October On The Farm

There's been a lot going on around here this autumn, but I still try to take time to notice the small, quiet beauties such as this new mushroom in the lawn:

My neighbors gave me some cornstalks to decorate the front of my house and I purchased two pumpkins to add to the look:

But something has been eating my pumpkins, gnawing right through to the core. I'm guessing it's that porcupine I saw a few weeks ago:

I see the dawn sky nearly every morning these days, but few are as beautiful as this one:

The same morning as the above photo. The odd thing was that all this color was in the southeastern sky instead of the northeastern sky, where I usually see it. I have no idea why:

I keep collecting apples (and pears) to feed to the cattle - one bucket each day in the afternoon. I collect them and then store them inside the barn, ready to use:

I cleaned out the chicken and pigeon rooms, nearly filling the tractor's six foot bucket with poop and feathers. I then dumped it on the cow manure pile:

The grass around the fence line of the north field couldn't be cut when they hayed it, so it went to seed, creating a wonderfully colorful picture:

Why do my chickens cross the road? To mess with local traffic, of course:

Right after I cleaned out the pigeon's room, they became bolder about going outside. There were seven this time:

And eight this time. Can you find them all? There's one above the electric entry, two just above the center eave, four on the milk room ridge (one of them at the very end), and one just about the milk house window:

The Eastern White Cedar just outside my door has produced billions of cones and they are beautiful, especially combined with the green and yellow foliage. They're not so lovely, however, when they're littering my porch: