Monday Farm Photos: Have You Ever Seen A Dragonfly Up Close?

8 more photos below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #32

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (sometimes actually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Marta and Daisy snoozing in the creek bed shade during the heat of the day.

Wondering what was happening on the farm this time last year? Check out the Friday Farm Fix #16. (It's so nice to still have grass in the fields this year!)

Hot, hot, hot. That pretty much sums up the first week of summer on the farm, with each day hotter and more humid than the next. We all spent the week just trying to beat the heat.

Thursday night a huge thunderstorm crashed and boomed around us for most of the early morning hours, bringing high winds and a much needed 1½ inches of rain. Thankfully it's a little cooler today, and there's a gorgeous breeze blowing. We may even get some more rain tonight.

After 18½ years in Missouri, this San Francisco Bay Area girl still isn't used to the noise and ferocity of thunderstorms, especially at night. A few years ago I learned that the Pacific coast is one of the few places that doesn't regularly experience thunderstorms. The rare appearance of thunder and lighting was always a big deal when I was a kid. Now I just whimper and snuggle up to my hunky farmguy Joe, then lie awake worrying about things like big trees falling over and how badly (and in how many places) it's raining inside The Shack.

The best part of the week was the daily sightings of a young doe and her spotted twin fawns in the hayfield. This graceful trio has been coming out of the woods near the house each evening, but now we're seeing them in the afternoons too. Mama strolls through the grass, alert at all times, while the babies scamper and play around her.

All week we've been calling each other on the radio announcing "Doe and twins alert! Doe and twins alert!" (These handy little two-way radios are one of our best farm purchases ever; we've been using them every day for years.)

In other (much less cute) wildlife news. . .

18 more farm photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #28

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Tiny fawn hidden in the hayfield.

Whew, what a week. In five days we managed to accomplish three big tasks that had been looming over us: clipping poor matted Marta Beast, putting up the first batch of hay, and getting the sheep sheared. I just realized they all have to do with cutting.

Tuesday morning we were so wiped out that we both slept in until 10:30, and that was before the hardest work even started. Then the power was out all Tuesday afternoon (which also means no water pumped from the well), making us even more discombobulated.

Saturday we spent an unplanned four hours wallowing on the ground in the sheep/bunny barn with our new animal clippers and a (thankfully) drugged Marta, who is a 100+ pound mix of three thick-coated livestock guardian dog breeds: Great Pyrenees, Komondor, and Anatolian Shepherd. She's also a big mess. Marta could find a mud puddle in a desert, and unlike her Great Pyrenees partner, Daisy, she wasn't blessed with that amazing self-cleaning gene. She also hadn't been clipped in two years, so this was a real challenge.

The last time we had Marta professionally cut it took them five hours and cost a small fortune. The 80-mile round trip drive wasn't much fun either. So we decided to invest in a good electric clipper—which actually cost less than the last grooming session—and try tackling her ourselves.

I wasn't sure it (and we) would be up to the job, but this little Andis professional clipper outdid itself. If it can handle Marta, it can probably handle anything. She won't be winning any beauty contests (which is our fault, not the clipper's), but she looks much better than she did, and I'm sure she feels a lot better too. (Note for home dog groomers: blowing off the blade every several minutes with compressed air to clean and cool it and then oiling it made a huge difference. We're also going to buy a second blade that doesn't cut as close; parts of Marta are very pink!)

34 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image with your cursor for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #14

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a new series on Farmgirl Fare where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the Friday Farm Fix posts here.

Mr. Midnight knows the secret to staying cool—you just have to sprawl.

Birds seem to be this past week's theme around the farm: baby chicks, big chicks, wild turkeys, and the two graceful white mystery birds we saw in the front field one evening when we hiked out to count the sheep.

I guess maybe they were young egrets? I love to be around birds but am embarrassed to admit I can't identify very many of them. They looked like they belonged near water. We do see great blue herons around this area sometimes, especially near the river. They used swoop down and grab catfish from the pond at my old farm. Such glorious creatures, even if they are thieves.

These two seemed sort of lost, circling around the field and coming back toward us. Or maybe they just wanted to stay near the sheep. The photos below aren't real clear because I took them on 20x zoom. It sort of drives me crazy that so many creatures are afraid of people but not sheep or dogs or cats or even donkeys. Although it would be nice if the deer were still afraid of the dogs. I'm covering more plants in the garden each night than I did when there was a threat of frost because otherwise they'll munch it down.

We often see wild turkeys in the hayfield, and some years in the spring there are two hens who march around out there with their babies trailing behind. For the past few weeks one hen has been staying pretty close to the house, ambling around in the grass by herself for long stretches during the day.

I haven't gone out to look for a nest because I don't want the dogs to follow me and bother her. I'll never forget the time we were walking through the hayfield and Robin came out of the bushes that grow along the edge with an enormous turkey egg clutched between her jaws.

No sign of any baby turkeys with this hen yet, but on Monday afternoon when I went to pick up the mail and our weekly two gallons of raw Jersey milk, I stopped to let a hen and three little babies cross the highway in front of me. When I drove back maybe 45 minutes later I saw them again, crossing back over in about the same spot.

26 more farm photos below. . .

Friday Farm Photo: The Great Backyard Bird Count Starts Today—and You're Invitied To Join In!

We counted over 40 wild turkeys in the hayfield last Friday—a new record.

Warmer temperatures and lack of snow in parts of North America have set the stage for what could be a most intriguing 15th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, which runs from Friday, February 17th through Monday, February 20th.

Bird and nature fans throughout North America are invited to take part in this neat four-day event, a joint project between The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the National Audubon Society, and Bird Studies Canada (BSC) that engages bird watchers in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent.

Anyone can participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, from novice bird watchers to experts. It's a great opportunity for families, students, and people of all ages to discover the wonders of nature in backyards, schoolyards, and local parks while making an important contribution to conservation.

It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It's free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds. Last year, an estimated 60,000 bird watchers submitted over 92,000 checklists online. There were 596 species observed and over 11.4 million individual birds counted.

For more information, check out the Great Backyard Bird Count website. Details on how you can participate are here, and you can read more about the GBBC here. You can learn more about birds in general at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds website. And at WeLoveBirds.org, bird-lovers can share stories and information about birds and help protect birds from activities that harm them and their habitat.

Happy counting!

© FarmgirlFare.com, where we're fortunate to be surrounded by all sorts of birds on the farm, but my favorites are definitely the gorgeous wild geese that migrate twice a year overhead (we just saw some this morning!) and this amazing little owl that showed up one cold and windy, heartwrenching morning back in 2008 and stayed for most of the day.

Friday Farm Photo: Through the Kitchen Window

Twenty-two degrees and a graceful morning view.

Firearm deer season opens tomorrow. All around the area, hearty community breakfasts will start being served at 3:30 am. Businesses will be closed or short-staffed all week, and the kids are off from school. Vacation days from work were scheduled months ago, and campers and RVs have been parked in favorite hunting spots for days.

The small local meat processor, located five miles outside a town of 325, will take in something like 600 deer over the next week and a half—and those are just the ones hunters don't process themselves.

Deer season is a really big deal around here.

More below. . .

Saturday Dose of Cute: Slow Speed Ahead

The farm is full of turtles this time of year.

So we have satellite Internet connection, and for some mysterious reason it's now downloading at just .05 mbps instead of the 'up to 1.5' mbps our special pro (read high dollar) rate says we should get. That's extremely slow. Like too slow to do pretty much anything online.

Since we were already planning to relocate the satellite dish to the new house, we're going to skip a special service call for this problem and just go ahead and move it. But that won't happen until the brand new, already broken air-conditioning system over there is back up and running, which will probably be at least another week because we're waiting on an out of stock part.

Why am I boring you with all this? In the superstitious (or crazy) hope that as soon as I publicly explain our predicament, the slow speed will miraculously fix itself, which the tech guy said was actually possible since there seems to be nothing causing it in the first place. Hey, whatever works. And it's definitely cheaper than scheduling a service call.

Maybe this will somehow get that a/c part here sooner, too.

In the meantime, want to see some more turtles?

5/6/06: Spotted in the Backyard

5/12/06: Damn Turtles!

5/27/06: Bear and Cary and Me vs. the Turtles

6/15/06: I See You Looking at Me, Turtle

6/25/06: Weekend Baby Turtle Blogging

6/23/07: Looking for My Strawberries?

9/8/09: Baby Turtle Blogging

6/14/11: It's Turtle Season

© FarmgirlFare.com, where the 'slow moving' is also true for all of us critters dragging around the farm in this insufferable and relentless heat and humidity. There's nothing like watching a bunch of chickens walking around the farmyard panting to make you feel even hotter than you already were. Time for popsicles all around!

Sunday Dose of Cute: A Baby Bird (and The Whole Picture)

A wayward little phoebe in the farmyard

Early Friday afternoon I was walking across the farmyard over to the new house (that would be the one with the newly installed air conditioning system that has already temporarily gone kaput) and found a baby bird sitting in the grass.

And then I found a second one. And then I noticed the frantic mother bird swooping around and chirping up a fit.

More photos and The Whole Picture below. . .

Saturday Farm Photos: Geese! And a Maine Farm

Back in 1991, when I was an early 20's California girl dreaming and scheming about moving to rural New England (which was the plan before life intervened and I ended up adventuring sight unseen to Missouri instead), I asked a friend who was working at a bookstore to order me a copy of a book called Maine Farm: A Year of Country Life by Stanley Joseph and his photographer wife, Lynn Karlin. I knew nothing about it except that it had a nice title.

The book, which is available from amazon.com for under $5, turned out to be a large square hardcover that is part farm journal, part how-to manual, and part beautiful coffee table book. It covers a year on Stanley and Lynn's 22-acre Penobscot Bay farm, which was previously owned by back-to-the-land icons and authors Scott and Helen Nearing and is located down the road from Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch's Four Season Farm.

Thursday Dose of Cute: You Never Know What You'll Find Inside a Feed Bin

Flying Squirrel, Anyone?

Down in the sheep barn feed room, we've been slowly replacing our plastic feed containers with metal ones, because mice and squirrels tend to chew big holes right through the plastic in order to get to the food, thus pretty much ruining them, although I have successfully plugged some pretty good sized holes with duct tape. (Our entire lives are held together with duct tape—along with clothespins and bungee cords.)

Tuesday Dose of Cute: One of the Neatest Birds I've Ever Seen

And the Winner of Flyaway by Suzie Gilbert!

More photos thie little screech owl here

Thanks to all of you who entered the giveaway for a copy of Flyaway: How a Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings. All of your neat stories about birds and wildlife rescues (click here and scroll down to the comments section to read them) have been so heartwarming and delightful to read. I definitely think you're the perfect audience for this book!

Saturday Farm Photos: Flying in to Wish You Happy Halloween!

More photos below. . .

Sunday Dose of Cute: Vision Problems

Seeing Spots




And Double!

You Can Clearly See We're Surrounded by Wildlife:
10/17/06: Garden Life
11/6/07: Hayfield Grazing Rights
2/2/08: The Return of Chucky!
4/27/08: Wild Kingdom—A Big Sunday Feast & A Mysterious Little Owl
5/25/08: Bunnies in the Barnyard
6/4/08: Baby Bunny for Breakfast? Not Today, Thank You
8/15/08: Trying to Blend by the Barn
3/17/09: Backyard Beauty

© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the no need for The Nature Channel foodie farm blog where even the extremely frustrated, doesn't like to share her harvest gardener in me (the one who thinks deer look best on a dinner plate) loves to watch these adorable twin fawns running and romping around in the hayfield.

Tuesday Farm Photos: Backyard Beauty

Ravenous, Brazen Beauty



That's Fortunately Still (Mostly) Afraid of Barking Dogs

Highlights from a year ago:
3/2/08: How Do Donkeys Order Lunch?
3/4/08: Auntie Rose
3/5/08: Seasonal Eating
3/6/08: Do Chickens Ever Smile?
3/12/08: Cary Babies?
3/13/08: Cary, No Baby
3/17/08: Hey Baby!

Two years ago:
3/5/07: Zelda and Her Twins, Age Two Hours
3/8/07: Doll Face and Her Baby Boy Bonding in Their Bonding Suite
3/9/07: Moving Zelda and Her Twins By Myself
3/15/07: Gang Activity
3/16/07: The Definition of Relaxed

Three years ago:
3/1/06: I'll Spring to Life If There's Trouble
3/2/06: A Brief Distraction from All the Cuteness
3/3/06: Skinny Chip Checks Out One of the Little Attention Grabbers
3/4/06: Farm Boss Patchy Cat Keeps an Eye on Everything
3/5/06: You Can Add Babysitting to Bear's Job Description
3/8/06: Another Farmyard Still Life
3/8/06: Counting Sheep, Not Getting Much Sleep
3/10/06: Life When You're 12 Hours Old
3/10/06: Fleeting Heart
3/13/06: I'm Gonna Need More Than Spun Gold for Breakfast
3/14/06: A Whole New Way to Start the Day (thanks to Dan's Friends)
3/17/06: Same Scene, New View for St. Patrick's Day

And out of the kitchen and garden came:
3/12/06: The Great Compost Cover Up
3/10/08: Broccoli Onion Garbanzo Bean Soup & Recharging Your Dead Batteries (Because Setting Them on Fire Isn't an Option)
3/1/08: Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs and Grilled Lamb Steaks

© Copyright 2009 FarmgirlFare.com, the quickly greening up foodie farm blog (another heatwave!) where the white-tailed deer don't need a St. Patrick's Day excuse to munch on their favorite color in the hayfield—which happens to be off limits after March 1st so the grass can grow, but only the domesticated animals pay attention to this rule (and only because we fence them out). But I'd rather have the deer in the hayfield than in the garden!

Friday Farm Photo: Trying To Blend by the Barn

But You Can't Hide from the Camera

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where the skittish lizards don't do much leaping this time of year — but they don't do a whole lot of sitting still for pictures either. Of course their skittishness may be caused by the fact that a certain little kit kat keeps catching them and bringing them into The Shack — alive but usually tailless.

Wednesday Daily Dose of Cute: Baby Bunny for Breakfast? Not Today, Thank You

Look What The Cat Dragged In

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where we don't mind if the cats want to catch their own snacks, but when they carry them into The Shack still kicking and screaming, we usually step in and declare it to be a catch and release kind of day - especially if the catch is this cute.

Sunday Farm Photo: Bunnies in the Barnyard

Peter, Is That You?

We're being taken over by rabbits. I've seen at least three of them scampering around the sheep barn during the last few days. Now that Robin has gone into semi-retirement, we have cute little varmints everywhere.

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where the scrawny wild rabbits are in no danger of becoming dinner - unless they decide to hop into the garden - and we didn't think this scruffy little critter was actually adorable enough to be a full-fledged Daily Dose of Cute.

Wild Kingdom: A Big Sunday Feast & A Mysterious Little Owl

Screech Owl in the Farmyard on January 20th

Note: I wrote this back on January 26th. Unfortunately it's only the beginning of the story - and at this point there is no happy ending in sight. There is, however, a small bright spot in all of this sadness and frustration. Two small bright spots, actually, which even qualify for Daily Dose Of Cute status. Stay tuned.

January 2009 Update: You can read the rest of this story here.

There are days when farm life sucks, and last Sunday was one of them. I was here by myself, it was zero degrees, and all the water pipes were frozen. But that was no big deal. That was just January in Missouri in The Shack. But then around 11:00 am, two coyotes killed a sheep in the hayfield. Yes, during broad daylight. Yes, while the donkeys were out there with them.

The time between looking out the kitchen window and realizing what had just happened and getting to the scene of the crime was agonizing. As Bear and I ran the several hundred yards out into the field I switched between sobbing "No! No! NO!" to screaming at the coyotes in a vain attempt to scare them away from the white, unmoving lump I knew was a sheep.

The rest of the flock had fled. I was pretty sure the sheep was dead, but I held onto the slim chance that it might still be alive. Not knowing who it was - that was the most awful part. I figured it would be 12-year-old Skinny Chip, one of my big pet wethers who has bad hooves and trouble walking. I prayed it wasn't Cary.

It wasn't. It was a healthy young wether who probably weighed 100 pounds and would have graced someone's table in a couple of months - and put a couple of hundred dollars in our pocket. Instead it had become this Sunday's dinner. It was a clean kill, and it had just happened. The body was still warm. The blood that covered my hands was still warm.

When I was a little kid I watched "Wild Kingdom" every week on TV with my dad, who loved nature and animals and died when I was just eleven. I want to say that it was on on Sunday nights, maybe at six o'clock, right before the Walt Disney hour. At least that's how I remember it. Mutual of Omaha sponsored the show. I had no idea what Mutual of Omaha was, but to this day I can still remember their 800 number.

We don't have TV reception down here in our little valley. Instead I look out a window and realize I live in Wild Kingdom.

I can't blame the coyotes. They live here, too, and they get just as hungry as I do. It's the dead of winter; food is scarce. I heard there weren't any acorns in the woods this year. Things like fences and property rights and animal ownership mean nothing to them. All they see is a field full of fat and easy targets. A lamb is a lot easier to chase down than a deer.

I do partly blame myself. We've become complacent about the coyotes. We know we're surrounded by them. We hear them at night, their howls and barks echoing through the hills. We know we've been extremely lucky all these years to have sustained so few losses to them. And yet a couple of weeks ago we chose to watch a mating pair of these beautiful creatures (because they are indeed beautiful) cavorting around in the hayfield through a set of binoculars rather than through the scope on a rifle.

We don't shoot 'varmints' for sport or to 'clean up' our property, and for that we have paid a price. This coyote couple had been hanging around, watching, scheming, waiting, wanting. We knew this, and yet we still didn't shoot them. People around here think we're crazy. Some of you reading this will think we're crazy.

On Sunday I watched the coyotes tear into the lamb. My lamb. Later I watched an enormous bald eagle eat his fill of fresh meat while he stood on the wooly body, nervously looking around between bites. I watched a flock of crows move in for their meal. I watched two friends shoot at the coyotes from the second story window of what will soon be our new bedroom and miss. I want them both dead, I said. They know the taste of lamb. They know how to get easy meat. They need to be killed. They need to be dead.

As he was driving the quarter mile from The Shack to the front gate late that afternoon, one friend saw a coyote standing in the front field by the sawdust pile, which isn't far from the barn. He shot and missed. His dad, one of the shooters in the bedroom, had seen a coyote at the top of our driveway that morning.

On Monday reinforcements arrived. A pack of men and a pack of dogs scattered themselves around the valley at dawn and spent the next 10 hours tracking and chasing and shooting. One dog attacked a coyote and had his face torn up.

At four o'clock in the afternoon I looked out into the hayfield and saw both coyotes back at the lamb. Their lamb. And despite my yelling and Bear's barking, not to mention their having been chased all day by a pack of dogs and men with guns, the brazen, hungry coyotes were hesitant to leave their prize.

Loss is inevitable when you're raising animals, whether they're packed into a giant building under horrid conditions or out on the open range. You expect it, and you learn to take it in stride. You do the best you can, and you learn from your mistakes. You worry yourself to sleep. And you tell yourself it's okay to cry.

None of that lamb went to waste. By Tuesday afternoon there was nothing left but the pelt.

We're doing what we can to ensure the safety of the flock. Skinny Chip is in a big pen. The hayfield is off limits to the sheep. We've installed even more spotlights at the barn and turned up the volume on the radio that plays down there all night. I'm learning to shoot the varmint rifle. Because there are two coyotes out there who will no doubt kill again.



Fortunately it isn't all just death and killing in the Wild Kingdom. In the midst of everything that was happening on Sunday, I came across this little owl sitting on a fence post in the farmyard. Armed with only my pistol, I could do nothing except stare in awe and curse myself for being without my camera. I'd never seen anything like it. It held its face toward the sun, eyes closed, its feathers ruffling in the frigid wind.



It popped open its eyes and stared at me as I stared back at it. It turned its head almost completely around like you've always been told that owls can do but have never really believed. It didn't seem bothered by my presence at all. I really wanted to reach out and touch it.

I ran back to The Shack to get my camera in the hopes that it wouldn't fly away. It didn't. I couldn't believe it.



It was neat. It was gorgeous. It was adorable. I snapped photos until my fingers went numb. I was shocked to see that it hadn't flown away when the shots had been fired from a window directly above its head. I proudly showed it to off to the donkey peddling cowboy and his four-year-old son, who had answered my coyote phone call for help.

"That's a screech owl," the cowbody informed me. "Don't touch it!" he said to his son, who had cautiously reached out a finger.

I took more photos. I moved closer and closer to it, until I was standing just inches away. I was mesmerized.



The little owl stayed on the fence post for most of the afternoon. I checked on it every few minutes from the kitchen window. It was starting to seem a little weird. "What's wrong with that owl?" the cowboy had asked as the three of us stared at it and wondered why it was just sitting there in the middle of the farmyard.

Eventually it flew over to another fence a few yards away, where it sat for a couple more photos. Then it disappeared up into a tree.

Like I said, Wild Kingdom.

Note: After a week of thinking about it, I decided I wasn't going to write this. I was simply going to post a neat photo of an owl I saw in the farmyard. No backstory. It isn't easy putting yourself and your actions out there for attack, admitting that you've failed or that you made the wrong choice about something and somebody died because of it. But I know a lot of you don't just want the photos. You want the backstory - even when it's bad. You read my blog because you want to know what life is really like out here on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately right now this is what it's like - and the killing hasn't stopped.

© 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the in awe of nature foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares the good and the bad of life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Farm Photo 2/2/08: The Return Of Chucky

Happy Groundhog Day!

This is our resident woodchuck. Woodchucks are also called groundhogs, and when I woke up this morning for some reason I happened to remember that ,"It's Groundhog Day! And I have groundhog photos!"

We didn't see any sign of our woodchuck today which was perfectly fine with Joe, as he despises them with a passion that borders on obsessive—and hysterical. He has a valid reason for his hatred, which has to do with them building burrows out in the fields and cows falling into the burrow holes and breaking legs, but still.

When a forty-something, mostly sane man is standing at the living room window drinking his morning espresso and yelling, "CHUCKY! I SEE YOU OUT THERE WATCHING ME, YOU FURRY LITTLE BASTARD!" there's nothing you can do but try not to hurt yourself laughing.

There used to be a woodchuck living out in the hayfield. He could often be seen brazenly sunning himself in the grass in full view of The Shack, but never within a clear shot. He did this, according to Joe, for no other reason than to torment him. These staredowns between the two of them went on for years.

Then, thankfully, Chucky disappeared—until last November, which is when I took these photos. We were headed down to the barn to tuck in the sheep one afternoon and both spotted something moving in the small grassy pen adjacent to the barn.

"What the—"

"What was—"

And at the same moment we each realized who it was.

"IT'S CHUCKY!"


Home of the happy groundhog

And boy did Chucky have it good. He'd taken up residence under the stump of a fallen tree at the edge of the south facing hillside, building himself a burrow that included a downstairs residence, a covered porch, and an attached sun deck. It overlooked a beautiful, green, freshly seeded, high dollar expanse of what Joe soon started referring to as "his lawn."

Between his house and the lawn was a conveniently located fence which, while not entirely dog proof, did afford him an extra few seconds to dash into his burrow and escape any oncoming jaws of death. This had to be groundhog heaven on earth.

Chucky would spend each morning on his sunny lawn, rooting around with the squirrels and ignoring us unless I came too close with the camera. Then he would give us an evil stare and scurry into his house. Joe stayed remarkably calm during all this; he didn't even start toting a gun to the barn.

But when the donkey peddling cowboy and his dad were driving through one day and stopped their truck next to the pen then yelled, "Hey, Joe! Do you want us to shoot this woodchuck for you?" I quickly called out "NO! Thank you!" just in case.


Oh, Chucky! Where are you?

The morning sightings went on for about a week, and then Chucky again disappeared, though this time I think it was only into his burrow for winter. As I said, we didn't see any sign of him today, but if he did pop out in honor of Groundhog Day he most likely dashed right back into hiding.

Not only was the sun shining brightly, but there was snow all over his lawn. So I think we should all be safe (and sane) for at least another six weeks.

© FarmgirlFare.com, the furry foodie farm blog where woodland creatures sometimes run our lives and hunky farmguys always crack me up.

Farm Photo 11/6/07: Hayfield Grazing Rights

Wild Turkeys Up Front, Sheep Toward The Back

Wild turkeys are plentiful in these parts, and there are two females who have been living in the woods at the edge of our hayfield for years. Once when we were walking along the field's perimeter, Robin trotted out of a thicket with an enormous turkey egg proudly clasped between her little beagle jaws. (We put it back.) Each spring the mothers parade around in the grass with their babies lined up behind them. If we're lucky we catch a glimpse of flying lessons.

I think the babies usually venture off on their own once they've grown up, but a few weeks ago a flock of eight turkeys started spending hours each day in the hayfield, happily pecking around for bugs and whatever else wild turkeys like to eat.

They aren't bothered by the sheep in the least, and the other evening I watched as they completely ignored three deer who were leaping around playing right next to them. When Bear and I appear, though, they always run off to the safety of the woods. We did manage to sneak up on them the other day, and I was able to quickly zoom in to 16x with my trusty little camera and snap a few halfway decent photos before they noticed us.

Yesterday morning I was surprised to see them hanging out down by the spring. This time they fled by flight, flapping into the air in their ungraceful turkey way and landing just a few yards into the woods. Then they continued on foot, crashing up the hillside through the fallen leaves while gobbling excitedly to each other.

It kind of feels like turkeys are taking over the farm. I guess they know we usually have beef on Thanksgiving.

Want to see more?
There are more hayfield photos here.
Lots of farm landscape photos here.
Plenty of autumn color here.
And you'll find all sorts of sheep pictures here.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote acres.