Hurry Up and Slow Down

Back in college, me and one of my friends made up a term for the kind of lovely fall weather we've been having the last few days. We called them "be a cat days", because it they make you want to curl up in a lovely spot in the dry, crunchy leaves like a cat, and absorb the loveliness . . . just like it seems that Henry and Shadow were doing yesterday afternoon.

If you're a young turkey jake, for some reason the fall weather has seemed to induce a lot of strutting behavior. I was beginning to think that one of our young-uns was trying to either court me or viewed me as competition (for what I don't know, no females in his line of sight). He started out here:

And came closer:

And closer:

After the following picture, I pulled my hand with camera back from the pen, as I wasn't sure what was next on his agenda, and didn't want to find out if it involved beak or claws:

I came back to the pen a little later, and there was not strutting to be found. Though he started up again when I went in to the pen to feed them; makes me a little nervous when I have to turn my back on male poultry . . . I've had too many negative experiences with our rooster I guess.

The calves have really started to seem to flourish this fall, we've upped their rations to start finishing them for their end purpose . . . beef in the freezer. The flies have started to diminish, so there's less tail swishing and kicking going on (they freaked out when we tried to spray or pour anything on them to get rid of bugs, etc, so we just gave up, and told them they'd have to deal with the flies, and we would find other ways to get wormer in them).  Though their favorite part of fall, the fact there is an apple tree that hangs over the pasture fence, and when there aren't any apples on their side of the fence, there are nice humans around that will pick some up and feed them to them for a treat.

Probably not traditional beef calf rations, but neither are stale tortillas, and they are big suckers for those too. Though they get those as treats only occasionally, usually about 2 weeks after we've had tacos and I can't find anything to do with the last 2 or 3 tortillas in the pack. Really we've found that most of our livestock are pretty good at cleaning up leftovers, and would probably throw more into the pasture if it didn't cause such a ruckus between the calves and the poultry. I miss the pigs in that respect, because with them around I never had waste food, unless it was really gross and moldy; in which case, it doesn't get fed to anything except the compost pile.

It's getting to be that time of year where we hurry up, so we can slow down. We know that the weather is only going to hold out for a little while longer, so we best hurry up our outside chores so that we can slow down when winter hits.