• Animal Tracks •

Aside from the loss of half of our chicken flock to the ravages of two feral dogs things have been quiet on the animal front. Not to say that we haven't had our usual visits by skunks, oppossums, and the smaller crtters. The deer have become bolder and are regularly visitig some of the tomato fields although the biggest offenders in terms of eating our veggies have been the cows. Venus, discovered one day, that the electric fence was not charging, and we discovered her in the kale. I'm not real big on having an epicurian cow in the herd and sure enough she led the others back to the kale later that day. By the time I had the fence situation under control she had escaped no less than nine times in the afternoon alone! You can imagine my frustration at both needing to spend time chasing her back in with the other cows and use the same time to finish the section of new fence I was working on. Well, they are all in at the moment and the newest section of fence is complete and working. I haven't seen any unusual tracks in my daily work although as I said the regulars are abundant. I was surprised to still see bats flying as recently as this past week. It is standard wisdom that they head to their winter ground in October. Although we've had some very cold weather they are apparently still finding what to eat.

We moved the pigs to their next staged location and they are doing great. They have been thriving on warm meals and lots of good food. They are quite settled in here and I'm looking forward to spring and fresh pork as well as piglets.

We have had a surprising number of woodcock hanging out and their nasal "peeeet" along with their wild flying habit is always fun for me. I can not remember ever having them hang around for more than just a few weeks even though we have the meadows that they seem to favor.

With the warmth the past few days even a toad or two woke up and began their chirping. I'm not certain if this would qualify as an official Indian Summer but having had the deep freeze for a week and now the warmth it sure feels like it. I'm not seeing or hearing any complaint from the critters either.

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