Bittersweet

 After a long day of Christmas shopping, it's sweet to come home and go out to the barnyard to do evening chores.  Even after a tiring day, there's something calming and fulfilling about the routine.  There's a pang, of course, as we pass the empty chicken tractor.  It's surprising how much we can miss a bunch of birds!

But we've got Wren's gang ensconced in the Brooder House, and they seem a bit calmer today.  I think they're settling into their new routine.  Hopefully some time in February we'll start getting eggs from them.  We had a sweet surprise a few days ago when we found that Gypsy is finished molting and has started laying us nice green eggs again.  Victoria and Esmerelda seem to think they're on a permanent vacation!

Out in the barnyard, little Siobhan is always a delight.  She's growing up, getting stocky and sturdy now.

I'm certainly no expert on bovine conformation, but I can already tell she's going to be built better than her mother.

She was more interested in my camera snapping pictures than she was in Mama's feed.

She would have crawled right under the corral panel if she could have!

When I went out in the barnyard, she followed me to get a closer look at the camera and eventually to touch my gloved hand.

"Aren't I adorable?" she says.

All of a sudden Siobhan seemed to feel the frosty chill in the air, and she began to buck and gallop and race around in circles as fast as she could go.  Some of the pictures are a bit blurry, but you'll notice she's more in focus than the background.  That's because I was panning the camera to follow her movement, and it gives you an idea just how fast she was going.

Oops!  Who's this getting into the act?  Sara started acting like a calf, bucking and galloping in circles, too.  If the pictures are a little blurrier than Siobhan's, it's because she came running towards me, so I was moving, too!

I think she's pretending she's doing the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain!

And here I think she's pretending she's a bull going after the matador.  In case she thought I was pretending to be a matador, I left the barnyard!

And we left Sara and Siobhan both peacefully eating hay. Now that's a sweet sight!