Summer is really getting into gear now.  This weekend is the Blueberry Arts Festival in Ely, next weekend is the county fair, and there are tons of tourists around (in Ely anyway – we can escape them now going home to the farm!!)

We went up to Ely today, stopped at the festival for gyros (waited in a really really way-too-long line), and I hung out with the kids and Isaac at Fall Lake recreation area.  Brianna was there with her kids and 4 other ones, so we had 9 kids between the two of us, ages 9 months – 8 yrs.  It was fun!  All the kids were great, we had enough sunscreen, clothes, towels, food, older kids to help with younger kids, and the weather was perfect.  The kids were in and out of the water for several hours, with the playground to play on when they were drying off and warming up.

I found a leech on Delia’s ankle. UUUUUUggggggh.  It’s amazing how calm I was but inside I was screaming in disgust.  It was tiny and quickly filling itself with her blood!  Ew, ew, ew.

Henry was great around the lake.  He just waded in, chasing a big beach ball sometimes, but never went farther in than his thighs.  I put a floatie on him and encouraged him to go out farther, but he really didn’t like the floatie so I just took it off and left him to do what he wanted.

Ryan spent that time at our old house packing up yet more stuff.  I spent a few hours earlier this week getting almost everything down from upstairs and vacuuming.  A few more days and it’ll be ready to list.

We thought we might be boarding a pony for the summer (which ended up not happening) so I put some time in preparing our horse stalls.  One was nice and clean, but two of them had old 10+ year old rotted hay on the floor.  It had practically turned into plywood.  I had to break it apart with my pick axe and then I used my pickup truck (that was another adventure – driving that thing home) to load it up and haul it away.  I got one more totally cleaned out and the last one all broken up but not shoveled out yet.  I need to find a good place to dump what I have and then I’ll do that last stall.

The other day Delia and I were out catching tadpoles and we heard what I initially thought was a bird squaking in the woods south of our property.  It kept up and then I started thinking it might not be a bird.  Emily came out a little later and commented on it and I ran my theory by her.

“I wonder if that’s a bear cub.”

We listened for a while, and she agreed.  As I posted, we saw a bear in our back yard, so it’s possible that it has a baby.  I decided I wanted a closer look, so I slowly walked just a little ways into the brush to see if I could see a cub up in a tree.  I know, I know.  You don’t want to mess with a mama bear.  I didn’t go far – I promise.  I heard some rustling noises along with a variance in the squawking, which all sounded consistent with  cub in a tree, but I never actually saw anything.  The sound soon stopped and we haven’t heard it since.

“Daddy, when I grow up, I want Clorox Toilet Wand.”

Today Emily put one of the older chickens in the younger chickens’ run.  They did okay and no blood was shed, but the old one got a few bites in on the youngins.  The young ones seemed pretty curious about the intruder, but every time they got close, the old one would charge.  The good thing, I think, is that when they stayed away from her, she didn’t bother with them at all.  They were only together for a few minutes but I think it’ll be fine when they’re finally all together.

The night we saw the bear, Lucy woke me up at 1:30 by barking and howling.  I got up and saw her at the front window, carrying on like…  like…  like there was a bear in the front yard.  There wasn’t, at least not that I could see, but there were about a billion lightning bugs out there.  I’ve never seen so many.

A bear walked around in the back yard yesterday evening.  Delia and I were at my workbench in the store room and saw it walk by about 20 feet from the window.  I ran to get Ryan and he was confused because he thought I said “bat” and didn’t think I should be so excited about seeing a bat.  When he and I got back to the window, Delia said the bear ran away.  But it came back and we watched it from the porch for several minutes.

It was probably 1-2 years old.

We have them!  I’ve never seen them around here before, and I have always been a little sad about that.  They aren’t in Florida either, so I figured when I came north, I’d get to see them in the summer and remember the evenings spent in the mountains of western North Carolina catching them in matchboxes.

Right before we left on our trip, I let the dogs out really late one night and thought I saw some, but figured it must have been reflections of some animal’s eyes.  After shining our super bright make-scary-darkness-go-away flashlight in that direction, I didn’t see any animals, so I waited and sure enough there were a few little flickers.  I told Ryan about them, but I still wasn’t sure.

Now we’re seeing them every evening for a few hours.  They’re definitely a different species.  They flash really fast, on for just a second and then off for a long time.  At first they were pretty far away from the house only in the tall tall grass (as opposed to the tall grass near the house) and trees, but tonight they were right in the newly mowed front yard.

This is going to be brief and maybe I’ll flesh it out later.

I was sick and seriously lacking energy for quite a while which meant that most farm projects and pretty much everything else was put on hold.

The chicks are very big and happily living outside.

Coop still isn’t finished, though I’m re-cleaning the garage in preparation for working on it again.

We made a trip to IL.

Blackie is broody again.

Tonight I found some baby barn swallows on the ground and in my boat.  We’re trying to help them.

My tractor is sick. Low oil pressure.  This means I can’t really mow and now we’re living in a jungle.  Rebuilding might be the only option, but there’s no time.

Snowy the barn cat had a nasty wound on her neck but she’s healing.

Henry is walking like crazy and EXTREMELY curious about everything.  His personality is becoming more apparent every day.  He’s such a cuddle bug and he hugs us ALL the time.

Delia has roller skates (thanks Nama!) and she took right off on them.