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.