Getting Fleeced Again

The little flock of Shetland sheep we have left, our retired ewes, are starting to get nice looking fleece again.  They looked pretty ragged right after we sheared them.  I’m afraid we will never win any awards for our shearing technique!

I caught them under their favorite trees this weekend.  When it gets hot, this is where you’ll find them.

Of course, there are always guineas running around!  You’d think we have a thousand of them, the way they seem to be everywhere and are always in whatever pictures I take of the farm animals.

Since we don’t have as many animals grazing these days, we allowed the bottom pasture to grow up wild again, and that’s what you see in the background.  (It’s also where I took most of the pictures of wildflowers in the “Of Rainbows And Wildflowers” post.)

Of course, we also see a lot of this running around in the pastures with the other farm critters.  Toby does like to carry his boards wherever he goes!

Guess that’s The End!

Loose Lipped Llama

It seems the critters around here are bent on misbehaving lately.  First our African Gray Parrot was bent on eating things she shouldn’t, and now our llama lady decided to do the same.

Note the chicken in the background on the left?  Well, see that little gateway in front of the chicken between the tree and fencepost?  That’s where our silly llama squeezed through to get into the backyard.

She loosely lips the leaves off the rosebushes without getting close enough to the stem for the thorns to get her.

Pretty smart actually. 

But kind of hard on my rosebushes.

Tomato Damage

The Farmer had a bowl of tomatoes setting on our dining room table.  He loves garden fresh tomatoes – just slices them and eats them right up.

Yesterday I walked by his nice bowl of tomatoes, and noticed there was a problem.

There were little bits of the tomatoes on the table top, and a couple of the tomatoes had gaping holes where something had eaten part of them.

Now you expect that to happen now and then when the tomatoes are still in the garden.  Turtles like to munch on tomatoes.  Rabbits might take a nibble.  But these tomatoes were in pristine condition when they were placed in the bowl inside the house, away from those critters outside.  So what happened?

This happened. . .

Yep, our parrot decided she likes tomatoes.

I’d went off to the office and forgot she was loose. When I walked back into the kitchen later, she was sitting on the back of the kitchen chair furthest away from the scene of the crime. I think she was trying to disassociate herself, like “I had NOTHING to do with it!”

The Farmer now calls her “that tomato-eating bird.”  He wasn’t pleased to find a couple of his tomatoes partially eaten, but I think even though he won’t admit it, he thinks it’s kind of funny.

I know I do.

A New Chick Shows Up

A while back I noticed a young chick and Buff Orpington hen out in the sheep shed.  It was the only little chick with the mama hen.

I hadn’t seen it since then, however, and was afraid it hadn’t made it.  But then this morning the mama hen finally brought her chick out to get some of the corn I throw out each morning for the chickens.

I was happy to see the little one was still around, and from the looks of things, thriving quite well.

It actually reminds me a lot of Peeper’s chick.  Hmmm, surely this hen didn’t steal Peeper’s chick?!  That’s an interesting thought!

At any rate, it’s a cute little chick, but then, they always are cute!

Mystery Of The Lost Tail Feathers

A mystery developed over the weekend.  One morning Peepers showed up to eat her grain minus her tail feathers and chick.

What happened?

I don’t know if something attacked them, and she lost her tail feathers in the process, not to mention her chick, or just what.

Like I said, it’s a mystery!