It's Fall!

What a hot summer we had! It seems that the front that brought us 8ish inches of rain last week also brought us more typical fall weather. We are definitely trying to take every advantage of it, too.

Today we spent the morning processing the last batch of meat chickens. We only had 8 roosters so it didn't take very long at all with 6 of us out here. Thanks to Sue, Crendell, Keith and Alli for helping out! Hopefully we'll be having a lot less rooster drama now and the hens will not be pestered all the time. Most of the chickens watched from a safe distance today- except Brenda. She was the first to come investigate all the various by products of processing. She stuck her head in the innards buckets, watched blood drip from the cone and picked at anything that happened to hit the ground. Eventually the others followed her and as I type they are eating the blood from the ground around the killing cone. Dinosaurs- the lot of them.

The lucky rooster that gets to go live at our neighbors house.

Keith and Alli also brought us some more adult Peking Ducks. There are 2 females and a male. We're hoping to raise our own Pekings along with the Ancona and Indian Runners next year.

New Pekings- the male is the one with the bright orange beak. His name is Spanky.

Also in duck news we have our 9 Peking ducklings growing in the brooder. These are all for meat to replace the turkeys we lost. From adorable to delicious in 10 weeks! I increased the size of the duck pens for the new guys. They are separate right now , but I'm hoping they'll all get along and hang out together soon.

Peking Ducklings- 3 weeks old

The goats are feeling the effects of fall as well and are producing MUCH less milk. I've gone to milking them once a day and getting about a quart. They'll probably make it through October and then we'll let them dry off. Mary has been in the paddock with Roscoe and that seemed to go very well. It's on the calendar and in 145 days we should have baby goats again. It will be nice to have a little break from milking, even if it means buying milk again.

Muscadine grapes are still coming in still. They're so yummy! We've dug sweet potatoes and those did really well this year, and we're starting to get pumpkins and other types of winter squash in.

This fall we'll spend adding compost and nutrients to the raised beds so hopefully those rops will do much better next year, and continuing to beef up the goat fence strength to keep Scarlet in. She should've been named Houdini.

For now though, we're enjoying the mild weather and a quiet afternoon on the farm.

Chuck in the hammock with Hayek