Weathermen forecast an early autumn

setterlover

setterlover

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Watching the weather forecasters they are saying there is an early autumn.I have never seen as many blackberries on the hedges around our fields or as many sloes the bushes are dripping with them and they are all ripe.
Our third cut of haylege is being rowed up and baled tomorrow and it looks like a good amount .
Hope this doesn't bode a hard ☃️ winter.
My vegetable patch has gone crazy masses of runner beans and courgettes and the rhubarb is massive.
Here in West Wales everything that grows seems to have gone crazy!
 
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Yes everywhere around here is dripping with berries. I only remember this much this early back in late summer 2009 I think it was. That winter was horrendous, it was not just the deep snow, more the depth of solid ice on all the back lanes (and even some main roads) and really awful freezing temperatures that just didn't let up. We had a really powerful top of the range 4 wheel drive then, we still only managed to get half a mile down our lane before we just gracefully slid across the road into the ditch. The traction did absolutely nothing. We didnt have snow chains as we live in Ireland, not something one would expect to need!

I really hope it does not get that bad again I was just about 60 then and still very capable, not now though! ☺️
 
Pearlsasinger said:
The 'early Autumn' is a direct result of the very dry summer with high temperatures, as the forecasters are saying. We have had a bumper crop of everything except grass and plums this year.
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I was wondering about an early Autumn as we had a very hot summer about 4 years ago. It was too hot even to ride sometimes. Waited for the 1st week in September thinking it will change, nice bit of riding coming up. It started raining and stopped around the following March. I'm hoping we don't get a repeat.

Our swallows are behaving very oddly. Normally at this time we are having constant debates trying to persuade them we don't need another sitting. This year they need no persuading. I think some have gone already. We are quite a few short. Normally I still have a few beginning of Oct so we are at least a month early this year.

Bumper crop of grass and just praying they are going to like foggage.

the level of berries we have now exceeds what we have ever had before and about a month early.
 
Trees are already thinking about looking autumnal. We had huge amounts of berries, all of which were ripe mid-late July. Anything left now is shrivelled. The girls are moulting and Saus is already halfway into her winter coat.

I’m fine with a long winter, as long as it’s cold and crisp, with maybe one or two storms to fill up the water tank. I never want another winter like the 2023-24 one, the rain didn’t stop, except for one week in Easter.
 
My trees are shedding their leaves already. Hawthorne, horse chestnut (which all seem to have a tree disease this year) and the few sycamore we have that have been chopped but have a few bushy branches.

All horses moulting and one Shetland is fluffing up alarmingly 😳
 
Huge amounts of blackberries, sloes, hawthorn berries, acorns and blasted sycamore seeds this summer. If only there was grass to match! Horses are shedding already.

Am also thinking it could be a nasty winter, can cope with the cold and ice (I think 😉) it's a lack of hay round here that's a bit worrying.
 
My two lads are already shedding their summer coats - it seems like only yesterday that they got them!

We also have a ton of blackberries - makes hacking down the routes rather interesting as Baggs has adopted the "stick head into blackberry bush, shovel as many blackberries in face as possible, leave the bush when asked politely and then plunge into the next available blackberry bush" and repeat routine for our most recent rides 😂
 
I’ve had bumper crop of apples , cookers and eaters, berries are bursting out of my freezer, tomatoes , well can’t make much more purée or soup as not much room left in freezers. 😂 strawberries, well I made. 60 jars of jam as well as Raspberries jam. I am giving the jam always every day. Our farmers are harvesting and bailing 3rd hay crop, hope it don’t mean a hard winter.
 
I am expecting an early autumn. The big spiders are coming in a month early and the swallows are filling up and flying off. My garden birds seem to have done an early moult as well. I have never seen as many wild raspberries as this year and the blackberries are nearly over. If you believe weather lore, it is going to be a long, hard winter
 
Figs - I’ve never seen them as big, anywhere, not even around the Med. The fruit aren’t always easy to see under the leaves but worth a rummage - especially at riding height
 
Rokele55 said:
I am expecting an early autumn. The big spiders are coming in a month early and the swallows are filling up and flying off. My garden birds seem to have done an early moult as well. I have never seen as many wild raspberries as this year and the blackberries are nearly over. If you believe weather lore, it is going to be a long, hard winter
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Our spiders are in a month early too, which is odd as I thought they came in because it gets chilly and it's not chilly ATM 🤷🏼‍♀️
 
Lots of berries and sloes and so many acorns. We have a bumper crop of pears on our tree and crabapples galore. The trees are shedding leaves on the common and squirrels are burying stuff in the lawn. We've had no rain worth talking about for a couple of months and none forecast. I think a lot of the birds have left. The nightjars haven't been heard for quite a while.
I don't mind a hard cold winter but I dread another wet muddy grey one.
 
ElleSkywalker said:
Our spiders are in a month early too, which is odd as I thought they came in because it gets chilly and it's not chilly ATM 🤷🏼‍♀️
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Oh last night we had a mahoosive begger in our bedroom. The biggest I've ever seen, and we gets lots of big ones here. They are not usually coming in much before October but 2 good sized ones were removed from the utility this morning.
 
My apple trees have been dropping their fruit for the past month now. Ditto the plums. The fruit on the plums is very dried up and parched, some of them are dropping, and those are the edible ones. The apple trees have been dropping their fruit since early July, I'm in Devon and we've had a bit of windy weather recently, and every time we do the fruit is dropping. If I was a commercial fruit-grower I wouldn't be very happy at all with the harvest.

I have cultivated blackberry bushes which came out early in July big & juicy, but now they're all dried up. I did try making some Blackberry Wine, but all I produced was Cider Vinegar. Yuck! Wish I knew where I went wrong.

The trees are dropping; it has looked like Autumn for a while now.

Really don't want another endlessly long wet winter, just don't think we could all bear it tbh, not after last year. Don't want snow or ice either. For years I've dreamt of riding-out on a nice crisp autumn morning, but all we've had for these last years is endless gales, time and time again.
 
I was saying this to me lom, the trees are already colouring up and everywhere I look on my travels I'm seeing loads of berries!
Also I'm getting a bit of a brag in here...I've got a leaf blower/hoover! Aunty Ina gave us it so I'm all set to go with the leaf clean up!
 
Was thinking on my evening walk just how much fruit and berries were around in hedges, people's gardens etc. Trees are definitely turning already too.

I don't buy into long term weather forecasts at all, but if you do the 180 days on metcheck, for my area at least, there's very little rain predicted between now and Christmas. That will undoubtedly change, but can't remember the last time a wet windy November/December wasn't predicted.
 
Trees shedding leaves and horses loosing summer coats here in South of Ireland. Definite temp drop also! I look forward to cooler dry rides though, and a arena that's not like a dust bowl.
 
I've been collecting blackberries to put in the freezer for jam/baking at a later date. Lots of rosehip, rowan, hawthorn and sloes out on the hedges. Dodging falling apples too! Brassicas all bolted very quickly due to the heat and lack of water, and my new raspberry plants aren't doing too well, I think because they aren't established enough to cope and fruit. On the plus side, a bumper crop of hay, and done quickly as it's pretty dry before it's cut, proper dried out in 3 days. I hope we don't have a wet and windy winter, or an icy one. Cold and crisp is fine!
 
Just back from a hack, and it feels more like October. Piles of leaves everywhere. We were showered with leaves from a tree after a gust of wind. All the trees are yellowing.

We had our first blackberry crumble last week.
 
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