Uffdah. It is almost that time of year again.

That time of year when I am banned from the woods for 9 days total. As the little video shows above, the bucks are pretty silly with the rut season. This guy is a hoot and loves to stare right into the camera.

I've had a camera in this spot of my woods now for nearly 6 years. Over the years, I've spotted every creature we have in the forest using the trail near this camera. Coyotes, Bobcats, Turkeys, Racoon, Possum, and of course deer. The deer like to nap in this spot also. 

They don't seem to mind the camera at all.

Over the years, I've gotten some rather amusing photos.

I am not opposed to deer hunting at all. Their herds do need to be culled. On my morning walks now, I generally 'jump' up a herd of 6 to 10 does by just walking up my driveway. Farmers see them as pests, motorists see them as hazards. Insurance companies see them as headaches.

And then? I love to watch them. I love to photograph them. 

What a conundrum. I have a love/hate relationship with them don't I? 

Yesterday, revamped the fencing in area where I keep the equine during gun season. It is close to the house and we can keep a close eye on them.

Sundance is always curious no matter what I am doing. Yesterday she followed me around the winter pasture while I pulled t-posts and straightened them before the ground froze. 

What better time than the present to fix it?

Did you know that mules like pumpkins?

They do. Each year I've tossed my pumpkins before they rot into this pen. Immediately, it draws the girls in.
They demolish the pumpkin and tromp the seeds into the ground. Come spring, they have planted and fertilized my new pumpkin patch.

After I did winter repairs and set up the water tank heater, I headed up the lane to the meadow out back. Something, probably that large buck had torn hot wire down and busted six insulators. Ahhh, rut season, how do we love you???

I fixed everything and put the wire back up. 

In the valley, I often have to replace a lot of insulators in the spring. I don't keep the fence hot in the valley during the winter as the mules don't have access to that area.

I wonder how many more times I'll have to fix fence up in the lane this winter?

So this is the time of the year where I drag out a Lego build for the 9 day gun season which includes Thanksgiving.

This year we will be constructing the Medieval Village. 

Since we don't do anything for Thanksgiving [I make lasagna and we have pie]. I like to pick a project that I can do with hubby. I've found that hubby loves sorting pieces for me by color. He does look at the instruction booklet and sometimes he can catch mistakes I make.

Last year, we completed our Christmas Village. I'll take that out of the Hutch some time in December to decorate things for Christmas.

In the mean time, I have a few things left to do outside and in the forest before the hunters come on each side of us and begin the season of gun hunting.

Our property is 500 feet wide and 1/2 mile long. So the reason I don't dare go out is because our place is too narrow to escape stray shots. And believe me, on opening day I spend as little time outside as possible.

However, hubby used to be our hunter and he would always get one or two for us to supplement our table in years past. I'll never forget helping him put up a last minute deer stand the evening before the 2010 deer season. Link below....👇

A Hateful Woman or Stupid Man invented the Deer Stand

Updates

Harvest is in full swing again after a few dry days. Of course that all changed over night when another round of rain swung through the area.

Most of the soybeans in the area around where I live are harvested. Some of the larger Big Farms may not be all in.
There is still a lot of corn standing. Some of it still looks green, some fields are brown/golden and ready to be harvested.
Since we had such a strange spring the planting was delayed in areas and in other areas everything went as ... I hesitate to say smoothly as nothing in farming goes exactly smoothly.

Mules. They are all happy! Siera and I were out the other day, I took time to saddle her and ride her to go and check fences. I could have easily walked, but felt like it. 15's education is at a stand still as is Sundance's. I need to work with both of them but it always seems that something else grabs my attention.

Morris. He is doing rather well. When he isn't sleeping he is more like his normal old self. He likes to nag. He wants out, he wants his new food [he loves that nasty smelling stuff!] and he still enjoys his daily walks on a leash. He won't hike with me anymore but that is fine. He still seems to get confused once in a while but that is okay too.
He gets playful once in a while and will 'zoom' around the house, being his goofy old self for a bit.
He has to get up more at night to go out and do his business, and lately has been waking me up at 4AM to go out and feed him. Well. I am making adjustments. After all, he is the aged dog.

Rich. He is back to driving locally. He went last week to an auction by himself. It was a tiring day but he came back with a Pony Tiller for the garden. I imagine it needs some work, but he says it runs. Yesterday was his first solo trip to get small bales of hay from our Hay Man.

The Dexter Cattle. We have had the ones we are keeping separated for all summer now. Our Bull is scheduled to go to processing in January. I think we'll have plenty of beef from him. Rich has put off sending the others to auction. He needs to make some decisions quickly. Deer Gun Season is only 4 weeks away and if winter settles in, hauling the cattle out of here will be too tricky on our hilly driveway.

Fall Color. Wow.
I think this week was the last of it. Within days we went from glorious brilliant colors to the Brown Season.
Next week they are predicting our first frost. Usually we have a frost by the first weekend of October.

It is time to turn inward to the household things. Painting the kitchen, organizing and building shelves in the basement, and putting away the warm weather clothes and digging out the coveralls and long johns.

It will be a challenge to keep finding interesting things to photograph in the 'Brown Season'. I actually look forward to some hikes in the woods where I will be able to see now that the undergrowth is dying off.

That wraps it up.

3 days of working in the rain

Last night or early this morning we had another round of storms that added about 2" of rain to an already soaked ground.

We had begun our 'winterizing' projects a week ago and worked earnestly at them for the past 3 days.  Yesterday we worked nearly all day in rain.

Coveralls are good to have in nasty weather.
We cleaned the Jack pen on the east side of the shed and then moved on to the south side and began to work.  
There was a lot of shovel work involved as we had to scrape away and clean along the shed wall and shovel under the metal panels.

The sky literally looked as though it were boiling on and off above us today. Gusts of wind would switch around in our hollow.  It rained off and on and we slowly plugged away.
At one time it felt as though it were hailing, but to me it looked an awful lot like sleet.

Bob liked his new paddock on the east side of the shed, he could poke his head around and watch us work.  I think he was smirking at us.  After all we were cleaning his old pen.

We finished Little Richard's pen and moved him off the tie out and into his nice comfy new pen.  He trotted around and did some fancy kicking and bucking to show us his pleasure before he got down and rolled.  He got up and pranced around his enclosure as if he'd just won the lottery.  Such is the life of a crop out mini.
We fondly refer to him as our Guard Pony and our Organic Weed Wacker.

Summer shot of Lil' Richard hard at work.

I'm tempted to train him to ride.  He would make a very hand pony-moped.

Soon hubby had the area cleaned and we restrung the electric wire.  By dark we had things ready so we can move Dinah.  Fred, Siera, and Mica will get their own paddock to share and the rest of the gals will move into their winter quarters perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

In the summer the equine are on 'summer' pasture and just before gun deer hunting season we move everyone much closer in for the winter.  We can keep a closer eye on all of our animals and the stock tanks can all be plugged in so the farm critters can have warmed water.

It is like a ritual each year.  Spring ... out.  Winter ... in.

Another year has passed.

Archived shots of the girls playing in their winter quarters.