Summertime on our Little Farm

Summertime is a slow time with the dogs, but busy with the other critters.

Bantam chickens of some sort.  There is three hens
in this nest setting on eggs.  Yes, they have more nests, but they would rather all sit on one I guess.  The chicks started hatching yesterday, but they haven't left the nest yet and I could not get any in the picture.  They may be small, but those hens get awfully ornery when it comes to protecting those chicks, so I don't disturb them too much.

Also found this batch of eggs in the weeds near the bird shed.  They belong to the guinea fowl.  We assume one of those hens will take on the setting responsibility for them soon.  This is our first summer with full grown guinea.  I don't recommend them if you don't like ALOT of unnecessary noise!
If they are nearby, you can't even carry on conversation. Bores into your head sometimes...do have to admit that I think we have fewer ticks than usual.  I hope.

                                         Guinea Fowl

Another type of bird we have here are ringnecked pheasants.  Two hens and a rooster.  It seems like most things I've read about them cause you to assume the hens won't set on eggs, but one of our hens is setting like a pro.  We'll see if it comes to anything. Another thing we discovered about pheasants is that they eat slugs.  We always have slug problems with the tomatoes in the garden.  Problem is, the pheasants don't stay home like chickens or guineas, so we can't put them in the garden.  We'd have to fence it completely in, top as well as sides. Too much .  Oh well.

The view from the deck in the evening when we let the chickens out.

We have four rabbits that get fed only green stuff picked for them every evening.  During the winter, they get pellets and hay.

One of the seven farm cats and one of the two large roosters.

The view of the back of the house from our back "pasture"  Thats the bird shed in the foreground.

The moon over the back "pasture".

Good night.

The Pond

So, like I said in the first post, there will be updates on other things we're up to, as well as dog stuff. This week, we were really working hard on our pond. This is our second year doing the pond thing, but we redid alot of it this year. We dug it out deeper and totally changed the fountain feature.
I don't have any pics of last years setup, but here is what it looks like this year:

                                  Before we got the plants put in.  Thats Elliot gazing into the water.

                                              And after the plants.

Now we are working on clearing the water.  Its very cloudy and dirty looking.  Jeremy invented a filter for it, but it seems that its going to take a bit more than that.  We want to keep it as natural as possible, so we are going to add barley straw.  We can't get it around here at any stores, so I've got it on order.  From what I've read, it might take awhile for its benefits to kick in, but hopefully it'll do it.  Will keep updating as things progress.

Just so noone misses the dog aspect:

                                              Cello, Thunder, and Boris say HI

                                              The view out the door of our house.

                                               Aspen enjoying a loose run.

Summertime Loose Running Dogs

Okay, so during the summer, obviously its too warm for dogs to pull anything. They still need to get exercise, right? We load up groups of dogs in our trailer:

We drive to a couple different places up to 5 miles down the road from home, where the dogs won't disturb anyone, and let em run around and just be dogs. 
One of the places we go is to a nice 4 mile or so loop that takes us to Lake Superior.  Nice cliffs and rocks for the dogs to explore.

There's also a really nice stand of birch to enjoy at the top of the cliffs:

And just some more nice photos of recent outings:

The goal is to get every dog out at least once a week, time allowing.
We are busy with home improvement projects, work, gardening, etc. so it doesn't always work out perfectly, but we do our best.

So this is our new blog. Just learning all this, so bear with me.
If you're reading this, you should like dogs. Its gonna be mostly that, but we are also going to include other aspects of our daily life here in da U.P. Family stuff and any other adventures we may have. We also have a small farm,if you will, including chickens, guinea fowl, pheasants, rabbits, cats, etc.
But mostly it will be about the dogs. They are the one of the biggest aspects of our lives. We live a vey "doggie" lifestyle.
The purpose of our blog is to journal for our own enjoyment and also to keep in touch with people we know and maybe to meet new people we don't!

This is our dogyard. Always a work in progress. Right now all the dogs have barrel doghouses on the ground, the plan is to get them up in off the ground on frames, like this-

This way they can get under for shade, and get out of the mud, too.
A couple of gratuitious dog pics:

We also have 4 small dogs who live in the house with us, along with our main, main lead dog Thunder:

3 of the 4 little guys in "jail"

Thunder