Please meet the latest addition to Bonafide Farm: Tucker.

Tucker is a registered English Shepherd, a breed of dogs known for three traits: guarding, hunting and herding—all things I need help with here. English Shepherds used to be abundant in America during more agrarian times. These old-time “farm collies,” known for their good judgment and devotion for their families and homesteads, became a rare breed when the AKC began encouraging dogs to be bred for looks in the show ring instead of their working ability.

Tucker comes from a long line of steadfast and accomplished farm dogs and shows great promise as my right farmhand. I found him online and then traveled to Columbus, Ohio to pick him up on March 20, when he was about eight weeks old. He will be thirteen weeks old tomorrow.

Since he arrived we’ve been getting to know each other, taking lots of long walks in the woods and pastures, attending puppy class, learning to be respectful of kitty and guineas, meeting friends, and settling in to a new routine. It’s been quite the experience for someone who has never raised a puppy until now, but we are having fun and the joy he takes in life is contagious. I am really enjoying watching as he grows in confidence and ability—simple things like him learning to walk up the porch stairs fill me with happiness and pride. And it is wonderful to have a dog about the farm. In fact, I can honestly say that he filled a hole I knew existed here and with his arrival things feel complete. One of my favorite sounds each day is the tag jingling on his collar as he walks around or flops on the floor for a nap, which he does a lot!

I am wary of turning this into a “blog about my dog,” but Tucker has managed to sneak his way into most of my recent photos, and he needs a proper introduction. Please welcome Tucker. Of Bonafide Farm.

Last night. This is the second hailstorm in less than two weeks.

One thing I’d like to become more knowledgeable about before I die is tree cultivation. I’ve started by planting a few trees each year at Bonafide Farm, and you’ll find academic arborist texts on my bedside table. Hot, I know.

I planted a peach tree last year—or was it two years ago? I forget. Anyway, as I rationalized that it needed some time to get established, it had grown tall and spindly and leaned in a most unattractive way. I finally resigned myself to the idea that it was ready for obedience school. On the advice of a friend, photos of a local peach orchard, and a very thorough booklet from the Virginia Cooperative Extenstion, I gathered my instructions, tape measure, and loppers and headed out in between spring thunderstorms to do the deed.

At precisely 35″ up the trunk, I applied light pressure with my lopers and more than half of my still-blooming tree fell to the ground. It was a bit horrifying to make the cut, but I have to trust in my instructions that state that instead of a central leader, I want to develop a nice “upside down umbrella limb structure.”

I say we’re closer already. Only time will tell if this was indeed the right move, but at least I got rid of the annoying lean!

It was two years ago that I first laid eyes on what was to become Bonafide Farm. I was living in Northern Virginia, working in D.C., and actively scouting all real estate between there and Charlottesville. My parents discovered this property, for sale by owner, on one of their drives. They sent a couple of photos, and I wrote it off until the next time I was down for a visit. Then my mom and I took a drive. It was raining, and I was taking photos from the passenger’s seat of her car as we slowly passed by.

The house was nothing to write home about, but I liked the setting…the way the house sat proud and high surrounded by its fields and trees and mountains.

That night, I called the number on the for sale sign. Fast forward two years and I am sitting in a beautiful almost year old house that looks like it’s always been here, windows open, smelling daffodils and woodsmoke from last night’s fire, bacon from this morning’s breakfast. I’ve eradicated the honeysuckle that was suffocating the quince in the photo above, and replaced the mailbox, and added many young trees. My kitty is in the open window, listening to the birds singing their evensong. What a two years it’s been, but I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be right now.

Thank you all for your comments and e-mails in response to my last post. It certainly helped to know you all are out there.

Since all of my recent posts have been about death, let’s liven things up with today’s discovery:

I opened the bluebird box and it appears that Mr. and Mrs. have decided to stay. The obnoxious starlings seem to have lost that battle, and I’m seeing the bluebird pair all about the property as they get ready for their family. And the deceased guineas’ feathers are padding the nest. I couldn’t think of a better use for them. It’s a small consolation that means a lot right now.

Cryin’. Sunday was a bad night to be a guinea at Bonafide Farm. I lost seven of my remaining thirteen birds to the foxes.

It all started a few weeks back when the entire flock was panicked while re-entering their coop for the night. Since then I’d had them out once, the night I lost two birds who wouldn’t go back in the coop at dark. I thought maybe they’d gotten over their fear, and let them out Sunday to enjoy the warming weather and booming tick population.

Come nightfall, the entire flock refused to go in the coop. As it grew dark they huddled in the weak pool created by the coop light, all thirteen birds in a tight knot. I kept going out throughout the evening, trying to round them in. They’d all get to right under the door of the coop and scatter without entering.

Near midnight I tried an emergency rescue. I shut off all lights on the farm so the birds couldn’t see, which made them freeze in place, and I entered the field with a flashlight hoping to physically grab each bird and return it to the coop. I managed to snag four. I had my hands on many others, and one of the sickest sensations I’ve experienced is desperately hanging onto the wing of a large, terrified bird, feeling its joints pop open under my fingers as it fought me but knowing that if I let go it would surely be killed. As whole handfuls of feathers tore away in my hands the birds chose their fates.

I closed up the coop on the rescued four and went to bed. I dreamed of dog attacks in the woods, and calling to my brother for a shotgun he never delivered.

In the morning a small group of birds were screaming near my back porch. Another was 50 feet high in my neighbor’s oak tree, so small I could barely make her out in the dawn light. I stepped outside and at the woodline saw a fox scramble back into the forest.

I had eight birds remaining. By lunch there were four. I walked the fields counting piles of feathers. Some had bloody flesh hanging on them, still moist. I found one pile—the only slate blue bird I’d had left—right up against my house near the fireplace. By nightfall two birds had emerged from hiding.

The flock of six entered the coop that night, and I shut the door behind them. That night there was a huge windy thunderstorm, and most of the feathers blew away.

Kitty got her first mouse last week. Good kitty!

I spent a great day working outside in the yard, hacking down an old grapevine that I hope to rehabilitate. I opened the guinea coop and a few birds spent a lovely afternoon enjoying the newly green grass. It rained off and on throughout the afternoon, and I left their coop door open. Yet they didn’t rejoin their flock.

Around sundown there were about seven birds still outside the coop, circling madly but not jumping inside. I think they were still traumatized from their last foray out, which ended in a panicked flock right at the door of the coop. I curse myself for allowing that to happen, as I think it undid months of conditioning them to calmly return to their coop.

As it got dark I turned on their coop light, as well as the garage floodlight, hoping that the birds could see their way in and put themselves to bed. I sat on the front porch and watched as the sky filled with deep blue clouds out of the west.

All of a sudden the wind began to blow like the proverbial freight train, sending leaves tumbling across the driveway and causing the floodlights to do a wild shadow dance. It was dark now, and I could barely see the pale bobbing heads of several guineas still outside of the coop. I went inside for my boots, and the wind was blowing so hard it ripped the door from my hands. The power cut off just as I was stepping off the porch.

As huge raindrops began to assault me I approached the coop to find four birds huddled in a mass outside of an open door leading to food and water and the rest of their flock lit up in vital detail by a warm lamp. And yet these birds were camped out together in the dark and pelting rain.

I tried to herd them into the coop. Despite my warnings that, “If you don’t get inside right now you are dinner for the fox!,” they weren’t falling into line. In the dark, and with soaking feathers, they were moving unusually slow. So I did something I’d not done since they were tiny babies. I grabbed one. And, surprisingly, it ended up in my hands. I took it to the coop and threw it inside, setting off a flurry of dust and feathers inside. Pleased with my success, I went back for more.

I grabbed a second bird. It felt substantial. Meaty. I know to admit such brands me a horrible caretaker, but it was the dinner hour and thoughts of fricassee flashed through my head.

I overcame my base impulse and tossed the bird inside with his flock.

The remaining two guineas must have gotten wise to the farmer/predator in their midst. I chased one a bit, in and out of pale light and dark shadows, tripping over tractor implements (which cost me half my big toenail on my right foot) and made my strike. The bird screamed and burst away, leaving me with a handful of feathers. I gave up on that one, and approached the other, able to see only its bright frantic eyes in the flashes of lightning. When this bird headed into the pasture I gave up the chase. My jeans were soaked and made it hard to move my legs. My hair was dripping water, plastered to my skull. The thunder boomed again. Screw these birds.

I closed up the coop, and dashed inside to peel off wet clothes directly into the dryer.

Upstairs I turned on the shower. Nice and hot and sane. I teased grapevine buds out of my hair, and a lone guinea feather slowly swirled down the drain.

The front yard looks totally different without Buck Mountain.

While weeding the front flowerbed last weekend, I poked around the bases of some dried-up, dead-looking plants and was surprised to find tiny new growth. I am excited that last fall’s landscaping rampage may just pay off this spring.

(Rosa) ‘Pat Austin’