Farmer's Bubble Wrap

Ready for just a little pinch

These seed pods of the pale touch me not, or jewel weed (the spotted orange ones work fine too) are more fun than the wrapping from a dozen packages. And they grow themselves out in the yard by the thousands.

I found a lovely plant yesterday, with at least fifty pods, fat, ripe, and pure green dynamite.

Greedy thing that I am, I popped them all. To achieve maximum results pinch the pointy little tip at the bottom and the seeds explode like quail out of a covey. I pinched maybe twenty or so, reveling in the crazy flight of the flinty little seeds, then shook the bush to make the rest of them detonate. (I was taking my life in my hands as this plant hung right over the electric fence...which may be why no one else had popped the seed pods before me.) You can't help but walk away smiling.....

The best ones are the fattest ones, with translucent skin showing the dark seeds within. (The thinner green-seeded ones will pop too, but no where near as wildly.) This video will give you an idea of what happens, but the individual has not been trained in touching-me-not and is pinching the top of unripe pods...it is important to pinch the bottom for best effect (true in many situations).

Anyhow, as you can see I am a cheap date and easily amused.

We know a lady who actually sells jewel weed seeds and touts it as a skin-soothing medicinal plant. Here we let Ma Nature decide where the stuff will grow and pop 'em where we find 'em.

Can you imagine how many folks would garden if everything we grew was this much fun to plant?

Is It a Very Strange Love Affair

Or is it hate? (hard to tell with a cat.)

(Especially a warped cat. And Elvis is warped...hates all other cats with a killing passion. We think he is channeling a dog...Maybe an 80-pound pit bull rottie cross with issues.)

Anyhow, I went out in the front hall the other day (it is part of the house that is closed off for winter) to find Mr. Kitty himself glaring at me, with that half/guilty/half go-to-Hell look that cats have, as he mauled this kitty.



He had to sneak upstairs through two doors that are kept closed and get up on the saddle rack in Liz's room to get it.....we are perplexed......how did he pick out a cat from all the stuffed animals available...and what is he thinking? Maybe I don't want to know...

A Puzzle

Liz and I are off to a conference today to hear David Martosko speak. Hopefully we will see you tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened on the way to milking the other day. Actually we were in the living room, standing up, getting ready to go out, when something large and brown flashed past the windows.


All I saw was that it was big and really trucking, but Alan could tell it was a high-speed rocket-deer. It vanished into the hedgerow. Just as we turned away to go back to putting our socks on, it flew by again, racing in a sweeping circle around the brushy field. It stopped under an old pear tree and lowered its head to eat.
And for a few seconds it ate.


Then back into the grassy part of the field it ran, pronking, ducking and prancing, and digging its face into the grass. Back to the pears. Back to scrubbing its face. Another tour around the field at racing speed, then a repeat of all actions, with some facial pawing by a front hoof added in for local color.


I was completely bumfuzzled by the weird ungulate activities, but Alan and Liz both made sense of the doe's bizarre antics immediately.


Take one deer.
Add some chilly windfall pears.
Factor in some semi-dormant, but still cranky yellow jackets napping and nibbling inside the pears.

Priceless.

A Simple Truth

Popcorn Sniffing Dog

Needed at SUNY Potsdam.

Seems every few nights somebody burns popcorn in the dorm where Becky lives, causing middle of the night fire drills that last beaucoup long. Last night's took place around two AM...and it was raining.

It is cold there, colder even than here, where Liz and I just turned the furnace fan on for the first time this season. (The stove is always going for hot water and the plenum has been open to allow passive heat for a couple of weeks now.)

I gather that the non-popcorn-burning population of the dorm would like the culprit with the overactive microwave to be banished from all aspects of late night munchie reduction. They are becoming far too familiar with the appearance of the parking lot under the streetlights.

Thus the call for a talented canine to sniff out the offending grain destruction expert and bring the situation to a close before all the students (some in night dress ill-suited for the season) get chilblains or worse.

Just Another Wednesday

Late blight has been hitting the northeast in a big way, spread I guess from some tomatoes from some garden center. I grew my plants from seed, but alas the horror spreads on the wind and from the looks of the lower leaves yesterday I am getting hit. My potatoes are already on their way out. Fortunately they have developed enough for the potatoes themselves to be dug, so I dug a bunch yesterday and will try to get the rest today. They are quite nice. I hosed them off outside and they were sitting in a bucket by the sink when I heard...crunch, crunch, munch, munch....
What the heck. I am used to pork chops vanishing.
Bread doing a bunk.
But potatoes!
Who knew!

That sheepish look is because of the camera, not because I begrudge him a couple of spuds.

Later I was picking a batch of green beans for supper when I heard a hen turkey cut-cutting just feet away. It wasn't Lucy, who was down by the horse barn, but rather a wild one we have been seeing out in the horse field. I never did see this one, but I would estimate that she was within six feet of me hidden in tall weeds. It was kind of cool.

Right now a cardinal is whistling up a storm in the cedars by the front door . This is the first time one of them has used the acoustics of the front hall to amplify its song, although other birds do it regularly. You wouldn't believe how loud it is.

Farm Side deadline today, but there is so much going on in the dairy business just now that it shouldn't be hard to find material. Hopefully finding time won't be a problem either.

Someone special is taking Liz and the boss to NY for a Mets game today. The rest of us will be holding down the fort without them. Liz is over graining the cows right now, so I don't have to, but I will be doing it tonight. I think she is worried about me handling it, but I used to do it all the time....I am more worried about all the dozens of calves on buckets right now.

Get Down Babies

Knot Knotty Pine

But rather knotted honey locust.

Last year when I was weeding the asparagus that grows right next to the house (a volunteer) I discovered yet another of what seems like millions of honey locust seedlings. The other end of the tap root on every single one of them has a Hong Kong address. When I couldn't pull it out I tied a knot in it in frustration.

And forgot about it. The big asparagus plant doesn't get weeded all that often, but I finally got at it again the other day. Rather than the little baling wire sized stem of honey locust there was a big robust yearling as thick as my thumb and as tall as my head growing out of it. As I chopped it down with my loppers I found a surprise...the knot I tied and forgot last year. Who would expect that a tree would grow with a knot in the trunk?

So of course when I found another little seedling in the other flower bed, I chopped off its head and tied a knot in the stem.

Books

Are the perfect gift around this house....Thus my birthday was perfect due to quantities of books. I should have been too old to squeal with joy when opening a package, but I did at mom and dad's house. An owl book. A big pictorial bird book. A kitchen pharmacy book. Mrs. Rasmussen's Second Book of One Armed Cookery ( a veritable treasure and Mom's own copy, which will be doubly delightful), and last, but not least a book on cannons. How cool is that? Now if I can just get a real one for the front lawn......and that tank for repelling trespassers......

Along with the field guides and a novel for camp provided by Alan, not to mention chocolate and an Amp from Liz.....ah......I feel pampered. To make it all perfect we were treated to two sets of simultaneous fireworks, one at the race track and the other at some town up west and across the river. They were stupendous and we had the added benefit of the old dogs being so deaf they could barely hear them, so there was no panic and hiding in the bath tub this year.

Liberating Lucy

As longtime readers may know, we received a while back the unlikely gift of a turkey hen that is imprinted on people. Her name is Lucy. She is tame, sweet, and staggeringly stupid. She is a lovely sort of slate blue and turkey brown. She walks around the yard, beak pointed upward, chirping in a soft, melodious voice that sounds like a mother tenderly cooing to her babe. You can walk right up to her...except when you need to put her in the hen house. (Did I mention that she is about as smart as a lump of butter.?)





Who knew that when we decided to let the hens, absurdly multitudinous roosters, and good old Lucy range free during the day, getting her back inside would be so darned hard?

The first night Becky went out to close the door on the hens, as farm bird care is nominally her job. She returned much scratched and not too happy, ranting and raving about how hard it is to catch and carry a turkey. Yeah right. She is such a drama queen.

Then last night she wanted to watch some special TV show and the sun sets kinda late these days (for which I am everlastingly grateful). So I said I would put the birds away when it got dark.

A quarter to ten. The sky to the East and North is still glowing peachy gold, with puffy dark grey clouds, like fat smoky cats littering the horizon. I take my trusty flashlight and revel in the fact that it is still lightish at ten at night. I love the long days. Just love them.

A swirl of the light through the hen house reveals sleeping hens and roosters, like feathered fruit, on every high place.

No Lucy.

I find her sitting alone in the middle of the driveway looking very sorry for herself. When she sees me she starts to walk quickly away so I grab her tail. Everyone who has ever captured poultry knows you never grab the tail. The grab-ee turns into an instant self-propelled windmill, whirling on frantic wings until the tail feathers all pull out. The bird runs away, less fluffy in the rear perhaps, but free from your clutches anyhow. Well, if you think grabbing a chicken that way is exciting, try a turkey. Her huge, heavy, wings drummed on my arms and smashed my face. Her tail didn't pull out but I let go....just couldn't hang on.

So I herded her through nettle and burr, up almost to the door of the hen house. She obviously wasn't going in so I grabbed her again, this time by the base of her wings. What a powerhouse! When she flapped, I flapped. She doesn't look very big but I felt like the little dog that finally caught the car. I staggered over to the coop, threw her inside, and slammed the door.

Turkeys are strong. All that thick breast meat? Pure muscle. Schwarztenbirdie personified so to speak I am not sure I want to do that every night so I am thinking of closing dear Lucy in the caged part of the hen house and letting only the hens run free. I am not so sure that I will win the next time.

Excitement at Dansville

Check out the second tractor to run in this video from the 2009 Dansville tractor pull.

Alan is lucky enough to know the crew and driver (as do the rest of us actually) and got to go to the pull and be up close and personal with the behind the scenes action (thanks to someone whose privacy I will respect, but the kid is very grateful). Needless to say he had a heck of a time!

Sunday Stills....Silhouettes

Did we have fun with this one?
Oh, yes, we really did.
At first I thought I might not even try....so busy this time of year. Then once we got started I had such a great time that we ended up with a lot of them.
For more Sunday Stills, go here.

In pursuit of

Toes!!

The Fruit Salad Tree

Years ago my late and much missed mother-in-law planted an apple tree. Her late husband, Grandpa Delbert to my kids, planted a grape vine. They were close together.

Too close in fact.





Now the grapes grow up the apple tree and hang down in festoons of luscious fruit, tempting, tasty, and just out of reach.





Enter a determined younger daughter, a nice long shepherd's crook, and the decision to make grape jelly today.





The Fruit Salad Tree


It took a while, but it is sunny and Indian summery and it was nice to work outdoors. If you watch the video closely you can see apples caroming around as Becky pulls on one of the grape vines after hooking it down with the crook (now you know where by hook and by crook came from). I think maybe the apples high on the tree are finally ripe, so maybe I can make more apple jelly with them.
Anyhow for the first time ever I made grape jelly that actually set! Yay!

Getting their just deserts

Take one solid, not to be seen through unless you have x-ray vision, milk house door.
Add milk filters, long (wet) snaky tubes of fiber used to strain impurities out of the milk.
Add one man who is always in a hurry and who tosses them in the stable cleaner (which is just outside that same door) when he tears the machine down.

What you get is disgruntled family members, who, as they turn out cows and carry milking machines to the milkhouse, have been hit many.....many, many, many....times with wet soggy filters.
In the face.
Around the neck.
Or if you are lucky, just in the knees. You simply cannot duck fast enough when that door opens to get out of the way of that missile of doom.

Enter one mischievous teen aged boy and assorted sneaky and conspiring other family members.

Ha! Gotcha! ....and we did last night, when we were tearing down the milker and he was coming in from breeding a cow. He was a good sport about it. ...as he wiped half a river of milk off his face and neck.
I am sure this is not over but.....

Then take a naughty border collie who just has to go after the cat. Add a cat in a metal dog crate who knows the dog can't get him and reacts accordingly. We were sitting in the living room eating supper last night when there was a tremendous bang in the kitchen and Nick came hurtling into the dining room with his tail tucked between his legs. He leaped into his crate and huddled there trembling hard enough to make the whole thing rattle like a freight train. We figured he had banged into the kitchen crate trying to get the cat and scared himself. Alan shut him in his crate for the night and we forgot about it until this morning.

Enter crime and punishment. As I was getting milk for my morning coffee out of the fridge, I found a large, soggy, half-ripe tomato lying split wide open on the floor right next to the cat crate. I had set a bunch of them on there the other day because I am simply running out of room for tomatoes.

Update the scenario. Dog bangs crate in frustration over smug (safe, and he knows it) cat.
Add gravity and set an object in motion. Objects in motion tend to remain in motion and to hit whatever happens to be in their way...such as mid-sized black and white dogs. Splat! Take that you brat!

Who ever imagined that poetic justice would involve vegetables and cleaning devices? I'll bet the dog thinks the cat can throw stuff now.

Marrow Man

When your pumpkins don't grow, but other vegetables do,

We found this cute little blue-eyed blond sunbathing in our flower bed the other day

Farm wives face similar challenges everywhere

Erin, at Raising Country Kids, has an excellent post about some of the phrases a farm wife hates to hear. Although we have milk checks instead of calf contracts, I can identify with these so easily....especially the dreaded, "How much money is on the check book?"
(To which the universal answer is always, "Not enough!"

The mouse

A large percentage of farm work is repetitious and indeed often downright boring. Even a responsible job like milking is largely routine and done exactly the same way twice a day.
Cows like routine.
Farmers try to give it to them. Driving tractor can be fun when the weather is nice and the scenery fine, but it can also be monotonous. Round and round and up and down hour after hour. I have known folks to fall asleep driving and only wake up when they bumped up against the stones in the hedge row.

Enter the mouse. I never heard of this mouse before tonight, but both of the men, who routinely do the field work, were aware of it. I guess over the past couple of years it has offered them a little entertainment when they were out doing field work. You see, for quite some time it has lived in the dash board of the White 2-105 tractor. There was a gauge dial missing in it leaving a handy hole and sometimes it would peep out at them, clinging by its little claws to the edge. Other times it would come racing down the tractor hood when they were driving and dive below the dash before they could swat it. Some days there would be little mousie foot prints on the hood next to pools of dew where it had been drinking. It wasn't an exactly welcome guest as it once ate a hole in the air cleaner, but they were never quite able to catch up with it.

Then last week we traded in the White. It was time and past time for it to go and the "new" tractor is a huge improvement over it even in its better days. Still they had a grudging affection for the old thing. After all it had been here longer than I have.

Since it was raining and spitting drizzle today the guys went over to Jim McFadden's auction (that is who we traded with) to see it go under the hammer. The crew there had cleaned it up so it looked pretty good too. Imagine Alan's amazement when he glanced over and there was the mouse sitting on the tire. (He actually (believe it or not) looked around for a soda bottle or something to bring it home in......) As he watched it jumped off the tire and ran around the feet of the folks in the crowd, terrified by all the commotion. Then it raced up an unsuspecting farmer's leg, reached his fanny and jumped to the ground again. The man never even noticed it! (And Alan didn't tell him either.)

After a few seconds it vanished under the tractor and wasn't seen again. However, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if sometime next week someone heads out in the field on their new White 2-105 and has a heck of a surprise when a little grey mouse peeks out of the dashboard at them.
Alan was sorry he couldn't catch it. Me, not so much.

The Jersey girls

Hillbilly Deluxe,
never still for a moment

and her sister (not to mention cousin) Moments

Grain we want grain!!

Pet us, please, please please






Wild Alien Jerseys

This post is in part published for Knolltop Farm Wife, whose family recently entered the clan of Jersey owners. Don't ever let anybody tell you that Jerseys are just Holsteins in little brown suits....they are not your average cows in any language.

Sundae on the Farm

2006 Sundae on the Farm
at Hu-Hill Farm,
one of my favorites ever

The big event will take place this Sunday, 12-4, at the Conbeer Farm over across the river from us. If you live within driving distance, don't miss the giant free ice cream sundae, live animal demonstrations, horse-drawn wagon rides, live music and all kinds of opportunities to meet farmers and learn about farming. Some events are for fee, but most stuff is free and you sure can have a good time enjoying the beginning of the season.

Sundae on the Farm is always a great time for all involved.. An amazing amount of volunteer hours go into it and the results are worth the effort. I have attended a number of them, sometimes just for fun, and sometimes because I am on the Montgomery County Farm Bureau board of directors and have to do my part. This year I will probably be there and Liz definitely will be. If you are coming let me know and maybe we can meet up.





Here are directions to the event:
From Amsterdam - Rte. 5 West for 8 miles, go through downtown Fonda- about 1 mile, take slight Right onto Hickory Hill Rd. Farm 3.5 miles on right
From Rte 90 (Thruway) – Exit 28, turn Left onto Riverside Dr, at traffic light take Right, at next traffic light turn Left onto Rte. 5 West, 1 mile through downtown take Right onto Hickory Hill Rd, Farm is 3.5 miles on Right