Early Monday morning I was awoken by Tucker barking a steady, strong alarm downstairs in his crate. I’d never heard him do that before, so I got out of bed and peered out the window into the darkness. There was a car parked off the road right in front of my house, and in its headlights I could see a woman moving around outside. I thought she maybe had wrecked her car so I pulled my boots and coat on over my pajamas, grabbed my Maglite, and stepped outside.

A man emerged from the car and explained that they’d hit a small deer right in front of my house. It hadn’t done much more than break their car’s headlight, but the deer was lying by my mailbox, still alive. They didn’t know what to do with it.

“I have a small knife in the car, but I’m on my way to work and wearing a white shirt,” the man said.

“Just leave it,” I said, hoping that it was injured enough that it would soon die on its own. The couple got back in their car and continued down the dark road.

As I got ready for work I kept checking on the deer, which had enough strength left to flop circles around the quince bush by the mailbox. As I approached it each time, it tried to run but appeared to have one or more broken legs. As it got later it appeared to lose strength, and its eyelids drooped and were closed by the time I left the farm. Unfortunately, it was still breathing.

From work I called the county police to send someone out to shoot the deer, which they did. They also claimed VDOT would be along to collect the body.

Of course VDOT workers have better things to do like stand around staring at potholes, and when I got home from work the deer was still there, now with a fresh bullet hole in its chest and minus its eyeballs and intestines thanks to a flock of gigantic vultures. I couldn’t have this animal rotting in my front yard, so I tied a piece of twine around its neck and began to tug it, revealing a dark blood spot and spent red shell case under the body. It was much heavier than I was expecting–I’d guess at least 65 pounds. In short bursts I dragged the deer all around the perimeter of my property line into the field behind my house. I took the long way to avoid dragging its scent through my yard, trying to avoid enticing my dog to follow the trail.

The creature grew heavier when we hit the thigh-high grass of the hayfield. I had to stop every few feet just to rest and readjust the twine that was cutting into my hands. Each time I started up again the deer’s leathered snout banged against the heels of my boots.

I found a nice hollow several hills away from the house and pointed the sightless body west, the direction it was traveling when it was hit. I tied the twine into a bow around the deer’s neck and walked away. When I got back to the site of the kill even the shell case was gone, carried off by the red-attracted scavengers who still watched from a nearby tree, wondering what I’d done with their dinner.

It was only late that night, lying in bed, that I realized I could have loaded the body into the tractor bucket and saved myself the grisly march. Though the idea of washing blood and guts off the tractor has similarly low appeal.

Three days later what’s stayed with me from this experience, other than the pearly whiteness of the inside of a freshly opened eye socket, is pride in Tuck’s developing guard/alert dog skills. He’s still young and actively figuring out what’s normal versus what’s not, and I am doing a lot of work to try to communicate the level of vigilance and warning I expect from him. For example, he still doesn’t reliably bark when people drive in the driveway, yet will sound off in response to a perfectly normal truck just passing by on the road. He is literally, right now, finding his voice. For him to alert me on Monday so calmly but effectively to a very abnormal scenario on the road in front of the house impresses me, and it bodes well for the partnership we are building.

Tucker running full-speed out of the woods toward me when I call for him.

When his ears flip up in the wind I call it his border collie impersonation.

I took a birthday journey last weekend and turned 32 on Friday in a boat on a misty mountain lake with good beer, a good friend, and my fantastically good dog.

It was the first I’d been away from the farm for more than a night since this chapter of my life began two and a half years ago. Although it was wonderful to be on the road, camping and exploring through beautiful Southwestern Virginia, coming home to the farm was a sweet new pleasure. Never before have I lived in a place in which I was so invested—physically, spiritually, emotionally and creatively. These investments return a feeling of rootedness and connection to this very particular patch of earth, which is exactly what I was seeking when I left my transient life of roosting in anonymous apartments around the country.

In fact, I like the feeling of returning so much that I am going to start traveling more, just so I can come home.

And while we’re celebrating comings and goings and getting older and moving deeper instead of faster or more often, I’ve made it to my 200th blog post!

Today we had a big earthquake not too far from here in Mineral, Va. It was a whopper for Virginia, a 5.8—the largest quake in Virginia since another 5.8 in 1897. I was at work, sitting at my desk, staring at my computer when the filing cabinets began to walk across the floor.

And just now an aftershock came through as I’m at home, on my computer. The casings around my front door and windows creaked, unflappable Tuck cocked his head to the side and regarded the vibrating that seemed to fill even the air around us, and then it was over.

The thing that amazes me more than the earthquake is how fast everyone knew about it, around the world! It was listed on Wikipedia’s Virginia earthquakes page within minutes of occurring. Just now that 4.2 aftershock was posted on the USGS site and the data tweeted by the Capital Weather Gang within 17 minutes of the event. I can get every bit of geological post-game with a half-second online search, and if that’s too much for me to process, there’s always some humorously competent professor on NPR who’s happy to break it down for me.

And that’s just the scientific stuff, the islands in the swamp of sensationalist journalism that proffers such astute observations as:

A helicopter inspected the Washington Monument, and it was found to be structurally sound, the National Park Service said. The grounds were being reopened late Tuesday afternoon, but not the plaza and monument itself, where the interior was being inspected.

U.S. Park Police spokesman David Schlosser said to his eye, the monument was “clearly not leaning. It’s standing tall and proud.” via CNN

and

Christina Summers, a young mother who lives in New York City’s Greenwich Village, said she thought the shaking was caused by construction in a neighboring apartment.

“Holy cow! My couch was wiggling like those beds you put a quarter in,” Summers said. via Reuters

So much information, so fast. How far we’ve come from cowering before the power of angry, trident-wielding gods!

Or have we really? Now we just worship at electron altars—as the temples crumble around us.

Saturday morning I went to collect the eggs and found these:

Notice anything unusual about that third egg from the left? It’s ginormous! To its left are two guinea eggs, and to its right are three typical-sized chicken eggs. Who says that pullets start out with tiny eggs? One of my girls is a rock star. Poor thing!

I accidentally cracked this giant egg on the counter, so I went ahead and investigated. As I suspected, it was a double yolker!

Way to go, little hen!

I don’t eat eggs, so I scrambled it up in some leftover bacon grease and used it as a high-value training treat for some down-stay practice with Tucker. He thought it was delicious!

Last night’s full moon is nicknamed the Full Hay Moon.

Fitting, then, that I came home to find a neighboring farmer had cut the back pasture for hay. It made for great vole hunting for the pup this morning!

Who’s a big farm dog now? Tucker looks right at home in the hayfield—just like his greatgrandfather and greatgrandmother. Now if I only had some cows or sheep to complete the picture!

Tucker in his crate, lying in a sunbeam.

A massive storm rolled just south of the farm last Sunday. Though I didn’t get any rain, I was treated to a lighting and thunder show that seemed to go on for hours. It was the slowest-moving storm in memory. It gave me ample time to sit on the front porch and practice my lighting photography.

Around 8:30 p.m. the power went out, and I experienced my first extended outage since moving into my house. I lit a few candles and enjoyed the silent sound of my house, which I hadn’t heard since it was under construction and premechanized.

It wasn’t until the next day that I heard of the extensive damage just south of the farm. I consider myself fortunate to have dodged the storm—this time—and come through no worse for wear. My freezer didn’t even defrost a bit, and the power was out for 15 hours!

Let’s take a trip back in time, way back to winter—March 25! That’s when I started the project that was to consume much of the next three months. Without further ado, a high-speed photo tutorial on How to Make a (Critterproof) Garden from Scratch:

Find a nice piece of land, preferably fairly level, and stake out your corners. If you’re a redneck like me you’ll already have big dead patches of pasture from where your junk trailers had been parked for the past year:

Next, borrow the services of a family member with a pretty sweet new ride-on tiller!

Once the ground is broken up, add peat moss, sand, compost. Till that in.

Decide the garden looks too small. Repeat above process to increase area by a third:

Final garden: 20′ x 36′. Looking good!

Work stops to wait out the final snow of the year on March 27.

When not working on the garden, get acquainted with brand-new, eight-week old Bonafide Farmdog:

Next up: Deeproofing! Set posts and string tensioned wires to support 7′ deer fencing:

Puppy raising takes time away from the garden and in the meantime, spring has sprung! On April 23, begin hanging deer fencing, a slow process when done alone. This is heavy-duty polypropylene that should last a good number of years:

Stay tuned for the rest of the garden build, including all the essential critter-thwarting tricks!

Well, it must be summer. The snakes are out again:

I literally walked into this one in the front yard this afternoon.

After I determined that this was indeed a harmless juvenile black snake, I figured I’d use this snake to help train my farm dog. And once he noticed the snake, he knew just what to do. He went in for a sniff:

When the snake reared up and started shaking its tail, Tucker backed off but began barking like crazy.

I’ve been working with Tucker on having good judgment with his barking, and this was one case in which an extended barkfest was entirely appropriate. So I let him go for it.

After a minute or so, I stepped between Tucker and the snake, told Tucker thanks for his alert but I had the situation under control, and called him to me as I walked toward the garage. He happily left the snake and trotted to my side. When we returned to the scene of the snake less than a minute later, the snake was gone. Tucker sniffed where it had been, but was no help finding it. Vanished. What I find amazing is that among the several acres of cleared land around my house, the odds of a very fast moving four-foot long snake and five foot eight woman intersecting are pretty incredible. And yet we did.

I am very pleased with Tucker’s reaction…that he didn’t try to kill the snake but certainly knew that something was out of the ordinary and could communicate that to me. And that he left the snake when asked is a good thing too.

With the snake gone, a happy smiling puppy, proud of his good work on the farm.