Monday 26 April 2010

Lucky Day, and some other stuff.

For someone anyway. As I was finishing up chores outside the dogs started barking in the 'I'm seriously barking at something for real this time' way. I let them run for it and followed them down to the pond. We were almost there when I heard someone crying (we sped up). The dogs waited for me to tell them to go into the street, and they ranged out in front of me about 20 feet barking and growling. There was a guy with two young girls walking out of the washed out grade B road.

I talked to him for a moment and assessed that this was not what I had at first feared thankfully, and called the dogs off. They're normally not that responsive, but apparently they know when they need to listen, vs. when I want them to listen. Too smart for their own good.

So after asking the girls if everything was ok and seeing that they were fine with this guy (their dad it turns out) I got the story from the dad - the girls had asked him to take the truck out on some mud, so he'd found the grade B road and headed down. At night. In the rain. He's lucky he walked away at all instead of ending up headlong into a tree along the way - as muddy as it is that road is dangerous in the daytime. I don't expect he'll be able to get his truck out for a few days yet - I've seen 4WD tractors and trucks stuck in better weather than this, and the fields will be draining onto the road for another few days at least.

I took them home - that poor guy is going to have to tell a really, really embarrassing story to a lot of people, but he earned it - what the heck was he thinking? Lucky for him the dogs heard him or he'd have been walking a lot longer.

Earlier today I picked up a new storage bin to set out by the pigs so MamaP doesn't have to move the buckets around as much anymore for the morning pig chores, along with a bunch of new fence posts and fencing to put up around the garden to keep the dogs out.

Also earlier this week I finally killed Chicken Nugget the rooster who had been attacking MamaP and the kids. I realize it had to be done, but I felt bad about it - from his perspective he was just protecting his flock and his only real crime was doing his job too well. So it goes. Chicken Nugget Jr. will be top of the flock until the broilers come in June, then I'll be replacing him with two barred rocks which are supposed to be calmer than the Americaunas.

3 comments:

  1. Those are some great dogs! I always feel a little bit more safe when I see our dogs do something like that!

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  2. Wow, now that's some farm livin! Sounds like you all did what needed to be done.

    Thanks for sharing

    P

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  3. We wound up eating our araucana roo, too. As a breed the ones we had were all a bit wound up -- the girls skittish, the boy very aggressive despite lots of hand rearing and care... He sure did make a wonderful coq au vin, though! And, my husband learned a new skill and suddenly decided that when we have more land he'll be quite comfortable rearing, killing and eating some larger animals. Mmmm. Some bacon for him and lamb for me :)

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