I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I would say I was raised a “city” girl. When I was young, I dreamed of what it would be like to live life in the country with animals and gardens and especially a horse. This dream came true a few years ago when we made a big move to Upstate New York to a home with a small piece of land. I have since been learning about the farming “lifestyle” in small ways. One of the things that I noticed is how many phrases we all use that must have come from our farming roots, these phrases make so much more sense when the origin is understood! For example, we are raising hens and during the winter they hate when they can’t go outside in the grass because the ground is snow-covered and they get very cranky because they have to stay in their coop. They are “all cooped up”!  A dream of mine came true when we bought a horse. I took riding lessons when I was younger, and have been taking lessons as an adult. I fell off once and had to “get back in the saddle”. In horse training we use a whip, and if he doesn’t pay attention, I “crack the whip”. Before winter starts, we need to get ready in lots of ways, but especially with “squirreling away” wood pellets for winter heating. This leads me to harvest time or when we are squirreling away for winter. It’s a time when the tomatoes we plant and the corn, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers all need harvested and cooked down for canning or freezing. I love this time it feels so productive and to know that the food was grown from seed in your own garden is so rewarding. Since we like it to be organic, we may lose some along the way. We lost some tomatoes this year to blight and maybe some spaghetti squash, but our food is clean and healthy. Today was the beginning of fall cooking; roasted tomatoes, saucing tomatoes, tomatoes cooked down for soup and tomatoes dehydrating. We can’t bottle that wonderful aroma, but we will be tasting the “fruits of our labor” all through the winter.