It does snow in North Carolina Early December 2024 we had a light dusting of snow. It’s kind of pretty and usually disappears in a few hours. My kind of snow event. January came in with the coolest winter weather temperatures we have experienced since moving to North Carolina. This snow lasted a few days….
Tag: shiro utsuri
New Koi
The koi I purchased in late October/early November 2023 finally came home. Two pretty females, about 21 inches long each – Torazo kohaku (red and white), Omosako shiro utsuri (black and white). I purchased them through Russ Peters (PS Koi) on his fall trip to Japan. It’s always exciting to see all the social media…
Late Summer on the Farm
Life seems so much easier now that the pond is running and the koi are out of the garage. We still have a gazillion tasks like finishing off the last wall of the equipment house, pergola, wood cladding around the pond, landscaping – basically years of work ahead and nothing is ever totally finished. However,…
Shiro Utsuri Koi, Manda Fu and Oyagoi
The shiro utsuri koi is a variety that takes several years to develop. Unless you buy large, it’s an exercise in patience like the showa variety. Some will pan out and some won’t. I have only five Omosako shiro utsuris in my collection. I feel three of the koi are good representations of the shiro…
Birthday fishes are always better than birthday stitches
Last year, the pond builder took me to beautiful Lake Louise for my birthday and I ended up with 26 stitches due to a horse riding accident. This year the pond builder gave me some beautiful koi – fishes are better than stitches. The beautiful koi from Mystic Koi, Upland, California flew in today via…
Update on the Shiro Utsuri Koi
The shiro utsuri koi continue to be interesting. I did lose three this winter to illness which was disappointing. From my small sample the bottom line is that little tosai koi can change an awful lot as they grow. Picking a shiro koi at 6 inches is like purchasing a lottery ticket. Of course, buying…
Mud Pond Harvests – not too sexy but a lot of fun
Koi breeders believe that koi summering in the mud pond is a good thing. If you can imagine that you go to the spa for a few hours of a beautifying mud treatment – these koi go in for a few months. The end result is some impressive growth and their skin looks good too….
Summer is over :-(
It’s Fall now and I feel I have missed a great deal of the beautiful Minnesota summer this year. I certainly have been a little behind in posting, so I’m going to play catch up. Mostly photos but read the captions… First up is a video of the koi taken about a week ago. All…
Staying on top of the shiro utsuris
Keeping small and large shiro utsuris is fun, interesting and maddening. Yesterday I decided to bowl the seven shiro utsuri tosais to document appearance changes. In the lower pond, four of them took me almost 45 minutes to catch and I gave up on Black Jack and Belle Star. While I was trying to catch…
A Lucky Koi Keeper
I’m pretty lucky to be married to someone who works so hard to build exactly what I want. Today the pond digger and I worked on the waterfall. The landscape designer suggested we put a little curve in it. The pond digger saw a photo on Facebook of the waterfalls at the Mirage in Las…
Shiros in the Lower Pond
The lower pond is finally open and some of the koi are enjoying life outdoors again. We first put in Jet Li, a Kikokuryu to test out the pond. Since it’s always sad to have only one koi, we let Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid swim around for the evening with Jet Li. I…
Sunshine or Rain – we got a lot of work done
A ton of work was completed this weekend: The lower pond was started up with almost all of the equipment hooked up! The pond digger finished up the work in between raindrops today. See this PAGE for photos. The upper pond waterfall was cleared and is ready for changes. Near the upper pond waterfall, the little…
You must be logged in to post a comment.