Hey! What happened????

All of a sudden, Fall is here. Fall in this part of the world equals rain....and lots of it. Actually Winter, Spring and part of summer equals rain too...in varying amounts.

Hmmmmm, guess I should have got that moss off the barn roof before the new moss started growing...



The cool weather has the emus racing around, and they were definitely wet. Here we built that nice little run in shed for them...not even sure they really use it!

Rain kind of adds an interesting look to an already interesting "emu do".....

Here's Ginger....

and here's Fred....



The chickens managed to stay dry under the overhang of the barn, I was hoping to get an image for the saying "Madder than a wet hen" but it's not going to happen today. This girl looks far from mad.....

Although I think they were all getting fairly irritated with me...didn't I know that I was supposed to feed them?


I started looking around for the sheep and the donkey and spotted them in the lower pasture...

The second one of them spotted me they started heading up the hill.....
They were definitely wet, and some were sporting some major VM!

Here's Bella doing a little cud zen with a nice hunk of blackberry vine woven into her wool....
Bevin and Ellen are looking a bit damp and Ellen has a lovely fern motif going on.....


Claire was thinking "Can I go back to Eastern Oregon now?????"


Flora was in such a hurry to get up the hill to see if there was something better to eat she brought a little of the lower pasture with her. That's Ilse, her best friend, next to her...

Disappointed, milling sheep, waiting for the hay to show up.....

Jasmine said she wasn't in the mood to have her picture taken and didn't I know that donkeys are desert dwellers and not fish?
The guineas also reminded me that they are originally from Africa and shouldn't be subjected to such abuse....


















Coopurrrr, my little feral cat, was thinking that maybe I should be considerate and put down something he could walk on top of the wet pavement so he could get into the garage where it was nice and dry....

The rain didn't bother the young dogs at all, in fact, I think they thought it was funny the reaction they would get out of me by bumping into my bare legs with their wet toys....(almost said "wet balls" but for some reason that didn't sound right....)


Yep, you know it's boring here when all I can find to blog about is wet animals.....:)

I will be going on another sheep adventure soon though. :) Next weekend I will be heading back to OR to the OFFF (Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival) so hopefully will have some more interesting material after that! What? Am I picking up another sheep.....why yes! I'm picking up a lovely little Shetland ewe named Shady Oaks Matisse, a moorit HS (no t) sweetie. :) The scary thing is that there will be room in my trailer....I'm thinking about loading it up with something and only leaving enough room for one sheep.......

Eyes have it....

Eyes have always fascinated me in humans as well as animals. Here are just a few that caught my eye while out doing chores last night....

An Unusual relationship........

One of my ewe lambs from Boulderneigh, Bevin, has taken an unlikely liking to the emus. At first I thought it was just by coincidence that she lay down next to their fence, but I've found her there many times and see her nose to beak with Fred or Ginger (the emus names are Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers....):) Not sure what they're saying to each other but it must be comforting because then they usually lay down near each other....too bad some people can't be as accepting of differences.....

Harbinger of Fall?

What a surprise! There in a bed by the gate....my Fall crocuses in full bloom. Granted there has been a bit of a nip in the evening air....but really? Fall? I wandered around looking for other signs....

My Rugosa roses had no more blooms....the hips were there instead.....
But there were still Blueberries ,





and Raspberries,




Blackberries



and even a few Alpine strawberries..



My Katsuras looked as though they were starting to turn......

But my Butterfly Bush was still in full bloom......


The skies still look like Summer skies.......






But the true sign to me that it wasn't quite Fall yet...... Jasmine the donkey still is slick as can be.......

Fuzzy faces

I took Rena, my llama, up to Nikis' (JNK Llamas), to go to her new home. She never was a very happy camper being the only llama and I needed her to be a guard llama. She has an extensive show career and liked other llama company. So next weekend she will be heading to a llama show home where I know she will be alot happier (even though I'm really going to miss her) :(

There was a plus to going there though....I got to see all kinds of friendly, fuzzy faces and thought I would share a few of them with you. :)

Chicken problems....a Craigslist ad

This posting was on one of my Call Duck lists....for a bit of entertainment. I enjoyed it enough that I thought I would share it. :)




vermont craigslist > farm & garden

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If laying hens are from Mars, these are from Uranus. $7 each (Southern Vermont)

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Reply to: sale-824552027@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2008-09-02, 9:00PM EDT

I believe I have the most dysfunctional flock of layers this side of the Mississippi. No amount of Blu-Kote will keep these hens from pecking themselves until they all moon me as soon as I walk in the door.

When I picked these girls out of the catalog, this isn't the picture I saw.

Don't get me wrong -- these are good layers. All large breeds.

We (me and a friend -- my wife was away for the weekend and didn't have anything to do with this as she has told many people) imported these layers from one of those fancy Midwest hatcheries a year ago. I bought Silver-Laced Wyandottes, White Rocks, Partridge Rocks, Cuckoo Marans (mostly roosters that made good soup), Reds, Barred, Partridge, Araucana, Columbian, you name it. Healthy. Strong egg production. And no bugs (they'd be easy to see).

I guess I wanted to create a veritable United Nations in my hen house, and maybe that's where I went wrong.

Instead I built a struggling parliament for a fractured country. And some of the members possess only what could be called genocidal tendencies.

So here's my plan: I'm disbanding the government.

I need to send the members packing to the four corners of the country (or state). Put them on a plane (well, car) to whatever yard will harbor them, or at least keep their bare hindquarters warm for a few weeks until the feathers grow back in.

Why?

Because I know it will work.

How do I know?

Well, you see, a few weeks ago, when my wife was collecting eggs, a Partridge Rock escaped.

Let's call her Fred (the chicken, not my wife). My 6-year-old daughter named her Fred (she named the dearly-departed Araucana rooster chick Princess). Fred is a very fast Partridge Rock, it turns out. Fred has (so far) escaped the clutches of the family of raccoons that kill every rooster that I've never been able to get rid of on Craig's List.

(Have you ever noticed that Craig's List always includes free roosters? I swear there are more free roosters on Craig's List than there are prostitutes, err, women seeking men.)

(Not that I'm admitting to looking at the personals part of this site, being happily married and all. I just heard about it from that friend who told me to order so many chickens.)

(I digress.)

So, besides escaping the fearsome raccoon's sharp claws of death, Fred has grown all of her tail feathers back. All of them, which is a very good thing considering how on occasion she now perches near the road and I only just received a conditional use permit to keep said dysfunctional hens.

(It cost me a hundred bucks to get a zoning permit even though I own one of the oldest farms in my town. For this price I've been able to teach my kids what it means to add insult to injury.)

So why don't I just set all the chickens loose?

Well, if you're still reading up to this point, let me review a few parts of the story:

1. These chickens are good layers (most good layers are fetching $10 to $14 each right now, and I'm giving a dented-can discount).

2. Once these chickens are disbanded they should all behave better and regain their normal appearance (although I cannot guarantee this just as I can't guarantee that a Vice Presidential candidate's teenage daughter will learn something useful in her abstinence-only health class and won't turn up at a political convention several months pregnant).

3. These chickens aren't all as fast as Fred, and the raccoons won't pay me $7 each for them (I've tried).

So, if you want a few laying hens -- or if you want a lot of laying hens and have all-suite accommodations to keep them apart from each other -- e-mail me.

If you don't, it's OK. I have a fall back plan: I'll schedule a tribunal.

When we dispatched the roosters my 8-year-old son looked at one of the birds on the block, picked up the hatchet and said, "I do like swinging things."

I'll have him hitting home runs by the time we're through.

Oh, and one last thing:

Fred stays. She's earned her roost, if I can ever catch her.

• Location: Southern Vermont
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 824552027

The Odd Couple......

A friend of ours was looking for a home for a couple of roosters....and even though I definitely didn't NEED anymore roosters, their fate seemed pretty tentative if I didn't intervene.

I haven't named them yet (other than teasing the people I got them from that I was going to name the roosters after them....) one is a Crevecoeur and the other is a White Crested Polish.
















They seem to be best buds and I have them isolated in a dog kennel until I see that they are healthy enough to put with my other poultry. They love the igloo in the kennel and sleep in there at night (I need to get a pic of them peeking out) :)


If anyone has any ideas for names don't hesitate to speak up!