Farm Update For April

Is this a photo of the farm in December? No, I'm sorry to say that this was taken at dawn on a day in April. Our winter has lingered and, even when we thought it was over, has returned to put the bite on us:

The view across the road on that same snowy morning:

And speaking of unpleasantness, I had an entire winter's worth of dog poop to clean up after the snow melted:

Rosella began escaping from the fence and I rushed to get the electricity flowing again. I fixed many shorts in the south field fence and then crossed the road to the north field. There, I found numerous small shorts plus one giant problem. A dead tree had crashed to the ground, taking the wires down with it. A chainsaw, hammer and fence staples solved that problem:

The fantail pigeons lost their first two babies but otherwise seemed happy and healthy:

The chickens were the big winners this spring, reveling in their freedom to go outdoors each day, peck and scratch:

Until one day when I found this pile of feathers and discovered I had one less hen:

The next day I discovered the culprit, a red fox who had become so emboldened by the ease of obtaining a chicken dinner that it had little fear:

It was beautiful and fascinating, but could not be allowed to kill all my chickens. I spent an entire day trying to shoot it, but failed:

It returned at least 20 times that day in search of a chicken dinner. While my aim was not good enough to kill it, I did manage to keep chasing it away until I could get the chickens indoors for the night:

The fox kept coming back, looking for hens to eat - but I kept them inside. The chickens were not happy about that but they have no defense against such a predator:

I set a live trap for the fox and the next morning before dawn, I heard it barking excitedly out where I'd set the trap. When I went to collect it, I found it had turned the trap upside down and escaped:

Here it is, sneering at the live trap with no intention whatsoever of going in there again. As of this writing, the hens are still locked indoors and the fox is still loose and seeking a meal of fat chicken. I can't let the birds out until the fox has been disposed of in some manner: