Halloween is over. Now what I call the "busy season" begins - gathering firewood, finishing picking corn, the holidays, Christmas shopping, deer hunting, the occasional early winter snowstorm, and on and on.

It's not as busy for me nowadays as it used to be. I use the Springtime and the cooler Summer days to gather my firewood so that I am way ahead of the game and I don't have to cut firewood during hunting seasons. I spent the better part of my life trying to train the neighbors to do the same, so they're on their own now.

I don't pick the corn anymore. It was way too much trouble for what little it paid, and I have never once been offered a pay raise. The less money you make, the easier it is to give up. Now it's somebody else's headache, whoever will do it for him.

I don't hunt anymore. When Dad and Grandpa were alive, it was fun. The ones that control the hunting in my life now are a couple of selfish mama's boys. I don't play their games. Too many strings attached. They are getting old, and can't live forever, so maybe someday hunting will be fun for me again. Until then.

My oldest brother, that lives in California, sent me this picture out the back door of his house as the fire approached. It was taken by my niece's co-worker. The fire came within 15 minutes burn time before it was stopped: