May, of bids and birds

Hello Again Inverted Cow family!

Overall this has been a fairly slow couple of weeks, For the most part I have been working on getting the garden ready. This means digging all the gravel off the surface, then digging out all the dandelions and other weeds, as well as all the rocks that were on the surface. Rotortill and pull out even more rocks, followed bu heading to the pens next door and scooping up a few loads of cow poop. Rotortill and rake. Planting is yet to come.

Meanwhile the lawn is growing faster than I like, but we have had minimal rain so it is not growing as fast as it could! (thank goodness) The part I ordered last week for old red came in yesterday so I will be getting her on the road shortly.

And guess who is also back?
Woodtick: n Also known as seed of Satin, Demon spawn pest from the abyss: This insect has the uncanny ability to appear our of thin air on your body at the most inconvenient times. It is able to move through time and space and somehow end up biting you precisely at 3 am every morning. This is not a normal bug.

A normal bug, the honey bee, working on the dandelions
 I was working on digging out of the garden.

A butterfly of some sort, Nice orange pattern on the wings,
I could not get a shot of one with the wings open,
they were also helping me with the dandelions 

Auction fun.

Now that spring is here I have had the chance to check out some of the local auctions. The first one I went to was not too bad, I got there a bit late and they were already past selling some of the items I wanted to get. It was here that I was once again reminded that I am living in the middle of hillbilly country.

Whenever I attempted to bid on an item someone would attempt to out bid me even if they had no interest in the item. It was only because I am a new face. The inbred farmers here would bid against me for a box of junk no matter how high I bid they would fight to get it. One even went as far as to make the auctioneer reopen the bidding AFTER he had sold it to me. I also saw the idiocy of some of them as they bid on old lawn equipment worth, in my experience, about $20 they bought them for as much as $80!

The auctioneer was not one I would recommend to anyone as they consistently played favorites and ignored bidders who were not a familiar face. This was evident in the fact that the bidders that the auctioneers knew by name, got the bids accepted every time, and the sold would hit right away. While others, like me, were ignored, or had sold bids reopened.

On the way back from the first auction there was this
out in the middle of a field. Yet another reminder
of a history that is fading into faint memory.

The second auction I went to was in the other direction. I went down to visit the folks and took in a later auction. On this one the auctioneer was willing to take any bid from anyone, friend or not. Also the people there were not bidding just to outbid someone. The prices were staying within reason.

It was here I purchased a couple of little items and a new red toy! (for some reason all the things here at the home of the inverted cow have to be red) Kyle and I took it out the next evening for a test drive(?)

Getting the new red toy loaded for a trip to the wilds. 

Birds and things fowl

About the middle of the week Kyle shows up here with a big bucket of sucker fish. He has a couple of girl friends (female friends not girlfriends) with him and they cleaned a hand full of the fish. He had a bit of a spill of the bucket  and the cleaned fish ended up in a ditch someplace. So we decided to head back out yesterday to go get more. I went to the store and got the ingredients to make a marinade, I picked up a new fillet knife and off we went. First we tootled off to get an old wood burning stove to make the smoker with. Then it was off to the ditches for the fish but by the time we got out there all the fish had left. Oh well on that attempt.

Finally we picked up Kyle's tractor and brought it back here. Now I am able to get a little more work on the garden done, provided I have no more delays.

With the tractor here we figured to head up to the beaver dam and keep it open so the water will keep flowing. Kyle scooted out on his quad first and just after I pulled into my yard he comes back with 2 fuzzy little baby geese. (see he doesn't kill everything all the time)

Apparently the parents of the babies ran into something nastier than 2 pissed off Canadian geese. When Kyle found these 2 they were nestled up against momma. She had both wings broken, one of her wings was almost ripped off and the other was snapped in half on the thicker bone. I think her neck had also been broken as she was laying there in obvious pain, Kyle had already put her down when we went back to collect the body.  From the injuries I am guessing even if we could have managed to get her to a wildlife reserve they would not have been able to save her.

Another search of the area has not turned up any more babies, and normally they have about 5 or more of them at a shot. Also no sign of papa. I ended up putting the 2 little ones in the kennel and placed some straw in with them. I made up some mushy food for them to eat but at this point they are only playing it it as most babies do. They also had a bath last night and then snuggled with me for a hour or so while they dried out.



More details on their progress to follow in further posts.
  
Last thoughts.

There was a few thunderstorms here over the last while but none seemed to give us any noticeable amount of rain. I did shoot some footage but it was mostly just cloud shots and wind in the trees.

There are a couple of American bald eagles in the area, I attempted a couple of time to get some pictures of them, so far unsuccessfully.

We also had a bit of fun with Kyle's horses the other day. Again they got out somehow. We managed to chase them back in with the cows he has on the property again. (at least we know where they are)



I have gotten an few Emails back about some work I had applied for. I need to get my boss from Calgary to contact my boss to be here in Manitoba. But it looks like everything is a go for getting some full time work again. (wasn't I supposed to be retired?)

The only reason I cannot get any work here on the side, is because I am not an inbred cousin of someone out here. Seriously!

Well that is it for now, I got more digging to do.
Cheers C[_]