There is a female golden eagle that lives down by the river on one corner of our property. I’ve only seen her once close-up, as she was atop an electric pole looking down on our chicken pasture (Golden Eagles generally don’t eat chickens, but she did seem to like watching them.), but most every day I hear her cries and see her flying high above the river. Golden Eagles are rare in this part of the country, and there’s an outside chance she’s really a Red-Shouldered Hawk, but I really think she’s an eagle. I haven’t found her nest (there are several of them in that area of the woods), but she has two young birds that are just learning to fly. I understand that’s rare, too – the hatchlings are hatched a couple days apart, and often the older will kill the younger as it is hatching. The mother has made a game of teaching the babies, namely hide-and-go-seek (or maybe Marco Polo). She flies up from the river into a patch of woods at the other end of our property, up by the house. There, she hides in the branches and makes her calls. The babies then leave their nest and try to find her. They listen to her, answer her calls, and fly a little closer. There’s a little creek with a line of trees that connects their nesting trees with the woods she’s hiding in, and they hop from tree to tree along the way. Last week, they stopped at nearly every tree to rest. This morning, they made the whole flight with only one stop. Once they find their mother, there’s a loud cacophony of screeches, the eagle equivalent of “nanny nanny boo boo, I can see you!”. Then, she flies back to the nest with the two of them following behind. The year has really rushed by, as I’ve been pre-occupied with getting ready for our own baby while still trying to keep up with the farm and of course my “real” job. I’ve had to cast aside many things to get done what I’ve needed to, but I’ve made sure to keep up with what’s going on on the land around us. I made sure to find this year’s fawn – when I first spotted it, it was no bigger than a house cat (only with longer legs). Now, it’s a little larger than our dog, and its mother leads it on walks through the protective thickets of blackberry brambles down to our pond for drinks. There are sights like this all around our place, and when I feel stressed and tired and sometimes maybe a little sad, just a look around is all I need to pick me back up. Everything is nearly ready for the arrival. We still need to turn our own house into a full nest and there are still some odds and ends to take care of outside the home, but by and large we are ready. Which is good, since our addition could come any day. Hopefully, though, not until late next week. Resources: Listen to the calls of 550 North American birds at eNature.com. Learn about the birds of Georgia from the Georgia Wildlife Foundation See a young fawn at someone else’s house. This entry brought to you by Schlake. So, Schlake says my webpage sucks when it’s not being updated, and postulated that maybe I wasn’t being rewarded enough to keep it up, so he sent me a complete collection of New Mexico Tech 49’ers money. A vintage set, too, that I made back in the day. The bills even have my signature on them. So, Schlake, thanks to your payment, I’ve witten a nice, long update. Maybe there will even be more right on the heels of this one.

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I nearly forgot to mention that all this spring, our farm has been on the website of the excellent Field to Plate program. We’ll be there all year long, but right now we’re featured.

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“So, Eric,” I’m often asked, “what’s the worst thing about harvesting your vegetables for market?” Well, it’s not the crimp in my back caused by being bent over for several hours straight. That does remind me I’m getting older, though. It’s not the picking of salad greens, leaf by leaf, plant by plant. That’s really the only way to produce a high quality salad I can be proud of. It’s not having to wear a flashlight strapped to my head so I can work in the fields well past bedtime. With the darkness comes cooler air, which is good for both me and the vegetables. It’s not the cold rains that seem to always hit at dusk on harvest night. When it’s been dry the rest of the week, rains are always welcome. It’s not the staying up until the early morning hours, only to have to get back up a couple hours later. I attended New Mexico Tech, where such behavior was a daily occurance. Once a week is child’s play now. No, the worst thing is when my brain decides to start singing to me, when I’d rather be listening to the chickens clucking over roost space and the other natural sounds of farm life. My brain’s serenade selection, in infinite loop no less, this week was “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)”. And even that might not have been so bad had my brain only known the words.

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I was going to write an entry here, but then over the head phones came William S Burroughs singing R.E.M.’s “Star Me Kitten”. And now I can’t think of anything else.

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