A Face Only A Mother (And Father) Could Love

 A friend suggested I take a photo of a baby pigeon each day to show how fast they grow. I liked the idea, but took a photo only every two days or so. By the age of 27 days, the little bird was up and about, still being fed but close to being indistinguishable from the other young birds. Here it is at two days old, one day after hatching, and already too big to fit back into the shell it came from. The egg beside it never hatched:

At four days old. I kept the unhatched egg in each photo to provide a size comparison:

Six days:

Seven days:

Eleven days:

Thirteen days:

Fifteen days:

Eighteen days:

Twenty days:

Twenty-three days:

At twenty-seven days, it was time for the baby to begin to move among the other birds and find its place in pigeon society. That meant it would be increasingly difficult to tell this bird from any of the others. The parents were still feeding it, but that would soon come to an end also:

A Farm Update

People here are thinking about autumn already and especially the coming winter. Even while the temperatures are in the eighties, it's only prudent to be planning for the cold which will be here too soon. I had the bale fork on the tractor, awaiting a load of hay bales when I took this photo:

This is Hare-Ear Mustard, an inconspicuous but common plant. When mowed over or eaten by cattle, it just miniaturizes and grows as a sort of north country bonsai:

The Tall Garden Phlox were spectacular this year but the butterflies and Clearwing Moths were nowhere to be seen:

One of the plum trees I planted when I first bought this place is producing its first fruits. I can hardly wait to give them a try:

The pigeons and chickens seem to live together in peace, both of them mainly serving as ornamentation for the farm. Their job is to look picturesque:

The chickens have a good life, going where they please and doing whatever enters their little heads:

This toad was living in the dog yard and hopped away when it saw the lawnmower coming. Of corse I stopped the mower and made sure it found a safe, shady hiding spot:

I continue to give the pigeons their birdbaths every now and then, and they continue to be overjoyed, playing in them and splashing like happy children:

And there are a couple more baby pigeons:

It seems there is only one pair producing offspring, but that's alright with me. If they were all breeding, I'd have too many pigeons:

And speaking of breeding, the hens have been laying their eggs outdoors where I can't find them. This hen got so broody that she stopped coming into the barn at night. When I finally located her, I threw out all the rotten eggs she was sitting on and herded her back to the barn at dusk every night:

There was also a cache of rotten eggs behind that rock at the base of the old fashioned rose. It was impossible to find until I weed-whacked the tall grass around the base of the rose:

Farm Update For July 23

The season's first two baby fantail pigeons had grown up and their parents produced one new baby:

A couple of days later, its eyes were open and it was growing rapidly. Alas, I found it dead a couple days after that. Such are the sorrows of keeping and breeding animals:

The Elderberries which grow in the old silo base were severely damaged by the snow last winter, but they rebounded in fine form, bursting into bloom:

The pear tree began showing off its miniature pears, many of them even turning prematurely red:

The apple trees also sported pint-sized fruit with a bit of rosy color. I expect to have enough fruit to keep the cattle happy this year:

The fantail pigeons enjoyed the freedom to come and go as they pleased during days with nice weather. They, like the chickens, are locked up safely at night. That's the chickens' door on the right:

The yellow and orange Asiatic Lilies bloomed beautifully:

The neighbors, across the road, have six Hereford cross heifers, all of which began having babies this summer:

Bred to an Angus bull, their calves are mostly the color popularly called "Black Baldy:"

I lost a couple of hens, probably to predators, but otherwise they are all healthy and happy:

Our brutal winter and spring drought damaged the hay crop this year. In fact, it looked so bad and was so full of inedible weeds, that I used the bush hog to mow it all down. I was in the main field when I had to stop because my cows saw no reason to get out of my way. It was a good opportunity to snap a photo:

When I was done bush hogging, the chickens rushed over to pick through the grass clippings which were piled atop the mower. It's been a busy summer so far, enough so that a quiet winter with hardly anything to do all day is beginning to sound appealing:

A Farm Update

So much has been happening that it's been difficult to keep this blog up to date. The lilacs are long gone now, but this photo from last month was so lovely that I wanted to show it to you:

And the chickens continued to roam freely with (so far) no more losses:

I let the dogs out one morning at dawn and photographed this sunrise in the eastern sky. Despite the old adage, however, the day was very nice:

One morning I saw what appeared to be a coyote in the field and, when it didn't run away, became concerned. I kept an eye on it and became even more concerned when it began coming closer. But it turned out to be a neighbors' dog, a very well behaved dog, so I relaxed. Nevertheless, I delayed letting the chickens out for the day. Even a very good dog might succumb to temptation:

The first two baby fantail pigeons of the season left the nest and were growing rapidly:

Their parents continued to feed and care for them, even after their squabs hit the floor:

But while they were still in the nest, I got this video of Mom delivering a breakfast of pigeon milk. She got nervous with me filming her, though, and you can see the babies pick up on her cue and quiet down, turning their backs on me:



One day after giving the cows grain, I managed to trap Rosella and Gladys inside the barn without the big girls. I called the neighbors to come help me tattoo Gladys' ears and give her an ear tag. He and his wife wrestled her down and held her still while I performed the operations and their three boys watched. Afterwards, I got a family photo. The two boys holding their noses were making an editorial comment about the smell of cow manure in my barn. That's Rosella and Gladys in the background:

Baby apples began appearing:

And baby pears, some of them even showing a reddish glow:

The chickens grew fat and healthy on summer grasses and bugs:

And both the purple and yellow Iris bloomed simultaneously. Usually the two colors bloom at different times, but this year we plunged directly from winter to summer and everything had to make adjustments:

Around The Farm

As I indicated yesterday, this has been a rugged winter so far:

This small lilac was showing a few, swelling red buds sticking up above the snow. But that, of course, was before it got buried in four feet of snow:

The little hens are indoors and protected from the worst of winter's sting:

But they have noticed the lengthening days and are beginning to lay eggs, which I have to get indoors as soon as possible lest they freeze and burst:

The pigeons have been pairing off and doing a lot of cooing:

It might be a horrible winter outside, but the pigeons, like the chickens, are tuned in to the lengthening days:

This little lady has hatched two squabs and kept them alive for several weeks despite the cold. I haven't interfered in any way (beyond snapping this photo), hoping she'll be able to raise them in spite of the awful cold. So far, she's done just fine:

This is a typical view from upstairs bathroom window. Sometimes it's so white that not much is visible but snow:

The view to the southwest. That flat field was planted in soybeans last year:

The snowbanks alongside the driveway continue to grow and have now reached as high as eight feet - with lots more snowfall predicted. Our only hope now is to survive winter and pray for an early spring: