A month into living at the farm I wrote a post that was basically, “I think I saw a beaver? It wasn’t really a beaver, was it?” It turned out that yes, it was a beaver.
And they’re still here and busier than ever.
Ellie and I visited them on the weekend. She likes to throw sticks into the water for the beavers and climb the “beaver tree.”
Since we cleared the pond shore last year, the beaver lodge became visible. It wraps around the big willow–the beaver tree–on the shore.
Occasionally over the summer we caught a glimpse of the beavers swimming in the pond or heard splashing during one of our campfires.
In the lead up to winter, the beavers added sooooo many sticks and sooooo much mud to their lodge. It is very large.
If you take the trail from the pond around the meadow and behind the barn, you come to the beavers’ logging camp. They’ve taken down about a dozen trees here. In the fall, Matt’s Dad came and cut up three trees that had fallen over the fence and across the path. He dumped the wood at the firepit by the pond. The beavers dragged every single log into the water. And then they went back and knocked over a bunch more trees.
Apparently, “beavers store food (fresh branches) in the water around their lodges” in the fall. Then “in the winter, a beaver will swim out… to get food under the ice.”
This gives me a bit of comfort as the build up of sticks in the pond this fall has me worried that the beavers are planning to build a dam across the middle.
The weather here has been much too mild for the pond to freeze yet. And I can see where the beavers have broken through the ice to keep the water open. They’ve also still been coming up on shore to eat the bark off a variety of trees, including a huge maple.
I’m a little worried for the maple and still concerned that the beavers are going to take over the whole pond, but I’m hoping we can continue to share the farm. I still think it’s so neat that we have beavers.
Home on 129 Acres 
We have beaver activity out my way. But oddly I’ve never seen one!
They’re elusive, but so neat if you get the chance to spot one.
It must be so cool to hear the splashing during your campfires. I hope you get to keep enjoying the beavers without them becoming too destructive or invasive. So interesting to have a window on such wild creatures!
It’s a special night when we have a sighting, but we usually at least hear the beavers… or something… splashing in the dark.