December 2011 highlights

Seems like there's never quite enough time to update this blog.  But I went through my photos to highlight what I've missed writing about.

 This is the last photo we have of the great duck experiment of 2011-2012, which was a big fat failure.  We fenced in the pond area and though there were many duck escapes, all seemed to be going ok.  But then one of the 3? males started wobbling and not looking so hot.  And then one of the females looked kind of bad.  We thought (maybe rightfully so) that one of the males was being agressive towards other ducks.  So the "offending" male was picked up by Jake for dinner. 

In the meanwhile the wobbly male died.  And the ducks numbers started decreasing.  One female (the one who had been beat up) disappeared (she wasn't so healthy looking) and then we had 2- one male, one female- Harold and Maude.  And then on the day of Luka's birthday party, Harold died (after getting wobbly).

The verdict?  Our pond wasn't clean.  The ducks died of botulism.

Maude never got sick and has since moved in with the chickens.  

GB and I spent 2 days draining and cleaning the pond.  We also bought a very large aerator.  It looks MUCH better, and we've decided to not get any more ducks in the near future.  Too loud, too poopy and too stressful.

 This sneaky kitty snuck into the house and onto OUR bed!

Ra'am returned for winter break!!

Christy, Brian, Emma and Maya visited!
We spent some quality time at the beach!


We had a super fun New Year's Eve party!

Joni spent some time near the pool!

We tackled a large pond project.... we're now unsure about it since the whole botulism fiasco (which was caused by anaerobic activity in the pond)

GB and I traversed the upper pasture to clean up the fenceline.  We opted to leave the giant tree that had fallen (too big!).  But GB cleaned up many many smaller trees/ branches that had fallen across the fence.