More farms!

I decided to use the picture collage part of Picasa...so far I love using this program. Make things much easier to post onto the blog.

So this was another farm we went to with our newly returned friends...it is a sheep and llama farm primarily. In fact, the woman of the farm is a weaver too! How exciting for H.

The llamas are 'guard llamas'...they seemed pretty tame to me, but weren't that fond of any sort of attention... The sheep at the upper right are 'wool sheep' and the lower left is a 'meat sheep'. Mmmm....lamb. Apparently they start to 'harvest' them at 6 months...poor little lambies.

 

This here is a recurring little visitor...a member of the Reduvidae order of insects. AKA the 'Assasin bug'.



















These are some red deer/elk crosses at a local farm. The deer are from New Zealand stock and then crossed with elk...not really sure why. Our friends bought some of the sausage from these deer and mmmm...delish.


This is the door of the new store and winery. I love the hardware!


They were displaying this clock inside (it was for sale)...mom and dad, I thought you would appreciate this! 

Our new killing, fungal friend

So we have been finding loads of these mushrooms on our property. I have been removing about 3-10 every other day. My mom identified them as Amanita virosa, the 'Destroying Angel' which is only the most poisonous mushroom in the world. These pcitures are of an older specimen and the younger ones are exactly as they appear on the Wikipedia site and many others. We were not too happy. Oh well, I guess we are happy that we have so much natural diversity that we can have such abberant mushrooms as this. It's just a big concern to watch the kids closely so that we know they aren't going anywhere near them.

A isn't afraid of much right now, so this is a difficult thing to convince her not to touch them, especially since all she knows are edible mushrooms, which she has decided that she loves.


 

OK, so this picture was from a while ago, but it was extremely hot that day...

A mushroom forest made of cups and bowls...

Our huge squash plant growing on the compost heap!!! This is near the back of the yard...but still lots more behind me!

A leopard frog...one of the many of the summer.