Day: August 20, 2018

Bud is getting snipped today, another surgical procedure for the poor guy. He is due for his second heartworm treatment at the end of this month, and assuming all goes well with the treatment, he will be shipped up to Rhode Island where we can pick him up the first week of October, the week before our Open House.

Looks like he will be there just before then, which seems fitting. I talked with Carol Johnson, a new friend from the Friends Of Homeless Animals/RI rescue group, and she says Gus is rapidly evolving into a playful, sometimes feisty and very sweet animal.

She said he was initially purchased from a puppy mill, bought by a man who didn’t want him and who left him outside in a wire mesh pen for three months. He was filthy, covered in dirt and scratches and cuts. He was also terrified of people, men in particular.

Carol has done an amazing job fostering Bud, he goes into his crate now, steals bags of jalepeno chips and loves to cuddle and play with the other foster dogs. He looks as if he likes to chase cats also, Flo will make short shrift of him if he tries anything.

I’m thinking of you today, Bud, good luck getting snipped. When you get up here, we will have lots of fun and good times, and hopefully change the narrative of your life.

Our barn cats, like so many cats, are sun worshippers. Minnie hangs out on the porch day and night, Flo has different sleeping spots and loves to prowl the meadow at night. In the morning, both of them are usually found on the back porch by the door, soaking up the morning rays.

Our Three Sisters garden is providing us dinner many nights this summer – zucchini, string beans, now cherry tomatoes. There is something especially nourishing about eating food from our own garden, and we are fortunate to have mature donkey manure, perhaps the best fertilizer we have ever used.

In every flock of sheep, there is one guard sheep, a sheep who takes responsibility for alerting the others to danger. Sheep are prey animals, they are defenceless against predators – coyotes, wolves, stray dogs.

There is always one who keeps an eye on the surrounding pastures and woods while the others eat with their heads down.

Rosemary is our guard sheep and she always keeps her head up to keep an eye on Red while the others graze.

The thing is, the sheep think the border collies are coyotes or wolves,  come to kill and devour them. That’s why they do what border collies tell them to do (unless the border collie is Fate.) Rosemary will sound the alarm if  Red starts to move.

The call them “Naked Ladies,” they are an older and more traditional farm garden flower, Florence Walrath, our predecessor on the farm, planted them, they and the Irises are the last of her flowers. They come up late, and often seem to appear after nowhere, they are ghostly, popping up to preserve and honor the spirits of the farm.