October day

It’s very hard for me to sit in my office and write on a mid October day when the sun is shining and the temperature is reasonably mild.  I know that there will be few of these days left.  But duty calls and a writer has to have some self discipline.  But I promise to get outside later in the afternoon when it will be even nicer I hope.

 We had some excitement at 6 am this morning.  I was lying in bed and kept smelling this odd smell, I knew the smell but couldn’t place it.  It almost smelt like paint and since I could hear one of the dogs scrambling around I decided to get up and see if they had spilled something. 

 
I found Ginger standing in my big variegated leaved geranium plant and she and some of the other dogs were looking up at the shelf filled with plants higher in the window.  The crushed geranium was what I smelled.  I couldn’t see anything but Steve got up and poked at some of the plants and bam- a tree rat ( red squirrel) jumped out.  He didn’t stand a chance once he hit the floor and at least three dogs pounced on him.   That’s one down.   How it got inside I don’t know.

 Those darn things are in the attic, on the enclosed porch and a few other places in the house I guess.  They are getting in the attic someway probably through a hole under the eaves somewhere but we can’t find it.  Rat poison doesn’t seem to kill them and we can’t get into the attic easily enough to set traps up there.  I am seriously thinking about getting all the walnut trees around the house cut down.   I think that’s what attracts them to our yard.  And all the nuts on the ground are a big nuisance as well.

 I was hoping that the stray cat that has her babies in the woodchuck hole under the propane tank would kill some of them.  She sure does a number on the birds at the feeder.  But she must not be able to catch them or at least enough of them.

 Mama duck, that one that’s produced 25 babies so far this year was sitting in a lower chicken nest this morning.  All of her last bunch of babies were under the nest boxes waiting for her.  I told her to go ahead and lay there it would make it easy to collect the eggs since we do not need any more baby ducks this year.

 I am seeing tons of buzzards this fall, they’ve been around all summer but I think they are here much later in the fall than usual.  Maybe they are adapting to global warming or to the fact that there are so many dead deer by the roads all year round.  I think a group of them nest in our woods.

The wind has been so strong the last few days that the redbud tree I wrote about just a few days ago has lost almost all its leaves, as have most of the trees around here.  I can see the neighbors houses now, a sign its nearly winter.

Gold in the air

The redbud tree has turned to a blaze of gold outside my office window.  It’s about the only colorful tree I can see from here.  Our woods don’t exactly put on a fall display.  Most of the outer edge is poplar and their leaves are already gone.  One rusty brown tree is an oak and there is some green from pines.  On the west side of the property there are sumacs and even a maple along with walnut and oak so the color is a bit better.  But the one thing I rather regret is not planning for more fall color.

 It’s mid October and we still haven’t had a killing frost.  My tomatoes are still green although I will soon be pulling them green leaves or not.  The fruit had to be brought inside to ripen on the windowsill but we had bacon and tomato sandwiches for breakfast.  I picked apples from the tree by our west pasture today.  They are scabby because I didn’t spray this year but are good sized and will make a great apple cake later today.  

 The horses have been getting lots of windfall apples.  I actually have to pick them up so Lily doesn’t get too many.  The trees in the north pasture by the pond are loaded with apples but they aren’t quite as ripe and they are a lot smaller.  The deer have gotten most of the pears as usual.  The pears are on the east, and aren’t fenced, not that a fence bothers most deer.

 We put a roof on the new small chicken run this weekend and have started building a roof for the larger run.  I expect to go into the winter with nearly 50 birds and need more space enclosed than last winter.  I have a lot more birds than that now but Steve insists a great many of them be sold or butchered before winter.  Feed bills are really adding up.  I traded 3 turkey babies for 2 canaries, now we are down to 10 turkeys and up to 5 canaries.   I gave a friend 2 of the youngest batch of ducks and we are down to 21 ducks.  I was able to give away one of the frizzle roosters- down to 6 bantams. 

We still have 16 laying hens and 2 large roosters.  We also have 7 guinea hens.  I’d get rid of some of the guineas but they are so hard to sex and hard to catch that I think they’ll stick around.  The larger ducks are flying everywhere now- coming into the yard and garden to eat and roosting on the barn roof.  They are hard to part with- at least to butcher - as they are so pretty.  But ducks are very messy in the winter inside and I think the original pair and maybe 3 more are about all we need to really explode the population next year.

 If it was up to me and I could afford it I’d keep all the turkeys.  Momma turkey still has her four brown babies out in the front; I do have to figure out how to get them back with the other birds before winter.  I thought they were going to be typical bronze color but it now looks if they may be a chocolate color.  They are pretty and tamer than the 3 bourbon red ones left in the chicken yard.   But there are 3 toms so at least 2 must go.  The bourbons are 2 hens and a tom.

 The bourbon red hen turkey never hatched the last batch of eggs she was sitting on.  I feel bad she never got to raise any babies. Early on she hatched some chickens but we took them away from her.  But she is thin and needs to take a break from sitting.  If any more eggs are laid around here from turkeys or ducks they will be picked up and fed to the dogs or cats.  No more babies until spring.