inside images ...

This quilt hangs in our main room .. I love the colours and the fact it was made locally

Aren't all windowsills covered in ripening tomatoes once frost seems likely?

This hangs in our kitchen

on the way to Cherry Valley

If you cut through our property heading west you cross a pretty cool piece of land. It's pretty rough now but there is lots of potential on it. A little quarry, some beautiful trees, some lovely lake views, a pond, neat fence lines, apple trees, cherry trees. It rolls down from a plateau, very little of it is flat but it's just gorgeous.

Point Petre in the Wind ...

what a neat, wonderful, noisy trip to Point Petre today ...

The noise was incredible ... the waves were awesome

We all, 2 and 4 legged creatures alike

had a great trip to paradise

it's quite incredible to have a place like this to recharge personal batteries - less then 15 minutes from  the schoolhouse!

the excitement is never ending

"Green acres is the place to be.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside."

looking for excitement - little do they know what's coming

We walked a field over from our farm looking at a fence line today (a wild wet day with driving rain, hail and wicked winds). The fence line is in pretty good shape. That wasn't the excitement.

Suddenly the big dogs lost their collective minds - they were just ahead of us so Big T ran up to see what they had cornered - he thought raccoon, I thought deer -injured or dead.  We were both wrong

not our actual coyote - ours had every hair on it's body raised in defense too ...

I did not think of pulling my phone out to take picture in the heat of the moment

A coyote had a foot caught in the same fence we were inspecting. The coyote couldn't concentrate on freeing itself with 2 large dogs yelling hysterically at it. Luckily both Sally and Sampson broke away for a minute giving the coyote time to RUN away. I caught Sally but Sampson took off after the coyote for a good 90 seconds or so. Sally is usually easy to hold even when in HIGH drive mode. Not today. She was frantic to join Big T and Sampson. She pulled me over twice. Thank heavens Thea was at home due to the foul weather as she would certainly have been right in the thick of things. Brody stood with me quietly waiting for the big dogs to come back to reality.

Why did we finally see a coyote?
We have a few best guesses - the coyotes are often closer then we suspect and the lousy weather was loud enough to prevent the coyote realizing how close we were. We were in a spot that probably hasn't seen a human in many many years. The coyote probably would have gotten completely away unnoticed, even with those two factors, except for the caught toe. Those three things factored into making the excitement today.


Everyone is OK. And this is a story for all time (ranking right up there with the time Big T was bicycling along and a coyote jumped into the road to assess if he was prey or predator. Luckily the coyote decided predator that time too and took off. Two close encounters is enough for me!

a lovely fall day ... more like November than October though!

We worked a little and walked a lot. Found a new lake view from an adjacent property and a lovely tree of life tree.

The sun was quite reticent but eventually popped out to give us some dramatic lighting.