The old schoolhouse

The old schoolhouse, or where we spent our summer vacation

Samantha here.  So, astute readers of this blog will have noticed that most of the posts from this summer were actually from the second-to-last weekend in May.  And you may be wondering, what did we really do this summer?

Remember when we said the human acquired an old schoolhouse from the 1840s?

This summer, the human and her male counterpart bought a house that had once been the District No. 5 schoolhouse in some small town in Vermont.  It was in service as an actual school from the 1840s all the way through 1953, from kindergarten through 8th grade.  (The human has neighbors who went to school there.)  The main body of the house is still one giant room, and you can see the original timbers in the rafters and the basement.

This has become the doll window

 The human couldn't take all of us, so Lily, Celestine, Nellie, and I accompanied her this time.  Our usual spot in the house is in the window that used to be an exterior window of the schoolhouse proper but is now internal thanks to the added sunroom.

The main schoolhouse, now converted for the humans

Out in the garden

There's an acre and a quarter of the house and the gardens, and across the street is another 27 acres of woods for us to play in.  We mostly stuck the gardens because the human did not want to deal with a 45 degree incline hill with us.  She remembered what happened the last time she took us on a hiking adventure...

 We went in August, which meant one thing.  Blueberries.  Lots and lots and lots of blueberries.  That's a 4 quart bowl full you see there, and the human filled one of those every other day or so.  There were also early blackberries and some apples from the two apple trees in the yard.

Obligatory tree climbing 

Jam and cat

And this is what became of all those berries.  About 4 gallons of blueberry jam, and some apple jelly and apple butter for good measure.  (Further apples were turned in cider and even more apple butter.  By last month, the human was making 3 gallons of apple butter at a time...)