Wow It's Mid October Already!

So again we are way behind in keeping everyone aware of what is happening here in the Bull family so get ready to speed read your way through a quick what is going on here this fall.

 

 

Fall started out very slowing with the changing of the colors not taking place till mid October.  When they finally got here they were beautiful as could be though.  This photo does not do justice to all the beauty we had here.  I always feel bad for anyone who does not get to experience the beauty of fall, I would just go outside and smile with all the amazing colors that would show up each day.  Then poof just like that the wind came (with some force) and the leaves were almost all gone.  Mother Nature sure is an amazing thing.

 

 

But if you know anything about fall foliage in Upstate NY then you will know it requires a nice freezing frost to get all those vibrant colors to happen and with that cold freeze something else we did not want to happen ended up happening.  Our poor turkeys started to die.  We were on a one a rate death toll :(  We were finally left with just one and that is the one that was always bigger then the others so we were hoping for great things with this one but in a weeks time it too had passed away. 
The oldest Daughter was quite upset as the Turkeys were her choice in critters and she really did love them.  Thankfully our kids have adjusted to having to deal with the loss of animals and she did over come it and is already planning next years try again at turkeys.  And as much as I worried about them being nasty and mean as everyone had told me they would be they were not.  As you see this one is literally waiting at our front door for me to come out so they could follow me around.  They were like our little shadows and I think we will all miss them.

Turkeys were not our only loss in critters so far this fall.  We had pigs that have since become dinner and we had meat bird chickens which have also joined the pigs in the freezer.  But one unexpected set of critter deaths came in the form of 10 ducklings.  Yes ducklings in fall, one this springs duckling apparently grew up quite fast and managed to hatch our 10 ducks in October!?!  Not good timing for babies to born where we live but we were going to let her try to raise them.  By no means was she not trying to raise them as their death was not her fault.  When we first discovered the dead ones (at 1day old) we assumed a weasel or something had attacked them in the night as they all had the same damage by the neck area.  We were able to get two of them back to good health and back to their mom to try again but unfortunately for them they did not survive either.  These two were also attacked but this time as the last one was being destroyed the Hubby happened to be close enough to see our other lone male duck attacking them and they were just too tiny to survive.

All of this means one thing we are going to be heading into winter very soon.  The death of the critters is sad but on the other hand it is just the same as last year with just our chickens, goats and 3 adult ducks so perhaps next year will turn out better for an increase of critters here?