My, how quickly the leaves changed colors, and now they've fallen (well, the most part of them have!). One of my favorite things I enjoy doing is raking leaves, though I don't at all like tarping the piles of them away! But, that mostly depends on if they're light or heavy. Most of the piles that Mom and I carried away in the barnyard today were fairly light. It is certainly good exercise to rake them all up in a nice-sized pile, then rake them all unto a tarp, then with the help of someone else, carry it away to the woods to toss them in a pile, where they won't blow back into the field or barnyard again.

Since it's supposed to rain… sometime, I think, I went ahead and cleaned off [under] the roost in the Hen House, that way in case it did rain, at least it would be cleaner and smell a WHOLE lot better in there! Lately I've had to keep the hen house door closed. What I generally would do, on a nice warm day, was to close the main gate into the hen pen, so the chickens & guineas couldn't just sit in there all day, and open the hen house door that way the hens could get directly into the hen house and still lay their eggs in the nests. Well, that was workin' all fine and dandy until Gabriel developed a likin' to going in there during the day… This is just my hunch, of course, it hasn't been proven, but on the days when the door was open, we were only getting about 1 or 2 eggs… now when the door is closed, we usually get 3 or possibly a few more (the chickens haven't been laying much for some odd reason, I'd sure like to know just WHY though!).

Now, I haven't actually seen him snatch any eggs, but I did see a certain four-legged somebody with his front paws up on the ramp in front of the higher nests and his head in the nest, but I haven't seen him actually take one. I do leave the door open on some days when it gets nice and warm outside, and give the pup a stern warning to leave the eggs alone!

I had considered doing one of those "Wordless Wednesdays" posts today, but then I couldn't find just the right picture to post, without any explanation or words, so I decided to just make a post lettin' ya'll know what I've been up to, instead of just doing something like that. This gives me extra writing practice, too!

Danny and Jacob are getting along just fine now. I haven't seen either of them fight for months now! I'm so happy! It makes chore-time so much easier when you don't have to go around separating this chicken, that rooster, this guinea, so on and so forth. That was getting a bit tiring.

All the guineas have been doing great, as well! No more sticking Jesse or Sammy in the hen pen at night.. everyone has decided to behave and get along. Well, except Sydney and Abigail.. the boys [guineas] are picking on them a bit, but they [Abby and Syd] can handle it! It's not anything major, anyway, just running them around.