Yesterday was a fairly long day, as the girls and I made another trip into the city. Which should be the last supply trip needed. From now on, anything we’ll need over the month can be picked up locally.

Of course, before we headed out, I fed the critters. As I was putting food and water in the sun room, I discovered I had some quiet company.

There was Slick, just sitting, waiting for me to be done!

He’s got to the point where I can even walk past him outside without him running away – so long as I don’t come too close!

I put out the last dregs of deer feed, so picking up more was also on the shopping list for the day!

While doing my rounds, I had some kitty company, but not from Butterscotch. When I got back to put things away, I found Slick had been replaced.

It’s a ball of Butterscotch! She just looked at me, then tucked her head back again.

I’m a bit worried about her. She hasn’t been herself lately, and has seemed a bit sick. Today I have yet to see her at all. :-( I hope she’s okay.

When we got back from the city and unloaded the van, I made sure to top up the deer feed, since I’d only been able to put out about half what I usually do, that morning. I found it was pleasant and not-windy – a bit of a surprise as, on the drive home, we drove through several mini-storms. It was like driving into a wall of blowing snow, with a sudden drop in visibility, then driving out into open air with normal visibility just a minute or two later. This happened several times. Thankfully, whatever was going on with the weather did not reach home, so I took advantage of it to break out Spewie and clear the drifts out of the paths I’d made around the house.

I’m happy to say that, while the paths have allowed me to extend my morning rounds a bit more, the cats are also quite appreciating them. Not only do they not have to hop their way through deep snow, but the paths are cut through more than a foot of snow, providing them some shelter, too. From the tracks I saw this morning, they are even starting to bypass a path they’d made from the storage house to the collapsing log cabin, and instead using the path I made to the fire pit, where they have only a few feet of snow to hop through to get to the collapsing building.

Going through there this morning, I knocked some of the snow out of the fire pit itself. Very tempted to light a fire in there today, and shovel some paths to the piles of wood. Clear it out in preparation for a cook out. :-)

While doing this morning’s rounds, I decided to do the full circuit around the spruce grove; something I haven’t done in quite some time. This allowed me to check out the deer trails along the north side.

This first one was taken roughly half way down the grove. You can see how close to the trees the deer have been going. Last year, this was impossible for them, as it was full of low hanging branches, dead branches, undergrowth and a harrow. Now that I think about it, I was standing right near where I dug out that harrow!

Looking back the other way, you can see even more tracks. There is a trail that comes from the corner of the property, across the garden. More trails go through the maple grove and that end of the garden. Right near where I am standing to take the photo, there is a trampled area with many piles of scat, so the deer are clearly hanging around here for a while. Likely to nibble on the spruce tips that hang a bit lower in this spot.

While they are jumping the fence near the corner of the property, this is where the majority of the tracks lead. They were jumping the fence here last year, too, but at the time the trail was through a break in the undergrowth.

The deer seem to be quite appreciating all the open spaces I’d cleared up over the summer! It should be interesting to see where they go after I clear inside the spruce grove more, this summer.

From here, I walked along the fence line, which used to be a regular part of my rounds. I found myself in knee deep snow for much of it! I made a point of checking where the one line of barbed wire is broken. It’s being held up by the Christmas lights right now. If the weather holds, and things start warming up, I should be able to replace the strings of colourful LED lights with plain white ones, and fix the fence at the same time, fairly soon.

As I got to the last part of my route around the spruce grove, I found someone waiting for me! :-)

Rolando Moon loves perching on this fence post. I was able to get some cute pictures of her licking my fingers. What I wasn’t able to catch was her also trying to bite them, in between licks! :-D

She is such a nasty, friendly, aggressive, sweet, bundle of contradictions! :-D

I will need to head into town today to pick up some prescription refills. By the time I come back, we should be getting into the warmest part of the day. A good time to get the fire pit going, if all goes well! :-)

The Re-Farmer