Thunder boomers, koi and calf relocations

The first right while we were milking last night. Nothing serious, just got us wet with a good rain. We needed it. One upshot of that was a toad serenade last night. (I think they were partying down in the garden pond.) Amphibians, except for red backed salamanders, have been mighty scarce this spring. Dry weather I guess. Anyhow, it seems wonderful to me that something as homely as a toad has such a lovely song.

Actually right from the get go we had an amazing day yesterday. Thanks to Teri at Farm Life we discovered Craigslist. Now we check the local farm and gardens listings several times a day. Thus we discovered that someone over by Mariaville Lake had baby koi for sale for two bucks each. We all made the trip over and bought seven. However, the nice lady whose front yard pond is apparently teeming with little orange, silver, white and black fishies, threw in three extras.

Now if they will just stay IN the pond. We have had a terrible time with koi jumping out in the past. I am hoping they grow and thrive.

Only four of our old gold fish made it through to warm weather, although they all survived the winter. They contracted a terrible bacterial disease just as the weather warmed up though and died in droves. I am sure we would have been fine, but the spring fed watering trough where we have kept most of them for the past twenty years or so dried up and we had to put all those fish in the garden pond last fall. Not good. Way too crowded.

This is Carlene. We needed to get this door open for ventilation
so we needed to move her to a big stall

Then we went out to help the boss clean the barn. We took calf registration photos, cleaned stalls and moved some older calves into regular stalls. One the was tied in front of a door we needed to open to get some air into the barn. It was so much more comfortable last night with it open.

Carlene's other side. These photos will go on her registration papers

At night we had an "end of internship and two kids graduating" sort of party with pizza, calzone, grinders, French fries and the new National Treasure movie. (Grumpy old party pooper mom read a John Grisham novel, but stayed in the vicinity.)

It was nice. A really great day. I feel lucky. Maybe it is was the koi

This is the herb garden, honey locust tree
and part of the flowers around the garden pond...which you can't see.