Coyotes, Bobcats and Snakes Oh My!!
What a whirlwind of wildlife!! We were up at the garden checking gophers traps…part of our morning routine…when Mac said mom is that a wolf or a dog….and I look and in the chicken coop area there is a coyote!! Chase and I head up there leaving the boys behind the fence and there were actually two coyotes! We run them off, let the boys watch an educational video on what to do if you encounter a coyote and go with our day. Not 45 mins later Mac and I are watering in the green house when Merrick runs in and says “Dad made the bobcat run away”…..well Chase had heard the chickens squawking so he went up there and going through the window of the coop he sees half of a bobcat….the other half INSIDE the coop! He throws a rock at it, bangs on the coop and it runs off. We let the boss man know and he got one of the ranch dogs up there to ward any future predators off!! That afternoon we saw a snake go by out in the open. A good opportunity for us to talk about snakes and really be able to show M&M a snake. Well it goes around the green house and not five minutes later Mac is walking and steps on said snake….a prime example of why we watch where we are walking….can I say it any louder! We were thankful for the experience but it sure scared him but I’m hopeful that lesson has sunk a litter deeper this time!
We started moving stuff from the green house outside into the garden! At this point in time we have:
- red onions- 278
- Red rock cabbage -seeds
- Green onions- 259
- Dinosaur kale- 25
- Spinach- 39
- Banana squash- 10
- Spaghetti squash-10
- Crookneck squash-7
- Cucumbers- 36
- Early girl tomatoes-25
Pictured below is some of the spinach starts we planted and Mac watering in the green house!
In most of the rows if the seedlings did not complete the row we put seeds in and hopefully will have a second yield from the younger plants after the first go around with the older ones!
The rest of the seedlings were still too small/can’t handle the cooler temps at night so they are still getting bigger and stronger inside.
St. George Utah is about an hour and half away and is the “big city” near us, it has the nearest real stores….so we adventured this week with a list of errands to run. We explored a garden there and it was so pretty! And the sunset on the way back through Zion was beautiful!!
While in St. George Chase found a hat and a few shirts and now we have three cowboys!
I painted some mountains along the boys beds in the bunk room….we might wrap the mountains around the whole room….but we’ll see about that! Love how they turned out for now! (This project $5.03- for a pint of paint—the darker brown and then I mixed the brown and the white/green that I had used for the living room and made the second range out of that, and then used the color for the living room for the front range!)
The ranch had an employees Jeep tour ride and we went! Fun little family outing one night!
The buffalo fence is done!! ✅ and on that note….is it a buffalo or is it a bison. Well technically it’s a bison. There is no such thing as a buffalo in America. The only buffalo is a water buffalo and they are in Africa and Asia. Genetically the bison we see are closer to cattle than the real buffalo 🐃. But somewhere in American culture we started calling a bison a buffalo. It’s not like they are extinct from hunting or that the bison took over. It’s just that we called the bison a buffalo and it stuck. Soooo as we talk about them in our little family you would be corrected by a five year old and told they are “American Buffalo or Bison not just buffalo”…. so there you have it folks, may you sleep better tonight with that tid bit of info!