Fall is Here!

The gate to our property.......

All that's left of the old red truck.

Here's a companion picture for the one in your guest bedroom, Kathi.

Indian summer is a favorite time for me!  Although summer is still the best season, I savor Indian Summer because it is the last hurrah before winter sets in for a looong time here in North Park.

The Haskins meadow with Delaney Butte in the distance.

The hay is up and the cattle are headed for home.

Funny how on the first day of fall I started craving "fall foods".  I guess I started seeing the leaves changing (very late for North Park this year) and digging out my sweaters and warmer clothes and that spurred on my fall appetite!  I also got on the ball and started some fall cleaning projects!  How weird is that!  Here are some pictures and a few of my "fall foods".

The pond looks like a mirror.

Bright red rose hips.

My Favorite Fall Foods

Chili, of course, is an all time favorite at this time of year!  Cream of squash, cream of cauliflower, tomato basil soups, potato soup, Grampa's stew, a new Mexican style stew I made up with Rotel tomatoes, Albondigos soup, posole, Beans and Rice Haitian, making chili sauce, tomato sauce, Italian sauce (anything to use up tomatoes before first freeze), fried mush (or polenta, a new favorite), cornbread, hoe cakes, potato pancakes, chicken pot pie, fall breads and muffins like apple, pumpkin, cranberry, banana, etc., corned beef hash, and chuck wagon beans.  Also anything zucchini to get them used up ( I found a great new recipe called Italian Zucchini Casserole with pepperoni, cottage and mozzarella cheeses, onions and fresh tomatoes that is really tasty!).  Pickled beets and eggs are a must using fresh beets from the farmers market! Hot apple cider or wassail, hot buttered rum, all kinds of hot chocolate, and, of course, all kinds of bar cookies but especially that all season favorite, Brownies!

  OK that's enough food fantasies for the day!  Now I'm going outside to take some fall pictures.

Our cabin in fall.

Oh the beautiful blue fall sky!

Today was absolutely a perfect day for picture taking and hiking so I was gone for several hours and took tons of pictures!  The peak of the fall colors here will be sometime next week, I think, so I may have to go out again but for today I took a lot of "artsy fartsy" pictures.  Some of them will have more meaning for the family but are still pretty.  I think I will have to do another post of just the fall pictures but here are a few to get started.

Lovely!

Fall is coming to the cabin!

Summer's last hurrah.  Indian Paintbrush is still blooming.

Horsehair Coats and Woolies

Bob models his grandfather's horsehair coat.

 As always, you can click on the picture to make it bigger and hit the back button to return to the blog.

A nice warm collar!

The summer after I was married back in 1960, I was checking out an old log shed at the ranch.  I  was thinking of cleaning it out to make it an extra bunk house for company.  In it I found 2 beautiful horsehair coats still in the cleaners bags and a pair of angora chaps.  I asked Bob what the story was on these items and here's what I learned.

The company that made these coats from Grandfather's horse hides.

Look at the long hair on this horse's hide!

Button detail on this coat.

The dark heaviest coat belonged to Bob's Grandfather, George Manville.  Lorena Manville, his grandmother, owned the reddish small coat.  The hides were from horses that had died at the ranch on  the west side of North Park, Colorado, and were skinned.  The skins were sent to Ede's Robe and Tanning Co. in Iowa to be made into these beautiful coats.  We do not have the exact dates but they were made in the 1890s.

Pocket detail on Grampa's coat.

Back view

Side view

A well made lining with soft leather under the arms and an inside pocket.

LORENA MANVILLE'S HORSEHAIR COAT

I model this beautiful coat.  It is quite heavy but not nearly as heavy as Grampa's!

Back view of this coat.

The bottom two buttons are kind of plastic.  I'm not sure they had plastic buttons back then though....

A very well made lining that looks quilted but isn't!

Another look at the lining.

A crocheted button up near the neck.

We kept those coats without ever using them or even getting them out until we moved off the ranch in 1988.  Our daughter Jeanette took them to Laramie,WY where her son Micah showed them to his class at school.  They kept the coats and chaps and took them to Elko, NV when they moved there in 1990.  Jeanette has taken them to show her second grade class every year during Cowboy Poetry Week.  The coats have been drying out for the last 110 years and have become quite fragile.  Jeanette's husband , Ozzie, talked to an Indian friend of his who has worked with hides for most of his life and he feels they could be saved with proper care and the right storage conditions.  We are hoping to find some place that can give them the care they need.

The Angora chaps that we have were made by Bob's Uncle, Clarance Manville, for Bob's father, Harry Manville.  He made them in 1930 for Harry's birthday.

Wow! Woolie angora chaps!

A close up of the angora.  Notice the hand tooled belt.

Reverse side shows the fitted leggings.  You can tell these were really used!

* I took these pictures and wrote up this history for Linda Carlson to look at. She is curator at the Avenir Museum on the campus of Colorado State University.  We are hoping they can use them and maybe keep them from drying out and cracking.  It would be a shame to have the hair fall out or have them fall apart!