Here we are, another Friday, and it’s been a BUSY week as usual! With school, work, farm and household chores, who has time for photography?
Okay, I confess, I just about always carry my camera with me when I go out to do morning chores. So here’s a few of this week’s snapshots from the farm.
I’d never seen such red wasps until I moved to the south. I think they blend in better with all the red soil, ha! (As opposed to Iowa or Canada, which both have some of the blackest soil I’ve ever seen!)
This is our male llama, Samson, before getting up in the morning. He has a couple of hitchhikers…
It’s bad enough they think the llama is their own personal roosting place, but then the rooster has just got to crow about it…
At least one of the sheep thinks he’s really baaaaad.
Later that afternoon he figured a nice fluffy sheep in the shade made a good roosting place.
Our female llama doesn’t care how many chickens sit on Samson or the sheep, as long as she gets her afternoon session in the sprinkler.
To really get the full effect of that picture, be sure to click on it so it enlarges and you can see the drops of water more clearly!
We have some new guinea babies running around the farm.
I’m not sure why it takes half a dozen adult guineas to take care of four little keets! Last year they were having 12-14 keets hatching at a time.
And lastly, I just know you’ve been wondering what I did with all the scrap wool I skirted off all those fleeces. Well, here’s your answer:
Bet you didn’t know we grow wool in our flowerbeds here in the south!
And there you have it, a glimpse of life this past week on the farm.
Why is that things seem to go wrong the most when you’re short on time? I’ve got more company than I expected coming this weekend, the house is a wreck, and I needed to get some groceries. But I haven’t been sleeping well, so after the guys went off to work this morning, I laid down for a quick nap figuring I’d be more energetic after a little rest.
I was dreaming about catching chicks, and that there were all kinds all over the house. Little did I realize when I woke up almost two hours later that was a prophetic dream. Two hours! Oh man! I didn’t have that kind of time to waste today! But okay, I feel better, so time to get moving, and fast.
My one little injured chick was peeping. I figured she was lonely. I kept wishing for something else to hatch out soon so she’d have a buddy. I held her a while and talked to her, then zipped outside to do the morning chores.
The wound is healing, even though it still looks pretty yuck.
The animals were all giving me the hairy eyeball, like, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” I was mobbed by chickens and guineas looking for some scratch grain, peafowl screeching for their morning chow, and indignant goats butting my legs because they hadn’t got their morning treat of animal crackers yet. Okay, okay! I’m moving as fast as I can.
Then I heard it.
If you’ve ever had guineas with keets, you know this sound. It’s that high-pitched locater cheep that means, “Help me, I’m lost!” One little keet was running around in the back yard screaming at the top of its little lungs. At first I figured it got separated from the group we saw last night, and when the guineas all came in for food, it’d find its mama. No such luck.
Instead, the older guineas were pecking at it, so I figured I’d better go to the rescue. I got out my trusty net, waded through the other critters, and went after it.
Now if you’ve ever chased a guinea keet you’re probably already laughing, because you know those short little legs move like they’re jet-propelled. It’s really too bad no one had a camera, cause I’m sure this would have qualified for a winner on “Funniest Home Videos.”
After much running around in the 90 degree heat, I finally captured the little twerp, took it inside, and put it in the brooder box with the injured chick. Finally! Now back out to finish my chores.
I wasn’t out there for very long until I heard that sound again. Uh-oh, there’s another keet somewhere! I grabbed my trusty net again, and went off to hunt it down. This one was in the weeds along the driveway. Those weeds include poison ivy.
We went around in circles, I slipped on some rocks and skinned my leg up a little, and about that time I was thinking, “I sure hope you appreciate me saving your life little keet, cause if I get poison ivy for the first time in MY life, I ain’t gonna be happy.” After a whole lot of tries, I finally netted the little speedball, put it in a bucket in the feed room and figured I’d finish my chores, then take it inside.
Only once it shut-up, I heard that sound again. HOW MANY OF THESE KEETS ARE RUNNING LOOSE!?! I’m sure about that time I heard God laughing and saying, “You’d think by now you’d be careful what you wish for! Now you’ve got some little cheeps to keep your lonesome chick company.”
The trouble is, this one was down in the bottom pasture. Now keets are nigh impossible to see in grass, let alone tall weeds like’s in that pasture. The only way you can find one is to home in on the cheeps, and then you still have to extremely lucky to locate it.
I went to look at a known nest site there, and discovered a mass of adult guinea feathers. Hmmmm, so that’s probably why these are running loose on their own – someone had mama for a midnight snack. But where is this little cheeper?
Feathers to the left, two nests of eggs to the right.I waded through a whole lot of weeds, and probably still wouldn’t have found it except for one thing. This one doesn’t blend in. It’s a light gray. I’ve never seen a keet this color. We had some white guineas way back when we first got some, but I don’t remember them hatching out any gray keets. What I do remember is white guineas are the first to go when the predators come looking for food. They stand out, unlike the regular colored ones, so get picked off quickly.
At any rate, I captured that chick, and thankfully didn’t hear any more cheeps, so took them inside. Unfortunately, I just thought I was done chasing keets, cause when I got in the house I heard the sound again, and it wasn’t coming from the brooder box.
Oh no! The first little cheep had jumped out of the box and was running around all over the house. I headed towards the sound and stepped in something squishy. “Oh crap!” Yep, that’s what it was alright. Guess the little fink’s digestive system is working fine.
It ran in the office, where there are far too many places for it to hide. I crawled around on my hands and knees trying to find it. It ran out of there and into another room and under the bed.
Hiding out among some stuff on a shelf in the office.By this time my legs were really itching and I knew I couldn’t reach the keet, so I figured I’d take a shower and get ready to go to the grocery store and maybe by then it would be out again. About the time I started to step in the shower, I heard cheeping in the hallway.
I headed after the little cheep, and it zipped towards the living room. I was praying, “Please Lord, I don’t care if you laugh, but don’t let anyone come to the door and see me running around the house with no clothes on, trying to catch this little beast. I haven’t got time to explain it the psychiatrist after they take me away in the straight-jacket!”
Lucky for me, when those little keet feet hit the linoleum in front of the door, the keet went sliding and I grabbed it.
That’s the little gray one hopping out of the water dish.
Once I got it back in the brooder box, I threw a towel over the box and went looking for a screen to put over it so there’d be no more jailbreaks. I now have 1 chick and 3 keets cheeping away in a hopefully escape proof box.
And I’m NOT going back outside for fear I might hear more cheeps!
Play this movie, and you’ll hear a lot of those locator cheeps!
I looked out in the pasture a while ago, and saw two guineas running round and round the pasture. This is nothing new; they do it all the time. One chases the other, trying to prove dominance I suppose.
Then I remembered I’d taken a short video of their crazy antics back in the spring. I was sitting at the table eating breakfast, and watched those goofballs chase around the pasture for a half hour or more.
Guineas can be awfully mean to each other and any other fowl on the farm. Good thing they have redeeming qualities like being great “watchdogs”, and the best critters for cutting down the tick population.
Here’s one of the guineas keeping watch from the top of The Farmer’s work shed.
Without such redeeming qualities, I doubt if many people would put up with the Guinea Gangsters.
It’s a blustery day here on the farm. There’s moisture in the air, sometimes just a light mist, other times it’s wee little balls of stinging sleet. This is not my favorite time to be out and about, but the animals need hay even more on days they don’t go out and graze.
The guineas don’t seem to mind a little rain, running around looking for grain or perched on the fence. I almost chickened out of my morning walk through the woods, but I figured if the guineas could hack the foul weather, so could I.
The wind was making quite a racket as it roared through the trees, and of course the creek was up a little from the bit of rain we had.
On nice days, when I let all the animals out together, it’s not unusual to see all kinds of combinations of critters, with the chickens, guineas, dogs, sheep and llama. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen poultry perching on sheep. I think that nice thick wool must keep their feet warm, or maybe they just like being on top of things.
After record breaking warm temperatures earlier this week, it’s back to cold weather. Yeah, I know “cold” is a relative term, and what’s cold for us is a balmy day further north. There was a hard frost this morning, but the sun came out and it turned into a lovely day.
The return to cold weather hasn’t obliterated all signs of a coming spring either. After doing the critter care chores, I went for a short walk in the woods. I noticed the redbud trees have – what else? – red buds appearing.
I noticed other signs of growth in a slue towards the back of our wooded area that is filled with water again, thanks to the recent rains. The algae is bright green there. The moss in the woods also continues to green up, and there are a few plant leaves poking up here and there.
In my flower garden, the plant my Granny used to call “Live Forever” is already showing new growth for this season.
This particular variety is officially known as Sedum ‘Matrona’. It has lovely pink flower heads that the butterflies and bees dearly love.
The animals enjoy the sunshine too, and I noticed a bunch of the guineas in the front yard, headed down towards the pond.
All in all, it’s just nice to enjoy a sunny Sunday here on the farm.
