Catching up with pix

Afer our work yesterday we retired inside for a bit for some icy cold beverages. Hank was left sleeping in the shade under a truck. I guess he wasn’t asleep for long: in that time he amassed quite a collection of entertaining things to chew on. Pictured: Gatorade bottle, 2 shoes, one rubber boot, sheep fleece from the other side of the driveway, and a cardboard box.

The sheep got shorn 2 weeks ago and I forgot to take their pix. Here is Mae. During the hot weather, they lay close to the ground, even in the shade of trees. They are active very early in the morning and again in the evening, grazing on long and short grasses. When I took this picture it was only 6am, and Mae is hunkered down for the day already.

Matty is hunkered down and ready for another hot day too. We keep them in portable Kencove fencing. I like them over Premier because they have step-in posts, very helpful in our rocky soil.

I added some fencing from Premier to one of the coops. They get so hot during the day that I like to have them out in the shade of the long grass. I planted some large plants (Weigelia, purple millet, fountain grass) to provide some shade, but they haven’t taken off yet. I need to contain them because the roosters in this group do NOT play well with others, and Luke the turkey and Murphy the turkey will also fight.

Some other plantings include canna lilies, given to me by a co-worker. I am trying to beautify a spot where we get a lot of runoff and pooling. I used some old egg baskets to mark the spot for my husband. See the tire mark from the tractor?

Here are some juvenile muscovies, taking a dip in the pond.

I am not sure if I mentioned that the geese have taken over guardianship of some of the scovy babies. They have their watchful eyes on the babies throughout the day. They are very mean protective so this works well for the babies.