Dogs And Cats, Down On The Farm

I always try to keep my camera handy for scenes like this around the farm, both indoors and out. This is Bramble and Daphne, sharing the floor pillows:

Madeline and Seamus have become good friends. They're about the same age, a little tubby and less frenetic than the younger dogs:

Clover, Fergus and Daphne on the floor pillows:

And how's this for a bottom-of-the-stairs welcoming committee?

As soon as the south field hay had been baled, I took the dogs out for some photos, starting with Daphne and Clover, "The Silly Sisters," atop one of the five foot bales:

Little PeeWee would surely have fallen off a bale, so he just romped around on the ground:

He may be old and nearly deaf and blind, but he is a regular moving machine. In fact, I have to watch him carefully lest he disappear:

PeeWee, Madeline and Daphne sniffed around, exploring the hay field:

Madeline looked quite noble, I thought, up on a hay bale - kind of like a miniature Lassie:

Fergus, on the other hand, was nervous and shy and not at all sure he liked being up there:

The dogs got to spend a lot of time outdoors, especially in their fenced yard. That "dead dog" off to the right of the photo was PeeWee, napping in the grass:

A bedtime scene shows PeeWee in his own personal bed with Daphne and Madeline keeping him company:

Assorted Scenes From Around The Farm

It was a busy summer and a real learning experience for me. I spent a lot of it getting my little flock of Barred Rock bantams raised and teaching them to negotiate the outdoors. Yes, they had to be taught, first to go outside - and then to come back inside. But after awhile, they did learn to go in and out of their coop without assistance:


Alas, one of the lessons I learned was that a flock of chickens, however small and adorable, who hang out on the step in front of the barn door will poop so much as to make entering and exiting a distinct problem:

They learned to scratch, search for bugs and eat grass:

At first they wouldn't leave their coop so I put them out each day, one at a time. Then they went out by themselves but I had to catch and put them back, one at a time. But finally they learned:

I did a lot of fence work around both fields. The view across the hay fields toward the house and barn was one of the payoffs for getting outside and doing the work:

I had to haul pruned limbs and other brush back into the woods with the tractor:

And toward the end, I had to weed-whack the entire perimeter of both fields, a seemingly endless job. Here, you can see a section of trimmed fence line and then a section of untrimmed, just ahead of the tractor:

And this is what happens when weed-whacking thousands of feet of fence line:

But far out in the field working in a natural setting surely has its benefits:

I also had a lot of mowing and weed-whacking to do for the lawn area:

And once again, the payoff for doing it was a kind of rural, comfortable beauty - the kind which seems to put the mind and soul at rest:

And here is a very brief video of the chickens doing their thing: