The Light Was Just Right

So I grabbed my camera and headed towards the back paddocks this morning. The sheep were out serenely grazing; the horses too. What more could I ask for?

Maybe I'm stuck in Sunday Stills mode. When I got back in the house, all I could see were the distractions. Our pretty neatly manicured farm appeared full of weeds. The beavers [sheep] had dislodged one of the tree guards and were decimating one of the trees (great picture of Ford looking right at me like I was disturbing him - well excu-u-u-se me!). And at least half of our sheep are so fat that I was afraid if I posted their picture someone would call animal services.



This could have been one of my favorite pictures of Handy, my retired carriage horse. Look at the symmetry of his tail to his head and neck. And the light filtering through his tail. And the reflection off his slick hair coat. AND T-BONE (getting up from rolling) IN THE BACKGROUND LOOKING LIKE HE'S SITTING ON HIS BUTT!

Sigh.

The Porch

"All the benefits of the barn without them actually having to make the effort to walk up there." ~ Saint Tim.

"Whatever." ~ Claire Bear

Even taking these through the screen door doesn't soften that look.

The hay is back on the porch because Graham Lamb had some milk go down his "Sunday Throat" Saturday evening, so I wanted to be able to keep a closer eye on him that night. He's fine.

That was probably their plan all along ;-).

Sunday Stills

"If you can’t beat it use it, since power lines are a photographer's worst nightmare let's use this to our advantage. So find a cool landscape, sunrise, that would look great except it needs the dreaded power lines to mess it up, and throw in a billboard too, they are just as bad.. :-)"



Miss Aria in the morning fog earlier in the week. I ain't so much on the power lines, but I suppose if you look hard enough, you might like the symmetry between the two lines and the two fences.



Panning right, you've got your basic power lines and the "power lines" on the ground. Equally offensive, but very effective for sheep pasture rotation ;-).



Here is one from the archives. As soon as Ed posted the challenge, I immediately remembered this picture. I love this valley - just up the road - but was frustrated to see the shot ruined by the power lines. Little did I know, just a few months later, I'd be happy I took it ;-).



But still, I like this cropped view better. Wouldn't be nice if we could just crop out all the ugliness in the world? (As always, click to biggify.)



And here is a shot of the sunrise over Stella's house back last winter. Until I started looking for power lines, I'd never noticed the criss cross in this picture.

For more powerful Sunday Stills shots...

Pastorale

Look at these cute little "clovers".



These are the trees I like to sit under when I'm hanging out with the boys in the evening. You can lean back and put yourself in the picture too if you'd like.

Even when it's hot, the grass is cool. And the pine trees smell wonderful. Take a deep breath. Nice, eh? If you look straight up, you can see the sunlight filtering through the branches, kind of winking at you.

Some birds sing well into the evening and some start rustling around getting settled in early. There's always some shuffling of position to get it just right. I love to listen to the birds going to bed.



Hey look! There are three clovers now :-). Miss Ewenice has finally won them over. Or maybe they won her over. She didn't seem as excited to babysit this year as in years past and I was afraid she was getting too old for all that nonsense.



"When I was a little lamb about your age..." (Keebs is pretty polite, but I think I see his eyes starting to glaze over.)



"We'll be okay out here tonight. I'll take good care of the babies."

Thanks Miss Ewenice.

Death And Destruction

Not a banner day on the farm.

Scrunchy tested positive for both Feline Leukemia and Feline Immunodeficiency Virus. I knew this was eventually going to happen. We have too many strays around here to get lucky forever. There are no good decisions. None. You try to balance the needs of the cat and the needs of your other cats and the needs of all the other stray cats he might come in contact with as a free roamer as there is no way to bring him in the house or confine him for the rest of his life.

There are some rescues that can take infected cats, but they are already overcrowded and overworked. As all the rescues are. For cats, dogs, horses, pigs, rabbits... I'm sure the majority of blog readers are already well aware of this problem. We've all taken in strays and rescues and wondered why folks just couldn't be a little more responsible.



I'm not sure where we go when we die, but surely it's better than living in a cage. And hopefully you know that someone is sad to see you go.

Today also began the destruction of the old stripping room out by the big barn. This is the bigger of our two small outbuildings and had been moved here by a previous owner back in the 70's I believe. He stopped by one day to see the farm and told the story of balancing it on a tobacco wagon, pulling it over here from a nearby farm and resetting it all by himself. Quite a feat.

And while the building was still standing and very useful for parking tractors and miscellany, the foundation on one side had collapsed and we were told it would be cheaper to rebuild it than to repair it. As it came down in less than five minutes, it was probably a little dangerous as well.

Still, old buildings have character and history and I am a sap and sad to see it go as well. I'm just glad the project took a little longer than planned to get underway, as it gave all the baby birds plenty of time to grow up and move out of there over the last couple of weeks.



There is an email that frequently surfaces that features signs between two churches somewhere.

It starts as "All dogs go to heaven."

"Only humans go to heaven, read the bible."

"God loves all his creations, dogs included."

"Dogs don't have souls. This is not open for debate."

"[withheld] dogs go to heaven. [withheld] dogs can talk to their pastor."

"Converting to [withheld] does not magically grant your dog a soul."

"Free dog souls with conversion."

"Dogs are animals. There aren't any rocks in heaven either."

"All rocks go to heaven."


And cats.

And old barns.