Who can resist their soft, wriggly cuteness?

Their soft mews, pleading for their mother’s attention?

The first puppy was born just before Mouse woke up. She saw Faithful llicking something and thought she had been sick. The donning of glasses, however, told a different story.

“Mom! Come quick!”

And number two was born.

By then, we had a camera and the rest of the children to spend the morning with Faithfull.

They were all in love, cheering on Faithfull, fawning over each of her pups as their hearts filled with wonder.

My thoughts turned to another, one who also loved puppies.

“Puppy!” he exclaimed at the sight of his first cow.

“Puppy!” at the goats at the fair.

“Puppy!” at the horses in the field.

No amount of correction swayed his opinion, so we stopped trying and just enjoyed his love of puppies while we could.

Mattias would have loved sitting here with us, with the puppies. I allowed myself the moment of sadness, thinking of what would have been. But the laughter of my children and the rapt attention of my little one just discovering the world balanced my grief with joy.

Love holds such beautiful power.

And Faithfull had nine puppies.

And Faithfull and her puppies even have a blog of their own, written by Mouse, where she is asking for help in naming “Number Nine” who came long after we thought she was finished. Anyone interested in a puppy can watch their puppy grow up online and see the work we are putting into helping them have a good start in life.

So, Mouse’s English Shepherd is pregnant.

Oops.

We hadn’t even really decided whether or not we wanted to breed her, but a split heat cycle took us by surprise and we found out she was in heat when I turned around and she and Luke were tied.

Oops.

Mouse of course wanted to breed her dog. What kid doesn’t? I was open to thinking about it, but not much more. Mostly because English Shepherds are excellent farm dogs and they are a little hard to get hold of out here. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to mess with it.

Being a homeschool mom, I turned over the research to my daughter. She did a thorough job, hoping to convince us with her stack of knowledge. Strangely, the one thing that made me start seriously thinking about allowing her to be bred was when all this knowledge made Mouse unsure of whether she wanted to breed her. She was worried about all that could go wrong.

But then Faithfull went into heat and we guarded her and got through it and thought we we were clear for another six months. Two months later, well, oops. I knew about split heat cycles, but just wasn’t even watching for the signs. I’m not even sure if there were any.

And that brings us to now, taking Faithfull’s temperature daily because when it drops to below 100, labor is supposed to begin within 24 hours.

It just dropped.

And my children are bouncing off the walls.

If you are interested in following along with our unintentional adventure, I’m sure there will be posts here about it, but we are also updating my Facebook page through our puppy watch and Mouse started a puppy blog.

It was a good weekend. My evidence of that is a funny story I have to tell. It has been a very long time since I’ve shared a funny story.

That and my daughter thinks I give way too much air time to Bear, especially in the “Funny Stories Shared on Facebook” department.

This one is about this girl (sporting a custom ordered chipped shell bracelet available from our Etsy shop):

And this place:

And a little Nebraska town of less than 25,000.

It had been a long day. We left for the Dog Expo at six in the morning, drove for three hours, showed all day and had a three hour trip back home before repeating it again the next day. And when I realized that when you figured in the cost of gas I wasn’t saving all that much by going home, I decided to check into a hotel.

But I hung up without asking where exactly the hotel I just booked a room in was.

But I also figured the lady at the Wendy’s drive thru would know. And she did. Apparently, knowing where a place is and knowing how to explain how to get there are two separate skills, however.

“Well, you go past the McDonald’s . . . um, it’s the first turn . . . well, how do I explain this. You’ll take the first turn past the McDonald’s . . . “

And she started making lots of hand signs while turning around and more showing me than telling me while asking someone else how they would explain how to get to the Quality Inn. Fortunately for us both, the cryptic information she had given me was enough. Her confidence in telling me she knew where the hotel was coupled with her confusion at telling me exactly how to get there made me suspicious I’d been to this hotel before.

“That’s OK. Did it used to be a Holiday Inn?”

“Yes!” She said with evident relief.

“Ok, thanks! I think I remember how to get there.”

And we left. And I turned left. And my daughter, ever ready to give direction, protested.

“The other way mom! The McDonald’s is the other way!”

“No. You’re right that we passed a McDonald’s but she was talking about the one up here.”

And this is where the small town girl came shining through.

“What?! This town has two McDonald’s restaurants? This place must be HUGE!”

And my steering wheel got a light shower of Coca Cola.

Moments of joy.

Walking across the pasture with two little girls to visit Daisy and Buttercup. They had wanted to name all the bees, but when they saw just how many 20,000 really was, they decided to name each hive.

Watching the bees, heavy with pollen, line up at the entrance to do their work.

“Mommy! That one has pollen! And that one! And Mommy! They all have their pollen baskets full!”

A honey flow in September after a cold snap kept them in. I hope it is enough to sustain them through winter because I love keeping bees. I want a dozen more hives, but will have to wait until these multiply.

Opening the hive carefully. Without a suit. Without a smoker. Once I lost my fear of the bees, I discovered it was much easier to replace the smoker with my senses.

Watching, listening, remaining calm. I lift the lid. The buzzing changes for a moment from a busy hum to an agitated whirr. I wait. The happy hum returns and I try to lift the first few bars from the hive. They’re sealed with propolis and I smile at how effective the bees are at sealing their home.

Jarring them loose requires some banging and more vibration than they like. The buzzing changes again and a few bees greet me in a line at the opening I just made. But I know they are far more interested in the honeyflow provided by the acres of sunflowers in bloom and simply step back for a moment. One bee makes a warning dive but leaves when I don’t move.

The hive returns to its happy hum and I take a peek inside. There isn’t as much honey as I would like. Or think I would like. This is my first year and I am not quite sure what to expect. I need to ask about that. How many bars should be full? And how do I go about feeding them if they don’t have enough?

I move to the second hive and find a problem I hadn’t really been expecting until winter. And a small wonder.

A mouse had gotten in, seeking the warmth of the hive and taking advantage of the bee’s cluster which leaves it pretty docile in cold weather. She built a nest and chewed on the bee’s beautiful comb.

But with the warm weather, the bees drove her out. Now they are busy dissassembling her nest and repairing the damaged comb. I give them a hand by pulling out the main bulk of the nest. By tomorrow, they will likely have removed the rest of the shredded paper and bits of fuzz.

And I need to install a mouse guard so they can concentrate on the sunflowers down the road.

We return to the house with one sting. Because my six year old Bug came barefoot and stepped on a dead bee. But she forgives quickly and enjoys the piggy back ride back to the house.

Next year we should be harvesting honey and wax. I hope we can figure out what to do with it all, because I want a dozen more hives.

Hunter barks. Jake tries to tear through the front door to get back in the house. I know something is out there.

“Faithful! Luke!”

I call as I grab the flashlight and my walking stick. I open the door and they fly down the hill, past the barn, past the hen house, past the garden. Luke bounds. He reminds me of a gazelle the way he runs. Faithful charges. Head lowered, front legs stiff, she reminds me of a bear but without the size.

Emboldened by the presence of his pack, Jake comes away from the door and prances just behind me. He paws at my leg, looks at me with those big brown eyes and gives half a wag of his tail.

“Good boy, Jake! What a brave puppy you are!”

And with that he makes two ferocious leaps in front of me with a snarl and a bark that lacks just enough confidence to let you know there is still a puppy inside all that bulk. He looks back at me with eyes that remind me of my little LE as he wags his tail so hard his whole body wags with it.

“Look what I did, Mommy!”

I reach down to scratch behind his ears and hardly have to bend over at all. He has no idea he is bigger than all of the other dogs. He turns to watch the others. Faithful and Luke stand on a small hill, focused, alert and silent. Hunter paces along the edge of the cornfield barking. I have no idea what is out there. It could be coyotes. It could be raccoons. It could just be a deer.

But standing there in the dark in the midst of my dogs with only a stick and a cheap LED flashlight, my senses are alert. I smell the damp earthiness of night. I feel the hint of a chill that speaks of the coming fall. I hear Hunter barking and the rustling in the corn that might be something or it might just be the wind. And though I see nothing but the edge of the cornfield where it disappears into the night, my eyes are fixed on the spot all the dogs are watching.

Something is there. Something is making a challenge for our property and we are staking our claim, driving it back into the night.

Then comes victory.

Faithful relaxes and rolls on her back, inviting Luke to wrestle. Jake bounds forth, pouncing on them both. Hunter makes one last round, one last raspy bark and hobbles up to me for a pat and an ‘attaboy.’

And I once again have that fleeting feeling of wholeness, of ‘this is why we moved out here.’ There’s something about setting your roots into the soil of your own land and saying, “This is mine.” About going out into the coolness of the night to defend that claim against the predators that would have your livestock and the foragers that would have your garden. About standing in the midst of your dogs who become so much more than pets when they grow into their jobs and begin to work at your side.

And I return to the house feeling . . . alive.

OK. So we’ve established that we have the most annoying dog in the world.

But then we got chickens. Unless you have chickens, you may not understand this but chickens change you.

Pretty soon, four wasn’t enough. And I wanted geese. And goats. And a larger garden. And an orchard. And chores. And wide open spaces for the kids to run and play and be free. I remembered a childhood dream and we seized upon it.

Hunter greeted the new property with his customary enthusiasm.

Except he learned quickly that if he barked in the house, someone would just open the door for him. Gone was the mad scramble for the door any time it looked like someone might be trying to leave. Gone was the pile of children knocked this way and that along his path of escape. Gone was . . . Well, I’d really like to say the barking but that isn’t true. But it was so much less stressful out in the country without neighbors’ nerves to worry about.

Then we had our first visitors. That we knew of.

That’s when we noticed that his barking wasn’t random. Every morning and every evening, he trotted along the property line barking out his warnings. And that circling and barking thing? It looks a whole lot different at two in the morning when you’re surrounded.

All of a sudden, I understood my dog.  He was our protector, our guardian. He had a job to do and he took it very seriously. He wasn’t going to let little things like my sanity, the neighbors’ nerves or a nylon leash stand in his way. He was going to do everything within his power to stand between his family and The Big Bad World in order to keep us safe.

Within two months, he had pushed the coyotes back. Though our property had been abandoned for two years and poachers had turned it into a deer carcass smorgasboard, they stopped crossing through our land. We would find tracks and droppings all along the boundary, but not within the area he patrolled.

Then he stopped the nonstop barking, found a spot at the top of our hill where he could see our entire property and lay down to survey his kingdom. And we never lost a chicken to a predator while he was looking over the flock.

Hunter was the best dog we had ever owned. Someone even asked me if they could stud him because he so clearly had such beautiful instincts despite my best efforts to train them out of him. But that wasn’t a possibility.

I started to wonder what we would ever do without him. Then one day he came in acting just a little weird.

It took him two days to collapse to the ground and not get back up. He stopped eating. He stopped drinking. He lay on his pillow and looked as if he were waiting to die. We got him a wheelchair but remember his affinity for chewing through leashes? Well, one . . . two . . . three harnesses later, I gave up. I carried him to his hill where he seemed happiest, made him a bed on the porch to carry him to at night and wondered just how long a dog could live on what I could force feed him.

Perhaps it was time to put him down.

But then we had another visitor.

This time, I was getting something from the car and when I turned around there was a coyote standing at the edge of the driveway just watching me. I barely had time to comprehend what it was and Faithful was on it, chasing it back into the night. Back on the porch, Hunter was alert. Suddenly, the night came alive with the howls of the coyotes and he took off.

On two legs and dragging his useless hind legs behind him, he took off across the lawn and toward the coyotes in the soybeans across the road. I had to run to catch him and drag his fifty pounds of fury back to the porch where I had to chain him to make him stay.

Hunter was back. In the morning, he wolfed down his breakfast, drank two bowls of water and went on his morning patrol of the property. It was a long slow walk to the lilacs and he cut his circle short at the edge of the hen house, but he came back to the top of his hill with a vibrance I hadn’t seen in weeks. He was exhausted, but he was alive.

And then came chore time. Chore time around here . . . well, let’s just say chore time is difficult. I frequently send the children to take care of the poultry because sometimes it is just too hard to deal with the little hand that isn’t there.

The little hand that wanted to help. The little hand that reached for mine to slow me down. The little hand that reminded me that there is so much more to chore time than just getting it done.

And now, though part of me wants to rush through the chores to keep from thinking too much about that little hand, a tip tap slide holds me back. Tip tap slide, tip tap slide and Hunter catches up to me. I scratch him behind the ear and we walk slowly down to the hen house together. Because there’s more to chores than getting them done.

And I wonder what we’ll ever do without our Hunter.

Because anyone who has been reading this log definitely deserves a little overwhelming cuteness now and again.

These are our Welsh Harlequin ducklings, a breed considered critically endangered by the American Breed Conservancy. They were developed from a color mutation in a flock of Khaki Campbells in Wales and were first brought to the US by John Fugate in 1968.

They are excellent layers, good foragers and good little meat birds which is why I looked high and low for these little guys. They arrived happy and healthy from Holderread’s with an extra duckling as a nice surprise!

The closer we got to pick up day, the more I thought about bees as stinging insects rather than honey producers. The children were anxious, picturing life imprisoned in the house for fear of getting stung. We all were anxious about the drive home with 20,000 bees in the car.

Bug with a 3 poud package of bees

And I drive an SUV. There isn’t even a trunk to separate driver and children from the buzzing in the back.

But somewhere inside that small office, fear turned to curiosity. The cookies and the soda didn’t hurt any, either.

The queen in her cage with attendants

By the time we got home, the bee suit was a formality worn not so much for protection as for entertainment. At what other time in your life do you get to dress up in a beekeeper’s suit?

LE pretending to be a honeybee

And I found out my children are fearless.

LE holding a honeybee

The first sting was inevitable, but it was the third bee my little Bug picked up by the wing that stung her.

After that sting, Bug came in crying and through her tears pleaded, “Why do they have to die, Mommy? Why do they have to die when they sting?”

Through her pain, she was worried about the one who caused her pain.

Love your enemies, I thought. And she knows too well what death is.

After that sting, I saw just how forgiving my children can be.

If you are interested in following our journey a little more closely, I have been updating my Facebook fan page regularly with photos and tidbits about our bees. I have a video of my daughter installing the bees in the hive and one about their orientation flights I still need to upload. I may share them here, but they will certainly be on my fan page and on my YouTube channel.

I have to open the hives today. Hopefully there won’t be too much runnnig and screaming on that video!