Earlier this spring our dog Steve, a 13-year-old Shepherd/Husky mix, became very lethargic and quit eating. After giving him a couple of days to recover he still would not eat anything, and drank very little. We tried his favorite treats, chicken, steak, broth. He would barely even look at food. We took him to the Vet, who examined him and ran some blood work, which showed some extremely high liver enzymes. She gave him a shot and sent us home with some antibiotic pills, with advice on other food to try to feed to him. Nothing worked. He was visibly loosing weight and could barely get up to go outside. We had lost our other dog, Marley, last year, and we were now preparing to put Steve down. After seven days of no eating we called the Vet again and he said after this long of a time I think the dog has won. Shelly tried one more time with some broth, and Steve drank it. Then she fed him some boiled chicken, and he ate a little. For a few days he ate chicken at least once a day, sometimes twice. Then he would eat a small amount of dog food with the chicken, and eventually full portions again. He became more lively, walking around, until after a few weeks he was his old self, eating and drinking and running around the acreage again.

Epilogue: Shortly after his recovery I was in the garage with the overhead door open, mixing up Steve’s food. I called for him, and he came running, but when I turned around with his food bowl he disappeared from view. I called him again, no Steve. I walked out of the garage and spotted him around 30 feet away, with something in his mouth. I hollered at him to drop it and when he did I could see it was a baby bunny on its back with the little legs working around. As I started walking toward Steve he immediately picked back up the bunny and began chewing it, working it lengthwise across his mouth, breaking its bones. As I advanced on him he gave me a furtive look, turned the bunny in his mouth head first and with two or three neck stretches and gulps swallowed it whole. I stopped and just stared at him. I had only seen snakes do that. Over the next few days we kept an eye on him to make sure he was okay, and he was. Not only had he regained his old appetite, he had acquired a new one.

Along with our long, mild much needed rainy spring here in Iowa have come a couple of tornado outbreaks, first in mid-April, then at the end of that month. We didn’t suffer any damage here on the acreage, but we do feel more vulnerable living in the country than we ever did in the city. You just never know out here. The photo above was taken within twenty miles of where we live.

The fields have mostly all been planted, our lawn mowed, the trees are leafing out and the flowers are coming up. Speaking of our trees, this is the year for the power company to trim trees in our part of the county, to keep branches from interfering with or falling on power lines. Their first visit to our acreage was busy, out at the street. The second visit was semi-busy, in our driveway, with around a two hour lunch then not much else until they left around 4:30 in the afternoon. The third was back out at the street, with the safety cones out just in case they decided anything else needed to be done. The fourth visit involved parking a truck in the street in front of our house, safety cones out, with some light cleaning of the truck, a long lunch, then nothing. They might have been napping in the truck cab, or playing on their phones. Whatever they were doing they found a nice quiet place to play hooky for a while.

One night a couple of weeks ago I let our dog Steve outside, and as soon as I opened the screen door he rushed at a opossum that was drinking from Steves water dish on the back porch. They disappeared into the darkness and I couldn’t see or hear anything else. Around ten minutes later he was ready to come back in, and acted like nothing had happened. He had no injuries, and the next day I looked around and there was no sign of the opossum. Just a couple of nights later Shelly went out to call for Steve and there was a opossum standing at the bottom of the porch, eating a bit of old dog food Shelly had tossed out. Steve came trotting up to the porch, right past the opossum, which he completely ignored, and into the house. Shelly and I both stepped out on the porch and looked at the opossum, which regarded us with disinterest, and continued eating. We wondered, did they make some kind of a deal? What is going on? To be continued, I suppose…

After an almost complete absence over the winter months we now have birds galore again around the acreage. They have found and emptied the feeders of the leftover seeds from last fall, so I really need to get back in the habit of filling them again. So far we have seen the usual army of robins, who have been mating with each other seemingly non-stop for weeks now, and a scattering of little sparrows, a couple of red wing blackbirds (probably just passing through, we have yet to see any nest here) some crows, a blue jay, a mourning dove and some various finches.

As a kid I was sort of indifferent to the season of spring, which seemed to me to stand in the way of the very important season of summer. My mother always loved spring and when we were out and about she would point out, and name, the various flowering trees, bushes and ground flowers. I remember being impressed that she knew so many names of the spring flora, but still, I saw the season as a pause before the real deal of summer. As I have grown older I have come to enjoy the spring much more, which might have something to do with liking winter much less. Summer is still great (but it seems to be getting hotter and dryer) and autumn might be the best if it led into spring and not winter.

I checked out a book from our local library recently titled The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare. I came across a lovely poem in it titled, simply, “Spring.”

Now the slim almond tree

Tells April soon will be

Scattering her petals where

Snow still lies cold and bare.

Birds in its leafing boughs

Echoes of spring arouse.

Piercing the drowsy earth,

Crocus her flower brings forth –

Wooing the bees. And soon

Winter’s ice-silvered moon

Shall melt, shall kindle on high

Springtime within the sky.

Except for a chunk of January, now being called “the two-week winter” it has been a very warm winter here in Iowa, as well as around much of the country, with late February seeing a couple of days hitting the low 70s.

Now that it is March this winter season is officially the warmest one on record for Iowa, and this abnormally warm weather continues.

Shelly spotted two opossum close to the garage while walking to the house. She was able to keep our dog Steve from them, as we have decided they must be eating the mice around the acreage, and so we want to keep them around. We still have had no mice in the house or garage this winter, which is a first since we have lived here.

Some birds are finally back; our first robins were spotted on the acreage February 25, right around the time we saw the first flies this year. Even though winter took it easy on many of us this season we are greatly anticipating the glorious sights and smells of spring.

Since my last Acreage Update posted January 10^th we here in Iowa have experienced light snow, a “snow squall”, blizzards, frigid cold, heavy snow, wind gusts of 35 to 45 mph, whiteouts, drifting snow, road and school closures and an Arctic air mass. When it finally began to warm up we had a dense fog advisory every day until the end of January. Now we are experiencing some record high temperatures, with highs from the 40s into the low 60s. So far it looks like it really is a leap year, skipping over February into March. In some places it has been reported flowers are blooming! Some are predicting we will get “payback” for our current nice weather. That could be, but I am thinking we have prepaid for it with that horrible January. And we have Phil on our side, having predicted an early spring this year.

I saw a cat prowling around the acreage recently but I think it has moved on as I see no scat or tracks. However, we still have no mice in the garage or house. And I filled up all the bird feeders before the crazy winter weather hit, and they are still full. Strange…something different is going on this season.

At the end of last year we received an oil and gas lease offer from an Oklahoma company for our acreage, which is part of a 640 acre area where they want to drill. We have zero experience with this kind of thing, so we will check with our neighbors first to find out what they think about the issue.

One night recently I let our dog, Steve, outside and there was a opossum scrounging around the outside of the garage. Steve immediately went after the animal and it dropped into a ball before Steve even got to it. He picked it up in his mouth a couple of times, and I heard some cracking sounds, but let the opossum drop on the sidewalk each time after a few seconds. The playing dead worked and Steve lost all interest in it and wandered off to explore his yard. That left it to me to finish off the wounded animal.

We just experienced our first winter storm of the season. As usual people were worried about what might happen, stirred up by the forecasters. We received around 5 inches of snow, with some wide drifts whipped up by the wind. Down south of us, in lower Iowa, areas received 10 to 12 inches. Of course, by the end of winter we are not so much worried by the snow storms but sick of them and ready for spring. Another one is blowing through starting tomorrow.

I think we have almost finished winterizing the acreage. All of the flower pots have been gathered and stored away in the machine shed, along with extra chairs and cushions and whatnot that we don’t want to leave out in the elements this winter. For the first time I called a local John Deere dealer to service our 420 that we use to clear snow. We have been here five years now and I figured it was time to have the pros look it over. They changed the filters, spark plug, oil and lubed it up. It runs great, so I think we are prepared for the snow to fly. I also bought a new snow shovel to replace the one with the broken handle from last year. Just hoping there is not another three day blizzard like last winter. We had our first measurable snow this season a couple of days after Thanksgiving. Around one inch fell, but the ground was still too warm to allow that to remain for long.

There was some action around our area a couple of weekends ago involving a fugitive. We noticed a Sheriff’s car closely, but very slowly, following a white pickup truck on our road. There were no lights or sirens involved, which left us wondering what was going on. A couple of days later Shelly was talking with a neighbor who explained what happened. It turns out there was a car accident on Hwy 20. One of the occupants was a service dog that was able to get out and run off. A service dog wearing a pink vest was spotted in our area and a family member of the dog owner (white truck) and a deputy went looking for it. Our neighbor was enlisted to help with the pursuit because his ATV could traverse the muddy corn fields. The chase went through the little town nearby, back out to the country, across fields and acreages (including ours) until they were finally able to corral the poor frightened dog under an old car parked behind an outbuilding on a nearby acreage. According to Facebook the dog, named Koda, was reunited with the owner and all are okay.

The fall harvest finished on our road around Oct. 20. With the corn gone our little hideaway is out in the open and we can see for miles all around us again.

Last month I wrote about the possibility of a carnivore roaming our acreage because of the lack of mice and rabbits. Well, if there was one it is gone because once again there are rabbits and mice aplenty.

A couple of weeks ago, during a mid-October evening, I heard a pack of coyotes very close, just behind our machine shed. I was walking from the garage to the house when they started up. Once on the back porch I stood listening to them howling and yipping for a few minutes until just as suddenly as they started they stopped. To hear them howling far off in the distance is lovely, almost romantic. To hear a pack just a few yards away from you is something different altogether.

A small wind storm blew through recently throwing dirt and debris at our house from across the field to our west. Just a little warning to us of what might be coming. We need to finish getting the place ready for winter. The weather forecast for this coming weekend looks like it might be a good time to take care of that.

As a kid when I would complain about being cold during the fall or early winter my dad would tell me I was not yet “climatized.” The more time you spent out in the cold, he would say, the more used to it you get. Well, sure enough, as winter went on what was a cold day in November felt like a heat wave in January. As I get older I dislike winter more and more, but I still look forward to becoming “climatized.” The only drawback is how much cold you have to endure to get there.

The harvest of crops along our road started September 12 and continues now into October. Just sections at a time have been taken so far, with the entire field to the south of us finally all gone while we are still surrounded by beautiful golden corn on the other three sides.

I write this on October 3^rd and only a few trees have begun to change color. The garden is winding down, with only the tomatoes left producing. The forecast calls for widespread frost this coming weekend, so that might be the end of it. Our son-in-law has offered in the past to bring out several containers of turkey manure to spread on the garden and I think we will take him up on the offer once we have the garden cleared out.

A few weeks ago I was cleaning up part of the machine shed when I noticed a couple of piles of animal scat, long and dark, on the floor. My first thought was raccoon, but there was no other evidence of them such as the usual chewing and general destruction. My second was a cat, for two reasons. We have seen one on our property a couple of times over the summer, and the rabbits and mice have almost disappeared. I have not seen a rabbit for maybe two months, which is roughly how long it has been since I have emptied a mouse trap around here. We might have an unseen visitor prowling the acreage.

The end of a hot, hazy summer is approaching, but many of the animals and insects on our acreage don’t seem to notice yet. The flies are still buzzing, the cicadas are still humming and the crickets in our yard and garage are still chirping. What started as tiny grasshoppers a month ago are now full grown bugs hopping and flying around everywhere, and there are dozens of dragonflies soaring through the early evening sky, showing their amazing flying skills while eating their fill of whatever they can catch. There have been strange looking bugs I can not identify, which usually only live a few days. They are long, skinny and bright green, then others came soon after that are dull green and fat. The bees that came through first were the large, loud, round bumblebees. Then about a month later came the tiny, conical shaped bees that have to fly around your mouth and eyes to find contentment. I have seen a few very small toads this season, no snakes, and the usual horde 0f rabbits.

The garden this season produced below average except for the cucumbers, which came on like nothing we have ever seen. We eat them raw everyday, have bartered some with a neighbor for farm fresh eggs, made pickles, gave some away and we are still harvesting them.

The corn and beans are browning rapidly, and we noticed recently a few fields have already been harvested. Our usually quiet road will soon be busy with trucks, tractors and combines coming and going while gathering the annual bounty.