Civil War Battlefields.. first stop Spotsylvania

I love history, it was one of my favorite subjects both in highschool and college and I've been fortunate to live in historic places for most of my life. I started out in Alexandria, Va which is just across the Potomac River from Washington DC that has a beautiful Old Town district filled to the brim with artifacts dating well back to the time of the Revolution. Then I spent a semester at Gettysburg College where I was immersed in Civil War history and now living in Spotsylvania, Va I am just down the road from some of the battlefields that raged a very long time ago.

I took a trip to Spotsylvania Battlefield probably one of the best preserved battlefields from the Civil War, here are some photos from my outing there.

The sign leading to Bloody Angle.

My "guides," aka Pepper and Reuben showing off their double leash and walking harnesses.

War Memorial at Bloody Angle.

The Battlefield

Cannon

Cannon with dogs

Looking over the battlefield

The ground certainly speaks

View towards Bloody Angle

An exhausted pooch after a long walk

Oh and there's something new at the farm.. he's a black tabby, 6 months old and really needs a name.. yes I'm a sucker for a cute face at the shelter.

Change of Plans

I'm not going to make it to the fair this weekend, just too much to do and the weather is so unpredictable, sunny one minute, storming the next.

Instead here are a few photos from today and yesterday.

Pitbull play is intense, but it is just play, here is an action shot of the usual wrestling, sumo matches Pepper and Reuben have. Pepperoni might be small, but she packs a serious punch with all 38 lbs of her!

And of course after playtime is naptime, little brother and big sister. <3

I was trying to get a shot of both Pepperoni and I... lol close enough. she has a shiny new purple collar that will be clean and new for all of maybe a day!

Tambourine is smiling.. wonder what he did too look so pleased with himself..

Not so glamarous rear end shots of the goats. Their microchips are in their tail webs.

Just a few finishing touches left on the goat barn, I need to do some painting and sealing and pull the stickers off the glass on the windows. I love the goat barn and so do the boys.

Baby Uno is growing up.. he is precious, I hope he starts to catch up on his growth.

Good friends, Reuben and Uno

Nothing New

Seems like I've fallen into quite the routine among work, animals, chores and so forth.

Today's post is simply to report absolutely nothing new. All the rabbits are doing well, baby Uno gets bigger every day and the hares also seem to be growing at an amazing rate, all of them are bigger than their momma Trix at 4 & 1/2 months old. My plans for outdoor bunny safe enclosures are begining to take physical shape, I can't wait to get them built even if it won't be safe for the bunnies to move into them on a more permanent basis until fall when the temp and humidity drops to a tolerable level. I still have an insane amount of work to do on the pet bunny barn which I keep putting off.. fingers crossed I'll bite the bullet and get down to buisness this Sunday.

I'm going to stop at the local Agricultural fair tomorrow for some good old fashioned country fun after I get off work. I'm looking forward to it, I haven't been to a fair in years.

I'll try and snap some photos when I'm at the fair tomorrow, I'll also try and get some photos of the dogs and I, we're planning a trip to another battlefield for Sunday afternoon and I'd love to get some new photos of my pups.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, Happy Christmas in July!

Days Off

Its nice to have a day off during the week to try and get things done.. of course the key word is try..

I started the day off early today and did some general barn cleaning. I also started kilz painting what will soon become the "pet bunny" barn. There is alot of work to be done in there until my 4 remaining pet bunnies can move down to the farm.. I didn't get far with that since I had a repairman come and look at my washing machine which had been flooding the floor the last few loads. Of course when he arrived it didn't flood and hasn't since.. oh the joy of unbalanced loads I suppose.

I headed out to town and took the dogs with me, they've been cooped up on the property alot lately and they both enjoy car rides so I took them to the feed store to pick up bunny feed and shavings. After that I decided to improvise and go to the Chancellor Battlefield one of the Civil War battlefields near me. We took a nice long 3.5 mile hike in the woods which we all succesfully completed, even if Reuben's tongue was so far to the ground it was dragging towards the end.

It was a peaceful walk, we were the only ones on the trail and the dogs enjoyed smelling new scents and keeping their eyes open for wildlife. Now they're both fast asleep recovering from their long walk. I'm looking forward to taking them on a few more hikes at the other Civil War Battlefields down here.

I have a bunch more things I ought to do today but I think in the end I will just relax and enjoy my day off... there's always the weekends and next week.

Also just a reminder to all you D9 residents, ballots for the representative for ARBA are in the mail, I got mine yesterday and am sending it off tomorrow. Please remember to vote!

Here are a few photos of late:Giant Moth on my property, any ideas on what it is? I'm terribly with identifications, especially of insects.

One of the hares would very much like to move into the goat barn, the goats have other ideas on the matter.

And this beautiful photo is clearly not of Virginia.. my sister is actually living on a tropical Island in the Carribean at the moment while her boyfriend attends Ross Medical School. She took this beautiful photo and sent it along. It looks just like paradise to me, I can see why you'd want to go to Medical or Veterinary School at a place like this.

Too Cute..

I had to share this photo of baby Uno with his foster momma Shelby. Shelby is well over 8 years old, she could be ten at the oldest. She is a spayed house bunny who is what I like to call "rabbit friendly," meaning she greets all rabbits sweetly and is very good with any bun she meets. This trait allows her to be picked on sometimes by my other house buns.

Luckily this trait also comes in handy with a lone foster baby like Uno. She's doing a great job raising him.

Sales List

After hanging onto the hares for 4 months I now have a set idea of who to keep for my programs, I now have 4 Belgian Hares for sale. I'd like to keep them until the Bucks, PA show on Labor Day weekend in September just to be certain that this pasteurella thing has been worked out of the herd. I don't want to sell a rabbit that is going to get sick and by then if they're going to have symptoms they should have developed them.

The hares for sale are Alice, Maeve, Oliver and Jasper. They come from a mixture of lines, and have good genetics as far as I can tell. Some of them are more "showy," than others. They are all siblings and thus should not be bred together.. their lines are too close for that.

I also have a junior Rhinelander marked doe with DQs for sale. (Churro) More details on them can be seen on my website here.

Please e-mail me if you're interested in them.

Those photos I promised!

I finally took those photos I promised. Featured are the 4 month old Hares, 4 month old Sage, Burrito and Churro along with most of the rest of the herd!

Pepper decided to go into Theo's cage during his photo shoot...
Perfect sky, perfect weather for photos.

Reuben was very tired through the whole event..

Trix front middle, at play with her daughters who are bigger than she is and they're only 4 months old!!

Pep standing watch while naughty Banjo headbutts one of the gals...

Fiddle thinks Belgian Hares smell funny..

Burrito

Churro, she is for sale!!

Theodore

Pinto Bean

Sage

Poor chubby, broody Fajita, yes she is on a diet...

Momma Trixie to the following babies:

IH9 - Gem

IH8 - Emmer

IH7 - Maeve

IH6 - Alice

IH5 - Oliver

IH4 - Jasper

IH3 - Murphy

IH2 Duke

I'm really impressed with the junior hares, they all have great traits, not one if perfect but they sure are huge improvements over their momma Trix.

I moved down one house rabbit today, gentle old Shelby (over 8 years old) arrived down at the farm after a falling out with the 4 other house rabbits. Things have been tense with them since I moved down to the farm and left them with my mom. Jules and Melody were being way too mean to her and I don't have time to work through their bonding problems so I took her down to the farm today and she is now living with baby Uno. Shelby is sero resistant to pasteurella so I doubt she'll have any issues, even with her advanced age. She really seems to be enjoying his company. I'm not sure if I'll try and reintroduce her to the other 4 when they move down, only time will tell but for now she has a tiny little buddy to snuggle with.

It's a Boy!

Baby Uno turned 4 weeks old today and is officially a boy. For one reason or another he always seemed buck like to me , so its very appropriate it turned out that he is indeed a boy! He spent the early hours this morning playing in his outside cage, grazing and bouncing about. He is healthy, happy and growing like a weed. Although small for his age, I feel confident he is going to do well once he is fully weaned off goats milk and formula.

The goats caused quite a stir this morning before I played with Uno outside. Fiddle some how managed to wedge himself underneath the barn. How on Earth he did it, I have no idea, but the fact was he could not get out once he got stuck. Luckily with the help of Master Diggers Pepper and Reuben we were able to dig away the loose dirt around the pressure treated skids and slide him out. He protested very loudly during the under barn experience but forgot immediately once he saw the grain bucket was full... These silly goats! They get into immense trouble if you don't watch them carefully.

I had hoped to get all new photos of the rest of the herd today and while the weather was nice in the morning by the time I had a plan for the photo shoot storm clouds rolled through and ruined the good photography weather... my next photo date is now Tuesday, my day off. I promise I'll get those photos taken then unless the weather turns on me again.

I'm having trouble setting up my wireless router which is quite frustrating.. I wish I had kept up with the tech field so I could sort this out myself.. anyways I'll have new herd photos soon, hope all is well with everyone else!

Flower in the front yard

Another flower out front

Pepper loves baby Uno

Hello there baby Uno

Reuben turn to give some love

Perfect spine marking, ear base and clean face!

This side of Uno is short on orange but the spots are nicely seperated and clearly defined, there is some orange there its just not much, otherwise he has great markings and beautiful type developing!