Cider Bend: October

Fall is always a great time on the farm!

 Cats:

Stormy has been around a lot more this month, and she really looks good. I'm hoping the winter isn't too hard on her, but if it gets super cold, she would probably let me bring her into the barn. Floof and Michem don't have a care in the world, and have no idea what it would be like to live the hard life like their mama does.

You can often find Floof like this. 😆

Stormy missed dinner one night, so she came to the back door and meowed at us. She visited with her babies, and had some dinner.

😁😁😁

Chickens:

The chickens have had a good fall. Mark made a new roost for them in the covered area of the chicken run. They have been getting lots of treats from the garden, because we just can't keep up on all the fruits and vegetables. They also got to carve their first Halloween pumpkin!

The new roost going in!

While the other chickens carved their pumpkin, Freda just wanted to snuggle with me.

I processed all the pumpkins from the garden, and I gave the chickens some of the extra pumpkin puree. They loved it in this form.

Tillie and Fern got to try pumpkin too!

The chickens did a great job carving their very first pumpkin. It's a fun process to watch.

Donkeys:

My cute little donks are my absolute favorites! They are such good sports! They were clowns for Halloween, and were a big hit on social media. 😁

Clover had to have a hat change part way through because Willow ate the flower right off of her headband! 😅

Perfect costume for Willow! She is a bit of a clown!

Playing with toys as it was getting dark.

I spent some time raking all the leaves out of the corrals. I got lots of help from Clover and Willow.

Then they became a lot less helpful!

Cows:

My sweet little cows are approaching their first winter outside of the barn, and I'm very stressed about it. They have a nice shelter that blocks the wind, and I put lots of bedding in it for them, so they have really enjoyed the fall. I hope it's enough for winter, or else I'm gonna have to squeeze two very big cows into one small stall.

They enjoyed all the corn husks from the garden.

I love them!

Ace and Opal were a big hit for Halloween too!

Random Stuff:

I'm outside in the mornings as the sun is coming up, and I'm usually finishing up chores in the afternoon when the sun is going down, so I get a lot of good sunrises and sunsets in the fall.

We had a huge harvest super moon in October. It was stunning coming up over the mountains. My phone just couldn't do it justice, but I tried to capture it.

Someone photo bombed my picture! 😅

We had tons of visiting critters on the farm in October. The first and most shocking was a badger! We weren't expecting that! I hope he was just passing through and doesn't have his den near by.

We have a herd of deer that hang out on the property, but we had these two just wandering around all night long for a couple of nights. I saw them on all the cameras, at times when they are usually sleeping.

We had a mama moose and twin babies hanging out last week. The garage camera caught them in the morning while I was out in the barn feeding the animals.

Then the front door camera caught them in our front yard. Watch the last one run right across our grass in front of our porch.

Then the moved over by where I saw them. I was cleaning up poop, and saw them in the field along the property line. This is the time of year we start seeing them come through, and it never gets old. 

I was in the corral with the donkeys and saw an eagle flying around. I watched it for a long time, and then another one showed up. They stayed around the farm for a long time, so I put the chickens away. It was really cool watching them.

The next day Mark sent me this video, and the pair of them came back. They must be nesting close by. I love having them around, but I worry about my chickens when they are out in their free range area.

We got an early freeze, so we had to harvest the garden a couple weeks earlier than we were hoping for. We made a haul!

So many watermelons! Some of them weren't quite ripe, so I want to start them a few weeks earlier in a green house next year.

My pumpkins did amazing this year!

This was my first time growing pumpkins, and it was so fun! I have been processing all my pie pumpkins. I have 9 cans worth of pumpkin puree in my freezer now. We can have yummy pumpkin treats all year!

I made these delicious pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. So good! Also on the menu for November is pumpkin Alfredo, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin butter. I can't wait!

We have a row of giant cottonwood trees on our property, so the amount of leaves that fall is insane! We like to stay on top of it as much as possible, because we want to keep them cleaned up in case it snows. We worked on leaves for a few hours on Halloween day. We finally started using the tractor, and it made it go by so much faster! Worked like a charm!

October was great, and hopefully the nice fall weather holds out through November.