Oh who am I kidding? I’m not a great photographer or videographer and one hand is wrapped in a splint! But here are some photos and videos of my evening at the farm last night. Will post more this evening; hopefully I’ll be able to catch their playful antics. Sadly, they’re more playful with the lambcam since they have no idea it’s there but when I come down, the babies run for their mommies and hide!
Lambs everywhere!!
C’mon guys…work together!
Oscar & Felix
Furble aka farm cat extraordinaire
And sadly, the lightening won this round. It would seem that during the storm this past week, a particularly wicked bolt of lightening hit close enough to the camera to disable it. I’m not a techie but I’ve been told that there are four integral parts and two are dead. Hopefully it won’t take long to repair and you’ll be able to watch the antics of the lambs again soon. Until then, here are some new photos!
Charlie & Churchill enjoying lunch
Agnes and her minions
Follow the lady with the food pail!
Adelaide poses so proudly
The babies are starting to eat hay!!
But they still want their mama too!
Wembley is very interested in the camera
Ready….
Set…
Dive!!!
This morning I got a call from the post office that our order of ducklings and goslings had arrived!
We all very excitedly got out of bed, got dressed and headed into town to pick them up. We could hear them peeping as soon as we walked in, and it was an awfully cute ride home, with Neve nearly dying from the adorable.
Yes, poultry comes in the mail like this!
We got 3 Khaki Campbell ducklings, 3 Rouen ducklings (all female), and 3 Pilgrim goslings (1 male and 2 female).
Female gosling.
Rouen duckling.
Male gosling.
Khaki Campbell duckling.
We set them up in the brooder and Agnes has been guarding them ever since. Mostly she just stands and watches them; occasionally she’ll hiss if one of us tries to pass by, but she’s easily brushed aside. All talk, that one. It will be fun to see how she handles them once they are grown!
Agnes is a feisty goose. She’s the only goose left on the farm, the others have died over the last few years. Geese are pack animals and you’d think that that this would mean that she she would want to hang out with the sheep or the ducks, but she has no interest. She’s decided that her job is to be a guard goose and she takes her job VERY seriously.
Pippa, Amy’s (indoor) dog refuses to go out the back door or past Agnes and must go out the front door to avoid her. She squawks loudly and will show an aggressive stance if she thinks you’re invading her space.
Case in point, while Tanya and I were dyeing sock club yarn and dumping out the excess water, she decided it would be more fun to attack us, so I had to keep her away.
Lately, she’s been taking to knocking on the back door at the farm with her bill, setting off the indoor dogs and amusing Amy and her family. (Well, until the indoor dogs won’t stop barking!). Amy caught her knocking during daylight hours:
If she were a woman, she might be called bossy, but as I say in the video, she is just doing her job. Granted, she decided that being a guard goose was her job, but she’s clearly just a go-getter. And no one likes go-getters more than the women at Juniper Moon Farm!
Thanks to Cris and Amy, respectively, for the videos. And for Tanya to brave the goose to dump out the dye water.
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Tagged ducks
We got several inches of snow yesterday and Paul’s office was closed, so I declared an actual snow day for the kids. Normally we have school no matter what the weather, but it looked so blizzardy, and inside was so cozy with the fireplace (and having Paul home throws off our routine anyway), so I let everyone curl up under their blankets and just relax all day.
It worked out well for me; I got the front right half of my Shepherd sweater done!
It worked out well for Gulliver, as well – he had Paul’s lap all day.
No one, though, seemed to enjoy the snow more than Gnocchi.
He had his goofy self a grand time while the snow fell.
While Cosmo and the smallest lambs enjoyed the dryness of the shelter with a few chicken friends and the pigs.
But, the day that had begun so snowy and stormy finished out sunny, and they all came out to enjoy some hay.
It’s hard to believe that two days ago it was 73 degrees, and that a few weeks from now is the first day of spring. It’s still rather frigid outside and the snow has not begun to melt yet. Soon enough it will, though, and we will be installing a heat lamp into the big chicken coop for the arrival next week of our ducklings! Winter may have some life left in it, but spring is nearly upon us!
A few days ago we got happy reports of potential snow for our area, and started making preparations in case we got hit. Projections were for 6 inches or so, and though Paul was very unenthusiastic and grumbly about the idea of snow, he helped me get the farm in order so that we could actually enjoy it from indoors, unlike last year when we spent an entire storm outside trying to keep everyone dry.
But I digress.
The snow was not expected until late morning, so after we made sure all of the water troughs were full (and the tank heater working), we got busy delivering extra hay to both paddocks.
Once that was complete I made sure the dogs were in where they could access the bigger shelters and Paul cleared space for the tractor in the garage. Then we went inside and I got the kids working on their schoolwork while we waited for the snow (no sense cancelling school for home-schooled kids when there is no snow actually out there to play with!).
We waited. And waited. And waited some more.
Susan teased me with pictures of lovely white snowfall in northern Virginia, and we heard reports of plenty of the white stuff just to our west.
Some time after noon we started seeing some snow “drizzle” and then our weather reports changed. We would now see around two inches total.
Needless to say, the kids and I were very, very disappointed.
Fortunately by around evening feeding time the snow began to pick up and we say some actual accumulation on the ground.
Everyone was fairly unfazed by it, and focused more on FOOD!
Though not much snow had fallen we double-checked on everyone’s hay and water levels and made sure the chickens were tucked away safely for the night.
Happily, we did get at least an inch, and the next morning dawned super bright and cold.
The water tank without the heater had to have the ice broken up.
Aside from that, everyone was rather unfazed and unimpressed.
Orzo and Lucy played a bit after they’d had their breakfast.
The pigs and the little ones were content to remain in their shelter with the hay until I brought their grain.
Only the ducks seemed confused; they’re the only animals here that hadn’t seen snow before. They weren’t sure if they should eat it or nest in it.
Although we’re still disappointed we haven’t seen a really good snowstorm, I’m glad we at least got some taste of winter. It’s such a lovely and welcome break from the rain and mud!
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Tagged chickens, chores, ducks, farm update, farming, goats, Guest Blogger, lambs, Lucy, sheep
Because those puppies don’t seem to care about their new pool, we decided to take some animals swimming who actually might like the pool.
The ducklings are two or three times bigger than they were at the beginning of July.
And we’re starting to be able to tell them apart, too. We’ve had to take them away and raise them by hand, since Lucy was helping herself to the nest a little more frequently than we were comfortable with. It’s a bit more work, but it’s definitely worth it.
There were some scary visitors who wanted to investigate the pool, but we kept them away.
There was also some head scratching,
a few barrel rolls,
and maybe even a fledgling romance.
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Tagged ducks, posted by Caroline
Phoebe, our precious duckling, has brothers and sisters! Seven of them!
Aren’t they the cutest? We are so looking forward to their coming adventures.
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Tagged ducks
To find a duck!
Zac walking around the yard after dinner when he spotted a tiny something waddling away from the duck’s nest and towards an increasingly-interested Lucy.
It was a duck baby!
We brought him (her?) indoors for a brief photoshoot, put Lucy indoors for the night so that she wouldn’t be tempted to gobble him up, and tucked our little duck back under his mama for the night. Since Spaghetti-O, the hen, was the one on the nest, it looks like we might have an adorable mismatched family on our hands.
We’ll keep you posted. But this was too cute to not share immediately.
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Tagged ducks, posted by Caroline
It’s National Donut Day! I went to Dunkin’ Donuts this morning for coffee and was informed that I was entitled to a free donut with my purchase of a beverage .
I don’t eat donuts, but I figured the chickens would like to celebrate National Donut Day.
This might be my favorite picture of all time ever. Have you ever seen a happier duck?
Watching a chicken run with a cruller in her mouth is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.