Friday, December 21, 2007

A Blustery Day

I’ve begun collecting eggs to put into the incubator once again. I plan to collect them for a week to 10 days and then put what I have in and see how they do. I figure the chicks will be big enough to put out in the coop by the end of March. The roosters are crowing like old pros now. I intended to process a bunch them during the 2 warm days we had last week, but one day was extremely windy and the other was filled with work and necessary errands. I’m hoping to have a few warm days in January to take care of that business. My sister Melissa wants to watch and help, so I hope we can work it out. As of now, with the price of feed, they are eating me out of house and home.

The neighbor closest to us, about ¾ mile away, brought up a Christmas gift basket last night. I was so blown away by their generosity. I had taken eggs over to them this fall and occasional loaves of home made focaccia bread, but really hardly know much about them. I did Google his name a month or two after we moved in and found out he invented something to better process fossil fuel and then sold his business to the tune of 80 million, so I guess he can afford to be generous, I just didn’t expect it. I feel a bit awkward, I was going to take over some home baked cookies, but after the lovely gift basket they showered us with, cookies seem a little trite. The gift basket included a nice 9 lb spiral cut honey ham, some nuts, cheese ball, crackers, fancy imported chocolates and a box of assorted tea. I hadn’t picked up a ham yet, but I can tell you, it wasn’t going to be anything like that. What a blessing! Our hunter friend Ben told me Sunday he has a goose for us as well. Anymore, it seems every time I turn around God is pouring out an unexpected blessing; and like just God it is bigger and better than I would have thought of for myself.

While here, they asked if we have seen the lions much. Of course Steve & I have yet to see them. Turns out just last week he was checking on his horses and came upon a fresh lion kill at the spring just to the north east of our place. There were 2 adults and 2 of this years cubs feeding on a deer just 200 feet from our house. He said one charged him and he backed off. They normally are loners and they normally don’t charge adults so not sure what was up with that. Just 2 weeks ago the neighbor on the other side of us had them attack and kill two of their pets. I guess it’s good that we haven’t seen them.

It turned a bit colder today, starting out at 42 this morning and ending up at about 22 as I sit here typing. The winds were howling further up the mountain, although we did get a bit of a blast here at the house as well, with winds gusting to about 40 mph. It started snowing at about 11 a.m., just small flurries swirling around in the wind. As the day wore on, the flakes began to grow in size and intensity till it finally decided to stop around 4 this afternoon. For all the snow, not much really stuck; we probably have about an inch on the ground. I think it was thanks to the earlier warm temperatures.

As I looked out around the time it started to snow and noticed a small herd of elk cows moving across the meadow. I counted about 30. The grazed all day and by dark had begun to work their way up the mountain to find a safe spot to bed down for the night. I hope to see them work their way back down in to the meadow in the morning. It would be nice if they would hang out here for the winter. Several weeks ago I saw 11 bull elk cross our land in about the same place.

Photobucket
About 18 of the elk, the rest were further down in the draw, hidden in the trees.

No comments:

Post a Comment