Moving Day; Its Golden

Goldie, my first Golden Pheasant and his harem of three hens were moved into the outdoor pen this morning. It has been a long time coming. He feathered out nicely after the molt this year with an attractive long tail. This arrangement will be much better for them.

Goldie and two of the three hens

 A few more perches need to be installed for them and some landscaping - I'll be on the hunt for some interesting rocks and fallen limbs to give them places to check out and explore.









Autumn's brilliance is spent.  However there is this one lone tree on the farm that stands out from the crowd of now barren trees.  It is stunning against the drab background of the greys & rust tones which mark the impending dormancy of Winter.  

Yellow Tree

Perseverance prevails! Reina will be starting training this week!  She'll will be on an Amish farm for a month.  We finally found the Amish man who trains horses.  The Amish are not plugged into the rat race and all its complications.  After repeated visits to various farms during the Summer, finally the time was right and the communications began to make this happen. 

Reina the 2 yr American Saddlebred

Looking forward to getting her back and riding during the colder months. 

The chickens are enjoying the cooler weather and are usually by the chicken house door chopping at the bit to get out and forage around, unless of course they are in the nesting boxes laying eggs. 

A Reunion

It was a blissful colorful Autumn day with a warm breeze and sunshine.  A wonderful day to get the chicken house cleaned out and refreshed before the weather gets too cool.  A benefit of free ranging the chickens is having them out and not inside, while getting their space spiffy.  Plus the addition of all natural lawn fertilizer.  The grass should really be green in the Spring. 

After some target shooting, two on lookers showed up and then there was; "What's that up in the woods?"  At first glance my eyes caught the movement of black fur, (bear? . . .) and then the animal came into full sight.  What the heck!  It is a rather young calf that looked very hungry.  My job was to get around it and drive it back to where all the Moms were.  Yesterday the cattle were moved and this little one was inadvertently left behind.  This calf was swift on its feet and in no time it raced its way to the fence where there was help to open the gate.  (It was more like me catching up, hee) But it ran into the barbed wire and with a little help successfully made it through the fence.  It came upon a black cow and asked;  "Are you my Mother?"  Nope with a rather sharp nudge received it continued to hang with her.  After some encouragement the cow and this little one, joined the larger group of cows and in no time Mamma Ghost made a bee line to the calf, sniffing and licking.  The calf was quick at getting to some nourishment.  It was quite a sight to see.

Mulching Hens

I found a neat blogger up in Massachusetts who has chickens and a classy and informative blog.  One of the posts she wrote mentioned how her chickens love to get into mulch.  Well, my hens found it yesterday.  Now it looks like a professional landscaper was here to refresh and weed the mulch bed.  Ha, Ha. Ha.  Thankfully there weren't any noteworthy flowers or plants in the bed.  Will definitely make a note of this.

I put on my IT hat over the weekend and managed to figure out some networking &  remote viewing capabilities.  So what's your IP, gateway mask and port, blah, blah, blah.  It took some time to figure  it all out.  I must say the data/voice tech did an amazing job specially in light of being told it was his first assignment.  The manual was absolutely useless.  The hardware being set up is pretty nice but the manual definitely wasn't written or printed here.  Has anyone noticed the smallness of fonts used these days, with prescription glasses it still took getting the magnifying glass out to catch bits and pieces of set up detail. Thankfully it all came together with everything working properly. 

Harvest Time

Yesterday morning was pleasantly cool. The hens were eager to get out and roam on the dew covered grass. I picked what might be the last of the various hot peppers and green peppers. Yesterday's yield of eleven eggs inspired me to consider making an egg baked dish suitable for microwaving at the office. Here's the pre-baked picture.

It is basically a crust-less quiche. It was made with breakfast sausage crumbles that were fried up in advanced, green pepper, onion, fresh crushed garlic, shredded sharp cheddar cheese and Hungarian hot peppers for a mild kick. My taste tester gave it the thumbs up.  Hee!  This turned out to be a nice warm breakfast treat. 

Here's what was found under the floor of the front door. It is an old plastic ad sign for Massey Ferguson.  What can I say, except this is an old farmhouse.  Apparently they were making use of what they had.