Autumn excitement

I can’t believe it’s almost the end of October already. The falling leaves and bare branches, cold temperatures and fall rains all seem premature somehow. Every year I am virtually dragged into fall kicking and screaming, not ready to give up summer. But alas, it is here.  The autumn months are beautiful, no question, with the leaves turning and all the fall harvests and ripenings, but after just a few weeks of rain I’m already dreading the three or four months of rain yet to come. I need to make peace with this.

I entered some fleeces in a local fiber show and N-Kerry’s fleece got 3rd place in a very large class of Shetlands.

The judging. It’s always educational to watch and listen.

Earlier this month we had a visitor to the farm. I’d run out on Saturday to do my usual weekend errands. I came back home and pulled up the driveway to the gate. I saw one of the sheep run across my field of vision as I got out of the car to open the gate. They normally get excited when I come home and run up to the upper pasture gate as I drive up the hill. But intuition told me something was up and I immediately worried about loose dogs (not my own, which were inside the house). 

I opened the gate and walked over toward the pasture quickly. The sheep were all bunched together, moving, except for that black one up by the…  OMG. That’s not a sheep! A black bear had come to visit! I clapped my hands loudly and walked toward the bear (in the pasture with the sheep, but not really after the sheep, as far as I could tell). “Go on, bear!” I hollered at it. He moved down the hill away from me, toward the NE corner of the pasture, then sat down to chew on his foot (maybe he stepped on a thistle?). He knew I was there, but wasn’t nearly as concerned about my presence as I would have liked.  He went over the pasture fence and headed up the hill toward the chicken coop – and the beehive. I got in the car and drove up the hill quickly. The car driving up scared him a little, and he moved to the edge of the yard to where the grass meets the woods. I got out and walked towards him, clapping my hands again, and telling him to go on (the dogs heard me from inside the house and started barking). He looked at me for a long moment then moved off into the woods, loping to the fence and off the property. Then I went inside and let the dogs out to reinforce the message.

Sorry for the blurry exposure – I was a wee bit excited.  The sheep in the foreground (Minnie, I think) is looking at me to fix this situation.

It was pretty exciting to see a bear like that. I’ve had them come through before (though it’s been a few years) and generally at this same time of year August/September, but in those other instances I just heard them (moving through the brush) or, my first year here, seeing the aftermath (tipped over the empty garbage bin, got into my bird feeder, got into my chicken feed – I no longer feed the birds and keep the chicken feed locked in the garage). This was the real deal, and in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon. Wow!

A few feathers is all that was left of a good sized rooster.  A stealthy bobcat strike. 

The next day I was out working in the yard and the chickens were out. When I went to check on their feed and water later in the afternoon I saw we were down by one. The rooster obviously got got – a few feathers and a little blood and evidently the work of a bobcat. I found a feather or two by the back fence line, but it was clean and quiet, just like a cat. Dang.

On Monday night I was sitting in my living room, up late and working on an editing job, and heard the chickens squawking. I heard a thump and went to look out the window at the coop. I didn’t see anything in the porch light, but figured maybe it was the bobcat again so I let the dogs out. The barking excitement told me they were doing their job. After a bit Farley and Daisy came in at my call. Pal didn’t. He sometimes will stay out running around for 30 minutes, but considering the activity recently, I started to worry. I called him and got nothing. So I got a flashlight and went out, Daisy and Farley happy to come out for more 2 a.m. fun. I saw a white streak run by in the dark but when I called him he didn’t come, which is unusual for Pal, as he has a pretty good recall. At least he was okay.  The chickens seemed to be fine – a little shaken up and a couple off the roosts, and I shut the coop door and propped it with the fence post (it doesn’t close all the way).  Meanwhile Daisy had taken up barking maniacally at the foot of a maple tree near coop, like a coonhound with a treed coon. I went over and shined the flashlight up the trunk, but I already knew what I’d find, judging by the noise. The bear was back. He looked down on us from a rather flimsy looking branch about 30 feet up, clacking his teeth and bawling every once in a while (the best way to describe the noise – not a growl and not a roar, more like a moaned complaint). I had to physically haul Daisy off to the house. Farley came with us, and Pal now, too. I watched/listened from the bathroom window and after about 20 minutes I could hear branches cracking as the bear lowered himself to the ground and ran off over the fence. I felt bad for the bruin, as he was obviously scared, but hoped that the hazing by the dogs would convince him to move on and that human dwellings weren’t good places to hang out.

There were a couple of hens loose in the morning, so I herded them back into the coop. A quick head count told me we were down one.  I don’t think it was the bear, but more likely the bobcat, come to take advantage of the birds being loose. I left for work. And that afternoon I pulled up the driveway see this.

He was back. He was about 15 yards away and stood watching me. I got out of the car and took few steps in his direction, clapping my hands loudly. (Cue chorus of barking from inside the house.) He thought about it for a few seconds, then turned and left. I kept clapping and yelling. Then, when I was sure he was over the fence, I let the hounds out.  Wee!  So much fun!

Muddy paw marks on top of the gate.  Smelly fly trap to the upper right, and a tipped over water trough just on the other side of the fence. 

Then I went around the property to see what he’d been up to. I’d left the sheep in their pen that day, and from what I can tell, he was maybe IN the pen with them. Or maybe just climbing the gate (I could see muddy paws had been up on the top of the 5 foot gate) and also the other side of the pen. As near as I could tell he was after the smelly fly trap still hanging out there (smells like a dead thing rotting) from the summer. He’d bitten at it but didn’t take it all the way down. The sheep seemed fine – weren’t even breathing hard by the time I got home. And of course there’s this.

Nice.  But there was no honey in this hive, and no stinging bees either. 

It’s the dead hive, with the live hive full of (angry) bees…and honey, right next to it, still intact. I wondered if I maybe interrupted him when I pulled up. Other than that it was just the fence that was taking a beating with all these visits.

Over in the SE corner.

You can’t really see how badly this is mashed. I pulled it back up for now, but will need to get it repaired (stretched) in the spring.

Pal is on alert.

The back fence is pretty loose, and crunched by the bear’s exit. Daisy gets SO excited when I clap my hands.

One of the 6 or 8 areas he crunched entering or exiting.

The fence he went over in the video link. Not too bad.

I decided to stay home the next day to keep an eye on the place. I was able to work remotely from home, and keep watch while I did so. The bear came back around noon, from what I could tell by the chickens and sheep behavior, but I don’t think he came on the property then. (I let the dogs out to reinforce things.) Then, about 2:30 he was back.  I saw the chickens go quiet and bunch up again. I got up to look out the front window to see the sheep in the pasture all looking intently towards the north/east property line. I went out (without the dogs at first) and clapped my hands.  I heard him move off, and went to let the dogs out again.  So. Much. Excitement. And I fixed the crunched fence sections for the fourth time.

Again, I hoped this hazing (especially the two tries without any reward) would make him decide to move on. He didn’t seem to want apples. And thankfully he didn’t seem to want the chickens or sheep. I think he was young and inexperienced at being on his own, but hopefully heading towards the foothills and a safe place to den for the winter. We haven’t seen him since that day, three weeks ago now, and I hope he’s safe.

Gratuitous cuteness: Pal on his 7th birthday last Friday.  He was worried that this unusual attention (me trying to get a nice photo of him on his birthday) might mean something like a nail trim or a bath. Love this little guy!  (Excuse the fugly tape on the chair – it’s a lost cause, but I try to deter the cats from shredding it more by putting double-sided tape on it.)

 

 

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The stuff of life

How can one person have so much stuff?  It’s been five weeks here at the new place (that was a fast month!) and I’m still only about 2/3 unpacked.  It’s a space issue, primaily. I’m downsizing inside while upsizing (is there such a word?) outside.  I’m losing a bedroom, a laundry room, a bathroom, and the kitchen/living room/dining area (a combined space) in my new place is smaller than just the kitchen I sold in 2007.  Yes, there’s a twinge there, not regret really, but it would be nice to have a wee bit more room in the kitchen. 

I am much happier though, with a smaller kitchen and home than the larger kitchen and nice home with the neighbors building on the property line and the lack of privacy.  I’m sitting in my office now, with the dark outside complete and no weird feelings about the window being uncovered (blinds are up).  The last “stranger” I saw out there was a bobcat, early one Saturday morning a few weeks ago.  How cool is that?!!  Now that’s my kind of neighbor!

So we’re all loving it, inside and out.  Is it perfect?  No.  But it’s a great place to be for the next few years, with tons of potential.  The to do list gets longer every week, with roofing, fencing, and appliances being the top priorities.  I already got the fridge, and knew I’d have to replace the cooktop.  After I moved in I realized the oven didn’t work.  So far I’ve been making do with the microwave and the two working burners on the cooktop, but I’ll have to get an oven at some point.  Oh, and windows.  Almost all the windows (and there are a lot of them, for such a small place) are single pane, and need to be replaced with something that won’t lose so much heat (the furnace can’t keep up some evenings). 

I’m still surrounded by boxes in every room.  Slowly but surely I’m going through things, unpacking and sorting and often moving items out to the garage.  I’ve taken several boxes to Goodwill (donation) – clothing and household items – and have more to go.  I’ve been posting things on Craigslist and getting great responses; I recycled all my moving boxes to others who needed moving boxes and my futon frame went last week.  My dishes didn’t get much response (service for 8), so I’ll probably donate them to Goodwill too.  I have a dresser with a bad leg I’ll post on craigslist and my oak pedestal dining table and chairs as well.  By then I should have room to park the car in the garage!  Well, maybe after the dump run (futon mattress!). 

I have boxes and boxes of books to unpack, and my shelves are already filling up.  The office here has one wall with built in bookshelves, floor to ceiling (love this!) and I’ve already filled it.  I have at least a half dozen more boxes of books.  Time to do some culling, I think.  The local bookstore had an ad looking for used books, so maybe I’ll see if they want some of the books I don’t really need.  Or won’t read.   Really, it’s been 14 years since I bought Frank McCourt’s first book, Angela’s Ashes, new in hardcover and I still haven’t read it.  And I never did make it all the way through Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, and probably never will.  His lack of punctuation irritates me – tons of dialogue and not a quotation mark to be seen.  I suppose we should be grateful he deigns to use periods, commas, and question marks.  I struggled through All The Pretty Horses, and got partway through Cities of the Plains.  The Crossing remains completely untouched.  It’s not as if his stories are cheery or uplifting either, however well written they may be. 

Well, obviously I’ve already pulled some books for the bookstore.  As soon as I get unpacked and settled a bit more I’m going to start painting.  Not only is the wall color in most rooms disconcerting (a coral-y red in the bedroom and bathroom), but the paint job is horrid, with incomplete areas over the doors, as well as areas that need clean up and repair (looks like a child lived here at some point – drawing on the walls).  I’ve been picking out paint chips and am looking forward to tackling this job in the summer.