A Spooktacular Halloween!

I hope you’ve had a spooktacular Halloween!  I finally decided to do something with the pie pumpkins I harvested from the garden.

one of my pie pumpkins

I got as far as baking them and getting them made into pumpkin to bake with.  Now I need to bake.

My pumpkin orange Bob cat

And my black Halloween kitty, Salem.

Salem

But the birds got to enjoy the seeds and insides.

all of the birds

It’s good for them–raw pumpkin is a natural wormer.

I do like to treat my birds occasionally. And by the way, look who’s slowly growing his tail back in.

Mr. Peacock

Speaking of birds, there was a crow sighting for Halloween!

The littlest farmhand in the costume I made (with my mom’s feather cutting help)

Good thing we had a scarecrow too!

The little farm hand

They are just too cute!

And I have to share this one of my nephew with the little crow because you can see the tail.  I am really happy how the costume turned out!

My son and his partner were at his shop handing out trick-or-treat candy.  The holder for the candy bowl was the old tires from my Ranger.

My son, my twin nephews, and my son’s girlfriend.

It really was a perfect evening for trick-or-treating.

leaves from my mom’s yard

Samhain blessings!

Evergreen Wars

Saturday morning, I decided to finish my walk in pasture by taking the buffer strip that would lead me along the north paddock where the evergreen sentinels stand.

The sentinels of the farm

I seem to have wandered into a territory war–the sharp shinned hawk against a party of blue jays!

sharp shinned hawk

blue jay sitting on the same spot in the tree

It was quite impressive to see the jays go after the hawk and chase him from tree to tree.

two jays–there were a lot of them ganging up on the hawk

I’m not sure there was ever a winner because I finally had to go back to the house.

When I went back out later, it was all quiet.

Evening Milking

When Ava and Joy came into heat right after I took them out of the Buck pen with Xerxes, they went a little nuts.  First it was Joy–she refused to leave Freddie’s side to come get milked in the morning. And in the morning I don’t have time to deal with that, so she just got milked that evening.  And let me tell you, it was still a whole lot of coaxing and begging and chasing and dragging her to the milk room.

Joy

Of course, the next day, I had to repeat the whole process and plus Ava jumped on the crazy hormone train.  So the long and short of it is that I’m only milking in the evenings now.  I have to say, it is nice not going out before the sun to milk.  In the evening, it’s right at twilight when I go milk.

Ava (my nightlight is already on when I come out to milk now)

It’s not a bad thing that I’m down to once a day.  My freezers are full; I have my supply of mozzarella and I don’t really have time to make more.  I kind of hoped that switching them to once a day would slow down their production. That hasn’t seemed to work.  Especially for Ava.  She’s kind of going wild with the milk right now.

Between the two of them, I’m still getting a half a gallon a day (or close to it depending on the weather). I don’t know what to do with it all.

By the time I get done milking and filtering it and come out of the milk room, the sun has already set.  All I get to see is the afterglow.

Dolly front; Onyx; Penelope, Trace, and Pretzel

Which is still beautiful.

Penelope and Trace; Xerxes on the other side of the fence

Penelope and Trace; LilyAnn (in front) with the moon over the garage

But I still don’t know what to do with all that milk.