Farm stuff - no words

Fish finder

One of these fine fall days Harold decided that we should clean out my goldfish pond.  I think we've only done it once before, so it was really time.  This time we used a sump pump to remove the water, spent time catching the goldfish, then hosed the muck out and so now, for the first time in years, the FISH ARE IN RED!

Wait, what was that brown blur at the right?

Of course, it's Decibel the helper Briard.  She loves it when I feed the fish, because she might get one of the pellets.  It has all the stuff in it that we avoid when buying their expensive dog food, PLUS it stinks like dead fish! 

Decibel says:  "It's super delicious!"

 

One...two... five... one hundred fishies!

Hey, there is a gorgeous Briard there!

Maggie's mystery critter

It's over here, human, c'mon!

Skeeter pretends he knows what's going on.

Maggie KNOWS.

Right in there.  Note the wood chips missing, she tried chewing her way in.

It's a sleeping beauty...

I'm-not-thrilled-to-be-awake-opossum.  

Admittedly the photographer poked the critter with a stick to get a portrait shot. 

I KNEW IT... It's ALIVE!

note drool

So Decibel...

I was a bit tired today, since Harold is away on business and ALL the chores are mine, and of course the cow misbehaved... so I decided to take the dogs to the orchard for a short walk, instead of our long trek through the pasture.

I was checking the trees for apples but the only ones I saw were too far up, and not worth trying for, when I got to the hazelnut bushes. I had harvested our first nuts from these bushes earlier, but apparently I had missed some, because soon I had more than a handful of nuts. I used the bottom of my tee shirt as a bag and kept collecting nuts.

Decibel came over to watch.

Might as well put her to good use. She likes nuts too, and with her nose... so I showed her a nut and told her to find it. Decibel sniffed the thing, then gave me one of her most brilliant smiles, sat up and pawed the nut-filled pouch of my tee shirt.


"They are right there, Mom!"



Brilliant.

Buster's Day Out

Buster is catching up, and is trying to figure out the world around him.  He has managed to solve the mystery of the green pellets (feed), and is working on drinking water from a tank.  So far that task has escaped him, since he is used to nurse from a bottle or suck on a finger.  Still, he is trying...

What's out there?  Go to the light, Buster!

Wow, it is bright out here!

Buster trying his legs

a new friend

Maggie is very good with him, she knows he is a baby

The pigs are now hogs, and couldn't care less

so Buster checks out a bucket instead.  Well, he IS a bucket calf!

It was difficult to get the pictures of him, since he does not like to go away from people.  He actually prefers us to his mother, which drives Ruby crazy.  She has been acting a bit ornery of late, and even tried to keep me from using donkey for my trash pick up 'beast of burden', thinking that I was somehow stealing her baby.  

Fall day

By now most readers know that I am completely besotted with Decibel and her antics.  This weekend however, she might have lost a point or two in her 'Dad's' opinion poll.  And it wasn't even her fault - she would say.

What happened was one of those adages come to life, in this case the one about "it's all fun and games until someone breaks a window".

Decibel, who is an outdoorsy kind of gal, needed some grooming attention.  I can usually do that with a little wrestling, but this time she had one of her teenage moments, and her nails were going to rival Nine Inch Nails and so I called in the cavalry, namely Harold.  For a while we played a spirited game of twister with Decibel who would alternate between scrambling to get away, hiding her paws, throwing a little fit, and just when things got too fierce, being a really good girl.
The cycle takes about 45 seconds.

Just when we had gotten to the scramble while jumping away part again, she combined it with a sudden back-up move and her butt (rather bony) smashed through the window!

Okay, that was a first.

All 22 nails trimmed and mats brushed out (mostly).

Decibel looked very guilt stricken and stopped fighting me, which was good, since Harold was trying to assess the damage.  Rest assured, nobody got hurt.  Harold taped the broken window so he could remove it without glass shards all over the place, I finished Decibel (as long as the house is not burning, I finish the grooming), and luckily we still had an old window in the shed, so the glass got replaced with a new piece, which is so clean that I will probably smash it, thinking the window is open, but the dogs will most likely take care of that and put a few nose prints on it.