New Arrivals

Finally, after having to dump excess milk, and making cheese until that became more like work, help has arrived!

The piggies still have to learn about milk, and how to drink from a bowl.  They drink their water from a metal nipple which keeps the water clean, cool and it is something they learn easily, since they are not so far from being weaned.  So the first milk experiences are always fun to watch.  Their good noses tell them, hey, check this out, it smells good, but they are often not so sure just how to get this good stuff down, and make bubbles, bite the edge of the bowl, tip it over or lick it off the other pig.  Sometimes I have to add a little of their meal and make them a cereal to get them started, but this batch is smart and once one figures it out, they all do.

Meanwhile in another part of the barn:

King of the hill is Maggie.

The dogs will climb up to right under the roof, usually chasing the cats who have a secret escape tunnel somewhere up there, much to the dogs' frustration.

So while all things in the barn seem settled, here is what we came home to when Harold and I actually went out to dinner with friends (by ourselves, no dogs - gasp!):

 A destroyed dog bed.

Stuffing all over the place.  Maggie looks fairly innocent, though.

Ralph looks a bit guilty, but no, that is outrage at being accused when he is clearly innocent.





But Ralph is no snitch...

I saw nothing, honest!

Me!?  Why are you picking on me?  Clearly I couldn't have done such a thing....

DARN IT.  Mom always knows.

The French Maid

I have long wanted a person to take over the cleaning chores, since they are more like a never ending world war at my house.  So I was delighted to find out that Briards can learn to take care of the dusting, and make rather pleasant French maids:

Dusting up a storm, ma'am.

The trick is to get a good grip on it.

Almost got it...

Wait, there are still some feathers stuck here...

...almost done!

All done, I got all the feathers off now!

Although it might look like Decibel was just taking a feather duster apart, the truth is she asked (by poking at the thing, and looking at me) for my permission to take it, waited until I handed it to her, and ran for the camera, which on second thought I should have gotten before I gave her the thing, and then she took it outside, for a test drive, before she plucked it clean.  It was too cute, and not that much of a cleanup, really.

Dances with Briards

Briards are extremely versatile dogs, and can master herding, agility, tracking, Schutzhund, possibly obedience and even dancing:  

Oh, you are so light on your feet!

In true French fashion, Decibel thanks her partner for the dance with kisses...

... both sides of the face with one swipe of the tongue!

The Sabertooth Briard

With Decibel, it would be best to have a built in camera, since she always does something that is funny, silly, or just incredible.  Here she is trying out a larger size "fangs":

Look at my fangs!

ROAR!

Or does she have one of those teenage vampire crushes?  

I vant to suck your blood!

Decibel the helper Briard

Decibel is always willing to help out and ever curious about what is going on.  Nothing new or out of place escapes her.  With spring the ducks and geese are checking out the ponds and Decibel is very busy swimming after them and chasing them off.  I don't mind that, especially not in our 'swimming pond', since those birds can be messy.

Harold got himself a new toy, and after convincing me that this will make weed and poison ivy control more effective, and that fences will be repaired, and that wood lots will be cleared out, well, he came home with the ATV.  I should have got a video camera for the unloading of the thing, which involved backing the truck up to a bank, and using some flimsy pallets as ramps, but amazingly nothing major went wrong.







Naturally now all of us have to learn how to work with and around the thing.  The dogs are doing pretty well so far.

A new tree came in to replace the almond tree that never grew, and Decibel did her level best to help, inspect and clean up.  She is a natural for gardening.

What's in the bucket?

Water!

Daddy did it, not me.

I can dig with my paws, but this technology is promising.

Put your back in it, Dad!

Old tree disposal.

Today Decibel caught on that Harold wanted the tall weeds by the chicken coop gone, and she actually pulled one and brought it to him!  How clever is that!  She is a very clever girl.

Then for another swim in the pond, and some wood ducks took off, and circled, and Decibel managed to paddle in place, watching them in the deep water!  I have never seen a dog tread water before.  She is a strong swimmer and likes going for laps, just because.  I don't mind, it keeps some of the soot out of the house, washes her big paws off.

Prairie Fire

A large portion of our land is enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which keeps highly erodible land out of production agriculture and yet preserves the land.  We are obligated to keep our land as tall grass prairie, which is what it used to be centuries ago.

Prairie used to burn every now and then, which maintains the grass and gets rid of the shrubs and trees and other weedy invaders.  These days burning is a management practice but like most managed things, it gets complicated.  Because of the CRP we cannot burn from April 15th to July 15th.  Most of the grass would benefit from a late April, early May burn, but rules are rules.

Foreground is pasture, which didn't burn much, background is prairie, which did burn.

A good burn

Get the dogs to swim AFTER they walked on the ashes!

So we burned in early April, and thanks to our neighbors' help, we did get a very good burn in.  A good burn is one where the house and barns are intact afterwards, the tall grass is gone and burned to ashes, and no neighbor got burned out.
We didn't even have smoke on the highway, and the only time law enforcement came by it was to compliment us, because there were many other burns that had gotten away from the controlled category, and firefighters were out in force.  Part of the blame for that is with the weather forecast, which is as good as studying entrails, if you ask me, but since the weather including wind speed and direction is forecast hourly for the coming days, people tend to believe that sort of prediction and use it to plan their burns.
We have done so in the past.
However, we were ready a bit before our scheduled start time, and so we decided to 'get her done', which turned out to be a stroke of genius (dumb luck, really).  We were done before the winds picked up to twice or three times the predicted speeds (not to mention that the directions were wrong, too), and since we burned there has been no let up in wind, only it keeps getting colder and shifting.

We got good back fires in, had enough time to get back to the house, where Harold and I had mowed previously, and not even a hay bale got singed.  We were both rather sooty at the end of the day, but it washed out, and the dogs were rather snooty, since they had been locked up, but that was better after they all got cookies.

Where is the birdie?

Decibel helped with the clean up, she bites the water from the hose, and then tried to lick the camera.  Maggie tries to camouflage herself by becoming one with the soot, and suffers from excessive bathing.  She does not like it one bit.  Ralph just wants to sit in the truck, and Skeeter has no clue.

I know where to go to get black paws!