While the Cat's Away the Mice Will

Mirror, mirror

on the wall

Keep a close eye on everything, and lock the gate, and listen hard for the dog to bark if anyone messes around the barn or tool shed.

Today is the Sprout Brook Auction. Go! Have fun! Say hi to the boss and most of the rest of the family, who will be there. The boss is auctioneering and everyone else is just watching the bargains and schmoozing with friends.

Except Becky and me. We are here, holding down the fort, keeping safe the cows and listening for that dog. I don't mind a bit except for the repelling boarders part. Chores are done, cows fed, bedded and milked, barn clean, peacocks fed; time for breakfast. It is for the moment peaceful and calm and we can hope it stays that way.

****Oh, wait, I do have a dutiful destination in today's peregrinations. Gotta go out and take photos of rust for Sunday Stills. Shouldn't be too terribly hard around this place. No lack of material.

The Royal Wedding

Lovage, an appropriate herb for a wedding rant, don't you think?

Is perhaps the most annoying event in history. Why does anyone care? What is so awfully special about them-there two rich and privileged folks anyhow?

Weddings should be about family and friends and caring couples, not bazillions of strangers and a lot of money and obsessing about every meaningless detail of every pointless tradtion.

The boss and I did it right. We got my brother to do one milking for me at the farm where I was working as herdsman and eloped.

Just drove up to Johnstown to Justice McVean and got married in his living room with our two best friends to stand up for us.

It was quiet, sweet, and moving. It meant so much to me that I struggled to hold back tears...and I am not exactly the queen of overt displays of emotions.

And it was private.

When we were well and truly wed, our friends took us out for Chinese, the first time I had ever eaten Chinese btw. Heartbreakingly, my dear-best-girl-friend-ever had such terrible health problems that a few years later she couldn't remember anything about the day, and sadly she is gone now. We will always remember her with particular love though...always...

The marriage has lasted almost 26 years now (and so has the liking for Chinese food). I wish the royals as much fun and challenge and struggle and satisfaction as we have had.....but I sure wonder whether the world will let them have it.

Floods

What a week of insane and horrible weather for the eastern half of the US. WW has some photos and links to flooding in her area and the Dacks.

We are just wet and soggy here, (and I do mean wet...the garden is under water and the boss is having to fork feed out of the bag for the cows, because he can't get in with the skid steer) but there is flooding all over the rest of the state. They have even delayed the opening of the river because of high water and debris.

Liz's boyfriend drives truck down in the southern tier and he snapped the photo and emailed it to her. He actually had some others of worse stuff, but she deleted them. Thanks Jade for the photo.

The kids have good friends who live up near where the Frankfort tornado touched down. I guess they haven't been getting much sleep, with tornado warnings and watches. The other day we were under five watches and warnings at once, including tornado watch, severe thunderstorm warning and watch and flood warning and watch. Up here on the hill we are pretty good when it comes to flooding, but last year's Glen tornado started right here at home, right over Alan on the tractor....which was not so very comforting...

Here is a report of some survivors of the devastation in Alabama. The folks down there will be needing our prayers for a long time for sure. I don't know when the normal weather is going to show up this year...if it does....but it could come along any time now.

The Future of Farming

Here is a video from Channel 9 about Kirsten Gillibrand talking to farmers about the ongoing loss of farms due to high costs and low milk prices.

Oh, Baby!

The sweetest baby we know needs your vote for a fun thing her mama is doing. If you could take a minute to do a couple of clicks it would be appreciated.

Find the Hidden Object Game

At the far, far end of the lawn behind the house.

Wicked Weather

We just got regular spring thundershowers. (Not like we needed the rain or anything, but not much harm done.) However, up west of here, right near the homes of some of the kids' friends it was really wild I guess.

Meanwhile, Liz bought me my first ice cream of the season. I took a ride up west with her yesterday as she had to get some hay and shavings and feed all the horses she and the BF care for. She stopped at Auntie Kim's and got me some sort of orange pineapple concoction that was perfect for our first really hot, sunny day of the year.

I also discovered that the weather this winter simply wiped out my herb garden. The lovage lived, as did the garlic chives, walking onions, regular chives and orange mint.

Pretty much everything else seems to be completely gone. Can you imagine a winter nasty enough to kill spearmint!?!

I began a complete do-over, re-dig mission so I can get some new thyme and such for the empty spots. Sadly the speedwell also bit the dust after nearly ten years of out-bluing the skies and jays. That will probably be hard to replace, since I have only ever seen it for sale once...the time I bought it.

In honor of the warmish weather I made hummingbird food this morning. They should be back pretty soon, cold or not.

Where the Wild Things Are

Pileated woodpecker lunch counter. Must be some bugs in this cherry tree that he wanted to eat.

And this gold finch must have had a real wild night; (prolly up at the bonfire) he still has his sunflower seed party hat on...

**sorry about the less than great photo...taken through the kitchen window.

Franklinton Vlaie

Goose fight! Look at the lady goose egging the fellas on

And stay out!

Click for details on the bout

A few of the many swallows hunting the water

Vlaie is a Dutch word for swamp. Franklinton Vlaie is located in Schoharie County NY right along Route 145. Alan and I took one of our now and again birding and picture taking trips down there Easter Sunday. For a gloomy, grey, almost raining day it was not bad at all. We saw:

Red winged black birds by the dozens

Flocks and flocks of tree swallows with one cliff swallow thrown in

Canada geese

Robins

Song sparrows

Common crows

an Osprey

Great Blue herons

Blue jays

Common grackle

Northern Flicker

Turkey Vulture

Sunday Stills...Flowers and Wild Flowers

Poplar flower

Box Elder Flower

Blood root, showing its opinion of the season

This one really was a challenge. Not so much that there isn't a whole lot in bloom here in the frozen north, but the weather was lousy almost all week, rain, snow, sleet, bah humbug. However, we did find a few things.

For more Sunday Stills....

Happy Easter to All

Music of Our Days

Woke up from good sleep to a cardinal.

Singing, seemingly two inches from my ear.

Felt like someone sliding a letter opener into my head. He must have been perched on a twig right next to the window.

Thought with all that singing it might be sunny.

Nope, rain through Friday.

At least.

This cold, wet, weather is setting crop planting back, right across the nation and messing with the commodities markets something fierce, or so I have heard. It is messing, in a quite literal sense of that word, with everything here. Lotsa mud. Lots.

Not only is getting on the land a distant dream, but just cleaning up is going slowly.

But back to music. After I wrote about my new song, my dear brother arrived on a mercy mission involving mom and dad's frozen food (which has been staying with us due to the death of their freezer, but now it can go home to their new one), with a CD full of songs he had burned for me. Then Jinglebob sent me three fantastic songs that he made.

I am awash in riches....just swimming in musical joy. Thanks!

And yesterday morning when we went out the daffodils were prostrate under the weight of a frost from night so cold it defied description. They were just getting pretty, the earliest ones a couple days in bloom

I despaired.

However, by the time we were done with morning chores they had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and were shining their sunny faces right at us. Such a glorious resurrection seems particularly fitting to me just now.

The Good

Northern mockingbird, following us around while we built fence.

Since July of last year I have been trying to track down an mp3 of the RW Hampton song, Donnie Catch a Horse for Me, without success. You could get it on a hard copy of an album CD, but if it was out there for single purchase I couldn't find it. RW put up a link to a file of the song on Facebook yesterday, so I gave it another listen.

Still liked it.

Shared the link.

Came in from chores last night to find that a particularly dear friend, who has been known before to surprise me in sweet and wonderful ways, had found the song and sent me an mp3 of it in an email. Bet you can guess what I will be listening to today.

I dunno about you, but I use music as a crutch to get me through the boring parts. I can even do dishes, my single most hated job, and not even notice that I am doing them, if I have my favorite play list running.

I named the list Little Niagara after a river in a story I read once and it is pretty eclectic in its make up. Chris Ledoux and Elton John. Todd Fritsch and Queen. Dire Straits, the Allman Brothers Band, the Eagles, Garth, Jason Aldean, the High Kings, Emerson Drive, Lonestar (I only like one of their songs, but I like that one a lot), Jimmy Buffett, Bach's Tocata and Fugue in D Minor and lots of other stuff that only fits together in my head (although now that we have a CD of parts of it in the barn, Beck has become a Doobie Brothers fan). Now it will have Donnie Catch a Horse too.

Grin.

And the Badly Ugly

The bad and ugly...... . Yet another animal cruelty video has emerged. Many of these have turned out to be mostly staged with lots of creative editing.... but this one sounds worse than any others so far.

I am not going to watch it. We are thousands of miles away from the scene and my heart does not want to feel the pain it would engender. When I think of the dozens of calves that have begun their lives on my kitchen hot air register.....Scotty, beautiful Moments, who is now one of our best cows, lots of other Jersey babies and a few Holsteins and Shorthorns too, it makes me sick to think of this other way of doing things....However a large number of excellent farm bloggers have watched it and shared their feelings.

Ray Prock has compiled over thirty of them here.

My feelings are that I am glad that these b****rds DON'T live right next door. A taste of their own medicine might not be excessive.

There is ugliness behind the scenes in a lot of human places. This is another one I guess.

When They Said

That April showers bring May flowers....did they mean snow showers?

****Update-this is just plain overkill. The wind just blew the dog house away.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Not Again

Thieves hit us again some time recently. Went into one of our buildings and stole air hoses off the big compressor, a broken fan and a bad electric motor, an old axle and who knows what else. The guys went to use the compressor and the hose was gone. Then they noticed the other stuff.

It is getting frustrating. We just can't be everywhere all the time.

Whoever this was had to know us, walked right past our rather fierce dog who was installed by the gate the last time we were nailed. We have so many route men and such and the milk truck coming through it is going to be hard to keep the gates locked, but I guess we will have to. I am almost always home so they will just have to call me to unlock it for them. Everyone will have to pay the price for the perpetrator's dishonesty.

Fencing

Alan and I started today. He cut brush and fixed wires. I carried the bucket of tools and staples and took pictures.

Rinse Cycle

Upstate NY style.

Yeah, March looks like dragging on at least into August.

If you are droughty blame NY. Flood watches, flood warnings, cold, cold, cold, trains keeping us awake all night because the lowering clouds send the noise right up here.

We have your rain.

All of it, or so it seems.

If I could catch it and read its license tags I would call the rain control officer and send it back.

I know you need it......

And we just......don't...

Hey, wait, maybe it is micro chipped!

Bad News for Bees

Again. Looks like this was a rough winter (it doesn't seem to be quite over either.)

I wonder how Matt and Lisa's bees are faring.

How Much Actual Cheese

The "Noses" along the Mohawk River

In boxed Mac and Cheese? You might be surprised.

Sunday Stills...Favorite Recipes

These are known as Aunt Marianne's Butterscotch Cookies. Unbeknown to their devoted fan constituency, the sneaky chef merely replaces the chocolate chips in a basic Toll House Chocolate Chip recipe with butterscotch chips and then makes bar cookies rather than drop cookies (this practice was instituted when there was a busy farm and a bate of little farm kids to deal with and dropping cookies on a cookie sheet and baking for hours was a non-starter as a policy.

Sprinkles are an essential addition. They are not cookies without sprinkles.

For more Sunday Stills.....

Please excuse the sideways cookie photo. It is rotated properly in Picasa but will not stay that way....

What Not to Do

Got out the shorts the day before yesterday. (Such a fashion statement when worn with high rubber boots and heavy sweatshirts). Washed and put away my ancient Brown's Feed winter hat and the fleece vest I won at the Midvale Vet Clinic picnic several years ago.... Which I wear between the several-many turtle necks and sweatshirts of winter and the once-blue, but now sort of slatey-dun over shirt to keep off the snow.

It has been in the upper fifties with sun, light breezes, sometimes a little nippy, but nicely invigorating. There be spring peepers and some new kind of sparrow, which calleth from the mulberry tree when I was working in the yard yesterday. Somebody with a thick, buzzy, guttural call I have never heard before.

Liz's boy friend even rototilled the garden last night. (Thanks, Jade.) Man, that dirt looks like crumbly chocolate cake, all fluffy and black and begging for seed.

Garlic is up and doing great. Becky and I planted FIVE ROWS last fall. (I normally plant about twenty cloves.) I don't know what got into us, but a good third of the upper garden is in garlic.

It is easy to see why the one farm implement I have never driven is the corn planter. I have chopped, I have baled, I have raked and raked and raked. I have cultipacked, and disked a little and driven the tedder for hours. But never the planter...or the grain drill for that matter. Not without reason.

My garlic rows are nice and straight.

Parallel, not so much. Looks like I was writing my initials in garlic, a sort of a smelly tribute to my homemade spaghetti sauce or something.

Alas as I sit here shivering at the computer with that freshly laundered vest on INDOORS plus long johns, and a heavy sweater and a turtleneck and a sweatshirt, I am figuring that it may be just a tad too early for planting anything but lettuce.

And I plant that in barrels.

Ah, well, spring is a firm believer in courtship, and makes us all dance attendance on her.

One step forward and two steps back. It'll get here, don't you worry.