Autumn

Autumn has officially arrived. It feels like autumn with temperatures cooling, especially at night. However, the trees are not as colorful as they usually are at this time of year. We haven’t had much rain over the last month so I’m wondering if that’s muting the colors. Rather than vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows, the colors are more dull brown.

With autumn’s arrival, EJ and I have begun making lists of things to do before winter: finish harvesting the herbs and vegetables, let the chickens out into the garden to glean the leftovers, put away the garden hoses, and so on. We are making the lists but we want to wait until the last minute–just before the weather turns permanently cold–to actually do the tasks. I believe the hummingbirds have flown south so I put away one of their feeders that was empty. I was going to dump the nectar out of the other feeder and put it away also, but yesterday the honey bees began mobbing it so I decided to leave it up for them.

Yesterday EJ asked, “What is our target date for turning on the furnace?” In order to save money on heating costs, we play a sort of game each autumn, trying to wait as long as possible before we turn on the furnace. We decided we’d try to wait until October 15, which is actually quite late. Some years we’ve had snow before then. Whoever gives in first and turns the furnace on is the loser.

Last week EJ had his physical therapy assessment about his back. The therapist wanted him to come three times a week for a month, but he can only manage Fridays, which is his day off during the week. Even one day each week will be expensive because he has a co-pay of $85 per visit. Yikes!

The physical therapist was quite nice. We found out that she also has chickens. I told her that we had a problem with mice in the coop this summer and that I trapped more than 100. She said she doesn’t have any problems with mice because she sprinkles cheap cayenne pepper on the poultry feed. The chickens don’t notice it but the mice hate it and stay away from the feed. That was a very helpful tip which I put into practice as soon as we were able to get to the store for the cayenne pepper.

I trapped 96 mice in August but the number sharply decreased in September–only 11–even before we started putting cayenne pepper in the feed. I did find one mouse in a trap yesterday. Usually, I threw the dead mice out in front of the trail camera to observe what ate them. I know chickens eat mice, but my chickens are never very interested in them. However, I didn’t feel like taking the mouse all the way to the trail cam with just one mouse, so I decided to just throw it out in the chicken pen. The chickens went crazy; one hen grabbed it, and the others chased her to try to take it away. Chickens can sometimes act like land piranhas. Their “game” was still continuing after I had gathered the eggs and left their area.

Hannah Joy had been excessively itching. It got so bad that it was keeping me awake at night. I read that the itching could be caused by food allergies so we began making her homemade food. Her itching has greatly decreased. Hannah always loved her food, but now she LOVES it. She is so eager to eat it that she stands up to the counter and tries to eat it as we dish it into her bowl.

I’m noticing that the deer are getting in their winter coats and the fawns are losing their spots.

I’ve been slowly learning to combine several of my short trail cam videos into one longer video. At first, I concentrated on learning to combine videos and now I’m learning how to put in transitions between videos. I’m excited about this because now it’s easier to convey a whole story that lasts over several videos, rather than just pick one to upload to Rumble. Here is one of my longer videos in which a Doe makes sure a raccoon does not bother her two fawns:

In the app I use to combine videos, there is an option to let Artificial Intelligence make a video with the my footage. I tried it just to see what it would do. Here it is: AI Video I warn you, it’s pretty awful. I won’t let AI loose again. LOL.