On the Move

With the autumn chill the wild animals are looking for winter range. Yesterday a bald eagle in all of his glory swooped the canada geese on the pond sending them squawking into a close knit group for protection. When I tried to get a picture from the deck he flew about 6 feet over the house.In addition to the geese we've seen widgeons, wood ducks, scaups, ring-neckeds, canvas backs, and buffle heads and of course mallards.



This morning over homemade bisquits and gravy (Gary, I'll share my recipe but it's really all about technique) we watched a coyote wandering over the dam. Clark finally admitted to Dan and Bill who had dropped in for coffee and whatever other goodies I might have baked this week, that he doesn't mind coyotes since they do keep the rodents down. I noticed the other day a proliferation of prairie dogs in the "town" over the hill from here and do believe it is because of the bounty on coyotes.

After a short while the nice 5 point buck (10 pt if you're east of the Mississippi)
that's been cruising through the property every day came out of the woods below. He meandered around at the pond for several minutes.


I've been feeding the eleven geese, twenty five chickens, three horses and a donkey for the Cindy, the girl on the hill.

She helps her Dad on the various farms he has around the country and is gone a lot. It's a good excuse to hike up the back way (as I've discovered a few extra lbs I can't seem to squeeze into my last pair of "big" jeans) and collect some large rocks for the terracing I want to create in the back yard. Her place is very cute and I like the perspective from the top of the hill.
This is just the chicken house.

Well, time to feed the critters, work on the Craft Fair projects for Nov 10th, get ready to go down to Stan's to see the Rinpoche and then contemplate how to host ten family memebers for several days at Thanksgiving.