Up at the farm, the end is in sight for the harvesting and food processing. The root vegetables—carrots, turnips, and beets—have been harvested, as have the cabbages, squash, and apples. It’s been a wonderful year for apples. We are eating them fresh and have made lots of apple juice and applesauce, which will be wonderful for the winter. There was even an apple-pie making bee one evening when about twenty of us made delicious apple pies for Thanksgiving—no small project for our numbers.

One very exciting harvest was the Carpathian walnuts. It takes about twenty years for a tree to come into production, so Mary Davis, who planted them, is very proud of this year’s 26 bushels. Some will be shelled and chopped for the Christmas baking.

The hard-working food processors, under the leadership of Diana Breeze, are tired after a long summer. Most recently they’ve made jam and sauerkraut, boiled the bones for soup stock, and put up this year’s meat.

Yes, autumn is also slaughter time. With the help of friends—John Blum, a retired butcher, and Phil Luckavitch, a retired meat cutter—the farmers have slaughtered and butchered 8 cows and 21 sheep.

We also killed and put away the chickens, and that is done, not only by the farmers and food processors, but also by everyone else who is available to help. This year at the chicken bee, we slaughtered, plucked, gutted, washed, and froze 244 chickens. Many of them will end up as soup for the sick.

This event was not without its entertainment.

At breakfast on the day of the bee, Jeanne Guillemette and the women guests donned red paper "combs," wings, and chicken beaks and sang the French Canadian song, "Alouette." Then at lunchtime, Sushi Horwitz, who had borrowed a chicken costume from a friend in Toronto, acted out, to the accompaniment of a cassette, a song about a chicken who refused to die.

Autumn also means the beginning of school for so many families, and we have our own version of that: the beginning of applicancy (which I’ve already told you about), the beginning of the spiritual formation program, and the beginning of Wednesday morning classes for the guests.

The spiritual formation program, which we have had for many years now, is a time of formation and discernment for men who are seriously looking at a priestly vocation. This year there are five men in the program: Nick Argirovski, Anthony Burchat, Frank Capisciolta, Mark Gomez, and Daniel Jodoin.

The formation comes both through classes and through living our life. These days, Fr. Tom Zoeller is giving them classes on Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on priesthood, Shepherds After My Own Heart.

The guests, too, have classes—Fr. Sharkey’s "The Fundamentals of the Spiritual Life." After their morning class, they are given time to read related material.

Four of our staff are being given an education in a whole other way. They are on a month-long apostolic visit to Korea. We haven’t heard much yet, mainly short e-mails about how full a time it is. We’ll tell you more when they get back.

In comparison with December, October doesn’t have a whole lots of days we celebrate in one way or another, but, as always, there are some.

Last Sunday, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian revolution, Aliz Trombitas, an applicant from Hungary, and Theresa Girard gave us a short presentation about that revolution and what brought it about, and about what is happening in Hungary today.

We celebrated Thanksgiving (it occurs in October in Canada) with apple pie and displays of our bountiful harvest.

October 15th is the anniversary of the foundation of our apostolate, whose first house opened in Toronto in the early 1930s. On display was a small re-creation of Catherine’s apartment made by Anne Marie Murphy.

That evening there was a simple presentation, which was inspired, led, and introduced by Joe Hogan, who had the applicants read excerpts from Catherine Doherty’s diaries from 1929 through 1934.

At St. Mary’s, Diane Lefebvre read about Catherine’s life of poverty when she was a waitress in New York, and Toni Austin acted out the part.

Both houses ended with the reading of the account of Catherine Doherty’s first evening in the house in Toronto—read by Diana Breeze and Bernadette Gonzales respectively.

In such ways, we pass on the history of this community to the guests and applicants and keep it alive in the hearts of the rest of us.

The big news at St. Mary’s is that Steve Héroux is now their co-director pro temps. He had quite a first day. There was a sewage backup in one part of the building and then when the propane gas alarm went off in the kitchen and no one knew why, it was he who had to try and figure it out.

Now we’ll finish this diary with a potpourri of news items: A number of us took part in the Life Chain in Barry’s Bay, the nearby town. (This is a silent prayerful protest against abortion.) Some also went on a tour of the craft studios in the area. Both of these are annual fall events.

Autumn is also the best time of year for hikes, and there have been a number of them, both organized and not.

There is music in the air these days, literally. Schola director Veronica Dudych and a few of the guests have been gathering to learn songs in harmony, just for the fun of it. And Trudy Moessner has been gathering in the basement with whoever wants to learn the praise and worship songs we are singing at Mass one day a week.

Marian Centre Regina celebrated its 40th anniversary, and three people from here attended: Kathy Rodman (a former local director of that house), and Dawn Kobewka and Helen Schreiner, who were on vacation in Regina.

Fr. Denis Lemieux, Chuck Sharp, and Maria Victoria Fausto gave a parish mission in Owen Sound, Ontario.

May God give you a holy Advent and a Christmas filled with joy.