From Puppies to Crawfish and Spider gets a Win

Rupert

Yup, another pup. Rupert is a lucky boy pulled from the Forsyth County Animal Shelter. Chuck has been talking about having a dedicated farm dog- the Danes make great mascots but they really are lazy- so I started looking at the local shelter pages on the internet. I fell in love with Rupert's sweet face (who wouldn't) and we went to meet him. The rest is just details. He is a 5 month old rough collie mix according to his paper work.

He's done really well today adjusting to the farm. No signs of chasing chickens, seemed fine with the goats, etc. Of course, he's on light duty from his neutering so all his interactions have been brief and at the end of a leash. He is such a sweetheart.

And this is the crawfish. Crazy! We had 4 3/4 inches of rain yesterday, with a lot of it falling last night. I'm assuming this little guy(?) just got confused and thought water rushing by the chicken coop was a real creek. I found him this morning as I went to let the chickens out and gather eggs. Luckily , I had the egg basket, so I scooped him up, showed Willow, took pictures then put him in the woods by the actual creek and in he went.

Here he is making his getaway. He was pretty big as crawdads go. His body was at least as long as my index finger. I didn't measure closely. Scary claws. He's back in the creek where he belongs now. (Not in a pot, sorry honey.)

Now, this next picture I find fascinating. I was hanging out laundry (umbrella line on the porch) and heard a strange buzzing. I look around and on the railing see this spider that just caught himself a fly. He must have just been hanging out and blending in until dinner flew by. He was engrossed enough that my taking pictures didn't bother him.

Nature is cool.

So farming stuff... Chicks/Turkeys/Ducks should arrive tomorrow. Processing of the Delaware chickens is scheduled for June 5th. They're finally starting to look meaty. Dairy stuff is going well. FINALLY got the cream separator working. It's labor intensive and takes A LOT of milk to make any useable amount of cream so it's put away until we NEED it. For now, I can get local cream and be quite happy. The garden is giving us snowpeas! One of my favorites- I've been eating them right off the vine with a bit of dressing. Yum! The beets are not doing well, but most of the other stuff is coming in as predicted.

Hopefully there will be pictures of baby birds tomorrow...