our homestead: a winter walk on the slough

I took my boys, Oswald and Banjo, out for a dusky walk on the slough today. As I headed down a ridge and looked below, I noticed my woodcutter neighbor now has three small brown pigs in a pen made of wood pallets. These pigs are replacing the giant pig that used to lounge in this pen. As I continued on, another neighbor's cattle (most of them are black but there are a few shaggy long-horned ones) were out grazing by the road, moo-ing at us as we passed. Me and the pups walked all the way to the river, to have our path crossed overhead by a triangle of swans, followed by my neighbor driving down the road on his red tractor.  He was heading over to feed the cows and they all came and swarmed him as soon as he entered the gate to the field. Oswald, Banjo and I relaxed on the river bank for a little while, watching the water slowly move past. We always look for otters peaking up when we come down here...saw two last time. Didn't see any today though.

our homestead: merry christmas

Photos from our family Christmas shoot

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! I thought I'd post some of our family Christmas photos we had taken this year, including photos of our furbabies, Oswald and Banjo. These photos are the work of my sister-in-law, Rachel, of Nickel Images. You can check out the rest of her photo projects at the Nickel Images Blog.

For a while there we were living in a land cloaked in a thick fog, as you can tell in the photos. My husband and I took our photos on the train tracks I used to sneak down to play upon when I was a kid. I'd leave coins on the tracks and come back later to find them smashed into smooth roundish disks.

Anyway, hope everyone is staying warm and spending time with loved ones and may the eggnog overfloweth in your mugs!

our homestead: scenes from my walk this evening

Today made for a very sunny day, followed by a beautiful evening and sunset. I had the chance to take my dog, Ozzy, out to one of my favorite spots to go for a late summer's walk: the levy that runs along the river. I have a special way to get here. The entrance is a bit of a local secret...you have to drive all the way to the end of a rural road, past a cemetery full of born-in-the-1800s tombstones and then hang a sharp left to find it. Once you get out on the levy, you cross fields of marshlands full of grasses, wild flowers, snags, giant thistles, willow trees and all sorts of critters. Today I spotted a giant toad, several ducks, a beaver and its dam, and an otter hopping into the river from the bank across from me. In times of heavy rain, these marshlands are meant to hold excess river water to help prevent flooding in the valley. The further you walk, the quieter your surroundings become until you find some true peace.