Foggy days, and plenty to do.

Yesterday and today are firmly in fog season, not just rain, but thick fog. It's not an uncommon thing where we live, but it's definitely a normal spring sign. Of course, we're expecting Snow Sunday into Monday, so winter isn't quite done yet. We'll see just how snowy it actually gets, I'm not expecting much effect, but it would certainly not be good for anything that had sprouted. The only thing I'm really concerned about on that front is the apple tree, but we'll see how that turns out!

Wandering animals, and ethics vs feelings.

It's another rainy day with no great photos to share, and fortunately I've been thinking about ethics again. Before I get there though, we have a couple things going on around the homestead. First the turkey is missing this morning, and there's no exploded poof of feathers. I suspect she's going looking for a tom that will give her what she wants since I'm clearly not doing it for her. I hope she comes home soon, and we'll keep you updated. The second thing is, somehow in the weather changes the hutch with Dawn and her daughter ended up open. On the big up side, when I walked up and picked dawn's daughter up, she didn't run anywhere but back to the hutch and let me put her back in. The benefits of having well socialized rabbits. I guess being outside in the rain wasn't as much fun as she thought. Below the cut, let's get on to some thinking.

Turkey fuzz, and air flow.

There are a few things going on around the house as our weather vacillates wildly between warm and bitter cold. The biggest upside of this is that the driveway is relatively clear, and the shoveling I did completely paid off. There's still plenty of ice of course, and lots of snow still on the ground, but as you can see there are areas of ground peeking through.

Mother Nature reminds us it is winter for some time still.

So one of the problems with talking about how mild the winter has been in late January is, there's a lot of winter yet. She heard us, and has delivered the missing winter. We'll see how long it stays, but She seems to be aimed to drop enough snow for us to remember right quick. On the up side, the Critter still loves every moment of snow.

There are better uses of a day, and worse.

Today has turned out a bit frustrating, but not a total waste of time. It mostly just pointed out some of the differences in how we have come to see the world from others. We were schedule to get a stove delivered today. Now to us the driveway is totally doable. Especially with the extra sanding I did to prepare it for the delivery truck. To them, with this amount of sand, and getting through to the gravel beneath for much of it, it wasn't something they would even consider. They'll try again in a week, and if they can't deliver it then, I'll tie it to a hand cart, and haul it up myself. For all that I'm frustrated though, there are other things going on, and while I hate "wasting" time off from work, other things have been done, including rest my sore back.

One surviving tomato, and poultry thoughts.

I think we've found some tomato seeds to save. This plant is incredibly stubborn and very hearty. It isn't doing very well at this point, but really I didn't expect it to be alive at all at this point given the number of frosts it's taken. Anyhow, there's a few last tomatoes holding on despite the cold weather and frosts, and it's kinda fun to come out and see. That bright red tomato under the right side of the plant, that one is probably going to be what I pick for seed saving. 

Turkey foolishness, and more home work with help.

An amusing occurrence occurred that puts something of a lie to the turkeys being smart. Let's be fair, they're smart at what they do, but figuring out what a fence is still isn't one of them. For some reason the black turkey who is the (mostly) dominant turkey wandered into the chicken pen and got stuck. No I don't mean physically, I mean for almost 10 minutes making contact and alarm calls pacing back and forth along the North fence line trying to figure out how to get out, when he could flap his wings once and be over.

Turkeys, and thoughts about trait selection.

The Lady of the House was kind enough to get some really lovely photos for our Patreon Patrons so we could get them their special content for the month. Normally I'd be doing that earlier in the month, but it's been busy here. That said, as a side effect of that we have some extra beautiful photos to share. Unsurprisingly they are of turkeys and the remaining chicken, because they are looking great lately. Also I want to talk about trait selection and why breeding has a place in this circumstance.

Quick Hit: Turkey taming with Critter.

Today's going to be a quick post because we've been very busy for the past couple days. The Lady of the House has been taking the Critter out to work on taming the turkeys, and that's a bit of an adventure. We want to get them more tame because we want them to come when called.
If we can get them comfortable with being close to the Critter, they'll definitely be comfortable with us. From the photos you may think that's already happening, but you'll notice my hands are on the Critter in every shot. That's because of the action you see in the shot Below. The Critter has a tough time not trying to go and pet the chicken and the turkeys. They're not a huge fan of that particular action. In fact, it's why the black turkey who clearly has a better survival sense than the others.

The Critter does however enjoy going out and throwing scratch to feed the turkeys, and watch them doing their thing. I think that as the Lady of the House and the Critter do that every day we'll be able to get a lot more friendly with the Turkeys which is going to be good. The one thing that I'm not thrilled about at the moment is the Turkeys enjoyment of perching on the car. So far it isn't harming the car, but I'd rather they not be up there. They like being up high though, so, I suspect it will continue to be as it is.

First fruit, and ferocious weather.

Again I'm going to start with something I'm excited about just because it's good to see more than it shows anything we've done in particular. The first raspberry I've seen start to ripen on our property. I'm going to be keeping an eye on it to try to get it when it's fully ripe before the birds get it, so I can give it to the Lady of the House. It also means that we're about to be a bit busy paying attention to make sure we get as much of the ripening fruit around the yard as we can. Strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries are what we have around. If we let them sit not only are they going to get eaten, they're going to attract bears which we don't want for obvious reasons.

Cold Antler Farm visit, chickens, and planting.

As usual we had a bit of a busy weekend, and part of that involved meeting Lucas here, who showed off to us all day. We met him at Cold Antler Farm where Jenna Woginrich was kind enough to show us around and be hospitable to us. We loved seeing everything on her farm.

She actually has a similar sized lot to what we have, but much more of it is in use. She keeps very busy, and has a variety of creatures on the farm in addition to logo creation, book writing, and a variety of other activities from archery to draft horse use. Left are Jame and Ciersie that were very affectionate and hung around us most of the day. The Critter learned how to headbutt things from them which has been so far fairly entertaining.  Going out to visit, see, and experience was our Saturday and a day well spent relaxing together and seeing someone else doing something similar to us, just a bit further along. Of course, Saturday and Sunday we had other things to do.