Happy Fall Y'all!

...some Fall moments from earlier today...

Puyallup Fair 2010

Bright and Early Thursday morning we drop off our poultry for the Junior Poultry Exposition....

Settle in the chickens

and the ducks...

Return a little later Thursday evening for Birdsmanship--cleaning the barn and feeding the poultry.

The boys work hard doing the fair chores..whilst I go work hard at enjoying the fair exhibits..I love the Ag barn :)

...curiosities...

When the boys are done in the Poultry Barn.. we visit the Midway to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells (cotton candy anyone?) of The Fair.

Early Saturday morning brings Showmanship

and some quality afternoon time with my son..

**I took all of these pictures with my iPhone and edited them using some really fun apps-- Tilt/Shift Generator, Photoshop Express and Hipstamatic.. no advertising here, but if you have an iPhone and like to take pictures, these are REALLY fun to play with!! :)**

It is a beautiful day today

Typical early Fall day.. bright blue skies with scattered clouds, slightly crisp but still warm air. Love it! Going to go work in the yard and garden in a minute..

~but FIRST~

Here's some fun pictures

..A garden needing to be put to bed for the winter..

funny cochin girls, still try to cuddle under Uno

Val.. our only White Crested Black Polish hen. and Juliette.

Cleo and her babies, this one is a lil roo..

and this one is a girl..

the other girlie was being very shy

and my boy, Stanley.

One of my favorite Fall beverages

Homemade Carmel Apple Spice

Use your favorite Spiced Apple Cider.. ours is either the bottled Cider and Spice by Knutson's. Or Simply Apple Juice with the Knutson's Cider and Spice Packets(they look like tea packets).. Heat to your preference. You can also add a splash of cinnamon syrup-like the kind they use at the coffee stand.

Drizzle carmel sauce into your mug, top with whipped cream and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Enjoy!

**YUM**

and don't forget to check out our favorite Fall Pancakes from my friend Tina! (scroll down a bit to get to the recipe)

It is feeling rather Fall-ish outside

Leaves are changing and dropping. My neighbor has a shrub that changes as soon as cooler weather hits, and it is already turning it's beautiful fiery red color. I do love Fall, in fact, our fantastic Indian Summer here in the PNW is probably my favorite time of year. I just wish we would have had a warmer Summer. aw well. There's always next year.

...An early Fall storm building...

I was able to can some peaches that my Dad brought over from his trees in Eastern Washington, as well as make a couple pints of Dilly Beans. I had quite a few beans on my plants, but he also brought a lot from his garden--which supplemented my stash nicely! :)

This is Talon, our young Cochin boy. He oozes attitude. We decided to hang onto him thru the Winter show season to see how he does.. but after that we will sell him. We don't have any unrelated Cochins to put him with, his mom is a frizzle like him and it is not advised to put frizzle with frizzle ~ you'll get 'not quite smooth, not quite frizzle' feathers!

And our little baby Mille Fleur Cochin out of Albert and Marie--hatched by Hedwig. She wanted to be a momma sooo bad, I couldn't get her to quit brooding no matter what I tried, so gave her a couple eggs from Albert and Marie. Two hatched, one died.

I really like this picture of Uno.. she has a lot of personality.

******

Here is Stanley--originally thought he was a Stella! Goes to show how hard ducks are to tell male from female!! haha! He is my little orphan boy. He is 'almost' tame for a duck. He'll follow us around the chicken yard.

And this is Black Bird, one of my favorite hens.. She is a goofball and very tame.

She disappeared one day, right before we were going away for the weekend. No trace, no feathers no nuthin'.. gone during the daylight hours. Things were very suspicious about her disappearance. Either she was abducted by chicken thieves or had hidden herself away in a very private place. I was leaning towards the nesting theory, and looked EVERYwhere for her and could still find no sign of her. So, heart heavy with disappointment, left for the weekend with strict instructions to my friend who house sits for us to keep her eyes peeled... (they saw no sign of her either)

After being gone for the weekend, I was out tending to chicken yard chores.. stepped backwards out of the hen house and almost stepped on Herself the Missing Hen! Yay! She was right at my feet ~ looking for her usual treats of course. I watched her closely for a minute, because after she was done eating and having some water she went directly back to her nest..

looks cozy huh? She was sitting on about 25 eggs, hers and everyone else's. (ok, so not 25 eggs, but enough that she could not cover all of them!) I pulled all the eggs that weren't hers and set her up in a coop to finish out her Brood. Look at that utter concentration too! Brooding is HARD.

Here's about a week later. ;) little fuzzballs of cuteness. I have no idea what they are ~ Aracauna crosses. Either Sir who is a Serama or Albert the Mille Fleur Cochin would be the dad. You wonder how I could tell which eggs were Black Birds? Because she is actually an Aracauna--just not tufted and she has a tail--but she lays gorgeous blue eggs. :) dead giveaway.. because all the other eggs in her nest were white or brown.