How I spend my vacation

The weather forecast is wonderful. I’m taking a week of vacation to help get ready for winter, and incidentally to be here for Lisa’s birthday on Thursday.

My new best friend Yesterday we got a rescue Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog. Her name is Maggie and we love her. Apparently there are thousands of big white dogs in the south that need homes. Maggie’s problem is that she apparently was raised on a farm as a working dog. She had no idea how to live in a condo. There are still two potential issues: We’ve been warned that she is stranger aggressive and that the reason we haven’t seen it is that she isn’t yet sure who belongs here. So we have to watch out for that in the next few weeks. The other problem is that an LGD needs to live with her critters. Maggie however has gotten used to watching TV in the evening and sleeping under the kitchen table. The big puppy eyes when she gets left outside are truly pitiable.

Damn Beavers Today we mended fences in the morning. There were several spots where we had stapled the fence to a tree by the edge of the swamp that the beavers then took out. As of now, the Mack Hill Farm chapter of Future Dogfood of America is still inside, although Disa and Bjarki can still get out. It turns out that Maggie respects high tensile. Since the cows, horses and pigs do also, we think we’ll go back to running that rather than pouring time and money into woven wire and attempting to sheep harden it.

We hauled and cut firewood in the afternoon until the dirt on the logs dulled the chains. After that, I managed to finally get into the beehive again. They had drawn about half the honey super, and had at least a few frames of capped honey. They were also very cranky and I apparently hadn’t sealed my collar well enough. They actually came at me when I smoked the entrance, which is not normal behavior. I managed to pry the super off the hive body and scrape enough burr comb to insert a bee excluder. By then I clearly had bees inside my suit so I slapped the cover back on and got out of Dodge, unfortunately leaving behind the lamb that had crawled under the hive to die.

Aside from birthday celebrations, fence and firewood is the plan for the week.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.