I haven’t been driving my “dog show van” much because I haven’t been showing or training dogs much. The other day, I took it to the store to pick up some lumber, turned on the AC, and was immediately struck by this thought “is that urine I’m smelling???” And then mouse nesting started flying out of the heater vents! :-0
I found this little guy sitting out by the poultry houses at dusk. Though we have scads of bullfrogs, all singing at night, it’s rare to see them. They are very shy and quick to jump and hide in the ditches if they hear you coming.
But, the near-darkness must have convinced him to sit still instead of flee. And, I’m not sure what he was doing so far away from water.
We are starting to get some nice garden produce already. Our lettuce is bountiful, and tonight we enjoyed both English peas and sugar snap peas. Fresh off the vine, they were delicious Continue reading “Garden Produce”
At least the tiniest I’ve ever seen!
Kirk has been enjoying the use of our new road up from the pasture, using the tractor to haul up debris from down there that was a bit too scary to drive on the street. Much of what he’s retrieved are standard-sized logs, metal chunks etc that have probably arrived here from past floods.
But this mammoth looks like it may have been something from the original farmstead, back in the 1800’s. I know that the homesteader family logged the hill and had an on-site sawmill from which they cut boards to build the barns. It took Kirk some finessing to get this onto the tractor bucket (you can only see the tractor’s roll bar and Kirk’s head behind the log, it’s so big). But he did, and got it up the hill and into the to-be-processed scrap pile. Our little 30-hp tractor does pretty well carting big loads like this around.
We’re thinking of what we could do with this one, to keep it around for posterity. Maybe we’ll make it into a bench or something. Any creative ideas?
The sewn-up duck has healed well- she still has a barely perceptible limp, but I almost can’t tell her apart from the other adult ducks. Amazing!
Her adopted babies are the result of my next generation of duck egg incubation attempts. Still not good: 7 hatches out of 36 eggs! :-{ Again, I had a lot of eggs that appears to be fully developed, but never hatched. Continue reading “Status: Duck Incubation and Sewn-Up Duck”
Late last night I heard a radical thudding on the front porch, and went to check it out. It was our clumsy cat, and she had caught this giant moth after leaping about after it.
But, typical of Mrs. Pete, she got distracted and let it go a moment later. Then it landed and I was able to coax it onto my hand.
It’s rare to see such large moths here, we mostly have little, plain brown ones. This one was as big as my hand!
I spoke with a neighbor this weekend who said she is having a terrible time with domestic dogs chasing and/or killing her livestock. So, she’s been shooting them (this is entirely legal, btw). I don’t blame her, this kind of predation is perhaps the most frustrating of all, because it doesn’t need to happen. These dogs have kibble at home, they aren’t trying to make a living like a wild predator, they are just out having a good time! Continue reading ““Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up””
A funny thing has happened with the recently sewn-up duck and the babies with which she’s sharing her A-frame. They’ve decided they’re family. 🙂 Continue reading “Sewn-Up Duck Adopts Babies”
Know what this little blob of material is on the roof of the sheep shelter? It’s an “owl pellet,” Gentle Reader. I bet I’ve unconsciously seen these a million times in my life, but never knew what they were, until last year. Continue reading “Where Owls Barf, Fortune You Will Find”