Due to the much cooler weather this week, we're having some spectacular sunrises at the moment. The colors are just amazing!

                                   

We're also having beautiful sunny days and, although chilly, I love my walks at this time of the year the best!
I'm still finding new ways and paths to hike the property. The little forest area downhill is one of my favorites ..

                                 

As I said I've not come across a lot of wildlife yet but this week there have been quite some ducks in the ponds.
Unfortunately, since Coco is usually with me who likes to chase them, they often all fly up and I can't get a shot, but this little female Bufflehead stood her ground .. or her water I should say:

                   

And at another marshy area I found a bunch of red-winged blackbirds:

                                       

They're noisy birds and I had heard there characteristic call "konk-la-reee" (they also make a sharp "check" or "chuck" sound) many times before, but had a hard time seeing them amidst the dense growth of cat-tails.

And now for the big news of this week:

Yes, we have gravel! Six trucks full! Yahoo!



Despite a couple of sunny and dry days the ground was still very muddy and the delivery-truck sunk deep down into it a couple of times, but fortunately didn't get stuck.
James did a great job spreading and leveling it all out! Always a fun day when you can play with 'big-guy toys' .. !

As usual Thanksgiving snug up on me, like every year, butof course we celebrated  as usual!
I baked a Pumpkin Mousse pie:


I tried to somewhat copy the Edwards (frozen) pie I bought a couple of times a few years back, which they sadly discontinued since, and I think I came close.
Being a no-bake pie, with a Biscoff-cookies crust, and ready-made pumpkin mousse from the store, it was easy-peasy and very delicious!

Once again, we watched the Macy Parade:

                                                      

And saw Santa complete with elves and reindeer 'coming to town' which means the Holiday season has officially begun!

No thanksgiving without Deviled Eggs .. and a few cheeses thrown in for good measure:

             

After which we really needed to get some fresh air, walk off some calories and work up an appetite for dinner ...

So, we decide to check out Hampton Park in Willamina, about 3 minutes away from us.
                                          


The park features Huddelston Pond, previously a plywood logging pond, which has been restored and is now home to a variety of fish and wildlife.
A walking trail with fitness exercise stations leads you all around the pond for 0.6 miles.

It's a pretty little walk, just the ticket for a short holiday stroll ..

I'd scored a free turkey at Winco (if you bought groceries for more than $125), and although I picked out the smallest one I still ended up with an eleven pound bird!
For 2 persons .. I know .. but there's the left-overs!

When I got home and realized that it's sheer seize was pushing the limits of my oven, I thought of our landlord's (who are still on vacation) kitchen which houses 2 large ovens!
Problem solved!
In it went, I used an oven-bag this year, and it came out beautifully cooked and moist.

As happens so often, I forgot to make pictures of the meal, but here's a shot of next day's (leftover) lunch:
                                                           


That evening, thoroughly stuffed and happy, we watched the annual National Dog Show presented by Purina we recorded from earlier that day, where a friendly, tail-wagging 3-year-old male Sealyham Terrier named “Stache” charmed his way into winning best in show!

                                      


And that concludes the Thanksgiving week. I can't believe it's already behind us again, you look forward to it for quite some time and than 'swoosh', it's all over and done with!

The waiting is now for the gravel to dry, or more accurately the soil (clay!) underneath it, so we won't sink in too much and will be able to move!
The forecast is for 4 more days of sunny and dry, although cold, weather so we think we'll move on Tuesday.

Fingers crossed!

 

Most of our mornings started rather foggy this week .. but you know me, I like that stuff!

I'm usually accompanied by our landlord's Great Pyrenees dog Coco on my walks these days, and since they're on vacation for 2 weeks right now we're taken care of feeding her as well.
She's the sweetest dog, except for when you happen to be a gopher, raccoon, coyote or deer! Although not the bravest of dogs she'll nevertheless bark and chase them until they're off the property .. just what's she's supposed to do.

"Coffee time? Count me in!"

Since we had a lot of rainy days this week I busied myself indoors.
I'd picked a bucket full of apples and found this old-fashioned but very handy-dandy apple peeler in our landlord's kitchen, which made short work of peeling the whole lot in no time!

                                         

Which I than I turned into applesauce. Homemade applesauce, always the best!

                                          

Also, I'd found a recipe for Butternut squash with Orzo soup. Two ingredients I've wanted to try for a long time but never did.
Which is a shame (that I didn't try it before) because this soup is utterly delicious! Wow!
Just the ticket to warm you up during these cold and rainy days!

This soup is the bomb!

Lets see, what else? We'd ordered a large bin to be used for UPS/Fedex package deliveries so they won't get rained on when they drop them off at the gate.
That gate is always locked and closed (except for when we leave of course) so they can't deliver all the way to our doorstep.

                                                               

It arrived, and it worked. Our first delivery. Yeah! (As you can see James went a little overboard with the size. You could hide a body in there!)

I went grocery shopping as usual on Wednesday, but now we've moved McMinnville is a lot closer than Newberg and unfortunately it doesn't have a Freddy (Fred Meyer) ..
They do have a small Walmart though (yeah), a Safeway, Bi-mart and a huge Winco!
I'm not very fond of the latter, their inventory doesn't show a lot of a variety for each item, but their prices are good so I think that will become my go-to store.



Another advantage of McMinnville .. they have several large clothing stores, and luckily of the affordable kind!
There's a Marshalls, a Ross, a Maurices, several second hand stores like 'New-to-you' and a bunch more.
This week I immediately scored this cute cardigan at Ross for $14! I've been looking for something in that color for forever and by some miracle they had this one. Score!

And that's about all for this week. 
James has been working on a couple of new files that have come in. Although we can't possibly say that business is booming at the moment, new work is coming in steadily.
Enough to stay afloat for now but it would be nice if the economy picked up sooner than later!
Oh, and last but not least, it looks like we'll have gravel coming in on Monday. Yahoo!
It's supposed to be dry that day so we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Who knows, we might be moving in our new spot before Thanksgiving ... OK, let's go and knock on wood now ..

 

 

Look at that gorgeous oak tree! There are several on the property here and I'm so happy to be able to admire them every day.
They're beautiful in any type of season or light and I bet I'll be photographing them a lot while here!

My daily walk brings me to the tree-line with the neighbors where our landlord mows a path through the grass of the meadow for easy walking, which is wonderful since both his wife and I like to get our walks in every day!
This is looking back towards the barns next to which we're parked ..

                                         

Here's a little closer view. You can see the spot there on the left, just below the bright green grass patch to the left of the barn, where we're going to move to once the gravel arrives:               

The trees I just passed on the right hide a pretty little pond area ...

   

                              

And in between the oaks I've found several apple and one pear tree:

            

They're east to spot right now since the leaves are falling as well as the apples/pears!

                               

So far I spotted about 8 different apple trees and several of them have excellent tasting fruit! I see some apple sauce and pies in the near future!

Fall has brought out many mushrooms here as well, these are only a few of the prettiest:

   

So far the wildlife has been somewhat sparse but we're in a spot where we don't have much of a view (yet), so it's entirely possible that there are a lot around but they're in our 'blind spot'.
There should be quite some deer roaming around, as well as raccoons and coyotes ..

Right out our window though, this little guy (actually he's quite a fat one) shows up every now and than. Probably checking out possible new food sources:

Besides walking the property (34 acres!), I ventured out and followed the (gravel) road we're on that seems to dead-end after a mile or so, or at least ends at a T, from where the left and the right look to end in several (long) driveways.
One of these days I might try to find out if those are private properties or if I can extend my walks by following either one of them for a while.



In between the rain, lots and lots of it, the sun has only been out every now and than this week.
It's a petty, since Fall colors are at their peak right now and there has not been much opportunity to enjoy them ..

This is the property we're on 'as seen from the road' .. and below you can just see a red barn hiding behind a row of maples at the very end of the road where it stops at the T.

                                                

                                            
This is looking at the hillside in the direction of Sheridan:

The last two days were also rather cold, water-cold we call it in Holland, that kind of cold when it's cold and damp and feels colder than it really is. That cold that chills you deep into your bones.
Time for some more hearty meals, like farmer's cabbage-'stampot':

Due to the move, I'd taken the opportunity to empty our small chest freezer and defrost it. Fortunately that went very fast and nothing of the food that I had kept cold in a few cool-bags had had the time to go back.
It also gave me the chance to see what all has been hiding in the depths of it that I had forgotten about, or that I had tried to forget is more accurate .. as in several baskets filled to the brim with blue- and black-berries!

Time to 'do' something with it again. First up .. blue-berry oatmeal bars:

As you can see, I was too late to show a pristine, perfect pan full of bars, but they were just too hard to resist ..

And I finally finished my farm-puzzle ... phew, a lot of hay and chickens in this one.
Not the easiest, I can tell you that!

Our (temporary) view from the front door

Yes, we moved! A little earlier than planned, and we didn't end up in our definite/permanent site yet, but the weather forecast predicted 10 days of rain so we thought it was better to 'get out of dodge' while we still could!
The place where we were staying was turning muddy already and we had to anticipate several other areas that would turn slippery with rain. Not a good scenario for moving a large and heavy RV, especially up a hill!

   

Fortunately everything went smoothly, it was a nice, sunny day and James did a fantastic job getting us out of our (very) tight driveway, into the equally narrow one at the new place and up the hill into our temporary spot :

That's the house of our landlords on the right

We're next to that red barn where we could plug in our electric and where we can dump our sewer in it's sewage outlet.
Water is coming from the pump-house, just visible behind the truck.

The reason we're not in our permanent spot yet is the fact that we're still waiting for the gravel to come in.
Unfortunately the quarry is out of the right stuff and we'll have to wait a little longer for the good gravel to come in before we can arrange a delivery.
Ideally we would like for that to happen on a dry day, and although there aren't too many of those in the forecast there seems to be a chance of it next Wednesday so who knows, we might get lucky!

As far as the site goes, we've finished pretty much everything we had to do. All wires and conduits are in and buried:



As well as the electric to the green barn below: 

                                   

An electric box was installed and the guy for our Internet came buy and set everything up (that little dish). Apparently it all works fine!

That same day our TV dish arrived as well:

Phew, it was a lot of work, time for coffee and donuts!
It rained the whole time until coffee-time when the sun came out and we could sit outside. Perfect timing!

We're very happy we made the move when we did because the next few days it rained pretty much non-stop!
We're all set up and dry and snug and warm.
I brought out the instant pot to make some Hungarian Goulash. Just the ticket for days like this!



In the meantime we had some more 'real' (appraisal) work come in, and now we don't have to think about moving anymore we have a much more relaxed time to work on those.
I assisted James today with several appraisals, and fortunately it stayed dry for the outside parts of those!

Driving to and from our appointments we enjoyed all the fall colors ..

                          

     

The vineyards always look their best right now!

This was the driveway to one of the houses we were appraising. So gorgeous!

It so happened that the owner of this property was dutch!
Although she didn't speak the language that well anymore, we had a fun conversation. It turned out her folks were from Castricum which is only half an hour from where I'm from.
It's a small world indeed!

OK, I think that covered most of what happened last week.
I think it's time to enjoy a well deserved glass of wine!