Friday’s Farm Fotos

Okay, so it’s a cute-sey way to spell “Photos”, but I happen to be a fan of alliteration. 🙂 At any rate, just thought I’d show you a few pictures I’ve taken lately around the farm and hadn’t got around to posting yet.

First, we have a picture of our cat, Spot FenceWalker. He thinks he’s a dog. He and one of our “real” dogs, Toby, follow us around where ever we go outside. This is nice until I’m trying to take pictures, and my subject objects to having a cat and dog close by! In this picture, Spot was following me one night when I went out to check on the chicks.

And here’s a picture of the chicks I was checking on.

That’s a little pile of peachicks on the left with a couple of the younger chicks, and the older chicks huddled up in another pile under the volunteer sunflower.

Sometimes I find chickens in unlikely places. I often look out a window to see them perched on the other critters.

The ewe with the horns is Valrhona, and the one with the Buff Orpington hen perched on her is Papaya.

Other pretty things we can see from our windows include Goldfinches enjoying snacking on seeds and bugs around these tall blue wildflowers. (Anyone know what those flowers are called?)

We can’t have a bunch of pictures without one of The Farmer doing what he loves best… playing Firebug. 🙂

We seem to accumulate boxes and feedbags, so they need to be burned every so often before the feed room in crammed full of them.

The Farmer’s faithful companion likes to trot softly and carry a BIG stick.

The minute one of us goes out the door, it doesn’t matter what Toby is doing, he rushes to grab as big a stick as he can find, cause after all, then we might play with him, right?

And on final reflection, we have a heron who visited our pond this morning. We happened to catch him there when The Farmer went out to work this morning, and knowing how I love pictures, he waited for me to grab my camera and take some before heading on down to the car and scaring the heron away. (Thanks Farmer!)

I’m not sure whether the heron was there to grab some breakfast or admire its’ reflection, but it was a nice surprise to see it..

And there you have it, my collection of “Friday’s Fotos”. Hope you enjoyed them!

Typical Scene on the Farm

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.

It’s a typical scene on the farm.

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

The weather remains changeable here. Yesterday it was up in the 70’s, last night it rained, this morning it was in the 40’s. At least the sun was shining brightly when I went out to do the morning chores.

The sheep were still resting in the main pasture, in a nice, neat row near the orchard:

 

That’s the matriarch on the left, Coconut, then Rowan, Domori, Payapa and Valrhona. They’re retired now from producing lambs, though of course, they still produce wool! In fact, each one produces a different color. Being Shetland sheep, some of those colors have special names. From left to right, their colors are: white, gray, moorit, shaela and musket.

So to the question, “Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?”
The answer is yes! And so do all the other different colored sheep!

Friday on the farm…

It was beautiful out there when I went to do chores this morning. The weather has warmed up again, and I wore a light jacket instead of my heavy winter coat. Even at that, I pulled off the jacket before I was half way finished with the chores. Though the sun was shining, it’s pretty dreary. What colored leaves we had have either turned brown, fallen to the ground, or both. Still, there’s a little color peeking through here and there, like this lovely little violet.Toby was in rare form this morning, galloping all over the place, carrying around a big piece of lumber he found somewhere. He’s got to have a piece of wood in his mouth, whether it’s so tiny you can barely see the end of it sticking out of his mouth, or so large it’s twice his size and he’s dragging it along behind him.

He’s the farm jester, always finding ways to make me laugh, no matter how grumpy I might be. He loves to play in the water. In the original game, he jumped up and bit the water, but later it evolved to him wanting sprayed while he ran around with his lumber stogie in his mouth.

The other animals generally ignore his lunacy, unless he gets too close. Then they’ll scoot out of his way while casting a wary eye in his direction.

Eventually, they’ll go back to munching their hay or grass or whatever they were doing.

It’s another beautiful Friday on the farm.

Another Frosty Morning

For our part of the world, it was downright cold this morning. It was 27 degrees F (-3C), which doesn’t sound so cold if you’re in Maine or Canada perhaps, but it’s all relative, and for us…. brrrrrrr….

We had another hard frost, and the sheep were sporting icy wool this morning.

It’s easiest to see the frosty fleece on a dark colored sheep like Papaya.
I don’t like HOT weather, but I’m not too keen on this really COLD stuff either. The wind is wicked sharp out there today.

The rocks and fallen leaves were covered with ice crystals.Dare I say it? I wish this frigid weather would *leaf* us alone!