Happy New Year! 2018-2019

Happy New Year!

This year’s farm focus was the pond filter.  Thank you, mom! (aka Laura Victor van Gorder), for providing the filter for the pond.  The water is amazingly clear now, as you can see  : )

Ups and Downs on the farm: Obviously the pond filter was the biggest highlight. But additionally, Heather grew a tomato bigger than a bocci ball.  I have perfected making “brown butter sage”, we invented a new cider flavor that we’re simply calling “Mulled Cider” (we’ll need to mull that over and come up with a better name).   The wildlife activity was off the chart this year with “foxy” becoming a regular occurrence during the height of “egg laying season”, as she would regularly come by around “ducky bedtime hour” and look for stray eggs. And yes, we give Foxy stray eggs.

In a duck coop there are, at times, eggs that get very cleverly buried or a bit bruised and beat up.  We began putting these eggs out in an offering to our already curious visitors, Miss Foxy Vixen.  Another patron of our ducks eggs was a skunk.  A very cute, very relaxed, and somewhat shy skunk would also show up around the same time of day and year (the end of summer) hoping for extra eggs.   It was amazing just how calm the ducks and geese were when those two came around.  Of course, it begs the question:  In the choices that the fox and skunk make to either eat the eggs, or eat the ducks… what is the primary motivating factor?

a)  Laziness? Making a meal out of raw duck takes a lot of work!  You essentially have to eat through an entire pillow before getting your meal.

Or…

b)  Pure Genius? Perhaps Foxy and Skunk are good at math!  Choose either:
One egg a day for many years…
OR…
One single duck meal, with a side order of “Goose Bites” – as in Goose bites your ass!  – compliments of the house, of course!

So, in noticing that our fine furry friends were indeed good at math, we decided to all hold hands, paws, wings and claws and have a sing Kumbaya together.

Speaking of singing…

Q:  Why did the fox hate the skunk’s signing?
A:   Because his singing stank! Just like this joke!

So yes, we took to putting a few of the “bad eggs” out for our furry friends on occasion and have been pleased with the the reviews the skunk and fox have both left us;

Dear Moon Acre Farm,  the eggs you leave out for us are the best within these 5 square miles! (my regular hunting ground)
Please thank your goose for being such a fine Gentlegoose – so rare these days.
Me and my fox pups give you 5 out of 5 paws!
 – Your Foxy Vixen

and…

Dearest Moon Beams and Farm Friends,
I love the way you age the eggs a few days before I get them – so smelly and tasty!
I combined one with some old cabbage from your compost pile to make a truly fabulous kimchi!
P.S. Do you need any neighbor’s dogs sprayed or anything?  I’m happy to oblige for more eggs!
– Skunky

Ahh, aren’t those critters the best!

We also had the largest squash harvest EVER!

For Thanksgiving Heather made us all pumpkin soup in these home-grown pumpkin bowls!…

And now the “Downs” of 2018…
We believe a large blue hereon made off with one or more of our Koi fish – and we don’t mean they “eloped” and went to Hawaii.
Our most beautiful and largest koi was a sight of solid, shimmering gold.   Now she is…   bird poop and nitrogen, on someone else’s field none-the-less! I think the hereon is the only major visitor to our farm that we have no photos of video of.  So we can’t virally shame or down-vote that hereon.  Too bad.  He was a large jerk.  I wish the crows would keep him away and leave Mr. Owl alone.

We lost 2 large apple tree branches.  Sad…  and yet the trees continue to toss apples at our feet like there is no tomorrow!

Up or Down, we are forever grateful.

Further video notes:

The “moon” video footage (in the beginning), is from the “Super Moon / Blood Moon Eclipse”.
You can see a “divot” in the lower right “corner” of the moon in the still image.   Sadly, it didn’t become all nice and red until the moon was just about setting low on the horizon.

Yes, that snake actually went backwards!  That was not a trick of video editing.  And it freaked me out when it happened! For one brief moment, while looking at the screen on my camera (while taking that footage) I thought;   What button did I just press?!?  The whole world is going in reverse!  But no. Apparently, snakes can go backwards!

Sorry for the delay in getting this out, as there was just TOO much great footage to wade through (pardon the pun), especially the underwater footage.  Also, I apologize for some of the “warping” on some of the skunk video – the video warp is not because the skunk’s thiol or mercaptans melted the video, but because the footage was captured very frantically – and at some distance! – so I had to apply some “stabilization” after the fact so it wasn’t so shaky.   Couldn’t be helped.

You can also glean, from strange editing style, that I grappled with including/excluding the video scenes;  The extra/raw footage at the end, and the insertion of the fish footage in the middle…  I think it all worked out stylistically in the end.  But you be the judge and let me know what you liked, didn’t like, wanted to see more of, etc.   Don’t be shy in giving feed back.