Jack's new toy and trail camera pics


This morning it was sunny, windy, and fairly warm, about 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind was cold, but the sun was warm in contrast. It's been so warm lately, 60's during the day, but yesterday it was 34 degrees out, more normal November temperatures.

This morning before work I made an oven blueberry pancake for breakfast. This is a really handy recipe, it tastes good, it's pretty painless to make, and you could add a lot of different fruits to it, or chocolate chips if you wanted. But blueberries are my absolute favorite anyway, so blueberries it was for us.

4 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbs sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup frozen (thawed) or fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Measure butter (enough to grease) into pie plate and place in the oven to melt. Meanwhile, beat eggs in large bowl. Add flour, milk, salt, sugar, and vanilla - beating the whole time. Take hot pie plate from oven and swirl butter to coat. Pour in egg mixture. Sprinkle blueberries on top of egg mixture and return to oven; bake for 25-35 minutes until center is impressively puffed up. Cut into wedges and serve with real maple syrup. Serve quickly while it is puffy, it will fall flat in the cold air.

Yesterday we had to make a run to the feedstore to get a few things. The days seem so short now with it being dark by 5 PM. I was going to wait until Christmas to get Jackson, our miniature stallion his present, a jolly ball. Wrambler, our big horse has no interest in such things, he's too mature. But Jack carries everything around so I thought maybe he'd really enjoy this toy.

He wasn't too sure what the heck I had when I showed it to him today. But he liked the handle and I know he'll have fun with it.



Kevin had to go out and work on the dams, the beavers along our main road into the farm are starting to dam up the road and soon they will flood it, trapping us in here. They have been pretty ambitious lately. Wednesday we got some pretty heavy rain and the beavers took it upon themselves to expand their dams, but this time they have decided our road needs to be under water too, which isn't going to work out.

this is the culvert, which is suppose to be open, not plugged!
Kevin checking out the main dam
  
The beaver who lives next to our other road, our road which connects pieces of our property, not us to the main road, and services, managed to flood the road on Thursday after the heavy rains. Kevin was able to clean it up and despite loosing a lot of dirt from the road, it's safe.

the flooded road
I went out with Kevin to see the new roads that we had put in, that I hadn't yet seen.


We put our trail camera out on this road where we've been seeing big buck tracks. Hopefully we'll get a picture of who is leaving the tracks. We think it may be Torn Ear. The rut seems to be coming to a close since a lot of the buck scrapes we have found are not being serviced any longer. But we still haven't seen any bucks since hunting season, including the 4 point we had show up in the yard. We have a lot of does around, and a good crop of fawns this year, two of them are little bucks, so that is positive for the future of deer in this area.

The guys also put a culvert in a spot leading into what we call our buckwheat field... since we usually plant buckwheat there. It used to be a dip you'd have to drive down into and back out of. In the spring it gets pretty muddy in there, and sometimes in the fall too. It's so weird just being able to drive straight along there now. It looks really good.


On the way home we brought back a tractor load and half a mule load of wood to the splitter.


These are old pictures now, from when we came home in late October, but here a few of the trail camera pics from the last place we had it set up, the same place we got the pictures of the fisher before, obviously he lives in this area. I've been meaning to share these.

Coyote

Fisher, we got about 8 pictures the second time of him, mostly in the early morning.

Porcupine


This doe was licking her side and in the next picture we see that she has a sore there.


We also got lots of pictures of raccoons, three that seem to hang around together, a fox, and lots of squirrels.

My wonderful friend in Vancouver sent me a package in the mail which made my day yesterday. She sent me a beautiful pashmina shawl, some lovely teas, and SALMON CANDY! to help me recover from my upcoming surgery. But even better, she sent a beautiful rooster bell. I just love it. I thought about hanging it on the house but decided it would make me smile every time I was up at the barn if it was there. So tomorrow I'll hang it up.

Norman is feeling so much better! He's acting like his usual self, and is full of energy, playing with Douglas, eating well, running around. I'm so pleased. He has just under a week of meds left and we'll see the Vet again on Tuesday to make sure the lump is gone.

I wasn't much in a cooking mood tonight since I'm still not feeling myself. To be honest, as much as one can look forward to surgery, I hope when I recover I have my health back. I see now how difficult it is to get along without it.

I did toss together some quick guacamole because I had some perfectly ripe avocado's starring at me from my kitchen counter this evening, and it made Kevin happy.


There are lots of ways to make guacamole but this basic recipe works well. You need a couple ripe avocados, some diced tomatoes, some finely diced onion (red is good, white works when needed) some finely chopped garlic, and lemon or lime juice. I usually use whatever I have on hand which is usually lemon juice. I also add a secret weapon, a tiny bit of mild salsa Verde.. it gives it a bit of a kick but not too much.

For dinner we had cream of asparagus soup and a sandwich, a simple but filling dinner. I think a hot bath and cup of tea are in order for me tonight after finishing cleaning the bird cages and feeding the Prairie dogs and house rabbits.

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