Monday, September 01, 2008

A Day at the Farm

You know you've come to the right place when there's a fleece drying by the front door.

FleeceAtDoor

This is the home of Pat and Bob and Isabel and Olivia. Bob had to work, Olivia had to shop (she's 14, school is about to start, what'd you expect?), but Pat and Olivia and I had a glorious fibery day together yesterday. I admired the Cheviot ram lambs - these are twins, believe it or not. The coated one is close to twice the size of his brother, and his balls are probably three times as big.

CheviotLambs

I admired one of the she-devil Shetland ewe lambs.

DevilEyes

I admired some of the chickens.

Chickens

I forgot to photograph the horse, the dogs, the cats, and the rabbits; just use your imagination. I did admire the garden's bounty.

Bounty

Which was transformed in Pat's creative hands into a scrumptious lunch.

EdibleBounty

A nifty caterpillar visited around lunch time. Despite poring over Dave Wagner's great caterpillar book, I still don't know what this is.

UnknownCat

I admired Isabel's enormous haul of ribbons from various fairs.

IsabelRibbons

And Olivia's (she's 4 years younger; give her time).

OliviaRibbons

Pat and Olivia tortured little wooly dogs with very sharp needles while I knit and spun.

HardAtWork

Olivia was very intent.

IntentOlivia

An incipient dog.

Doggie

An even cuter incipient dog.

CuteCoggie

We took a walk in the late afternoon to stretch our legs and admire the neighborhood crop of Monarch and Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars. One of the Monarch cats was very dark.

MilkweedTussockCat

DarkMonarch

I think I want to go live on Pat's little farm.

5 comments :

Elizabeth said...

I'm sure my husband can help you with your caterpillar ID question. His first postdoc was in a lab that worked on tobacco horn worms (manduca sexta) and this one definitely has a horn.

Laurie said...

Isn't that a tomato horn worm?? Hates them. Ugh.

Elizabeth said...

Not a tomato horn worm. But a sphingid, which is the same family. Mr SABLE is researching as I type.

He says a Clearwing Sphinx, especially if it has a yellow base to its tail.

Hope that helps.

Bezzie said...

Wow, everything you wanted to know about 'pillars but was afraid to ask!!

Looks like a great day (although I wouldn't have put my fleece by the door...what if it got swiped???)

Batty said...

Those wooly dogs are so cute! They are simply adorable!

And before I read this post, I'd only ever seen a woolly caterpillar. I grew up in the country, but in Germany, and we had completely different critters there.