It’s been a bit longer than we like between posts. But since spring is finally here (knock on wood) you will forgive us since you, like us, are probably running around in today’s sunshine before tonight’s predicted rain.

Silence on the web does not mean it’s been quiet for The Quarry Farm. The new chicks are growing, as is the grass for Buddy and the goats. Fezzik and Inigo are displaying for every female fowl that could conceivably give them the time of day. Inconceivable? Not so for the little red hen that follows Fezzik around. The wild turkey hens on the nature preserve could care less, however.

Eventwise, The Quarry Farm has been on the road for the last couple of weekends. Saturday, April 20 took us up I-75 into Michigan for the Monroe Conservation District Tree Sale. Tim Kwiatkowski, good friend and conservationist for Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP), invited us, and an assortment of aquatic macroinvertebrates from Cranberry Run as well as an opossum that matured overwinter here, to be part of the Monroe County Earth Day celebration that was held alongside the tree sale pickup.

It was cold and the wind blew. Despite the weather thousands of trees were sold and the buyers learned a little about biological indicators and that Virginia opossums are fantastic garbage collectors. Some even decided the little guy was cute.

He was cute. And we assume he still is, wherever his nomadic opossum ways take him. Once the evenings warmed toward the middle of the week he finally ventured out of his open hutch and into the wild.

Cassie poses

Today, we had a short drive to the 6th Annual Mutt Strut and Craft Market sponsored by Putnam Pet Pals to benefit the homeless and neglected dogs of Putnam County and Northwest Ohio. They do good work and put on a great, loud show every year at the Putnam County Fairgrounds. Last year we set up a table at the Strut; it turned out to be one of the best offsite events that The Quarry Farm has ever been part of as we handed out packs of newsletters, talked to some amazing, compassionate people, and produced more canine caricatures than we could track. Although this year’s weather was sunny and warm, a day for breeding garage sales and other such competitions for public attention, the fairground was still hopping.

Better make that barking.

Good times.