simple country pleasures...

October...my favorite month of the year! Filled with brilliant shades of dusky bronze, mustard yellow, russet red, and deep burgundy. A bundle of Indian corn hangs as a harvest greeting on our farmhouse door, a tower of plump pumpkins are stacked in the urns that once held pretty pink begonias, and piles of leaves are everywhere. I love the sound of fall leaves crunching underfoot...it's the only sound to be heard early in the morning as I go outside to greet chickens and goats...who, by the way, are sleeping in just a bit longer on these gray, cool mornings.

In the evenings we can hear the call of a Great Horned Owl in the distance. If all goes as it does each year, any time now he (or she) will move into the tall pine tree in our front yard...owls calling to one another late at night make for a perfectly eerie Halloween feel.

And oh, it's time for pumpkin patches...I mean look at this!

Pumpkins.
AND.
Pigs.

Can you blame me for pulling the truck right in to check it out?!

There were oodles and oodles of pumpkins...

Look how clever...a round hay bale wrapped in orange plastic and painted to look like a pumpkin (check out the log on top to resemble a stem!)

and of course, as promised - pigs!

Little ones that given half a chance would have made their way home with us!

And see that little sign off to the right?  Directly under it is a Mason jar to drop money in. I absolutely love that...an honesty jar. It just doesn't get any better than that...call me old-fashioned.

A family farm, overflowing with pumpkins, and they invite passers-by to just pull in, greet the little pigs, choose a favorite pumpkin, and drop money in the jar.

Yep, call this Heartland farmgirl old-fashioned...that's just fine.