Keepin' Cool

We had a beautiful evening last night, clear sky, bright moon. This morning the temperature was 49 degrees outside when I woke up, very refreshing. What was not so cool was a visitor I spotted outside, a hawk was sitting on a fence post near the house (see picture, this was the best I could get with my cell phone camera). So, I decided to not open up the pigeon loft this morning. My birds are disappointed but at least they are not someone's breakfast.

The cold temp brought a heavy dew. Yesterday Buzz was working again in the upper field to make hay, he should be back at it later today.

I banded two baby pigeons this morning, they are babies of my blue bar hen 721 who won the 300 mile race last fall.

Last night after work I went and rescued another pigeon that showed up at the Tate School of Discovery, it was a fancy little pigeon with band "NPA 8 07 DH 139". I'll try to track down a contact for this bird today. The fancy pigeon is a cute little bird. When you hold one of these it feels like you are just holding a bunch of feathers, they are so light. When you have a racing/homing pigeon in your hand you know you are holding something, they are strong and heavy.

After dinner last night I worked on the riding mower. We have an old John Deere STX46 hydro which we have pretty much abused on the farm. On Monday I removed the mowing deck and loaded it in the Suburban, Debby dropped it off at the local JD dealer. $258 later we had three new blades, new blade bolt kit, new belt, three new idler arm pulleys/bearings, and an engine maintenance kit. I changed the engine oil/oil filter, fuel filter, air filter, and spark plug. I reattached the mower deck. Started right up, should be ready for more bush-hogging uhhmm, I mean grass cutting.

More cool stuff: the AC in my old car has not been working very well so yesterday at lunch I decided to buy one of those $20 AC recharge kits at Walmart. The result was excellent, nice cold air!

John and Mary have been using water to keep cool and have fun. Every evening they are outside playing with their super soaker squirt guns and the hose.