Right now our new friend seems to respond to tongue clicking, the rattling of the food bag, and “Hey, good boy!” I couldn’t very well refer to him as SHUSH-SHUSH-SHUSH here, and I didn’t want him to get accustomed to Good Boy as his name either since there are quite a few wild cats around, and if another happens to start enjoying my company I’ll probably say “Hey, good boy” to him as well. We can’t have everyone thinking their name is Good Boy. This isn’t the Foreman house; everyone here gets their own moniker. So, after nearly three weeks of going back and forth with names, we finally settled on Pickwick. Hopefully he’ll acknowledge…

The other day, when I was writing the About page, I mentioned “a friendly little orange cat who runs around the fields nearby.” This is that cat. I don’t think he’s accustomed to being touched but I think he likes it? I’m getting mixed signals. He’ll rub on my legs, purr, swat me with his insanely sharp claws, and then resume purring and rubbing. I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer. – Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn Title From:…

There is a group of mule deer here whose numbers are between 17-20. They’ll often wander through our back pasture in small clumps. Yesterday six or seven of them decided to rest by a shed that will eventually become our goat barn. I’ve taken dozens of photographs through the windows, trying not to disturb them, but yesterday I decided I’d had enough of the distorted images and I opened the back door. Slowly and quietly over a period of ten minutes, I worked my way outside without startling them. Sitting on the step with a warm breeze blowing in the early evening sun, while the mangy deer lounged nearby, was…

We are being overrun by mice. Poop is everywhere! They began their assault by entering through plumbing holes beneath the kitchen sink. We plugged the holes with steel wool, which they then pushed out of the way to continue peeing all over the dish rack. So we hot glued the steel wool in place and stopped their invasion. Then the assault came from behind the stove. We moved the stove and the refrigerator and glued steel wool into any opening big enough for a ball bearing to fit through. Following that, the mice started pouring from the furnace closet. We can’t remove the furnace to reseal the room so we…

One of the cows from the neighboring ranch got into our pasture this afternoon. Unfortunately, our fencing isn’t very solid. We had intended to repair it in the spring so we could put a couple horses of our own out there, but it’s not spring yet, so it’s still unsuitable for animals. I didn’t want to risk her getting out of our pasture as well, so I had to run out in the wind, alone, to mend the one large opening that would allow her complete freedom. Most of the fencing is, unfortunately, barbed wire, but the opening is a gate of sorts, made with livestock fence that had blown…