Day: May 12, 2016

Animals are quirky and life on a farm is not predictable. This morning,  we took the sheep out to the far pasture to graze. Chloe the pony and Lulu and Fanny always come trotting along, but this morning they refused to come. It was odd, since there is little tall grass behind the Pole Barn. Chloe kept leading us to the side pasture, she likes the grass there. We weren’t buying it. The donkeys were delighting in doing what they were not supposed to do or expected to do.

This reminded of the great donkey rebellion at Lulu’s crossing, the two donkeys refused to cross the marshy stream without a firm gravel bridge so we built them one.

Red got the sheep out to the far pasture with little trouble, but they were balky at first also. We found some coyote scat out in the pasture, it’s possible there were some coyotes out there at night and our animals – all of them prey animals but the dogs – got skittish.

We stuck to our guns – no trek to the back pasture, no food. Rotational grazing is on. I love the farm, every day here is different.

If want to know the season in the deep woods, look up. Spring is announcing itself in the forest, green is sprouting everywhere. The biologists believe that trees communicate with one another, and you can almost hear the chatter up there about Spring, sun, water and space. The conversation seems to crackle.

Could use some help identifying this egg. Walking in the forest this morning, we found the egg lying right in the middle of a path, there were no feathers or marks of a nest anywhere around. We have never seen a full, unhatched and large egg out in the woods, certainly not in the middle of the path.

It is a biege egg, speckled, it is heavy, the shell is unscathed or broken. Maria took it as an open of Spring, neither of us has seen an egg quite like it before. It is larger and heavier than a chicken egg, perhaps belonging to a large bird or goose or duck? It is hard to imagine any bird laying an egg in so exposed a place, it would almost have to have been moved or perhaps fallen out of a nest (we couldn’t see one.) We are not sure, if you recognize it, you can e-mail me at [email protected] or post on Facebook. Thanks.