Birds

We love watching the birds free-range (as long as they restrict their free-ranging to exclude our gardens!)

They love digging through the manure under the rabbit hutches. We don't mind the bits of feed that the rabbits drop through, knowing the clean-up crew is quite thorough!

The ducks mostly like swimming and splashing. They really do make a tremendous mess with water!

They loved our pathway ponds.

The chickens saved us the trouble of carving jack-o-lanterns this year. 

They don't seem to feel too guilty about it though. 

Yesterday, a Northern harrier kept watch over our birds. They didn't spend a whole lot of time out of the coop until we top-of-the-food-chain predators came around!

Daisy

After over a year and a half of our good food and care, Rosie finally successful raised a kit!

We named her Daisy, for one of Samwise and Rosie's daughters.

She stuck pretty close to her mom at first.

But before long, she showed that she has her mother's curious streak (one of the reasons we chose Rosie).

The two of them seem to get along great!

So much fun! At least once a day (especially when she was younger), I made sure Mickey knew that "Daisy is so cute!" :)

Mirabelle's Bunch

After Rosie's success with Daisy, it was Mirabelle's turn.

She built a tremendous nest with straw and fur.

Here's what we found under all that fur! 6 beautiful kits.

We love the variety of colors! I believe the happy family includes one gray, one brown, one dark gray, and three black (although their fur color continues to change as they grow).

The crazy lady with the camera was a little scary! so they all piled up in the back to get away.

One was a little braver and started exploring the world outside of the nest box.

The explorers especially like to hide behind the nest box.

 Baby bunnies are ridiculously cute!

Three Little Pigs

We are now proud owners of three little pigs!

We bought three weaners (all gilts) from a farm on the next hill from ours.

They are very curious, and very fun.

They were scared of us at first, but soon came to associate us with food, and...voila! They make quite an astonishing racket when we get up in the morning, or home from work in the afternoon.

They are also tremendous rooters!

You can see where they've been...

The soil where they've been feels like rototilled garden soil!

We feed them food scraps, they will provide us with delicious, nutritious meat -- not a bad deal for a rototiller!

They take their rooting very seriously.

Gretta so far is the only one we have named -- in honor of a blond Homer Junior High Life Science student who loves pigs and made her request!

Did I mention they are curious? We are loving our newest additions to the family!

Sheep

 The sheep have settled into their winter lodging, complete with a manger that Mickey built for them. (They spill a lot less hay this way!)

Lublin is still our friendliest and most curious sheep.

They certainly seem to enjoy the hay we bought for them, from the next hill over.

 Lovely ladies!

Cabin Life

Let there be light! Mick has hooked up two of the light fixtures in the bathroom -- how decadent!

The view from the front porch at peak autumn. 

(I couldn't decide which picture I liked better.)

Gerard, ever resourceful, has found all sorts of interesting places to make a nest.

Our New Hobby

Before the frosts came in earnest, we discovered a new hobby: mushrooming! We went on a couple of hikes before the frost put most of the mushrooms to rest for the winter (with the exception of the beautiful late fall oyster mushrooms). 

We were pretty pleased with our first haul! These were all identified as edible while in the field and brought home to clean and cook. Our favorites were the puffball (center), which we've had before, and the abortive entoloma (left), which surprisingly tasted like candy!

This large oyster mushroom topped off our find! This wasn't even anywhere close to the whole mushroom (we went back and harvested most of the rest of it the next week). So delicious! A wonderful addition to pizza, and Mick made a great cream of mushroom soup too.

One of our favorite things about our hobby is getting to explore our woods. Not really sure how this tree came to be, but we thought it looked pretty neat! We also saw a pileated woodpecker. Gerard joined us for one of our excursions -- very adventurous of him -- until we spent a little too much time a little too far away from home for his liking. He didn't know how to get home without us (or at least wasn't about to try), but he loudly voiced his complaints!

We're looking forward to the spring flush!