New Pool, More Reindeer Pictures

The kids got a new pool. It's a step up from the laundry tub in the greenhouse. We had planned on keeping Cotton, the new Great Pyrenees, leashed for a couple of weeks until he settles in. But he managed to get unclipped from his chain the other morning after I left for work and he didn't go anywhere. With Serena, she came with a reputation for running off, so we kept her close until we were sure that she would know where to come back to if she did run off. Cotton, however, seems content to follow us around the yard. I went to the greenhouse this morning to prune tomatoes before work and Cotton kept barking, so I let the dogs loose so he wouldn't wake the kids up. Of course he wanted to come in the greenhouse with me, but since he is huge and doesn't understand "stop", "down", "sit", or "stay", he is not allowed in. So he went around to the side and stood up with his paws on the greenhouse plastic. As greenhouse film is not the most sturdy material and is relatively expensive and troublesome to replace, I was unnerved by his audacity to say the least. Back on the chain he went.

Reindeer drinking water

Rosie

At the feeder. Since they have so much pasture and woods to graze on they only get about 3 coffee cans of grain twice a day split between all of them.

Darren usually sits with Rosie by her feed bucket that is on the ground so the other reindeer don't push her out of it. She is very tame now.

Virginia is sort of visible eating her grain under the feeder.

The big bull on the left, Virginia under the feeder, and Rosie to the right. Virginia is three weeks younger than Rosie, and she has been sick for most of her life.

Darren & Rosie

Virginia coming out from under the feeder. Darren discovered the source of the cyst on her chest. It was a small matchstick sized stick that poked her and broke off under her skin. A cyst had formed around it and we speculated that has been the source of her illness for the past few weeks. Darren has been doctoring it, but just discovered the root of the problem this morning. The stick and cyst are both gone now so hopefully Virginia will not have anymore trouble.

Virginia - her horns are just now starting to come out.

Great Pyrenees, Reindeer, More Butterflies

The Tree Swallows were gone this morning. I did see 4 or 5 circling really high in the sky, but they looked like they were just trying to catch a good breeze which would carry them south. It's always sad when the swallows leave for the year. We probably had a hundred or more living in the swallow boxes that Darren built and put up all over the farm. The sky was alway full of them displaying their acrobatics catching mosquitoes and flies. It was not uncommon to be sitting on the porch and have one zoom past your head. They started swarming around several days ago preparing for their long trip south. Marble the cat caught one on Monday as they were practicing their swarming. Isabella ran out to save it from being eaten but it was already dead. They have brilliant blue-green feathers on their back. She carried it around for a while, pulled out a couple feathers and inspected the contents of its mouth (it was empty). Then I convinced her to give it a proper burial. So she buried it in my new raised bed next to an asparagus plant. And now the sky is quiet and still. We also had a good thunder storm on Monday, July 5th. Rainbows kept popping up - sometimes you could see the whole thing, and sometimes just parts of it would show up really bright. This picture was taken about 11 pm. The sun was shining through the clouds from the north, illuminating the field below the house during the downpour. Shortly after this, a complete double rainbow appeared over the farm.

This is our new puppy, Cotton. He is an 8 month old Great Pyrenees. They don't reach maturity for two years so he is just a baby still. A 90 pound baby.

He is a happy, calm dog, and very cuddly and gentle with the kids. He will work with the Serena to patrol the farm and keep out invaders. Mostly moose, loose dogs, wolves or bears if they show up. We will keep him on a leash when he is not in the house with us or tied outside for the night for a few weeks until he gets used to things and learns some basic commands. Eventually, he will be able to roam about like Serena. She's a good guard dog and she seems to enjoy it. Being a puppy, Cotton is not as well mannered as Serena was when we got her. He doesn't sit, go, or lay down when told so we'll have to teach him some manners, I think his previous owners spoke to him in Japanese (they were a Hawaiian/Japanese family). He does come when I call him so he seems to be responding to his new name. His old name was Juneau.

Isabella loves her new dog.

Here is the big bull reindeer. Both bulls have shed their winter coats and are very sleek now. The cows are still shedding. Virginia is still sickly. She was doing really well for the past two weeks, but then she got weak and lethargic again. Darren bottle fed her and gave her some probiotics to see if that would help. She was better the next day. Darren is considering just confining and bottle feeding her, he didn't want to do that before because he thought it would be too stressful to take her away from the rest of the herd.

This is Rosie, she is big and healthy. She like having her horns rubbed and she will eat leaves from your hand. She is still shedding her winter coat, too.

The greenhouse is doing well. Darren will put stakes next to each tomato plant so we can tie them up. We have been attaching them to twine hanging from the ceiling, but Darren is tired of doing that so we will just tie them to stakes as they grow. The melons and cucumbers will still be clipped to the hanging twine though. In the picture above, from right to left we have bell peppers (in the grassy looking row), honeydew and cantaloupe, 2 rows of carrots, beets, and green beans.

On this side, we have provider bush green beans, seneca horizon corn, baby bubba okra, bloody butcher tomatoes, cherokee purple tomatoes, sweet million cherry tomatoes, and sweet slice cucumbers.

Isabella saved another butterfly and several flower flies from the greenhouse plastic. She also mashed a grasshopper with a rock so she could carry it around. That is often what happens to bugs that don't want to be held and inspected.

More Chairs and Planting Rhubarb

I finished building the second lounge chair.

It came out better than the first one. I filled in the screw holes better and added even more embellishments. The main difference can be seen on the back of the chair. The first chair is on the left. On the second chair, I added the rounded ends on the arm rests and moved the back support to the inside of the legs.

But there is no difference when you sit in them. They are very comfortable.

I highly recommend Ana White's Knock Off Wood Blog for free furniture plans.

http://www.knock-offwood.com/2010/05/furniture-plans-simple-outdoor-lounge.html Happy Summer!

Planting Rhubarb

I ordered 12 rhubarb plants this spring. I planted one in the flower bed by the greenhouse and one died, so I decided to plant the remaining 10 plants in the main garden.

When we lay out rows for planting, Darren's preferred method is to use two 2x2 stakes withe string between them and pound them in the ground at the ends of each row. Then pull them up and move them to do the next row, etc. I got tired of having to pound a 2x2 stake into the ground with the back of an ax for every row so I bought a garden reel. The metal stakes are easy to push into the ground and the reel holding the string spins freely.

The little knob on top holds the string tight and keeps the reel from spinning.

Here are the rhubarb laid out in a neat row...

Hay Season

Here are Smokey and Serena lounging in the house. Serena is doing a good job of running off all of the moose within a half mile radius of the house. She diligently patrolls her area and protects us from invaders. Hopefully, the garden will be spared this year. Darren is tired of having to continuously fix the fence around the garden every time a moose crashes through it.

None of the dogs noticed when a fox was skirting the edge of the hay field on its way to the turkey pen though. Darren spotted it and chased it off. The fox will probably be back. A while back we had two of our rabbit does die during birth, the litters were lost as well. We decided the problem must be the new buck producing babies that were too large for the does. The does are just as big as he is so we didn't forsee a problem. He sired a litter last year with no problems but he wasn't full grown then. Our old buck died so the new guy is the only non related buck we have to breed to the does. He is a Californian which is a large meat rabbit. We had one more pregnant doe and we were concerned about her fate. She appeared to have a difficult delivery and several of the kits died but she ended up with about 4 babies that survived. Here is Darren holding one that is a week or so old. It looks very big and lean and muscley for a bunny, they are usually round and soft. I told Darren that this one is built like a pit bull. So we will probably still have to find another buck or some bigger does. Maybe around Fair time, we'll start looking.

Elijah is ready to help Dad cut hay!

Things are generally busy around hay cutting time. I took 3 days off work so Darren could cut, rake, and bale hay. We got about half of the fields done and are just waiting for another sunny window to cut the rest. Here is Darren cutting the hay by the house on Wednesday, June 23rd. He raked and baled the lower field on Thursday. After he finished baling he hooked the trailer up to the truck and I drove while he loaded the bales. It was kind of tricky since I am not used to driving a stick shift and Elijah didn't have a car seat in the truck, so he and Isabella were just climbing all over the inside of the truck while I tried to navigate between bales and watch Darren in the mirrors.

There were some pretty soft spots in the road back to the house, so some of the bales got rather shook up. None of them fell off though. Darren was having trouble with the way the baler was tying the bales, about a quarter of them came apart.

On Friday, as the thunder clouds built up in the distance, Darren disassembled the baler and sharpened the string cutting blades and figured out what the problem was and got it running right again. Then he could finish the last of the baling, but with the rain clouds fast approaching I had to help. My first task was to take all the loose hay that was piled in the big sled and distribute it amongst the hay rows to be re-baled, it was about 4 bales worth or hay or 200 lbs. I pulled the sled with the 4-wheeler and spread the hay out. Elijah was napping and Isabella rode on the 4-wheeler with me. Here she is exhausted after several loads of hay.

Then I got to pick up the new bales Darren was making, load them in the sled, and then stack them on pallats before getting another load. Yesterday's hay was stilled stacked on the trailer, so the sled was the only option for picking up the new bales. Here is one load on the sled.

My hay stack doesn't look very nice. These are 50# bales, some heavier, so at least I got them stacked up as much as I did. I ended up picking up and stacking almost twice the amount of hay shown in the picture below. After Darren finished baling, Isabella and I went back to the house to check on Elijah, who was still sleeping. Darren finished picking up the hay which was about as much hay as I picked up, but he did it in a quarter of the time. And incredibly, the big thunder storm went around us, the hay was saved!

Hopefully we'll get a break in the rain soon so we can get the rest of the hay up.

Isabella has made it her job to rescue trapped or drowning bugs from the greenhouses and water buckets and nurse them back to health. Her favorite bugs to rescue are butterflies, lady bugs, lacewings, and flower flies (flies that are striped like a bee). But basically any bug that will sit on her finger is a good candidate. Bugs that do not cooperate with the rescue efforts usually get squished in the process.