{"id":4256,"date":"2017-05-08T11:04:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T17:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/?p=4256"},"modified":"2017-05-08T11:04:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T17:04:53","slug":"spring-baby-animals-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/08\/spring-baby-animals-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring & Baby animals, part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring & Baby animals, part 1<\/p>\n

I’ll call this post baby animals, part 1, because we’ve got so many more coming yet. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Most mornings I try to get in a walk after my first coffee, and before my second.<\/p>\n

When I step outside, these two are usually there to greet me. These are two of the three orange stray cats that have shown up on our farm over the past months.
\nThese two are Puddy Tat and Garfield. We’re quite certain they are brother (on the left) and sister (on the right, with the frost bitten ears) because they showed up within 2 hours of one another. Both are SUPER tiny, so it’s difficult to guess their age but we’re guessing they were about 6 months old when they showed up here this past winter, on a horribly cold day. It had been quite a long stretch of cold, and we’re certain that’s why Puddy Tat lost the tops of both her ears. They seemed quite freshly frozen when she showed up. \ud83d\ude41 Poor little thing. She’s obviously the more curious of the two, since she showed up first, so that probably got her into the trouble but also caused her to find u s. Her brother showed just 2 hours later, meowing on our driveway wondering where on earth his sister had gone. He must of\u00a0followed her scent to our door!<\/p>\n

These two, and the other orange tabby (which I’ll show below), are 3 of our most loyal cats. It’s amazing to me how they can suddenly appear, and then never want to leave. You’d expect them to be wanderers, yet here they are, every day waiting by the door for me to go for my morning walk and they almost always tag along.
\n\"18339528_10154294387351058_875700739_o\"<\/p>\n

Spring seems to have sprung suddenly here on the homestead. New leaves are forming on all the trees, big and small.<\/p>\n

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My walking paths are turning from brown to green, very quickly.<\/p>\n

\"18339473_10154294387116058_1867871474_o\"<\/p>\n

I truly feel blessed every day that I live on enough land of our own that I can go for a walk about as far as a city block, and never see another person.
\nThe quiet is very healing and I could not imagine being anywhere else.<\/p>\n

I was watching a tv show the other day and in the show two female co-workers had to stay in a hotel out in the middle of nowhere. They both commented several times on how quiet it was.
\nNeither of them remarked at how peaceful that seemed, instead both commented that it would cause them to go insane. One even remarked that she’d likely kill someone if she had to listen to that quiet day after day.<\/p>\n

So funny to me that someone could feel that way, when I feel the exact opposite in the quiet, and feel like I’d go crazy every time we spend even a day\u00a0in the city!<\/p>\n

\"18378862_10154294386951058_998617061_o\"<\/p>\n

Back to the peace and quiet on the Willard Homestead, and a few of our new babies!<\/p>\n

Here’s our little lamb April!<\/p>\n

\"18221542_10154281095396058_2960744438330848311_n\"<\/p>\n

She is super sweet! No fear in this little one. She even broke out of mom’s pen one day and headed over to the pen of her dad and his other ‘wife’ lol
\nThankfully they were more than happy to visit with her nicely, but her mama was none too happy about it and we could hear her very loud baa’s from the barn, all the way to the house. She wanted us to be aware that something was amiss so we’d come check it out and put baby back in with her! Then she was happy once again. Baby hasn’t left since, I think her mama gave her a good scolding!
\n\"18339251_10154294385871058_1584793473_o\"<\/p>\n

Here’s Garfield, one of the two strays mentioned above, with Kitty, the first orange tabby stray that arrived here. At first we wondered if she could possibly be their mother and if she had left them stranded somewhere when she came and found our homestead. However, she showed up here quite some time ago, at least 9 months or more before them. We are wondering now \u00a0if there’s a colony of orange cats living on an old abandoned farmstead somewhere not too far from us. Seems rather odd that 2 orange females and an orange male would just show up. lol<\/p>\n

\"18339558_10154294289891058_460065691_o\"<\/p>\n

And of course, with stray cats comes even more kittens on the homestead. These are Kitty’s.
\nUnlike all our other cats who choose to birth their kittens in our barn loft (most were born up there themselves, so it’s natural for them to make their nests up there as well), Kitty decided to make her nest on the empty side of the outdoor pig shelter. They are so cozy in there! We just hope she knows to teach them to stay away from the other side where the big pigs hang out. lol We’re keeping watch once they start wandering, otherwise we’ll have to move them up to the loft to keep them safe. Her kittens are SO cute.<\/p>\n

\"18339015_10154294292651058_1173149487_o\"<\/p>\n

She’s such a good mommy. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"18362130_10154294289371058_483466254_o\"<\/p>\n

Here’s another batch of kittens. I’m really interested to see how that front one looks when it grows up. It has a very neat mask on it’s face and markings some what like a black tabby, which I’ve personally never seen before.<\/p>\n

\"18361978_10154294294366058_2071292145_o\"<\/p>\n

Back to my walk. Here’s my horse Raiah. If you look closely, you can see our big black Berkshire boar behind her on the right.<\/p>\n

\"18362232_10154294386896058_2038050993_o\"<\/p>\n

Spring is not the nicest season for horses.
\nThey are usually stuck in muddy paddocks for a while until things dry up enough. Thankfully we do have another separate paddock that we can put them into during the day for a few hours.<\/p>\n

\"18379005_10154294385926058_1052076694_o\"<\/p>\n

A visit to two of our pigs. Our boar Bane, and his smaller girlfriend Jazz, one of our piglets from last year (from a different father, a Tamworth).
\nWe prefer the heritage pigs for their colour, and for many other reasons. Berkshire and Tamworth are our favourites. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"18362517_10154294386086058_1669344653_o\"<\/p>\n

Bane is a very lazy pig. He loves to spend his days digging holes with his snout and laying in the dirt. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"18339526_10154294386751058_998768842_o\"<\/p>\n

Well it’s time to head out and go do some work in the garden. Hoping to uncover our garlic today, and do some weeding around the strawberries and asparagus. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I’ll share more baby photos once some of our piglets have arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring & Baby animals, part 1
\nI’ll call this post baby animals, part 1, because we’ve got so many more coming yet. \ud83d\ude42
\nMost mornings I try to get in a walk after my first coffee, and before my second.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/i><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[228,232,234,277,280,327,328,343,344,346,347,349,353,507,555],"class_list":["post-4256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gardening-and-nature","category-the-homestead","tag-family","tag-farm","tag-farming","tag-garden","tag-gardening","tag-hobby-farm","tag-home","tag-homestead","tag-homestead-emporium","tag-homesteademporium","tag-homesteademporium-com","tag-homesteading","tag-horses","tag-prairies","tag-saskatchewan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4256"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4321,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256\/revisions\/4321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homesteademporium.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}