The last two days other than take care of the rabbits, I haven't done anything homesteading related. Partially due to fatigue, partially due to rain, and partially because I didn't feel like building or digging. This led to me not having any idea what to post about today, so I figured I'd post about what I have been doing, hiking around behind the house. All of these pictures are from within a 30 minute hike from the house. As a caveat, my hiking pace is a little faster than some consider to be a normal pace so take 30 minutes with a grain of salt.
Well, it turns out we've been blaming the wrong predator for at least some of our chicken deaths. Yesterday the Lady of the House heard the turkeys giving alarm calls, and saw they were up the tree. When she looked out in the back yard, there, in broad daylight was a first year coyote. She didn't get a photo of it as she was busy chasing it off, but fortunately neither of the turkeys, nor the remaining chicken were killed. We're going to have to do some strong behavioral remediation for this coyote, because as interesting as they are, we Really don't want them around the homestead when we have livestock. At beast they'll scare the rabbits into not wanting to breed (gee, maybe that's why they haven't been accepting breeding) and at worst they can do a Lot of damage as is clearly evidenced by the nearly exterminated chicken flock. At least we know what we're dealing with because a coyote is very different from a fox. Fortunately they're smart enough to be easy to scare, and lazy enough to not want to go to much trouble. But now, let's talk about the garden successes.
