1 gallon, 2 pints of honey harvested.

Between the chicken we purchased as a chicken share from a friend, the rabbits, the berries I've picked this summer and all the other miscellaneous frozen bits I have stored away, our freezer is a bit full. Oh and never before have I had such a run on mason jars. Note to self, buy more mason jars. And soon.

I still very badly need to make a batch of Apple Walnut bread. The apples that we picked are fermenting in the corner. Hhmm, maybe I should see if Edward wants to make hard cider with them? It's a thought!

The house is almost closed up completely for winter. Windows tightly shut, screens taken out. We're doing the mad dash now, almost every day. Last week we managed to get the storm door on the front door. We're hoping this helps with retaining heat in our foyer. That is always the coldest room in the house. If anything, at least it ensures that the cat will never be able to just waltz right out of the house like she often does when she notices a door open.

Firewood still needs to be split and stacked, the apple trees need to be planted. The gold fish need to be moved from the pond outside to the fish tank inside. The rabbit manure needs to be moved out to the manure area we have set up. That has to be moved before we hit winter when it becomes almost impossible to move frozen manure.

I still need to make jellies, jams, catsup, and syrup. It's never ending it seems.

The cat sits behind me as I type, gently loving on my hair behind me and it feels good. It makes me forget the pain in my feet.

I still have chicken broth cooking from the carcass of the chicken we had for dinner tonight.

Tonight was almost completely a local meal. Local chicken from a farmer down the road some, potatoes from our garden, gravy made with the broth from the roasted chicken and cream from a cow that is only 3 miles away from us. The only exception was the spaghetti squash. I baked that with butter, local apples from the orchard and our honey. The taste reminded me of donuts. I do not know why. We didn't grow the spaghetti squash and we don't know if it's from an Alaskan farm or not. Still not bad for a locavore, which we try to be.

The house smells like a wonderful mix of smells tonight, from the chicken for dinner, the broth now cooking and the apple/blueberry/vanilla fruit leather cooking on low in the crockpot. It smells like home I guess. A combo of smells that all bring nostalgic feelings to the surface.

I've checked the forecast and no snow predicted yet however the house is becoming cooler. Its becoming harder to just sit in a room with short sleeves on. We have yet to turn on the heaters. Not in resistance against the cold chill of winter, but instead due to frugality. Why turn on the heat when we can just put on a sweater and slippers to ward off the cold.

It's getting dark earlier and earlier now. I look from the chair in our sitting room where I sit across to the dining room window and through the blinds I can see its almost fully dark, it's 908pm.

Tomorrow thankfully is a holiday, Labor Day, and yet we still have more to do that is not around our property. Duty calls elsewhere which distracts us from the projects that still need to be completed here.

It means we have to work later in the night on the weekday nights, to hopefully complete what needs to be completed.

And then of course, college starts for me on Wednesday. That's going to tighten things up, definitely.

I'm taking two classes this semester and I'm a bit worried that I won't have the time I need to work on assignments and what not. Thankfully, I am enrolled in a program that I've always been pretty good at. I'm hoping that helps me zoom through my classes with good grades.

Later the phrase "somethings gotta give" keeps playing over and over in my head, like a broken record. I just don't know what will end up giving.

It's raining leaves in North Pole Alaska. Our birch trees are losing their leaves.