One last post for today!

This morning, I was quite surprised to see Hungry Girl show up on her own.  This was early enough that the feed wasn’t quite covered by the snow, yet.

She was very skittish coming in.  I wouldn’t be surprised that all that snow would have made everything sound very different to a deer.

Gosh, she still looks pretty rough, doesn’t she?

Though the feed was still visible, she nuzzled pretty deep into the snow as she was feeding.

I just couldn’t resist posting this goofy photo of her!

Later on, well after the snow had covered the feed, Barbecue came by, too.

He had to dig his nose down pretty far to get at the feed by then, but he had no problem finding exactly where the food was!

He gets a more dignified profile picture. :-D

I saw Hungry Girl come along shortly after, but they were both very nervous and ran off before she got to the food again.  They did come back, but not for long.

They at least got some food, though.  I’m hoping that Mama and the twins come by at some point, too, for a bit of a snack.

The snow has stopped falling now.  My brother who lives nearby was kind enough to come and clear our driveway out.  He’d fired up the tractor to do his own driveway and just popped over to do ours as well.  I’d seen the snow plows going by the main road earlier, so I’m hoping they’d already gone through the road past our place before he came over.  The last time the snowplows went by, they left a windrow across our driveway.  Not enough of one to be more than a bump, but having another one on top of that now would be much more than just a bump!

After doing the driveway, he came in for a bit of a chat.  During the conversation, he mentioned last winter being one of the coldest in many decades!  He feeds deer with hay at his place, and he said he was feeding 39 of them!  I just can’t imagine that many deer crowded around by his place.  He trained his dog to leave them alone.  He said that they were pretty mean to each other, too, attacking each other with their hooves.  One young orphan deer was small enough to jump up into the round hay bale and get some food while avoiding attacks from the other deer.  After a while, he broke up the bale to spread it out, so they could feed farther apart and not be attacking each other so much.  Sadly, one night, a pack of coyotes killed a young deer, right there next to his house!  They had heard their dog barking like crazy, but by the time they saw why, it was too late.

Coyotes can be a real problem.  Especially when the population is high enough for them to start forming packs.  That’s one of the reasons I want us to get our firearms acquisition certificate as quickly as we can, and get at least a .22 rifle.  Being on the farm without a gun feels very wrong.  It’s a vital tool.  Especially if we do start getting farm animals over the next few years.

This has been a pretty mild winter, though, so there is less chance of a hungry coyote showing up and attacking anything in our yard.

It’s supposed to be just below freezing over the next few days, then creep above freezing again.

Time to keep a close eye out on the roof, and for any more leaks that might show up!  Hopefully, once the roof is shoveled off, that won’t be an issue.  We shall see.

The Re-Farmer