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02/05/2007: "A Nice Weekend"

The kitchen at Living Green Farm has turned into an internet lounge. Nate couldn't help but sneak a few pictures of Rebecca and I working away steadily in front of the nice warm stove. With the help of the stove, it's become a lot easier to get motivated to do homework.

A lot of other things happened this weekend, too.

Here's a picture of the backyard on Friday afternoon. There are close to two dozen roses in the back yard. Since we moved into the farmhouse in April, it was too late to give them a neccessary pruning. So this year I was ruthless.


By Sunday afternoon it looked like a tornado had hit. All of the roses are now trimmed back into bare canes. Some of the weaker roses that had more suckers than canes were removed. Now I just need to pick up the debris! I'm thinking about chopping down the scraggly eucalyptus tree in the yard...I haven't seen any Koala bears, and I don't think they're going to show up any time soon.


What we have seen are Great Horned Owls, Bubo virginianus. Two of them have been seen on either side of the farm and they hoot back and forth at each other. It's quite magical on a cold, clear, winter's evening to see the outline of the owl and hear his soft, "hoo hoo hoooooooo hoo" and the reply like an echo. Also very interesting is that an owl seems to have taken up residence in one of the large Port Orford Cedars in the back yard. There are about a dozen pellets littering the ground under the tree.

Owl pellets are kind of like hairballs for owls. They're regurgitating all of the indigestible prey parts. You can dissect an owl pellet to tell what the food sources of the owls are.

Looks like rodents to me!

Nate worked on preparing early spring beds. He made two beautiful beds in the upper garden on the sunniest day of the year.

He covered the newly turned soil with some of his beautiful compost. While he was working, he noticed how nice and firm the soil was, and what a bright sunny day it was. We decided to let Aura out to stroll about the north pasture while he worked. The north pasture is mostly fenced in and is growing some beautiful annual rye grass stands. So out she came.

She basically stopped right where she was and started eating. She ate and ate and ate.

When she could finally eat no more, she explored a little and gazed off into the distance. Our delightful neighbors, Ed and Denise, came over and took some pictures of her. They brought their massive black lab, Logan, with them as well. Aura took one look at Logan and charged the fence. She stopped short of busting through the very inadequate fence, but my, that dog knew not to come a step closer. She pawed the ground and huffed and puffed. The Queen does not like dogs! The Queen also showed her distaste with being milked after a full day in the pasture! It was a bit of a task to get her back in the cowshed, but in she went. Once in, she did not want to be milked. Apparently she was already full of tasty grass, thankyou very much, and she had no reason to stand still to be milked. This afternoon Nate put her up after a few hours of morning grazing. She was eager for her grass by milking time and the situation worked out a bit better.

In appreciation for Aura's show, (and not goring the dog, I expect), Ed and Denise gave us a pack of "Duck Pepperoni", which I call Duckeroni. It's pretty darn marvellous!

Here's a picture of Nate and Shakespeare Bronze (the cat), Esther, and Rebecca all enjoying a stick of duckeroni. Thanks neighbors!

All in all it was a pretty wonderful weekend.