Well with the cooler fall weather coming in, I mean really we had snow this past week, ok so it was tiny and it didn’t stay even much past hitting the ground but it was still snow..

This is putting the pressure on getting the barns ready for winter, the fall butchering that is coming and I am still in the process of trying to figure out where to trim on breeding/raising programs.

Now, to a point in terms of full time work on the farm, we have lost a full month so far this year and I can see it, you see between me heading to my mom’s for a month to help after surgery (DH took a few extra days off each week to run the farm and he did a excellent job on it but it eat up a number of his vacation days) and then for the first time in years, he took a off farm holiday, and I am thrilled he did, it was needed and wonderful but again, I lost the off time not being on the farm.

Throw in Marty, a bumper crop of lambs this year, Angelo, Brandy and Miss Rooten Tooten and clutch after clutch of ducklings and I am heading into fall with a bang!

Now there is alot of light at the end of tunnel as they say, Marty is going to the butcher in the first part of Nov, the lambs will be heading to the butcher, and depending on freezer space, its possable so will some of the hoggots, and lots of birds will be heading the same way soon enough.

Having said that, lambing season will be starting in less then two plus months, and the piglets will be growing and growing!

And what has also been growing this year is my compost pile,  for a single year, I have never had this big of a compost pile, and I would love to be in love with it, but strangely I am not! and I know why.. its not composting properly this year, the very dry conditions have not been kind to my compost piles this year.

I am going to have to break down and pay to have a tractor come in and turn that pile, mix it and get it going again, and then pray for lots of fall rain to get it reheating up and going properly.. I am starting to think about if I want to continue to add it to the same pile, I will till I get that one turned and mixed..

So what about you, if you got hit with this insanely dry summer, did you have extra water to spare enough to water your compost piles or where you like me? They heated and then sat and sat, even the smaller one that we have been turning, is just not composting properly this year.. I am going to have to crack out my composting guide book and see if it has any tips to get that pile going downward instead of growing.