Oh deer!

M’lady Doe has no tea, but she has a lawn good for a brief rest.

The deer ones return

                                   Five for brunch is a cinch in our neck of the prairie.

Our deer lunch guests

Mule deer never seem thwarted by snow-blanketed fields. I enjoy their visits, and I am happy they find fodder on our modest acreage. I am also happy that they leave the rabbitbrush alone.

Hail to the Plowman!

Vic had to convert our tractor to its snowplow identity to plow our driveway this morning. It’s hard to tell which–the snow or the plow–Cat Halvor disliked less. In any case, the red tabby is out on an errand.

Golden Thanksgiving Morning

Happy Thanksgiving! We are thankful for the beauty God has given us. The sunlight’s gleaming gold crested the fields and basalt hills only briefly. Clouds recaptured the hills immediately after I took the photo.

Halvor on Lookout

My husband, who took this photo, is building a gated fence around our small orchard, which has provided our visiting deer a feast of plums, apples, pears, and grapes. Halvor has taken up guard duty, even though fruit season is behind us for the year.

Good evening, Deer!

Two mule deer fawns felt no need to retreat when I raised my camera to photograph them through our dining room window.

Little early for Thanksgiving, guys

The sudden appearance of a flock of wild turkeys in my neighbor’s front yard was an entrancing photo op. I took the photo through a window. Now they’re in my front yard: 12 of them. . .

Chickens are treacherous, and other amazing facts

I am furious with our chickens, especially the witchy one who just attacked me.

Now that our erstwhile rooster is fulfilling his highest and best destiny (my husband sacrificed and canned the beast the last weekend), the hens are on the march.

I have brought the chickens an apple core as a treat every day of their post-baby chick lives. They have always received it hungrily and fought over it, each ultimately securing a portion. They never complained when I collected whatever eggs they laid. Today was different.

I brought them their apple core and held up the hatch of their hutch to check for eggs. For the first time ever, not one egg was intact. They have sometimes broken an egg but left others intact. Today all the eggs–I could not quite tell whether there had been three or four–were smashed and consumed. Only the shell fragments remained.

As I held up the hatch, one hen leaped onto my arm–these creatures have impressive claws–in an attempt to escape the hutch. I pushed her back and closed and latched the hatch. Then I went in and scrubbed my arm with Bactine. Chickens are incredibly filthy creatures.

It’s actually a negligible casualty, and chickens are far too dull to formulate an intention. I will still bring the hens their apple core, for two more days. We have two apples left, and the storage apples we get in summer taste like paper mâché. There will be no more apples until Fall.

I doubt the chickens will learn any manners by then–though I suppose that’s fair, since I keep removing their eggs.

Sexers of chickens are not always right

Mistakes in sexing chicks happen. We wanted four hens. They were little chicks when we got them in March. They all looked alike. The second from the left has a large comb, but that isn’t always dispositive. He crows. His cocka-doodle-do goes off at 5:00 a.m. and off and on throughout the day. Worse, he’ll never lay eggs. But he’ll make good chicken stew.