day after Easter

Well, we are up here at the farm again.  Last weekend was very eventful.  We went to Hendersonville to visit Stuart Van Meter and his wife Caroleena (sp).  They have a beautiful place up on a mountain.  About 70 acres with chickens, even Jim was impressed with how pretty they were.  (I thought I might have Jim convinced to let me have a few, but no dice....)  And a very nice lab named Ria. 
There are several log buildings on the property and Stuart has done the renovating work on most of them.  In particular, a house that was rebuilt and written about in "Cabin, a Mountain Adventure" by Barbara Hallowell.  We purchased the book and have enjoyed reading about the Hallowell's family excursion into log house rebuilding.  It is a wonderful read and very nice to have seen the property.
Stuart was showing us how to chink our old house.  We are almost ready to take this on, one side at a time...
The next day we met an old friend of Jim's (from 1st grade!) and his wife at Black Mountain for lunch.  It was a very pleasant day and we ate outside at the pizza place on the hill, cannot remember the name.  Then we drove to Old Fort to see our old friend Randy Lowery to talk about log benches.  We sketched one out and hopefully he will be able to make it in the next few monthes.  He is very busy with the craft fairs right now.  His wife is very sick right now, and we wish her a gentle but full recovery.  And he told us about how he lost his mother beagle and four of her pups to the coyotes.  That scares and saddens me.  He told us that he has bought bells for his other dogs to wear.  The bells seem to confuse the coyotes. 
We know we have had coyotes up here.  We saw one a few years ago when our little Hannah (who looks like a small coyote)  went up our mountain after a snow storm.  She has a bit of brain damage from being hit by a car when we found her 12 years ago.  We worried all night, and drove and walked around calling for her.  At one point we were driving down our street and we saw her, I got out of the car and called her but she ran away.  I followed her but could not track her.  (This was happening at about 2 am)  Early the next morning we hiked up our mountain because we could hear her.  She was up there and could not figure out how to come down. She must have followed the deer up there. Then we realized that what we saw and thought was her was actually a coyote. 
So now at night, before we go to bed, I take the dogs down to the pond with a flashlight and a big stick.  I make plenty of noise, even growl a bit to scare the bears and coyotes off!
Living the life of Riley....