Egg production

The chickens are really laying a lot of beautiful large brown eggs. More than we can eat. Debby has begun selling some at $3.50 for 18 eggs (same price as our local farmer's market). The chickens free range in the pasture daily. John takes care of the chickens.
The eggs are different from those you buy in a store. Debby did a test, she scrambled up some store bought eggs and some of our farm fresh eggs. The farm fresh eggs have a much brighter richer color.

Fall colors at home

It's very good to be back home at the farm. Picture shows the view from the back of the house.

Trip to Japan

I just returned from a business trip to Japan where I attended the LLRF09 conference in Tsukuba. Japanese culture is very different from the US. Japanese love to eat raw seafood. Japanese people are very polite. All the toilets that I saw in Japan were electronic. I took a picture of a hand filed hotel room key, my brother Mark will appreciate this. Most vehicles are Toyota, Honda, Mazda etc. as one might expect. Bicycles are very popular in Japan. My colleagues and I had a good conference but were all glad to head back to the good old USA.

Spicy!

Debby grew a bunch of Jalapeno peppers in the garden this year and they did very well. Since we had so many Debby decided to make some Jalapeno jelly over the weekend. It turned out very well.

Upper pond, water fall

John and I went on a hike to the upper pond a few days ago. The upper pond is spring fed and is full and actually overflowing. What is interesting is that the upper pond is at the highest point on our farm and that very little surface water goes to the pond, once you get a little bit away from the pond in all directions the ground slopes away from the pond.

We also went to see the waterfall located in the hollow near the well house. There are openings that go back in the rock for several feet. We'll have to explore more in the future.

More critters

I was hiking with John the other day and saw a cute snail on top of some horse manure out in the pasture. This morning just outside the house I spotted a cute little spotted salamander in the grass.

Signs headed to Virginia

I was driving to work last week on I-40 west of Knoxville and I saw a truck hauling some highway signs. I snapped a picture when I realized these signs were headed to my old stomping ground in Northern VA.

Wild flowers

We still have some wildflowers in the garden.

Glowing bugs, nice evening, snakes

Tonight I was walking in the dark from the barn to the house and noticed several glowing bugs on the ground. Actually this was not the first time I've seen them, they have been around for some time. These bugs glow green like lightning bugs, but they are not flying.

We enjoyed a beautiful sky tonight, clear, cool, and full of stars.

Yesterday John announced that he and Joey saw some dead copperhead snakes near the pond and that I probably had run over them earlier with the tractor. We went to look today and sure enough there was a dead snake that I had accidentally run over with the tractor. We brought the snake remains to the house and will try to identify the species. Oh, by the way, if Nanny is reading this there are a ton of huge poisonous snakes running all over the place around here, you probably don't even want to think about coming for a visit :)

Flying V's

We were just eating dinner and John said there was a giant "V" formation of geese flying overhead. I've seen a lot of geese lately, it must be time to head South. I still think it's amazing how geese learned to work together and fly in formation to reduce aerodynamic drag.