2021 Meat Birds - Week Three

Thursday afternoon means that the weekend is almost here.  It also means that it is weigh-in day for the Cornish Cross Meat birds.  We like to see how they are growing.  No fatalities this week.  All fifty of them look healthy as can be.  We moved the temporary brooder out of the way in order to give them more room to stretch out and run around and eat grass.  They appear to have enjoyed that!

We also moved in a gutter that we use as a feed trough.  This ensures that as they grow, they all have room "at the table" to eat.  When they get a little bigger, we'll add two gutters.  We also removed the gallon sized waterer and replaced it with the old trusty bell waterer.  It is kind of hidden by one of the heat lamps, but it is gravity fed by a five gallon bucket of water we have outside the chicken tractor.

We only turn the heat lamps on at night since it is 82 degrees (in December).  It is so warm, today I cut the zip ties off the side of the tractor and rolled up the tarp to allow some air flow through the tractor.  It was just too warm and uncomfortable in there.  50 birds put off a lot of heat.  It made them happy to have some fresh air blowing through there.  Once it cools off - it is supposed to be blow freezing next week, we'll tie down the tarp again to protect the birds from the cold.

Alrighty, time to weigh in.  I picked the first bird I could grab from the tractor and brought it in the garage and put it on the scale.  As you can see, The bird is stretching out.  It feels plump and healthy it my hands.

And as you can see, it weighed 1 pound and eight ounces today.  It weighed right at a pound last week.

So in week 3 of 2021, the bird weighed 1 pound 8 ounces.  That's up half a pound from last week.  How does that compare with previous years?

In week 3 of 2019 - the Cornish Cross weighed 1 pound 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2018, the bird weighed in at 1 pound 10 ounces.
In week 3 of 2017, they weighed 1 pound 9 ounces.
In week 3 of 2016, they weighed 1 pound 15 ounces.

In comparison with previous years, we're off by a few ounces on average, but still on track.  

Ya'll have a very Happy New Year's Celebration!  See ya next year.

Holding Stuff Together With Baling Twine

There is an old, tired line about holding stuff together with duct tape, chewing gum, and baling twine.  Sometimes, it's true, and is exactly what we do use to fix things.  When the cows are just about finished with a round bale of hay, I'll go out to the bale with my pocketknife and will cut the twine into manageable pieces.  I roll it together neatly and put it aside.  You never can tell when you'll need it.

Just so happens I needed it the other day.  With our "summer in late December" gifting us with days in the 80's, our garden is growing by leaps and bounds.  In fact the crop of cilantro is bolting right now.  You can see it on the bottom left of the photo below.  The other thing you can see is our Sugar Snap Peas growing on the trellis.  It is growing so fast and so lush and heavy, that it is causing us some problems.

The vines normally wrap their tendrils around the trellis and creep upward.  Some have done so, but others are so heavy, they are either breaking loose or they haven't firmly attached themselves to the trellis and are pulling down the other peas.  It's a mess and will be very difficult to harvest them.  Harvest won't be many days away.  The vines are full of blooms and little pods are already forming.

But, here's where the baling twine comes in.  I had wifey help me.  I strung out the baling twine from one end of the trellis to the other.

And then I pulled it tight and tied it up.  The twine pulled the vines back up to the trellis where, hopefully, the tendrils will wrap themselves against the cattle panels and hold this time.  

I'm thinking that next week I'll have to add another layer of twine a couple of feet higher.  I also use the twine for the "Florida Weave Tomato Trellis" method that we use every year.  Save your twine.  You never know what it'll come in handy for.

Late December Heat Wave and Its Effects on the Garden

Well, now.  Here we are two days after Christmas and we are in the throes of a heat wave.  Since Christmas Day we've had high temps of 80 degrees!  My firewood sits in the rack biding its time, neglected and unused.  The air conditioner drones on, keeping us cool.  The grass continues to grow and the cows have pasture to munch on.  

And then the garden.  The garden is growing like crazy!  The eggplant is full of blooms and fruit.  The peppers are producing.  We're even picking tomatoes for our garden salads!  Unheard of.  Things are actually growing TOO fast.  The heat has caused the broccoli to fruit early.  The heads aren't as big as they usually get and we have to get out and pick the florets every single day.

The high temperatures cause the plants to bolt to flowering and if you aren't determined about picking every day, you'll have the prettiest little yellow flowers on your broccoli that you've ever seen.  I'd rather eat the broccoli BEFORE it blooms.  The honey bees, on the other hand, were voicing their disapproval today as I was picking the broccoli, even those with flowers on 'em.

You can see, for example, this head of broccoli.  If I waited one more day, it would be too late.  It would be all bloomed out versus something good to eat.

The cauliflower is ripening too quickly as well.  With the temperatures persisting in the 80's for the next week, at least.  We are having to do a lot of harvesting that we wouldn't ordinarily be doing for a while.

We've been eating the broccoli and cauliflower in salads, roasting them in the oven with garlic, steaming them and intend on blanching and freezing some for later.  Tricia also made a Broccoli Cheese Soup for supper the other night.

We're waiting on some cooler weather.  If I understood correctly, the long range forecast shows some potential for freezing temps in the next 10 days or so.  That will be something to see.  A 50 degree fluctuation.  

Merry (Late) Christmas From the Sonniers

It's a Day Late, but we wanted to greet you and wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us at our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  We met at my parent's home for some family fellowship and enjoyed one another's company.  I trust you did the same.

As is the custom, my Dad read the story of Jesus' birth from the Gospel of Luke while we sat around attentive.

We do this prior to the gift exchanging each year to try to convey to each other that the most important gift was given to us over 2000 years ago when God sent his Son into this fallen world to provide salvation for Mankind.

Scout, my brother's chocolate lab, listened attentively as well to the Gospel.

Tricia was with Russ as he was feeling a little under the weather.  I don't get to see my brother that often, so we were able to get a photo of us together.

Above (L to R): My brother, Kristian, Me, My Dad, My Mom, my sister, Jenny

Once again, I hope you were able to get together with your family and enjoy time together.  May God richly bless you and yours!

2021 Meat Birds - Week Two

I got a little behind in my posts.  It was almost two weeks in when I posted our one week status update.  The chicks came on a Thursday, so I'm back caught up with this post.  Our Cornish Cross Meat Birds are two weeks old (yesterday).  Nothing eventful going on.  No more fatalities.  We still have 50 of the little guys.  They are still in the chicken tractor and we push them to fresh grass each day.  We keep them supplied with fresh water (with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar mixed in).  I'm mixing a 20% protein organic feed with an 18% protein non-organic, but non-medicated feed.

Let me correct that and tell you what I mean.  They probably are not all "guys."  We purchased 50 "Straight Run" chicks.  "Straight run" means that they are not sexed prior to shipment.  Now, you can purchase all males, if you wish, they just cost more.  Many people pay extra for all males.  Males grow faster and bigger and that's what you want when you are raising meat birds.  We're okay with straight run.  The law of averages tells you that about 50% will be males and that's fine with us.

So here is this week's bird for weigh in.  The bird is plump.  I can tell its put on weight.  The feet look like they were "photo-shopped" onto its body, but that's its real feet.  They just look like they belong on a bigger bird.  The rest of the body will grow into those feet in short order.  While we're talking about averages, I'm not picking up the same bird every week.  I grab the first one I can reach down and grab.  So there may be some disparities week over week if I select one that is smaller.  On average, though, it will tell us the story of what we need to know.

Our goal is to achieve a SIX Pound bird in order to yield a FOUR Pound carcass.

Now is time for the weigh-in and we have comparative numbers this week:  Drum Roll....

Chester the Chicken weighs right at 16 ounces this week.  Last week, it weighed 7 ounces.  It doubled its weight in one week.  

Here is a comparison I found from 2019:

2020    We did not raise meat birds in 2020.

2019    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 16 ounces.

2018    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 18 ounces.

2017    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 13 ounces.

2016    At two weeks old the bird weighed exactly 18 ounces.

It looks like we are right where we want to be!  Two weeks down.  Six more to go.  Tune in next week for the next update.

2021 Meat Birds - Week One

Here is the first weekly installment we'll post for the next 8 weeks until these creatures are fully grown and will reside in the deep freeze.  We'll discuss challenges, victories, and the ins and outs of raising your own meat birds for home consumption.  In the last installment, we showed how we moved the 3 day old chicks out of the makeshift brooder in the garage and out into the chicken tractor.

Over the last week we've experienced some 80 degree weather (in late December)!  The chicks were hot.  We turned off the heat lamps.  Then we encountered some cooler weather (in the mid-upper 30's).  The chicks were cold.  We turned the heat lamps back on and lowered them.  If you don't do this, they'll pile up on one another to stay warm and the ones on the bottom will suffocate.  Let's just say we learned this the hard way.

A week into it, and we've only lost one.  That one was smaller than the others.  I think it came in weak from the hatchery.  Before we could quarantine in and nurse it along, it got trampled by the other 50 chicks.  So where we originally had 51 chicks, now we have 50.  Now that we've got them this far, the only fatalities we should experience is from accidents.  We have learned our lesson there, too.  Each day we move the tractor to fresh grass.  If you aren't paying attention, you'll run over them.  There's no bringing back a flat chicken.

So we do this every week.  We bring in a bird and weigh him or her.  We look the bird over and record the weight, comparing with last year's bird at this time and make general observations.  Here we go.  Last week the bird was a yellow puff ball.  This week it is bigger and you can see the white feathers coming out on its wings.  It is slowly making a metamorphosis from a cute thing to a monster bird.  I put a 'diaper' of sorts on top of the scale, so the bird doesn't christen the kitchen scale.  (I would be sleeping out in the chicken tractor if that was to occur!)

The bird weighed 7 ounces.  I wish I would have weighed them the day they came in the mail.

I will be posting shortly the weigh in for Week 2 of the 2021 Cornish Cross Meat Bird Project.  Stay tuned!

Do You Hear the Bells?

Do you hear the bells?  If not, there is a lot of distracting noise.  You have to REALLY listen.  There is an on-going, never-ending cacophony that will drown them out if you let them.  There is talk of a dark winter of illness and death due to a new variant.  There are threats of joblessness, supply chain issues and inflationary concerns.  We seem to be a people greatly divided on a number of issues.  Fear and hopelessness seems to be a new pandemic.  Don't catch it!  You can still hear the bells if you stop and listen.

We sang the Christmas carol in our hymnals on Sunday entitled, "I heard the Bells on Christmas Day."  It's always been to me one of the most melancholy carols of all.  There is a reason for this.  The hymn is from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow written on Christmas Day in 1863.  Longfellow also wrote the epic poem "Evangeline" about the Cajun dispersion which holds local significance.  There's a story behind the "I heard the Bells" carol that needs to be told.  

It was written during the Civil War.  It had been a rough couple years for Longfellow.  His wife of 18 years died in a house fire.  Then his oldest son joined the Union Army without his blessing and was severely injured the the Battle of Mine Run.  Longfellow was looking out of his window, hearing Christmas Bells being rung from a nearby church.  He was depressed by his situation as well as the death and division that plagued the land.  For many people, the Christmas holidays can be a very sad time.

Here are the lyrics: (I highlighted some critical lyrics) 

1. I heard the bells on Christmas day
   Their old familiar carols play;
   In music sweet the tones repeat,
   “There’s peace on earth, good will to men.”
2. I thought how, as the day had come,
   The belfries of all Christendom
   Had rolled along th’ unbroken song
   Of peace on earth, good will to men.
3. And in despair I bowed my head:
   “There is no peace on earth,” I said,
   “For hate is strong, and mocks the song
   Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
4. Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
   “God is not dead, nor does He sleep,
   For Christ is here; His Spirit near
   Brings peace on earth, good will to men.”
5. Those are some very meaningful words, cathartic to Longfellow, for sure, but also to us in these modern times.  If we allow ourselves to only hear the bells of despair, fear, and angst, they will obscure even the bells tolling "more loud and deep."  Those bells tell us that God is not dead, nor does He sleep.  Christ is here and His Spirit is near, and He brings peace on earth and good will to men.  Can you hear them?  He that has ears to hear, let him hear.

6. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:13-14

I'm a Hog for Some Nog

Every year at this time since I was a little boy, I've been looking forward to egg nog.  I remember at the grocery store, the Borden milk man would be adding a spot in the dairy case for those green quart cartons of Egg Nog.  They would fly off the shelves as everyone just had to have some egg nog.  People were always asking the same question, "Why don't they offer egg nog for sale all year long?"  Good question.  One answer I can see is that Egg Nog is RICH.  It's like drinking melted ice cream.  We would weigh 450 pounds if allowed to indulge all year long.

It was a rainy Saturday and Tricia got together the ingredients for her annual homemade egg nog.  Not many ingredients.  It's all stuff we have.  2 cups milk, 1 cup cream, and 6 egg yolks and a half cup of sugar.  She got that heating up.

If you're gonna make egg nog, you gotta break a bunch of eggs.  In November and December, our hens' egg production drops way off due to the short days.  With 42 hens in the flock, we're picking up an average of five eggs a day.  We have no eggs to sell at this time.  We give a dozen a week to Russ and a dozen a week to Benjamin, and Tricia and I eat the rest.  Needless to say, egg nog making puts a dent in our egg inventory, but it's worth it.

One small problem is you are left with the egg whites from 6 eggs.  Tricia simply made scrambled eggs, but had to crack a few more eggs in the skillet WITH yolks to give a yellow color back to it.  I know some fast food restaurant I won't mention sells an "Egg White Delight," but we like whole eggs with yolks.

We allowed the egg nog to cool and then chilled it in the fridge.  By night time, it was ready to drink.  As we watched National Lampoon's, Christmas Vacation and laughed, we enjoyed a glass of egg nog with grated nut meg on top.  Delicious!

The smell of egg nog and nutmeg brings back a lot of good memories.

Shelling Pecans after a Three Year Draught

For whatever reason, nutrition I'm guessing, our trees haven't made pecans in three years.  This year, however, they made up for lost time.  As discussed in previous posts, we picked up six five gallon buckets of pecans.  We could have picked up more, but realized we had enough.  We decided that we needed to get started cracking and shelling them.  Five years or so, I'd crack them all myself using an old timey cracker.  In recent years, we've taken them to a place in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana that cracks them or to our local feed store.

Don't you love going into old feed stores or hardware stores?  It's like walking back in time.  There's a screen door to enter.  The merchants are always friendly and talk to you about the weather and other happenings.  You can pick up feed, or medicine, halters, buckets, boots, seed, seed potatoes and Farmer's Almanacs.  They load the feed in the back of you truck for you.  Old feed stores are the best!

Our local feed store also has a pecan cracking machine.  It is an odd looking contraption.  When you walk in, you can hear the "pop, pop, pop" of pecans being cracked.  You pour your buckets of pecans in the hopper and they go through the machine.

The cracked pecan drops out of the chute below and back into the bucket that you brought them in.

Then, the shopkeeper puts them on a scale and weighs them.  This year's charge for cracking them is $0.33 per pound.  That might sound like a lot; however, it saves you a lot of time!

Once we get them home, I grab several handfuls of cracked pecans and put them in a box.  I shell them over the box so that all the shells and dust don't get all over the place.  I use a special tool to clean the shell out from the ridges in the pecan.  If you don't get that piece of shell out and you eat it, it will instantly make your mouth very dry.  It's not very appealing.  If you deal with home-grown pecans and are a pecan-eater, you know what I'm talking about.  Anyway, here's what they look like right out of the machine.  As you can tell, the machine has done most of the work for you.  All you need to do is remove the cracked shells and sort out any bad ones.  Most of them even come out whole and not broken.

In three shakes of a billy goat's tail, you have a pot-full of shelled pecans.  Nice ones, too!

So far, we've shelled two of the 6 five gallon buckets and have put FIVE one gallon zip lock bags of fresh pecans in the deep freeze.  By the time we've finished the other 4 buckets, we'll have quite an inventory of pecans.  Pecans freeze well, and it is a good thing.  You never know, we may have another 3 year spell where we don't get any.  It'll be good to have some squirreled away.

Before we go further, let me tell you about our pecans.  It is hard to get perspective from the photos.  Our pecans are a 'wild' variety, I think.  They are small and a little difficult to crack manually.  But what they sacrifice in size, they make up for it in taste.  They are rich.  Full of pecan oil.  If you cut them up, your fingers feel kind of oily.

For comparison, the photo below shows on the left, a pecan from a local Pecan Company that has orchards.  Our pecan is on the right.  Quite a difference, huh?

But that's okay.  We like our pecans and look forward to once again, having pecans grown in the yard to eat.

Just In Time Delivery

Don't you like getting things in the mail?  Sure, we get emails and texts, and that is great.   But there's something special to walk out to the mailbox and open the door to the box to see what the mail carrier brought.  It's always a time of anticipation.  Don't get me wrong, junk mail, political mailers and bills can indeed throw some shade on checking the mail.  But there are good days for checking the mail.

Take yesterday, for example.  There was a box on the island where we always put incoming mail.  It was a USPS box that made me curious as to what it could be.

Well, immediately I saw that it was from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, Texas.  That means our onion order for 2022 had arrived.  I'm excited to get these planted.  This year I ordered 3 bunches of onion plants.  Each bunch contains between 50 - 75 onion plants in them.  So, we'll have roughly 200 onions this year, if the Good Lord's willing.  Each bunch costs $9.00, so that makes the cost about $0.12 per onion.  Dixondale Farms does a good job of sending you information on how to plant your onions for success.  Additionally, during the growing season, they provide you with emails on how to care for them at different growing stages, as well as harvesting and curing.  In looking at the materials, they are a family outfit, and I like that.

Since we are in the Southern region of the United States, we order the Short Day varieties.  These varieties are suited for 10 - 12 hours of sunlight.  I think I ordered the same amount of onion plants as last year, but this year I changed up one of the varieties.

I got two bunches of Short Day Samplers.  The Sampler package contains: Red Creole Onions, Texas Early White Onions, and 1015Y Texas Super Sweet Onions.  I have always liked samplers and this one gives you a good variety of onions that we love.  This year I added a bunch of Yellow Granex onions.  These are most popular sweet onions in America.  In fact, these are shipped to the growers of the famous sweet onions in Vidalia, Georgia.  I'm really looking forward to these!

We had our best onion harvest ever in 2021.  We cooked with them, made French Onion soup with them, and we also dried many jars of them and have in our pantry.  We used the last onion a few weeks ago.  So we're anxious to get these in the ground.  Once we get them planted, in 90-110 days, they'll be mature.  The earlier you plant them, the larger they'll grow.  We love onions!

Moving Out on the Grass Three Days Later

I wasn't prepared for the chicks the day they came in.  I had my dates mixed up.  Normally, we'd have the brooder all set up and it would be a quick transition from the shipping box to the brooder.  Needless to say, that didn't happen.  Tricia had to pick them up, water each one, go to the barn, get the brooder, set it up, get out the heat lamp, pour feed for them, and unload them into the brooder.  The wife was not too happy with me!

One of the things we like to do is to get the birds out on grass as quickly as possible.  We find they are just more healthy and natural when they are out on the ground versus being inside the garage.  On the grass, in addition to eating feed, they forage for bugs and worms and eat clover and grass.  It's good for them.

Here is a glamour shot of one of the chicks.  Cute, but they don't stay cute for long.  This guy is about to transform.  You can see a white feather about to come out on his wing.  Pretty soon, he won't have any yellow fuzz.

Moving the birds out on grass is easier said than done.  We have a nice chicken tractor, but I had to get it and push it all the way to the house.  Then we needed to fit it out for the winter.  Chicks are susceptible to the cold and the rain.  We need to shield them from that, so we began affixing tarpaulins to the chicken tractor.

Once done, we have a tractor that is protected on the inside from cold wind and rain.  Those two weather events are chick killers, for sure.  We have one side not permanently attached so that on nice days we can roll up the tarp and let the chicks enjoy sunshine and clear skies.

We set up the brooder inside the chicken tractor and ran the extension cord and set up the heat lamps.  We moved the water and the feed inside.  Now, we are all ready to go.  Except, we need the birds!

We picked them up out of the garage and put them in a wagon for transport out to their new home.  I think they enjoyed the ride.

We put them down on the ground and they immediately began running around pecking at the grass - just what chickens are supposed to do.  As the birds grow, we'll extend the size of the brooder to give them more room.  In a couple weeks, we'll remove the brooder completely.

Enough on the chicks this week.  We'll have another progress report next week.

Meat Birds - 2021

Checking out the deep freeze, we tallied up the count of our frozen chickens in inventory.  There are only six left!  With the supply chain issues and inflation and general craziness in our economy, we don't want to be running out of protein.  So, I made an order from Ideal Poultry in Cameron, Texas for Cornish Cross meat birds.  They are a hatchery that we like to use.  

The price has gone up since the last time we ordered, but what hasn't gone up?  The price per chick was $2.64, not counting the "tax, title, and license."  All in cost was $2.78 per bird.  We ordered 50 baby chicks from them and they shipped out last week, December 8th, to be exact.  Over the next 8 weeks or so we'll be raising the chicks.  At the end of eight weeks, if all is on schedule, they'll weigh 6 pounds and yield a 4 pound carcass.  We'll report their growth each week along with a report of how things are going.

The chicks are shipped by the US Postal Service and when they arrive, we get a call telling us to come pick up the package quickly.  The hatchery guarantees their birds to arrive alive or they'll make them good.  Usually, they'll throw in one or two lagniappe.  We got 51 birds.  After two days, however, one of the chicks looked noticeably smaller than the others.  It was kind of getting pushed around by the others.  I told Tricia that as soon as we got back from church I was going to put it by itself to allow it to get bigger and stronger by itself.  By the time we got back from church at noon, it was too late.  Sad?  Yes, but it's part of the deal.  You lose some sometimes.

I have the chicks under a heat lamp in the garage in a temporary brooder we like to use until we move them out on grass.  You'll notice that the chicks are scattered, pretty much evenly distributed.  That is a good sign that the temperature is right.  If they are too cold, they pile up on one another.  You don't want them to be cold.  They'll expend calories trying to stay warm versus GROW.  Since we're raising them in what is our winter, this will be an important thing to watch.  We have two waterers in the brooder as well as two feeders.  You'll see that the capacity of feeders and waterers grow along with the birds.

One other thing you'll notice in the photo below is the fencing that we have spread across the top of the brooder.  Why do we have that, you ask?  (Scroll below for the answer)

Answer:

Ginger the cat would like a two piece chicken dinner, I'm sure.  Tricia doesn't think she'd kill our chickens.  She trusts Ginger.  I tend to take the position that Ronald Reagan took in the Cold War.  "Trust, but Verify."  So 50 birds are on site.  Let's see how things go.  We'll report back weekly.

Enjoying Fall Colors

It was a very nice day last week.  I came home for lunch and we decided to have coffee outside on the front porch in the rocking chairs.  We sipped our coffee, waved at people as they passed by on the road.  I wish that I could have captured the event on video and zoomed in on it, but I didn't.  So, you'll have to use your imagination.  In the photo below, I captured "Fall" in our neck of the woods.

If you had an eagle eye, you could see that leaves were falling out of the pecan trees.  Lots of leaves.  As the wind continued to blow, a lazy stream of leaves fell slowly, but steadily toward the ground.  Those leaves did their duty all spring, photosynthesizing, providing shade, and now their work was done - almost.

I suggested to the wifey that we walk out and check the mail.  I walked out barefooted.  It was nice to feel the cool earth beneath my feet and feel the crunch of fall leaves under me.  I don't know what it is about Fall, but it is as if you can just look out and tell that there is not as much humidity in the air.  The air is crisp.  The sky is blue.  The sunshine is brilliant.  Life is good.

The leaves were beginning to gather on the ground beneath the trees.  Tricia reminded me of when the kids were little and I'd rake up the leaves in great big piles and the kids would run and jump in them.  It was great fun for them.  Simple things like a pile of leaves or an empty cardboard box can sometimes provide more entertainment that costly gifts.

These leaves won't be raked and bagged up.  Instead, I just mow them.  They compost into the lawn.  That's why I said their work was almost done.  The leaves will fertilize the St. Augustine grass under the trees and hopefully provide some fertility that will yield a good pecan crop again next year.

Right outside the back door is another pecan tree.  It yields bigger pecans than the ones in the front and they are easy to shell.  We used to call pecans like this, "paper shell pecans."  While the trees in the front yard have brown leaves that are falling or mostly fallen, this tree has leaves that are still hanging on the tree and are yellow.

I think it is a beautiful color.  We have friends that just got back from a trip to New England for two months.  They went as far north as Maine and said that they hit the Fall colors at their peak in North Carolina.  This pecan tree right here in south Louisiana ain't so bad, though.

I liked the way the sunlight filtered through the leaves, highlighting the yellow against the blue sky.

But alas, my coffee cup was empty and it was time to go back to work.  Glad I got a chance to see Fall take place, because it doesn't take long.  If you aren't paying attention, this is what the tree will look like in just a skinny minute:

Barren and sad until spring.

It's Fire Pit Season!

I check the weather report and tomorrow, December 9th, the weather prognosticators tell us that we will be knocking on the door of 80 degrees for the high and 70 degrees for the low.  But, on the several cool evenings we've had, we've lit a few fires in our fire pit.  There are few things more relaxing to me than lighting a fire in the fire pit and sit around and watch it burn.  

Sometimes I'll get the fire stoked up too hot and we'll have to scoot the bench back a bit.  Other times the fire will die back a bit and we'll scoot it back up close.  Other than that it's just sitting there, peacefully watching the embers, listening to the coals crackle and pop.  The scent of burning hardwood is nice and the roaring fire takes the chill out of the air.

We're constantly gathering limbs that fall out of the many trees in our yard and stacking them by the fire pit to use as fuel.  Sometimes we'll wait for the wood to turn to red-hot coals and the daylight to turn to dark.

Then we'll swing the grill back over the fire pit and cook something for supper.  On this particular night, we warmed up some leftover homemade soup over the fire.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like everything cooked outside tastes better!  (Many) more fire pit fires left to come.  With it being 80 degrees tomorrow, we'll likely not light the fire pit up tomorrow, though.