Down a chicken due to our previous visitor.

Remember our not so benign visitor that we were concerned about, well, an overly adventurous chicken experienced why we were worried about it the hard way from what we can tell. On the up side we only lost one of the chickens which is a lot better than our previous predator experience where all chickens died at once. That said, this is most certainly not the end of the season of predators being a major threat. In fact, as breeding or birthing season comes up for the various predators in the area the concerns about depredation are going to increase not decrease. After all, foxes, owls, and weasels do have babies to feed. To that end we're going to just need to try to keep the chickens out of the woods. In this case a couple chickens decided to fly out of their run and explore in the snow. I wonder if they were startled out of the run given that there's nothing out there that's really worth going out to get at. Especially not where I found the one live, and one dead chicken.

More snow, a less benign visitor, and maybe mites.

I figured I could get away with a little shameless use of one of the best photos we yet have of the Critter and I because it's a snowstorm photo. As those of you in the area know, we got a lot of snow yesterday. We seem to have made a tradition of getting the photos of the Critter in the snow. We can call this one his 3 month picture. As a side note, as I grew up in the far South of the USA in Texas, I never expected to find myself comfortable outside in near zero degree Fahrenheit weather without a jacket, heavy gloves, and a face covering. Now I'm out there consistently in what you see with waterproof work gloves and actually shortly after this photo went out and cleared the driveway. Very different than I was 5, or 10 years ago.

But, that said there's a lot that's been going on around the homestead over the past weekend so let's talk about some not so benign visitors, chickens, snow, and bread. The bread is simple, I baked 10 loafs of sourdough bread in one day. I recommend not doing double batches of dough, it's Much harder to knead a double batch than two single batches. I don't have pictures of this mass of bread, but next time I make bread I'm planning to make a walk through on how I've started doing sourdough.

Owl visitor, hot water, and slight setbacks

As we continue to be busy we've been trying to get some relaxing time in with each other, and honestly haven't been able to do a lot other than exist. This weekend we got lucky, and I happened to sleep in until almost 9 AM, and got up, and looked out the window, and saw an owl visitor being driven off well post dawn when I usually let the chickens out. The picture above is from last year, but I think it may have been the same owl. Either way, we, and at least one of the chickens got lucky  this weekend due to me having a nice lazy morning. There have been a few other things going on as well, mostly with Gabriel, but also I have managed to, with help, get some things done around the garden as we look to see snow tonight.

Baby rabbits and a barred owl visitor!

Spring is here! Snow is melting and we can see the ground in a number of places. Ignore the fact that there's still foot deep snow in plenty of places, we can see the ground! We can start getting frost hearty plants in the ground as soon as I can jam a shovel through it! And obviously with this warmer weather combined with their age, Twilight's babies are coming out of the nest on their own to harass her!

Broad winged distraction

Today's post has no new photos because this morning when we left the house the dog startled out a huge barred owl, and we spent a lot of time trying to get good photos of it. Unfortunately, the best we got was a vague brown blur among brown branches. So instead of new photos, I'll be reusing photos, sorry!

So here's a picture of a baby bunny looking at the world.