Chickens and Piglets and Blackbirds and Cows ~ a Lively Sunday Ride

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Larches setting the fields aflame
Piglets taking their Sunday tea
Blackbirds singing an evening song

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Another windy Sunday - but a warm southeast wind this time (much more pleasant than last week's biting winds out of the north and west). The sun is shining and temps are in the 50s as I set out.

Autumn's colours have shifted once again, from copper and bronze to shades of chocolate and tawny. Everywhere is the rich brown of oak leaves...

...and the dark gold of larches. During the year, this stand of trees fades into the horizon, but in fall they come into their own, and light a flame across the marshy fields:

More larches, slightly off my chosen road but well worth a short detour:

Around the corner, the road is lined with cocoa-coloured oaks:

A few miles on, I find some birch trees that have decided to enter into the spirit of the season and turn gold after all. (Most of them have been fading to brown and dropping leaves without any fanfare whatsoever.)

Just up the road from the birches, I pass the house of P, our egg supplier (who is also a co-worker). She's out hanging laundry on the line, so I pull in for a quick hello and a short farmy tour. First we visit the chickens, who have just been moved into their winter barn. Some are perched on the feeder trough, one is sitting in a laying box, but most have clustered in the bright sunshine streaming through the large open doors.

(It's hard to get good pics of them because the sun is so very bright.)

The chookies are calm and friendly and clucking contentedly as they soak up the afternoon sun. P points out the oldest chicken ("the Boss") and other notable flock members, giving short accounts of their health and habits and personality quirks.

Next we step over to the porcine maternity barn, where in a deep bed of hay these adorable little creatures are climbing over each other and snuggling up to their proud Mum...

...who slowly rolls over to give them their Sunday tea.

Purebred Red Wattles

Mum looks rather pleased with life, doesn't she? When the little ones are old enough to leave the barn, they will be put out to pasture (no concrete pens for these lucky pigs), and eventually wind up on the tables of happy diners in Madison and the surrounding areas.

Though P works where I do, we're always scheduled separately, so whenever we get together there is much to discuss. We stand in her front yard trading news, admiring the sunny day, and listening to the finches that sing from her feeders and trees. Sheep are cropping the stubble field across the road; a large bird (turkey vulture?) floats over them on its way to a less lively meal.

This pleasant converse makes it hard to get back on the bike, but I manage it at last. At the top of the rise beyond P's house, the verge is thickly carpeted with aspen leaves:

The road rolls up and down and around the countryside. Clouds are moving in overhead:

Shy but friendly cattle slowly approach when I stop to take their photo.

(I love that belt of green lane going up the hill behind the silos. Where does it lead?)

A mile or two up the road, I have a choice. Turn for home? Or go a little farther? Farther wins the day, and a good thing too, or I'd have missed an avenue of bare trees filled with singing blackbirds.

A somewhat fuzzy close-up

It's time now to head for home and dinner. On the way, a shadow shot:

And one last photo of glowing larches against a backdrop of rusty oak:

An unplanned, unmeasured route. (What freedom!) And a very good ride. :)

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