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In July 2006, I relocated near Fairchild, Wisconsin. After almost 40
years in the southern portion of Wisconsin, I have purchased a 30.32 acre farmette located between Black River Falls and Eau Claire.
The house was built in 1895, and needs pretty extensive interior restoration.
The previous owner replaced windows, siding, etc., but before he owned the
house, it was a rental for a couple of decades. The interior shows the neglect.
This is a project that will take us a few years to complete. There is a
kennel building in place that will house the dogs during the
restoration, and we're using our 5th wheel camper as a remote home during the
projects.
The property itself needed nothing but perimeter fencing and a quail coop to
be a great dog training set-up. Aside from the open field, there are 12 foot
wide paths cut through the trees that are perfect for giving the dogs a good
workout (you can see some in the aerial shot). The perimeter (blue line)
measures slightly over 5,700 feet. With cross-fencing for the horses, we've put
in just shy of 7,000 feet of fence.
This is an aerial view of the property. The light area is
clover field surrounded by dense pine forest.
The pink line is the dog roading path. The yellow area is horse pasture,
the purple and green dots are the house and kennel, respectively. |
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This is the view of the clover field from the eastern
edge of the pine trees. The northern tree line (on the right) is just
under 1,600 feet long. The far tree line is about 275 feet, and the
southern tree line at the left of the picture runs almost the length of
the property. |
The side of the house from the kennel. The previous owner
did new siding, vinyl windows, well, and septic within the last 5 years.
That is about all that was fixed in 30 years. |
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The kennel from the same spot I took the field picture. The kennel is about
50 feet from the house with the runs facing south. We've fenced in a dog
yard that is larger than most city lots, so even when the dogs are not
training, they've got a pretty good sized area to play. |
Our "little" buck 4th of July weekend, about 3/4 of the way down the
clover field. He's only an 8 pointer. There is another confirmed 12
pointer that comes in for a bite of clover, but we haven't seen him
around much since the fence got finished. The doe all still jump in for
their nightly clover feed, though. Thank goodness the turkey have all
left. It only took a couple of dogs to accomplish that small feat.
Destructive things, turkey. |
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The almost full October moon rising over the hill east of the dog
kennel. |
 
I was coming home from Eau Claire 12-26-06 when I saw the bald eagle
along the road right of way...He hung out long enough for me to speed
home, grab the camera, and get some quick shots. Seeing these guys is
still new enough to be very exciting... |
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The Eagle has landed...He flew across the field to land on a big round
bale of hay. To put him to scale, these bales are about 6-7 feet across. |
He looks a little ratty, but the peacock made it through his first
blizzard of December 2007. He won't be fully feathered for at least
another year yet. I had purchased 2 pairs of peafowl that arrived in
July 2007. One pair was murdered by Cass & T-Bone, which took my
$22/each chicks to $44/each chicks. We lost the pea hen in November in a
single-digit cold snap, so this is the sole survivor...he is now an $88
peacock. Actually, his resale price is slightly higher than that right
now. Once he is fully feathered, he would sell for approximately $175 |
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....And a Guinea in a pine tree...The Guinea fowl made it
through the blizzard, too.
We started out with 16 guinea fowl this summer, too.
They arrived at the same time as the peafowl. They all came in the same
box. It quickly started to look like Jurassic Park in that box, though.
The peachicks were twice the size of the guinea keets, and one of the
peachicks was a hateful little bird that kept attacking the guineas.
Cass ate him later. We dropped down to 9 Guinea fowl in September.
Fisher, bobcat, hawks, coyote, etc. ate them. We went from 9 down to 5
in October. Vizslas ate those...specifically Cass, T-Bone, Nika and Evie
;-) We still have 5 Guinea fowl at this time. |
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