Update

A stressful few days.

I examined my Jungle Shrubs Friday and decided that I would wait until the fall - or at least later in the summer - to trim them since each of the larger shrubs has several birds nesting in. I don't want to disturb any of my wild birds so I'll just live with the jungley look right now.

I'm scrambling to finish my new biddy condo as my turkeys should be shipping tomorrow. The chicks will be moving into the new digs and the baby turkeys will go in the warmer brooder pen.

I lost three of my baby geese to my own stupidity so I'm down to two timid little girl geese. I thought briefly of putting them in a cage in with the older pair but my hen is laying and I'm afraid that that would cause her to come off her nest.

Speaking of nests, one of my ducks is on hers, one of my bantams just hatched out four thumb-sized babies and another is about to hatch hers. It's a reproductive melee around here.

Excepting me, of course.

The huge old oak behind the house had to enormous dead limbs hanging out over the babies play area and the deck. Fortunately, I found a nice young man to trim them (and gained some firewood). Unfortunately it cost quite a bit of money I didn't have to spare.

Here's the after pic. You can see the size of the limbs on this tree.

Here's some of the wood. I've already cut and split about 1/3 of it and it was only two limbs!

But the really good thing that happened recently was this:


This is Turkish, a purebred Anatolian Shepherd (He's named after the bloke in Snatch. Anatolians were originally from Turkey). They're livestock guardian dogs and so his job is to live with the goats and sheep and protect them. Despite being super sweet, his appearance alone should give most predators pause. His shoulder comes up to my hip joint (I'm 5'8").


'Scuse him, here, he's having a slash. Dog can't wee around here without getting his picture taken! That's a five foot gate behind him, BTW.

Gratuitous baby pic (after almost choking and frightening his mother almost to death):

And that's it for today.