5 practical (and cozy!) tasks for the transition into autumn

From saving seeds to fall-ish reads, here are some of my favorite October-y ways to putter away a day

Is it just me, or is it a little tricky sometimes to figure out what to DO this time of year? Summer is over, but it’s also not quite time to snuggle in front of a fire. Colder weather is right around the corner, but I’m not quite ready to take to the sofa with my stitching for hours on end.

I’m happiest when I spend at least some time each day engaged in gently-productive household puttering, so hitting on just the right activities for this in-between season feels like a win. Here are a few tasks that feel perfect for the moment we’re in:

1) Saving seeds

Last spring, when figuring out how to maximize my library, I realized that my local branch offers a seed exchange. I was intrigued, but had no seeds of my own to offer - so I mentally added “learn to save seeds” to my checklist of goals for this season.

I’m not sure why, but seed saving has always felt intimidating to me, like advanced-level gardening stuff (and I am definitely not an advanced-level gardener.) When to collect them? How to dry them? And isn’t there something about cross-pollination I should be worried about?

So when one of my favorite homestead-y podcaster/YouTube creators

Jess Sowards

(who’s also on Substack now, yay!) did a YouTube video about seed saving a month or so ago, I eagerly watched. Her casual and sensible approach seriously de-mystified the process for me and right away I put seeds from an overripe bell pepper out to dry.

When we returned home from our trip up north I put the now-dried seeds into plastic baggies, and also found a few bush beans that had become quite brittle and brown, as well as a couple of very ripe shishito peppers. So I started the process again, using these very aesthetic extra plates left over from a Papa John’s delivery.

Like most things that feel overwhelming when they’re just an idea in my head, I found the process of harvesting and storing seeds to be surprisingly simple - and quite satisfying - once I actually did it.

Did I do it perfectly? Probably not. Will all of the seeds be viable when it’s time to plant next year? I really don’t know. But seeds want to grow into new plants, and have a vested interest in making it easy for me to help them along. Next year, when it’s time for the seed exchange to start up again, I’m happy I’ll have something to contribute.

If your summer was too hectic to try saving seeds, why not give it another thought now? They don’t necessarily have to be from your own garden, either: I’m eyeballing the delicious, juicy CSA watermelon that’s on my counter right now.

2) Mending and stain removal

While putting my fall and winter clothes away last spring, I lingered over a few items of clothing I hadn’t been wearing because of holes or stains. I’d caught one of my favorite pair of wool leggings on a sharp corner and they’d torn; another pair had worn a small rent at the crotch seam, and my precious pale-blue alpaca sweater and three of my favorite shirts had a stain - tea, I think? - in the exact same spot (right between my boobs, if you must know.)

It was May, my fancies were turning lightly to thoughts of sleeveless tops and days at the beach, and I was not in the mood to deal with stitching seams or the finer details of stain removal. But I had a feeling that I would thank myself later if I thought ahead about making them wear-able again. So I put a paper grocery sack in the corner of my closet and started tossing in any clothing items that needed to be dealt with before it could be worn, promising myself that I would do it all at once as a cozy project on a crisp fall day.

Well, I am hopeful that an actually crisp day is close at hand, and when it comes, I’ll be ready! I’ve never mended wool before, or actually leggings of any sort, so I’ll be consulting my dog-eared copy of Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelsohn - and if that fails, the internet - for guidance.

As for stain removal, I’ll be turning to Laundry Love by Patric Richardson and Karin B. Miller as my guide. I devoured this book on my Kindle - twice! - a couple of years ago, but just ordered it in print from Bookshop.org - this is the kind of useful, helpful, and FUN reference that I’ll turn to again and again, so it will be nice to have a physical copy of at my fingertips.

It feels really good to have an actual plan for getting these well-loved clothing pieces back into the rotation rather than just tossing them out. I’m picturing myself curled up on my sofa on a chilly Sunday afternoon sometime soon, cup of tea at hand, candle burning, and stained shirts soaking in…something…while I stitch away. Doesn’t that sound satisfying?

And speaking of Laundry Love,

Sarah Powers

read House Love, written by the same author team, last year and loved it. So when I saw that my local library had a copy available, I took myself on a little fall library date posthaste! Which brings me to…

3) Indulging in a cozy library haul

It’s eighty-two degrees out as of this writing, so while I’m ready for some cozier reading, I’m just not quite ready for a big stack of baking or craft books. In this liminal moment just before jacket and walking-through-crunchy-leaves season fully commences, my literary cravings run to thoughtful books about an eclectic variety of topics - and anything seems to go. A collection of essays about regional food in early 20th century America, a beautifully-illustrated guide to seasonal rhythms, a Ruth Goodman re-read about everyday life in Tudor England, and a collection of poetry by Wendell Berry? Just a small sampling of the all-over-the-place book pile I’m digging into this week. Somehow it all seems to work for the bookish mood I’m in.

4) Stocking and organizing the pantry and freezer

As I shared in my September Journal, I started this process over a month ago with a large bulk-food haul from Country Life Foods (use code KETTLE at checkout for 10% off your first order¹) but there’s still plenty to be done. I’ve been slowly transferring grains and beans from their original packaging into large food-storage buckets for the basement, with a stop in the freezer for a few days for grains, to kill off any insect eggs that may have come along for the ride. I’m also portioning out smaller quantities into jars and OXO pop-top containers in the pantry for easy everyday access.

There’s a quickly-filling freezer to contend with, too. Before we left town we froze a bunch of produce, including peaches, mire poix, and a blend of roasted onions, garlic, and tomatoes for easy soup (thanks to community member

Beth Bender

for that idea!). I have a lot of pears from our trees that I may decide to slice and freeze before they get too ripe to eat, and more CSA produce coming, too - so before I add anything more to the freezer I need to rotate some of the older stuff to the top and organize the whole mess so I don’t wind up with a bunch of freezer-burned scraps for the chickens. And speaking of the birds…

5) Cleaning out the chicken coop

People are often curious how much time I spend cleaning out or in any way dealing with the chicken coop. The answer is “hardly any.” I use what’s called the deep litter method, in which you add a new layer of bedding on top of the old stuff every couple of weeks, then either turn it yourself or encourage the chickens to do it for you by tossing some scratch grains on top. The bedding on the bottom breaks down and essentially becomes compost while the new layer on top keeps things fresh.

This method has worked really well for us - it just always smells kind of pine-y in the coop, and if it starts to get a vaguely musty or ammonia smell, I just toss in some more shavings and give it a toss with the rake.

I think the fact that my chickens free-range, and so are only really hanging out in the coop at night anyway, definitely helps.

But I can’t just keep piling up pine shavings forever, so I do give the coop a thorough cleaning twice a year, fall and spring. I basically just use a flat shovel to remove all the old bedding and replace it with new, and it still doesn’t take long - maybe an hour, beginning to end? - but it’s not a task I particularly want to face when it’s in eighty-two degrees out. Fifty degrees is about perfect: cool enough for a hoodie but warm enough that I’ll want to unzip it after a few minutes of work. So this is a task I’ll probably tackle next week or the week after when the temperatures drop.

There’s something about imagining my little flock snuggling down inside a freshly-bedded coop this winter that makes me feel truly ready for the colder months ahead.

If you don’t have chickens, maybe there’s a way you can create a similar feeling by caring for animal friends in some way: putting out and filling the bird feeders, building a brush pile to act as shelter for small critters, letting a small pet roam around the yard while it’s still warm enough out, or giving the litter box a thorough cleaning and letting it dry in the sun.

What productively puttery tasks are bringing you joy right now?

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