The Longest Run

As promised in Accounting For Unwanted Visitors , here's a small gallery of photos: If you can't see the slideshow, it's available at this link .

Having fought my own battles with woodchucks in my garden, I read Peter Rabbit Must Die in today's New York Times with great interest. I was dismayed to discover one day last year that woodchucks had dug a tunnel which conveniently exited in the middle of the main garden bed in our yard. A number of plants were destroyed, including a unique liatris I've only recently been able to replace. The woodchucks snacked on all sorts of plants, leaving us with far fewer vegetables (primarily beans) and flowers (primarily purple coneflower) than we'd have otherwise had. I first tried filling the hole, but within a day the hole had been reopened. We then went the humane route; the company which mows our grass put out a havahart trap, the plan being that they would release anything we caught at a nearby nature preserve. We trapped a variety of animals - first a possum, then some skunks, then some woodchucks (pictures to come)! Things got quiet after that, but once there were signs of ...

Courtesy of Cal Vornberger , photographer and author of the terrific Birds of Central Park , check out Natalie Angier's NYT article Noble Eagles, Nasty Pigeons, Biased Humans , which will resonate for anyone who has tried keeping squirrels away from birdfeeders or animals out of one's garden. Full disclosure: I've recently battled woodchucks in my garden and fully identify with some of the people characterized in the article....

Katherine's brother Christian and his wife Lisa have started a goat cheese business in Field Store Community, Texas. Katherine and I and the girls, along with my sister Amy's daughter Anna, spent this morning at the farm getting an update on what's happening on the farm. You can find out a lot more about the business at the web site for Blue Heron Farm . To give you a sense of what things are like out at Blue Heron, I figured I'd start with some video. I'll follow up in my next post with some pictures from the day. Here's one of the two pigs who live on the farm (the audio is particularly fun): It's baby goat season, and though most of the baby goats won't stick around Blue Heron for long, there were two babies on the farm today (one of which is just 4 days old). Here's some video of the goats: Finally, there is a cool group of cows who live (or maybe they just graze) across the street. Here's a video of my encounter with one of the bigger ones.....