Earlier this year in the spring I took a hike up our mountain to clean up any trash or debris that had blown onto our property over the winter.

I collected a handful of empty soda bottles (probably originally left by hunters on neighboring properties), some plastic bags, and 2 deflated balloons.

I also found a few other things in the woods:

There was a deer skeleton just onto our property. It may have died naturally over the cold winter, or it may have been shot and injured by a hunter and the hunter couldn’t track it. It appears to be the skeleton of a young buck – the antlers only have a few points.

A deer skeleton in the woods.

Deer skull with antlers still attached.

I also found half a plastic chair… It seems too heavy to blow onto our property, and I didn’t see the rest of the chair anywhere nearby where I found it…

I don’t really have any idea why it would be out in the woods.

Half a plastic chair found in the woods.

Even though there are 8 nest boxes in the chicken coop, a couple of them get a lot more routine use than the others. Sometimes, that can leads to traffic jams as hens jostle to get into the preferred nesting boxes.

Here is a picture of 2 of our bantam hens crammed into a single nest box.

Sharing a nest box.