Virginia Opossum - Didelphis virginiana - in a rare daylight sighting outside my door.

  Kayaking couple enjoy their first bit of rough water after entering the Schuylkill River below the Kernsville Dam. I wasn't quite so pleased, however, as they sent flying a dozen Common Mergansers I was trying to photograph.

  Maiden Creek - swollen by a spring rain - provides an opportunity for these two women to enjoy the scenery from their canoe. This photo was taken from the covered bridge, between Lenhartsville and Virginville, looking downstream. The water level is usually too low for this sort of thing and even on this day I had watched the ladies using their paddles to push themselves off the rocks a few hundred yards upstream from where this photo was taken.

  Horse stands patiently in harness during the last snow of the season while its owner attends an auction of the former Mente Chevrolet dealership. This is a sort of cultural dissonance one encounters frequently in this part of the country. Those who know of the plain folk only from travelogues and their craft work, and maybe the movie Witness, would be surprised at how much interaction there is between their communities and the worldly folks who surround them. For example, agriculture is no longer the dominant source of income for our Amish and conservative Mennonite neighbors; they do home building, cabinetry, automotive mechanics and a number of trades; one fellow I met specializes in rebuilding diesel generator sets on his farm and another I have dealt with specializes in tracked vehicles repair.

 

If you ever wondered where the Cadillac Fleetwood got its name, this is the answer. Other cars may have got their names from places associated with leisure and money - Malibu, Monte Carlo, Park Avenue, etc. - but this one comes from a small farming and manufacturing community in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Back in the early days of the last century, the region's long tradition in the coach-building business was tapped by the rapidly growing auto industry.

  Extec 6000 screen I bought this spring - we bought this to separate stone from soil, and then sell the stone. Hundreds of tons of stone were applied to make driveways and parking areas for the Interstate 78 highway project construction office on a part of the farm and needs to be removed to restore those acres to agricultural use.

 

Auction in Reading late last year - A very old brick structure that, from some of the papers and photos I acquired in the sale, appears to have been a factory producing cranes and hoists a century or so ago. One feature not apparent in any of the photos from that day is that, although parts of the floor were concrete and parts of it brick, a substantial portion had never been paved at all. I hauled so much stuff home from that auction I filled up my van and a trailer borrowed from a neighbor. Besides a huge pile of tools (a dozen ratchet drives and hundreds of sockets, a dozen electric drills, even some antique hand tools), there was one particular surprise - a Rogers silver plate cake server; I can't imagine what that was doing in a Craftsman toolbox.

  Call me old-fashioned, but I can't help feeling the lighted sign ought to be on a used car lot and not a beautiful old stone church. This particular small but imposing edifice is the St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania.

  Red-tailed Hawk - Buteo jamaicensis - being pestered by a mockingbird. It didn't take very long for the hawk to take the hint and leave.

 

Rock Doves (AKA Pigeons) - Columba livia - are as common on farms as in urban parks. These, however, are part of a flock that live by the old mill pond in Lenhartsville. I liked this composition for the contrast between one of typical coloration and an albino.

  Llama - Lama glama - lays down to stick its head under the wire fence and reach a tasty morsel beside the road. This one lives on a local farm as the only llama in a flock of sheep. Llamas are often used in this way to provide protection for smaller livestock; I haven't noticed a wolf problem locally, although neighbors do report occasional sightings of coyotes.

  Kitten chows down on a nice fresh eastern chipmunk - Tamias striatus. While I would prefer the mouse patrol stick to mice, their occasioanl depradations against chipmucks, voles and birds are a small price to pay for keeping mice out of my house.

  Case CX-47 mini-excavator which I bought last year has seen a lot of use in sewer hookups in the West Hamburg area of Tilden Township. This photo was taken last fall, but the work of converting about 300 homes and businesses from on-lot septic systems to the Hamburg Sewer Authority was suspended over the winter and resumed this spring. A serious financial blow to many landowners, the mandatory conversion has provided work for a number of excavating contractors at a time when new residential construction has been at a standstill.