Bernard Pastel by Pamela Koster

Bernard Pastel by Pamela Koster
Bernard the Magnificent

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Okay, here are some pictures to accompany the post below:
Here is one one of my Michael Kluck chickens, Schmoo and Sparky acting cute, Dinky Van Duuck Schmoo looking brown.

For shame! For shame!

It's been 6 months since my last blog post (feels like confession....). What can I say? We've had our best (read: busiest) year ever here at the Cottonwood. It's finally slowing down for a few weeks and I'm going to catch up on EVERYTHING (well, maybe not EVERYTHING) that has happened in the past 6 months. Lots of activity over on the new property, the little house is finished (pictures to come) and we've continued to work the land this year. New native grasses have gone in and we're hoping they will give the thistle some competition. The explosion of our duck population (yes, Anne Duuck hatched another group-- Inky, Blinky, Pinky, & Floyd, to keep young Dinky van Duuck company) has been good for bug and weed control. Having two giant dogs trampling everything has also been good for weed control. Even with the dogs over there we've been able to plant a spruce, two cottonwoods and an oak. They seemed to do well this last year and benefited from the weekly draining of the duck/goose ponds. We've been expanding our fencing venture to allow the fowl and pooches access to the other acre of the property. Unfortunately, the pooches are expert escape artists. There must be 20 miles of fencing around the land, but they continue to find ways under, over, through it. We're going to take a fencing breather and then hit it again in the spring. We've also been busy here at the inn. Lots of new furniture in our rooms and several nice "face-lifts" in the rooms. We acquired a delightful hand-carved desk from a Santa Fe artist as well as a Jim Wagner cabinet with guess what painted on the front....Yes! A chicken!! Local Santa Fe artist Michael Kluck has also contributed to my growing chicken collection with not one, but two hand-carved beauties. Yes, his name is Michael Kluck and he carves chickens (but lots more, too! This was part one of the update, part two is underway.