A season of reds and grays.

Sorry about not posting yesterday, we had some computer trouble which meant I couldn't edit photos to post. We're in the red and gray period of the year, and the orange netting over the chicken run really blends in a lot more than I expected it to. It won't soon enough, but right now it blends in just fine. As you can see the chickens really enjoy being out in it. One of our friends has offered an electric fence charger, and as soon as we can we're going to take her up on that.

The fence is doing just fine for most purposes, but a little charge will do a very good thing for protecting the poultry. The dog got into the chicken run by plowing through the fence in the back of the run from the perspective of this shot. He was in there, and thankfully we trained him to not chicken chase because he was in there with chickens trapped with him. He just wanted out because he'd had his fun (read eaten all of the chicken food). Apparently when the Lady of the House found him in there, he was sitting there wanting out with a chicken under the ramp, and just hanging out with the dog. I'd prefer to not have him out of direct control when around the poultry, but still. It's good to know that he's disciplined enough that when he's stuck with flighty birds he isn't going to go dog wild and have chicken fun.
One of the things I'm a bit disappointed about is the state of our lasagna/huglekultur bed. At this point between the dis-assembly with good intentions and the attention of poultry, it's just rotting wood lying on the ground. If I have time I'll re cover it with more material, but honestly I'm unlikely to have time to do that this fall. Right now I have a lot of other things that are more of a priority. The list of such things that have to be done before snow are:
* Finish moving wood into the piles.
* Finish clearing the porch.
* Finish doing outside clean up.
* Build a shelter for the trash cans so they don't get trapped for the winter (lower priority)
* Finish the kitchen.

The kitchen and the porch are the biggest ones, with clean up and wood into piles being just after. The porch is a big deal because the more that congests the porch is going to be problematic by the time we've had more than a single snow fall. Making the porch easy to clear is going to be a big thing for our happiness in the winter. Especially with the Critter being more able to be outside this winter, if the porch is more clear it's going to be easier to have him outside. With the depth of the snow it's not like he's going to be able to be out in the actual snow, so having clear porch area is going to be good.
As far as our woods, they've very much thinned out in terms of how they feel because of all of the leaves on the ground. I was going to try to get a photo of being able to see the next hilltop through the trees. Unfortunately the weather hasn't cooperated with my attempts. As you can see it's been very gray and foggy lately. In the photo Left in the center you can see a light patch through the trees. In better lighting you can see the hill across the river highlighted through the woods. Seeing the change in the woods clearly shows why when you're planting trees around a house you place evergreens to the North, and higher wind of the East and West of the house, and deciduous trees to the South of the house. By doing that you get protection from the worst of the wind from the evergreens year round, and by leaving the South face open in the winter thanks to the leaves falling off (or North in the Southern hemisphere) you get sun in the winter, and shade in the summer.