We got rain!

May 17, 2018May 17, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

A chilly day today – enough that we actually turned the furnace back up again – but that’s okay. We got rain!

Not much, mind you, and I never actually saw it rain, but things are damp out there, which is so good to see. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get more. I certainly hope we do! As nice as what we got today was, it’s no where near enough, though we are still supposed to get more now and again, throughout the night.

We saw a new bird this morning. I just barely got a few photos before it took off.

An American Goldfinch. I’ve seen them at my sister’s bird feeder, and was hoping they would show up in our area, too. Just the one, so far, but at least I know we can expect to see more of them.

Though we did get rain today, there is still a burn ban, and we haven’t done a burn in ages, so our trip to the dump today included stuff that would normally go into the burn barrel. We also got another load of paint out of the garage. One more trip should clear out the last of what’s there right now.

After going to the dump, my daughter and I went into town for an errand, taking advantage of the trip to play some Pokemon Go. Which meant our regular stop at a Pokegym at the beach. The lake was so choppy in the wind, I had to go and get pictures.

The town has finished grooming the beach. It all looks like a giant Zen garden right now. :-D

Definitely not boating conditions! The water is still very cold, and the wind off of the lake was pretty chill. Neither of us had jackets, so we didn’t stay long!

With the chill and the damp, this evening sounds like a good time to sit with a hot cup of tea and catch up on some crochet. :-D

The Re-Farmer

There be Deer here

May 14, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It seems that putting the feed out in the evening, instead of the morning, has been a good idea. Three deer came by, about half an hour after I put the feed out, when none at all showed up during the day. Which means they had plenty to eat, since the birds didn’t get a chance to eat it all, first! :-D

I think it’s the same trio that showed up last time, but I’d have to compare photos to be sure.

Just look at those little baby antlers! :-D

This one has such a loooong smooth face.

The fur on all of them was looking pretty rough.

This one had gone over to the edge of the trees and started nibbling on the new leaves on the wild roses, but it kept getting distracted. Then its fur got all puffed out as it kept staring in different areas.

The other two starting checking out the distraction, too.

Eventually, the source of their agitation emerged…

It was funny to see Nasty Crime Boy start crouching down in stalking position while staring down the deer!

When the deer showed up, I just started taking as many shots as quickly as I could, hoping I’d get at least a few good ones. I ended up taking over 100 pictures in the short time they were here. I got several of this deer making funny faces like this, with this one being the clearest. The deer was chewing on something that seemed to be giving it a hard time, resulting in photos that look like it’s having a good laugh!

There was the one deer with the long, smooth face. Then there is this one, with the lumpy, bumpy face.

Too cute!

The Re-Farmer

New Sparrow: updated

May 13, 2018May 14, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First off, a happy mother’s day to all the moms out there. I hope you had a lovely day of it. My own was nice and quiet, and I am quite delighted with my early mother’s day gift from my husband; an OBD II diagnostic tool that plugs into the van, with readings sent to an app on my phone via Bluetooth.

According to it, the van is doing just great. In the near future, I’ll have to get my daughter to drive, so I can see what readings come up while driving.

My husband knows what makes my heart to pitter patter very well! :-D

We haven’t been seeing any deer lately, again, though the piles of feed I’m leaving out in the evening are gone in the the morning, so they do seem to still be coming out. There is still plenty of scattered grain for the birds, though. Right now, we’re still getting mostly fox sparrows and white throated sparrows, but today we saw a new one.

There were only two of them, so we almost missed them among the other birds.

Next to the white throated sparrow, you can see the bodies are almost identical, until you get to the head, neck and chest. I’m guessing that means it’s also a type of sparrow, but a quick search for sparrows has brought up nothing with a head like that. I’ll have to try looking some more later, but if you happen to know what it is, please feel free to let me know in the comments. :-)

Update: May 14

It looks like the new bird is a Harris’s Sparrow.

The Re-Farmer

Deer Visitors

May 10, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

It was almost too dark to get photos, but I was able to get some of a trio of deer visitors!

When I saw three of them, I thought it might be Mama and the Twins, but once the antler nubs started to show, we could see that her twins were 1 male and 1 female.

Today’s visitors included two young males.

You can see the antler nubs on the two deer feeding in the photo above.

I had put out 8 little piles of seeds this evening, and they moved around a lot, from pile to pile, making it hard to get photos in the failing light. I got a lot of motion shots! :-D

I don’t think I recognize them at all.

While we’re not seeing deer as often anymore, now that the snow is gone (though from the disappearing feed, I’d say they’re coming over throughout the night), the ones we do see are looking rather rough, with all sorts of patches missing in their fur, and looking quite thin, as well. It may be they’re losing their winter coats, but the patches in their fur don’t look like they are from shedding.

They didn’t stay long, nibbling at the piles of seeds while constantly on the alert. After a while, they headed out into the garden area and started grazing by the remains of the wood pile.

With spring finally showing some greenery, any feed we put out is basically a treat. They should be finding plenty of food in the bush, now.

The Re-Farmer

That was quick. Also, deer!

May 8, 2018May 8, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Early this morning, I saw a pair of deer coming into the feeding area. Unfortunately, because we haven’t had them coming by in the last while, I hadn’t put any feed out the night before, so there wasn’t much there for them. Still, I got a few pictures, even through the reflections in the window. :-)

They are both looking pretty rough around the edges! I do think they’ve been here before.

Notice the little antler buds on the deer in the foreground? :-)

The female has some nicks out of an ear, and it looks like some scarring on her snout, too.

Aside from the missing patches of fur on the male that can be seen in the first photo, he’s looking pretty thin, too!

Just before I went to put more feed out tonight, I spotted a single deer through our bedroom window, making its way through the maple grove to the feeding area. The noise of me going outside would have scared it off, though. I hope it comes back later. :-)

This morning, my husband’s hospital bed was supposed to be delivered between 10 and 11 pm. So this morning, we dismantled our king size bed, which has been resting on a pair of queen box springs until we could get a proper bed frame again. The mattress just got leaned on the wall at first, and the box springs went into the dining room at first. Then I went out to feed the cats.

Beep Beep stood up to say hello! :-D

Then, with the help of one of the girls, the box springs got moved outside, just to lean on a tree until they could be taken to the shed.

The outside cats were very curious about this!

Well, hello, again, Beep Beep!

I had to head out at 11:30. My mother registered her vehicle, effective this morning, so I drove her car out to meet my brother at her place, as a surprise. I was going to accompany them for a medical appointment in the city, which was also a surprise.

It turns out my mother doesn’t like surprises.

Ah, well.

It was a long and draining day for all, but we got the information we needed, then took the time to explain it again to my mother on the way back. My brother, sweetheart that he is, drove me home before driving the 1 1/2 hours back to his place. It was a VERY long day for him!

While I was gone, much to my surprise, someone from the electric company came out to check the power lines! I was told they’d have someone out within 2 weeks. I wasn’t expecting someone the very next day! :-D I will have to phone them again to find out what their assessment was, since not a lot of information was shared while the guy was here and my daughters were buy hauling box springs to the shed and cleaning up the yard.

As for the hospital bed, it did finally get delivered and set up, several hours later than expected. Once that was done, my daughters got the king size mattress out – I have no idea where we’re going to store that thing! – then set up the spare twin bed up for me. I had had other plans for it – plans that can’t be done with the king size bed – but… oh, well. Thankfully, the master bedroom is quite big, and there’s more than enough room. I hope it works out better for my husband. At least he won’t be losing his balance trying to get in and out of bed anymore, since he can adjust the height to exactly where he needs it.

All in all, I’m really happy about how quick things got followed through on, both for the bed, and with the electric company.

The Re-Farmer

Shaggy friends, a new bird ID and… a mystery!

May 4, 2018May 4, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Early this morning, I spotted some movement at the edge of our spruce grove. It turned out to be a bird, enthusiastically digging and pecking at the ground. A surprisingly large bird; not as big as a grouse, but certainly bigger than a blue jay or crow. Not something I recall seeing before. Unfortunately, it was too far to identify by eye, so I got some pictures zoomed in as far as our lens can go. They’re not good pictures, but enough to identify it.

From what I can find, it appears to be a Northern Flicker, though there are different kinds that can look quite different.

The most distinctive thing about it was the splash of red at the back of the neck. The other distinguishing feature is the black bib.

A number of the photos of Northern Flickers I saw also had a splash of red on the cheek, but this one did not have that.

As it later flew away, I was able to see the underside of its wings, which appeared to be a bright yellow.

The Norther Flicker is a member of the woodpecker family, so it’s interesting that this one was pecking, not at wood, but at the ground.

Later on, my younger daughter and I got some progress done on the sorted wood piles in the garden. We’ve now removed all the wood we’d already sorted, except for the pile I set aside to keep for potential projects. More will be added to it as we finish going through the original pile. When we got to the larger pieces, we had to saw most of them in half so they would fit in the wheel barrows. We could really tell when we were cutting apple wood! The wood is so much harder, and the patterns in the rings are so distinctive and lovely. Even the ones I didn’t choose to keep, I set them to one side in the piles we’re making near the fire pit, for use when we’re cooking or, if all goes well, able to do some smoking.

My poor daughter. By the time we were done for the day, she was just wasted. She was really too sick to be doing this sort of work, but she did it anyways, and I really appreciate it!

After that, I went to the post office and, along the way, I found our shaggy neighbours were closer to the road, so I pulled over to get some photos.

Zooming in with a cell phone doesn’t get very good pictures, unfortunately, but still. Bison!

We got some unexpected people visitors today. First, my brother and his Lady Fair, who live nearby, came over to pick up the last of some stuff he’s got in our root cellar. I was all excited because his beautiful dog finally allows me to pet him! Then my older brother came by, just as they we leaving. My mother’s car has been stored here for the winter, and she wants to register it again soon, so he came to put the battery back in. It turned out to need charging, so he started doing some stuff at the barn. When I went out to join him, I stopped to take a look at a pile of wood that is sitting in the barn yard.

Only to discover, it’s not a pile of wood. It’s a pile of something else, covered in wood.

What on earth was I seeing under there?

Whatever the wood is covering has moss growing on it, and there’s a layer of plastic. Something is showing through holes that I at first thought was ashes?

So I asked my brother.

It’s insulation. My youngest brother had put it there.

My youngest brother died in 2010.

Why is it there? My brother didn’t know.

The wood on top showed up more recently.

What on earth are we going to do with a plastic covered, moss covered, wood covered, pile of insulation, sitting in the barn yard?

The Re-Farmer

The Return of the Deer

May 3, 2018May 3, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I got deer pictures!

Some days, we’ve seen none at all. A couple of times, I’ve seen a lone deer in the evening, slow to come over, quick to run away. My husband sometimes sees them around dawn, but none have been coming over during the day, and none of the regulars.

Tonight, however, we had visitors!

I spotted them as I went into the living room, coming in from the opposite direction we usually see them. Two smaller deer in front, and a larger one somewhat behind. Unfortunately, my coming into the living room startled them, and they ran off – the two smaller deer one way, the larger one the other.

The smaller ones didn’t go far, though. I managed to position myself and the camera as they slowly came in. Eventually, I could see the third one, going into the spruces from the other side of the pallet pile, then making it’s way through the trees to the garden area, before finally coming around from the other side.

The first of the little ones was looking very rough!

Aside from the burrs, there appear to be missing patches of fur, and it looks like his ribs are sticking out!

Notice the antler nubs?

The second deer made its way over, and in this picture, is watching the third deer going through the trees.

The male doesn’t look as beat up on this side!

The third deer came around and they fed for a while, but they were very nervous and kept looking out way, as well as at what I figure were cats around behind the house. Unfortunately, with our light on, there was nothing to hid our own movements. My husband moved an arm to pick up his water bottle, and off they ran!

Once again, though, they did not go far. I could see them grazing on the far side of the wood pile and…

Was that a fourth deer?

Sure enough, it was.

After a while, all four of them came over to feed. By this time, it was too dark for photos, but I could still see them fairly well. There was something familiar about the battered face of the fourth one.

It wasn’t until I uploaded the pictures that I was able to confirm that yes, these are deer we’ve had before!

There’s the little one with the scars on either side of its snout. The fourth one, with the battered face, is the one I’d identified as her mother, the last time they were here.

I’m happy that they came back, though they do look the worse for wear!

Though I’d put plenty of feed out in the morning, the birds had been at it all day, so there wasn’t a lot left by evening. Since the deer are coming very early in the morning, and in the evening (if they come at all), we’ve decided we will start leaving more feed out in the evening, instead of the morning. That way, the evening visitors will get feed, but there should still be plenty in the morning, since the birds won’t be eating it during the night.

So after the deer left, but before it got too dark, I went to put out a bucket of feed. As I was coming around the house, I was startled by the weird, loud, breathy cough, and the sound of hooves. All for of them had been in the garden area!

As they ran off in opposite directions again, and this is clearly a family group, I expect they’ll make their way back to join each other. Maybe even back to the fresh feed I just left out! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Another Stunner

May 1, 2018May 1, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

It was a rather cold day today, but peaceful. At least for us. From what I’ve heard, two more homes were lost in yesterday’s fire to the North of us. At this point, I know nothing more. The province’s website that is supposed to have an up-to-date interactive map of current fires has not been much help. It didn’t have either of the local fires on there at all. I’ve seen others comment on the site’s lack of updating, as they’ve had to turn to social media to keep on top of the fire situation.

We never got the predicted showers, but at least with the reduced wind and colder temperatures, the fire risk has dropped a bit.

It was another day of the birds, outside. I think it might be a while before the deer start coming back.

Oh, my. As I was inserting the above photos, I heard another thump at the dining room window. I went outside and found a little junco on the ground. My younger daughter came out to hold on to it, to keep it safe from the cats, until it was ready to fly away on its own. I’m hearing her come back inside right now, so it must be gone.

This is the second junco we’ve tended to after it hit the dining room window, just today. The earlier one took quite a bit longer to recover.

Here is the female, dark eyed junco from earlier today, in my daughter’s hands. It was very calm about being held, too.

It started to stand itself up and look around after a minute or so. Note its bent under foot. The other foot was like that, too. No damage, it turned out. It seems that it just wasn’t aware of it, quite yet.

When it finally did start to flutter away, it just moved over to my daughter’s arm. And immediately pooped on her! :-D

It seemed fully aware at this point, looking around and watching us closely, but content to stay on her arm for several minutes more.

After a while, it flew off to the bench seat on the platform to our old clothes line. There was a cat about, though, so I came over to encourage it away. It moved to this bush and stayed there for another minute or so before finally flying away, none the worse for the experience.

While it’s unfortunate so many birds are hitting our window hard enough to stun themselves, it is so amazing to be able to hold them and watch over them until they can fly away on their own. They seem to like the warmth of our hands as they recover, too.

Pretty awesome!

The Re-Farmer

A Day for the Birds

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

With the fires in the area, it’s no surprise that we aren’t seeing any deer, at all. It has, however, been a day full of birds outside our window.

Mr. Blue Jay allowed me to take his photograph today, though they certainly did make me work for a good shot!

In amongst the masses of bark eyed juncos, this bird went off into the flower garden and started digging like mad into the dried leaves.

I’ve had two strong suggestions as to what this bird is. Either a fox sparrow, or a type of thrush. I spent some time looking and comparing photos online to ones I’d taken myself.

Bird identification sites often have really unhelpful photos, I’ve come to notice.

Ultimately, it was the markings on the head that made the ID for me. These are fox sparrows, of the “red” variety.

Speaking of red.

I had taken so many pictures of these red birds before the snow fell, but it never occurred to me to try and identify them. I think I may have just lumped them in as another type of bird in my mind. While looking up local bird species online, however, I found photos of these guys, and it turns out they are purple finches. In the above photo, you see both the bright red males, and the less showy females.

As I was zooming in to get photos of what I though might have been the thrush/fox sparrow I wanted to identify, the bird turned and I realized I was looking at a new visitor!

This is a male white throated sparrow. Love that distinctive patterning on the head. It made it much easier to identify it, though it wasn’t any easier to find online. My bird book doesn’t have it at all, though it does have several other types of sparrows.

Just look at the face! :-D

Looks like some females were in the crowd, too.

Weather willing, I will soon be raking near this area, to get some of the leaves out of the flower bed and clean up dead branches. We are finally starting to see some green forcing its way through the dead leaves. Not too much longer, and we’ll be able to start trying to identify the plants around here, as well as the birds! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Blue for You

April 28, 2018April 28, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Alas, no pictures of deer today. I did see one cautiously making its way towards the house, just a few minutes ago, but it saw me move in the window and dashed right off.

Sadness.

I did, however, manage to get a photo of a blue jay today. For the past few weeks, even if I’ve been at the window, watching them for a while, the moment I get behind the camera, they all fly off!

This morning, I managed to get just one decent picture, through the sun reflected on the window.

I love how they collect so many seeds in their beaks like that, before flying off.

It was a fairly quite day today. We’re still in recovery mode and pretty low on energy. My younger daughter and I made a run to the dump with our garbage and recycling, before heading to town to find a new handle for our garage door. In the process, I remembered to pick up some chain and a carabiner to replace the heavy duty wire that’s been used to hold our main gate steady. It has a sliding bar across the top to close it. I’m not sure why it also needed the wire to hold it closed, and one of these days, I’ll remember to ask a sibling about it. :-D The chain and carabiner will be much easier to handle than twisting and untwisting the wire every time. It’ll look better, too! Plus, we’ll have the ability to add a lock as well, if we ever need to. Sadly, there have always been people who seek out solitary farms as targets for theft and vandalism. At best, the RCMP are at least half an hour away, and that assumes they can even find any individual farm. My oldest brother and I are already talking about adding a security camera on the garage, which would catch anyone coming in or out of the driveway, and another on the house itself.

Such is life, even in the sticks!

My daughter and I went to two different hardware stores, looking for a garage door handle. Both stores had only one option available! They were even the same brand and style. On the plus side, the second place we went to had a much, much better price.

On the down side, while driving to town, I went into a coughing fit so bad, I had to pull over and get her to drive the rest of the way.

It’s so nice having another driver available!

This cold has really done a number on my chronic cough. :-(

We had some other things happen that were polar opposites. Such as my husband’s disability payment coming in early (they do that every now and then!) on the plus side, then getting a call from the tax preparer and finding out he’s now owing $3000 instead of the $1300 that came up when we tried using Turbotax at home. I don’t understand how he can owe anything. He’s supposed to be paid back taxes, retroactively, from two years ago! And here we thought getting our taxes professionally done would mean it would be better, not worse. On top of that, it’s going to cost us almost $70 in fees.

*sigh*

This has happened every time we’ve moved back to this province, no matter how late in the year we’ve returned. We would be expecting a return, only to end up owing thousands. This time, though, I am sure that has to be some kind of mistake.

Living here was supposed to save us money. Instead, it’s been unexpected expenses, one right after the other!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out in good time.

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

Wildlife out our window

We got rain!

There be Deer here

New Sparrow: updated

Deer Visitors

That was quick. Also, deer!

Shaggy friends, a new bird ID and… a mystery!

The Return of the Deer

Another Stunner

A Day for the Birds

Blue for You

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