Did you know that Oregon is amongst the world's largest exporters of hazelnuts? True! In 1989, the hazelnutbecame the official State nut (ha) of Oregon. In fact nearly 100 % of all the hazelnuts grown in the United States are grown in the Willamette Valley!

No wonder we are surrounded by 'filbert' orchards, as they are called here. They're ripe now and the trees display some nice collors.
They are harvested by using a machine called a harvester (really)  that sweeps the nuts into windrows and than vacuums them up. The harvester seperates the nuts from twigs and other debris after which they are dropped into wooden tote bins and shipped to be processed.

The rains have been coming down in earnest this week. With a little luck our RV might float if it comes down to that! The wind is up too, we're really rocking and rolling every now and than and I'm starting to get a litlle worried about the awning when a particular strong gust hits us.
It's getting cooler too and to save on electricity and gas we've started to add insolating window film on the inside of our single pane windows.
Normally we're very happy with the many windows we have but now we have to cover all 14 of them, most of them divided in 2 or as many as 6 smaller ones we start to have some regrets!
According to the instructions it's very simple to do and takes about 30 minutes per window but I don't think they're talking about the tiny ones with little round corners that you find in an RV, on top of having very little 'working space'. Manouvering a sticky film around trickers a few interesting explicits every now and than!

The top part is done. See the difference in 'tint'?

Lets just say: "It better be worth it"!

As you can see the film has a slightly bluish tint but according to the information on the box this will fade over time. It also says it will retain 55% 'winter-heat" and reject 70% of the sun's heat. Lets hope so!

In between the rain storms Sadie and I still manage to get our walks in although she doesn't seem to be too fond of her early morning ones anymore. Too cold and wet for her stiff 12 year old bones I guess.

Fortunately we stay warm and dry in the RV, no leaks sofar!

Most leaves are off by now. There are still some berries clinging onto some bushes and we came across this fuzzy guy one day. It's a 'Wooly Bear' caterpillar and is the larvae of the Isabella tiger moth. It starts to slow down in fall and will overwinter in fallen trees and bark. If you pick it up it will curl up and play dead.

As superstition goes, if a woolly bear's black bands are long, the coming winter will have harsh weather. However, the length of their black coloration actually depends on the amount of moisture they receive.

James is working at reorganizing Dougs garage and shed for the moment so he doesn't have to be out in the rain and cold.  He had me buy some long Johns for him last week because his legs got very cold after working outside all day!

I'm still being trained by Katie. It all finally starts to make some sense so I might be of some help after all!

The 18th marked our one year Anniversary of living in our RV. Bring on the champagne!

We're still enjoying it and have not (yet) killed each other, sofar, so good!