A beautiful day in Yamhill County on April 9, and we headed out to find some spring flowers and birds, stopping by Farm Fest at the Yamhill Co Heritage Center on the way.  The draft horses and mules showed differing amounts of training and gentleness. Some were still practicing, and for the driver the task of keeping a plow in the hard ground while guiding them is a difficult art. (Soil note: this field gets plowed every year, and it is hard as a rock. This indicates that yearly tillage is not the greatest thing for the life of a soil). Sadly, the horses’ feet showed an equal range of quality care: several were in need of attention, with jagged or cracked hoofs and muddy legs, while one pair of beauties had perfect manicures to match their sweet manners and trimmed fetlocks.

Loved hearing what I have come to think of as the Willamette Valley dialect/accent among the human participants!

Here are a couple of video postcards from the day:

https://vimeo.com/162386658

https://vimeo.com/162333102

After that it was on to Winter’s Hill Vineyard where we took a turn around the birding trail and admired these natives in bloom while hearing and seeing Acorn Woodpeckers, Yellow-rumped and Orange-crowned Warblers, a Kestrel, Red-Tailed Hawk, Swallows and others.

Click for slide show.

Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) is a tall shrub

Sessile Trilliums (T. parvifolium or T. albidum var. parvifolium) are variable across their range in Oregon and southern WA

So sweet! Large old clump of Trillium

Just fading, but you can see how well tall Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) goes with red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) in the landscape garden!