By Patty Wilber

For some reason, John Denver was in my mind this week while I was doing some farm chores. “Life on the farm is kinda laid back…”, except it’s really not.  There is always something that needs doing.

The flies are hatching in droves this time of year.  Putting up fly paper is satisfying and effective! But has to be changed every few days.

Fresh fly paper!

We cleaned out the barn so we could get a new load of hay. The scrap hay will be mulch.

I came across a baby bullsnake in the loose hay! Too bad we don’t have gobs of larger snakes.  Then I wouldn’t have to trap the packrats. (Five so far.)

I put the snap trap in front of the live trap in the hopes that if they spring the snap trap and it misses, they will rush into the live trap.  It worked three times that way! The snap trap was also successful on its own.

Despite a good monsoon season, the long-term heat and drought has decimated our pinons.  I am really sad about that. We had some big, beautiful trees that shaded our little arroyo.  I am not going to use any pesticides, especially over a large scale, so now we need to get after making some firewood out of them.

The rain has filled the frog pond again (and again and yet again). So another “chore” is taking my training horses out to check the pond.  I came across a box turtle on one ride with some friends.  That is the first one I’ve ever seen out on our 30 acres!  I moved it off the dirt road. Apparently, they have small home ranges.  I wonder if I should try to find it again, just for grins.

Ornate box turtle. It was about six to eight inches long. It might look sleepy, but it made a good try at biting me by stretching its neck out and back toward my hand when I picked it up to move it off the road.

At the pond, Arrow sunk in right over her hooves and did not have a single problem with that, or stepping out of it either. She is a nice steady mare that will likely head home at the end of the month and will probably get out on the forest to gather some cows.

The latest spadefoot tadpoles are bigger than the earlier cohorts that were confined to the kiddie pool we’d installed.  There are still hundreds of them!  I don’t understand why they have not all been eaten by snakes or some other predators. I almost set up the game cam right by the plastic pool to see if I could see the little froglets come out. Good thing I didn’t since we got those gully washers that would have drowned my camera! The plastic pool is in this pond somewhere! I wonder if it’s totally silted over?

All the little spots are tadpole mouths bobbing at the surface. They are mesmerizing to sit and watch. I am pretty excited about the success of the spadefoot pond project.  I have some improvements in mind once it does dry up!

I dipped up a spadefoot tadpole to get a closer look. It’s about two inches long, with the start of hind legs! I am pretty sure this is a carnivore morph.

Because of the recent rains, we have lots of flowers! Also, lots of nasty kochia, a vigorous non-native that can choke out everything else.  I often get a little sidetracked pulling it out to free up the grasses and flowers!

So, despite the never-ending chore list (and I left a lot out, of course, like all the basic horse care!), this week sure has been beautiful and interesting!

Happy Friday!