Not much to explain here. These are some of my favorite shots from the farm. All vintage tools that have passed their time of service. Enjoy.

I guess you could qualify my Great Uncle as a pack rat. He has entire barns full of old tools. These next couple of shots were just piled on top of each other.

The barn was so full, tools have started collecting out front of the entrance. For instance a gigantic band saw sits waiting to maybe one day log a tree or two again. Or not…


An old field sheering unit past its prime.


This is supposedly one of the largest or heaviest wheels from the the local saw mill. I forgot how many tons it weighed. But my Great Uncle mentioned he one day wanted to make a water mill out of it.

There is a lot of life on the farm. So it’s only natural that there would be some death lurking about.

Towards the front of the property, there is a small tree line that hugs the stream. The canopy is a little thick, so there isn’t much light coming in.

While I was exploring the area, I stumbled upon a sheep’s skull with a few bones. As I continued on I found another skull, and then yet another. Everything was well overgrown, but it seemed like this was a small grave site for the sheep that roam the area.

And here is a little side bonus.

This Nutria skull was found sitting near the lakes edge. I wasn’t given the chance to eat one of them, but I guess from time to time they do shoot them when they come onto their property. This skull, and the Nutria pelt sitting back at the house were proof enough for me to believe them.

You’ve seen the farm, now its time to see some of the animals on the farm!

I didn’t get all the animals on the farm, I’m not so hot about taking photos of horses. And the emu’s just plain scared me. But I did take a little time to get some photos of the rest of the animals out there.

The alpacas were a curious bunch. They were checking me out as much as I was checking them out.

However, this stallion llama wanted nothing to do with me. And I was fine with that.

I wasn’t sure if the ears down meant I was about to be spit upon. So I took my shot and backed away.

I love the little piece of grass sticking out the mouth like a toothpick.

This bullfrog did a pretty good job of keeping me awake at night.

Ducks!

This guy was my favorite farm animal, the stand up duck!

Forgot what this fowl was called, but they were rather noisy and quite afraid of me.

I really didn’t want to do it. But I took a photo of a goat up close.

The goats typically graze on a slightly moist pasture. So their hooves will sometimes get a little bit of “rot” that needs to be treated.

I was given the pleasure of helping round the goats up and getting them into the holding cell.

I liked the sheep. Even though they tried to surround and attack me in the beginning. We came to an understanding that I was not to be messed with!

The two from the previous shot did not like being separated from the herd. I don’t think they liked me chasing after them either.

Most of the sheep were sheered.

And finally, the alpacas came out to see what all the fuss was about.

To kick off the new series, I thought it would only make sense to first introduce the actual farm that we stayed at.

This is my Great Uncle, Nick Botner’s Farm out in Yoncalla, Oregon. I would say the actual farm property is around 200 acres. There are multiple vegetable gardens, an apple orchard, rows of wine grapes, emus, lamas, alpacas, horses, goats, sheep, ducks, geese, roosters and a collection of antique cars and trucks.

Click through for much much more!!!

This is going to jump around a bit, so please bare with me. Take a look at these first few shots, I will reference them in the “farm level” shots that follow.

On the opposite hill from the farm, there is around 70 more acres of land. This shot was taken from close to the top of the hill, but looking back down on the farm. I couldn’t get all of it in one shot.

So here is a panoramic I made of the farm.

Here is the North end of the farm. You can see how deep in the valley is. There is a Christmas tree forest in the field close to the left of the frame, and that is the apple orchard on the right.

A little bit closer, here is a shot of the building/garage Nick uses to restore his antique cars. That road is the main drive up to the farm house.

More to the southern side of the farm is the main barn where some of the animals are housed. It’s also where the sheep are sheered and the birds are held.

Ok, that’s it from the hill.

Getting back down to farm level. There is a stream that runs along the main road used to get to the farm. This bridge is part of the front drive into the farm.

The sheep use the bridge to get to the front pasture along the main road. This ram didn’t like me too much. We had a couple stand offs here and there, until I learned to just confront them head on. Hehehe…

This is a view from the bridge, after I chased off the herd of sheep that was trying to surround me.

A better closeup of the fallen tree laying over the stream. I think this is where my foot slipped and I dunked my right leg into the water.

A little bit further down stream looking back at the bridge.

Ok, so after the stream and the tree line that follows it, is the first entrance to the farm. The sheep cannot get past this point. Thank goodness! The main drive here is lined with walnut trees, I believe they are walnut species from the Ukraine?

After the walnuts is that red garage you saw from the hill shot.

We fast forward past the car garage and into the front yard of the farm house. This little vegetable garden has garlic, asparagus, strawberries, and other assorted goodness.

I don’t have any shots of the house. However, this is the view you get when you take a few steps out the back porch. Those are alpacas and goats in the background. Also that is one of the ponds Nick made in the far background. If your lucky you will see a nutria swimming around in it. If you’re really lucky you will have a rifle on you and end up with nutria strew for dinner.

Another angle.

Alpacas are curious creatures…I don’t trust them one bit. The goats on the other hand, they keep their distance. They might look funky, but they respect our boundaries.

This fence lines the southern edge of the goat pasture.

Looking over the fence, you can see the rest of the valley and the pond. Its too hard to tell from this shot, but there are a few rows of wine grapes on the left, in the distance. The property line ends after that tree line.

Relocating back to the house. You can go into the back yard and then enter into the apple orchard.

This is the main road through the middle of the orchard.

The apples don’t come out until September, they just look like little trees right now. With that being said, I didn’t get any close shots of them. Instead, here is a shot of some of the wine grapes that share the orchard. Sadly, they too fruit in September.

Leaving the orchard and changing locations completely, this is the North field where the Christmas tree forest is.

The Christmas trees are well overgrown. If you thought of entering into the forest, the violent black berry bushes would easily convince you otherwise.

I love high grass!

Through the blades you can see the back side of the Christmas tree forest. You can also see the hill I did the beginning shots from.

If you sit down in the grass, it easily goes well over your head.

Well that’s it for the farm scenes! I missed a couple good shots due to the weather. This was my first time here and it was kind of hard to take it all in at once.

Next up is going to be some of the animals on the farm. I didn’t get them all, as again, I was kind of shooting as I was touring around. And not shooting to catalog the entire farm. Now that I have digested the farm, there is so much more that can be captured here.

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, it’s a “big look!”

At the beginning of June I spent one week with my parents in Oregon visiting my Great Uncle, Nick Botner.

I had never been to Oregon before and never met this part of my family. Needless to say, I brought my camera gear and ended up taking over 700 photos in one week.

I’ve already broken down the shots into around eight categories or so, and will be spending the next few weeks processing the shots. I will try to at the very least post one series a week. But hopefully I can get out two series a week.

The image above is the farm / ranch my Great Uncle owns. I took the shot from some property he owns on the adjacent mountain.