Notes From Here And There

The pigeon parents with the cubbyhole nest raised a healthy baby:

The baby did so well that one day I found it on the floor, attempting to begin its adult life. It was, however, being bullied:

I put it back in the nest, but it jumped right back out again. It's doing fine, though, and already indistinguishable from the adult pigeons:

Another pair picked an awful place to nest, crowded under a beam and full of poop:

But so far they've been excellent parents and their two babies are growing rapidly:

Both parents take turns keeping the babies warm and feeding them:

The little hens would like to get outside, but I can't let them because the foxes would eat the hens and the hens would eat my seedlings:

I get a few green and pink eggs each evening:

A friend from choir is an artist and, after visiting the farm, painted this for me to hang on my wall:

The Mock Orange finished its blooming season and began dropping petals so fast that it looked like it had been snowing:

Apparently this bi-colored Iris was the last Iris of the season:

The Morden Sunrise rose began to bloom:

June In The North Country

The fantail pigeons have not successfully raised any babies yet, but they are happy and healthy - and plentiful enough that I don't really need any more birds:

 They do, however, keep going through the motions of courtship, nest building, egg laying, etc:

 The lady on the right with the demure look on her face has a particularly nice nest, but nothing yet has come of it:

 The chickens are old enough that their egg laying is much reduced. In all honesty, that's a blessing for me. I simply can't use any more eggs than I'm getting:

Their eggs are pretty though, mostly green, pink or off-white:

 The lilacs began to fade so I took one last photo before those flowers became just a memory:

 The last and perhaps most spectacular bloomer was the Prairie Rose flowering crab. It was in full flower when everything else had quit for the year:

 And I couldn't resist one more close-up of this, its most floriferous year:

Our weather finally turned warm and sunny, so my neighbor came to begin cutting hay. He'd barely begun when he had to return to the gate to replace a broken shear pin. A few hours later, he went over a stump and had to replace a knife. This may look scenic and peaceful, but it's work which is not for the faint of heart:

 The field had already(!) grown to two feet high or more, and was so dense that cutting it was slow:

 But it was a beautiful day in a beautiful location. Life is good:

 And this hay looked like it will be spectacular:

The Great Egg-scapade

It was a chilly, rainy, spring afternoon and the dogs, cats and I were lounging around and doing nothing much:

 But I had accumulated three dozen eggs (well, 35 to be exact), and decided to clean them out of my refrigerator:

 So I cracked all 35 of them into a nonstick pan:

 I scrambled them and distributed them into six dog bowls:

 I put Seamus into the laundry room with his own bowl because he, like me, needs to limit the quantity he eats. I put the other five bowls down on the kitchen floor. To my surprise, Daisy and Caspar marched right in and began helping themselves:

 At first, the dogs were unsure of what that odd, gooey stuff was - but they soon figured it out:

 In the other part of the kitchen, Jack, Bugsy, Sammy and Daisy helped themselves to scrambled eggs (note the accumulation of cat toys by the door on the right):

 Miraculously, all my animals eat together without conflict, sharing and waiting their turn, though having plenty of bowls surely helps keep the peace:

 Bugsy and Sammy moved over to taste some of Fergus' eggs. He didn't growl, but he accelerated his eating speed:

 And then they all lay down and burped while I washed dishes:

 You didn't see Seamus formerly because he was alone in the laundry room, but the other dogs and cats hadn't been able to eat all of their eggs, so Seamus did the cleanup after I let him into the kitchen. Then he too lay down and burped:

 Daisy, Seamus, Daphne and Jack all joined me in the computer room while I put this post together. It seemed to me that this had been a great success, but that night all the dogs vomited and had diarrhea. It was a horrible mess. I will try again in the future, but only with a much smaller quantity of eggs:

The Changing Of The Seasons

These pictures are in chronological order and show the progression from winter to spring weather. We began with the bale feeder on the east side of the barn, the entire south field covered in snow and treacherous ice:

But conditions improved enough for me to roll the bale feeder out into the south field. There was still some snow, but not too much and the treacherous ice was mostly gone:

Some of the stemmy hay which the sheep farmer neighbors brought was still near the gate in the south field, and the herd considered it their soft, dry bed:

Remy gave me his best glamor pose:

The snow was slowly disappearing:

And after the bale feeder had been out in the pasture for some time, there were additional spots of waste hay for making my cows comfy. The snow was almost gone by then but it was still cold and muddy:

Inside the barn, I put a xylophone on the chickens' wall to see if they'd play it like the birds in the popular YouTube video:

At first they bit it, so it made no sound. Then they discovered that a sharp peck played a tone. It was all very exciting at first, but they've mostly ignored it ever since. I guess I don't have musical hens:

Blue and Remy began exploring the farther ends of the south field:

And enjoying the sunshine:

The little hens began increasing their egg production. I now have a supply of pink and green eggs, all  of them the small, bantam size:

And my ever increasing spring fever inspired me to add one last bit to my plant order. This is the Hosta variety called Fire And Ice. I added three plants to my existing order. They are supposed to be Zone 3 hardy and thrive in shady places. The north side of the house should be ideal:

Around The Farm

The little horses and big cows continue to eat hay and lazily wait for springtime to arrive:

The white fantail pigeons are all excited and starting to build nests:

One female had a nest on the floor last year and repeatedly laid eggs which never hatched. She either had no mate or had a mate who didn't help her with the nest. This year she's built a new nest and I've seen a male with her a few times. Alas, they both leave the nest so often that there's probably not much hope for any eggs hatching:

The hens would love to go outside when the snow melts, and I might even let them have a few excursions out into the big world when the weather improves:

But they're safe from foxes inside right now and once I have new plants in the ground, the plants will need to be safe from the chickens. The hens will be indoors again once I've planted:

Two little hens are laying eggs every other day now and I can't even keep up with eating them. I'll soon be hard boiling them for the dogs again:

This is another item on my wall, antlers from a Black-tailed deer, a gift from my Oregon relatives when I was a boy:

The chainsaw bear was a gift from my sister, and sits atop an old milk can which came with the farm:

The welded steel bird was another gift from my sister. The painting is on boards and represents an old style:

The painting is an imitation of a painting from the 1800s and this explanation is glued to the back of it. Even the imitation is getting old now, and the explanation is becoming difficult to read. This painting was a gift from a woman I knew when I first moved to the northeast many decades ago:

I was coming home from the feed store and almost to my driveway (that's my north field up on the hill behind the trees), when a big flock of turkeys was trying to cross the road. I stopped to watch and take a photo, but then they stopped also, and began to retreat:

But they are big and bold, so changed their minds and soared above my car in a display of real flying power. These birds were at home in the air and not at all like domestic turkeys: