A Passel of Rascals

While running errands earlier today, we passed an Amish barnyard, where normally one would find several heifers and a young bull grazing and enjoying the outdoors.

They're everywhere

They're everywhere!!!!

Today, although one heifer, who seems to like to hang by herself, was still outside, the yard had been mostly taken over by this litter of red fox pups and their mama and maybe dad. 

There were EIGHT (!!!!) foxes in the yard eating stuff, playing with stuff, and just soaking up the morning sun....it was a sight we have never seen before and don't expect to see again.

They were cute and all, but I'm sure glad that's not our barnyard...and that I am not that poor mama fox!

This Guy

Afforded Becky and me a few minutes of nearly dangerous laughter yesterday. I normally pretty much wage war on chipmunks. They get in the house and do bad stuff and carry disease and all.

However, I may give this guy a pass.

I was on my way to the sink to attend to a big mess of dishes when something flashed past the window, caroming off the blue bird feeder and falling through the air, flip, flip, flip.

I could see it was a rodent of some kind, but the flipping was pretty fast for clear discernment.

Thus I lingered by the window to see what was up.

Dippy Chippy swarmed up out of the grass and quickly got up on the garden pond pump, which is lying on a tree stump drying out to be stored for winter. It consists of two long arms, one to shoot water into the air and one to suck water into the pump. It was balanced not  so securely on the center part...the pump.

Dippy ran out onto the filter. It tipped dangerously and he levitated into the air and ran back to the center...then down the air spout, which once again acted as a chippy teeter totter. Airborne once again.

He was incensed and ran over to the old bird feeder pole, which is about three feet from the tray feeder that was his goal. Next he shuddered his way through the cinnamon vine that grows on it, nothing showing but his bottle brush tail.

See, I had found some old almonds in the cupboard and put them out there to see if the jays wanted them (nope). The chipmunk wanted them though. He sat in the catbird feeder on top of the pole and wiggled his fanny like a cat about to pounce on one of his brethren.

Nope, too far.

He vibrated his tail like pom pom at a football game, bouncing up and down to ready himself for the jump.

Nope, too far. 

Back down through the vine, tail a-quiver, to the oak stump again.

There he sat, eyeing the feeder and swaying back and forth as he contemplated the jump.

Nope, too far. You could all but see him deflate in disappointment.

Sigh....so close and yet so far.....

Then he did what any normal chipper would have done in the first place. He ran up the honey locust tree and onto the clothesline and out to the feeder. Of course there was a certain "first day on the new feet" air about his line running skills.....A Flying Wallenda he ain't.

Once in the feeder he was rewarded with a lovely, if a couple of year's worth of stale, almond. 

It was too big for his mouth. 

He turned it over and over until he figured out a way around it.

He sat there for a while nibbling the shell until he had a hand....er....tooth hold...and then contemplated egress from the feeder.

Looked at the old pole with the cinnamon vine.

Nope, too far.

Looked at the tree.

Nope too far, with only that scary old clothes rope to run on. 

Looked at the blue bird feeder hanging over the oak stump.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

Wham.

He caromed off the blue feeder again and down he went to the stump...

Flip

Flip

Flip

If there is a Darwin Award for chipmunks I have an inside tip on this year's winner

Mini Moose

Do click these photos for a better look

 On the way home from the farm show yesterday we stopped at a favorite pond that lies just along a sharp curve in the road.

A couple of years ago an obliging Great Blue Heron allowed us a nice opportunity to get some pictures, so we always pause to look.

Yesterday was no disappointment. There was a doe and fawn right in the water. The doe was eating off the bottom like a moose, head submerged to the ears.

Some ducks paddled by. One was right behind the fawn in a most photo-bombitous position.

It was pretty cool. I love stopping there.

And then this morning...I have to lean on the big five-bar gate to the pasture to tie it shut when I take the cows out. I was doing that this morning....not being tall, my chin and ear are right on the gate...when a fat grey squirrel bustled out of the building the gate is fastened to and started across it.

I kept waiting for him to see me. I was in a bright squash-blossom-yellow sweatshirt. 

He just kept coming.

And coming.

And coming.

Until he was about a foot from my face. Had he continued he would have had to squeeze under my ear to get to the fence.

I almost let him.

But I was afraid he might bite me.

So I said "boo". 

Instant magical transformation from grey squirrel to flying squirrel. 

I didn't know they could jump that far. 

Now You See Me

Actually there were two of them. The boss saw them from the big windows.

Peekaboo

The first shots are taken from those windows. Silly deers were right next to the corner of the house eating weeds under the mulberry trees.

I see you

When I stepped out on the back porch and down into the driveway, they didn't even look at me or flag their tails....just faded into the brush and waited for me to go away.

Still shedding

I'll bet they are out there all the time.

 Wish they would leave their ticks somewhere else though.

Now you don't

Look at all the Happy Creatures

Becky called me to see this wild turkey hen right on the lawn behind the house

These ladies went NUTS!

Get off our lawn, you varmint, you!

And then the boss called me over to see this one and four others,
which got away before I got to the camera

Dancing on the lawn. There are eastern cottontails and woodchucks too. I shudder to think of the beating the garden is going to take, should it ever dry out enough so we can actually plant it.


The wild things are on the move....new migrants showing up every day too. It is cold. It is grey. It is windy. But it is spring and there is no denying it.

Just Another Morning

Trying to get a sunrise for Sunday Stills....alas, they have been cancelled this week along with the closing of the canal. Much more rain predicted for tomorrow. yay.....not....

Sunlight through bunny ears

So here is what I saw when I went out photo hunting....

Bunny and flicker grazing together

An itchy fanny

Thirsty too

More bunny sun

Llamas on the News

Our good friend Teri, llama llover and source of our favorite chickens has made the news!

How Much

Wood plastic could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck.....?

I was sitting here at my trusty computer yesterday when I heard a weird rattling sound from the front porch. There was a lusty breeze bending the sumacs so I thought it was just the plastic that was on the door in the winter rattling in it.

However it went on and on so I got up to go look. Elvis was staring out the door in his grab-the-robin pose, only different. Kind of hesitant and nervous-ish.

Well no wonder! In place of the robin was a fat young woodchuck gathering plastic in its mouth like a gerbil collecting tissue for a nest. It was perhaps six inches from his face. It was so darned bold that it let me take its picture. Then when I clapped and shouted to make it leave the region it ignored me.

The cat ran away but not the road rat. Dag nabbitted thing anyhow. It just looked over its shoulder in an irritable fashion and sauntered away.

A much better encounter of the wild thing kind came later on the other porch. I was watering the plants when I heard an unfamiliar bird call. I looked up and the speaker came right to my knees...right there a foot away from me a lovely little Carolina wren. It hopped all over the porch looking right at me, completely unconcerned, then flew down below the driveway. How cool is that?

Storm List

Heavy and sweet, the scent of wild grapes and black locust lies on the valley like a mantle. Chores are done, everyone else is off to work, or off to buy seed or off doing some other thing....

Then a storm comes grumbling down from the mountains, lightning flashing over the northern towns, thunder rumbling, rumbling, rumbling

The breeze picks up and whirls stray feathers and hay stems in rising circles
The air changes....sharply warning. Weather is coming

Nobody home but me......

Jack the pony in from his yard, safe in the barn and fed and watered. Showed me some flash and dance but I have his number.
*Check

Guinea roosters locked up in the hen house
*Check

Laundry down and folded
*Check

Computers off and unplugged
*Check

Cat in his kennel, Nick in the house...mad cat; happy dog
*Check

Tomato plants tucked up under the table, safely out of the wind
*Check

Wood stove filled for the night while the wood is still dry
*Check

Gael blissfully oblivious, slumbering through it all. Merciful deafness wraps her safe in sleep, free from her terror of booms and bangs.
*Check

Time to sit down and watch the weather roll by. I hate to say the words but we could use a touch of rain (just a touch, for Heaven's sake hold the monsoons.) The grass is slowing down its rampant spring growth and things are wilting down.

Huh, no storm, three and half drops of rain, and five minutes of howling wind....what's up with that?

Firsts

This is the time of year for firsts. Yesterday was no exception.

First herps. Other folks have seen snakes and frogs and all sorts of cool stuff, but here at Northview we were coming up empty in the reptile and amphibian department until yesterday when I was spring cleaning outside the milkhouse. I reached down to pick up some leftover trash and spotted two little orange things wiggling among the crushed stone. At first I thought they were earthworms, but in fact they were red-backed salamanders. Plethodon cinereus is a big favorite of mine. I picked them up to show the girls, then returned them to whatever they were doing when I found them. (I'll bet I can guess.)

The day was full of cleaning and feeding and sweeping and being really ticked off about some BS with our water bill which is turning my hair grey and my temper black. Late in the afternoon I swore one of the guinea fowl had escaped and was down on the long lawn tuning up its unearthly cackle. I had just sat down and did NOT want to get up and go chase it.....However, the "guinea hen" soon turned into a sea gull and then to a cardinal/robin/song sparrow on steroids, and I realized that the mockingbird had just added a new sound to his repertoire.

Then late in the evening, just past first dark, I stood out in the driveway trying to hear the woodcock. I think he was still out there. I think I heard his whistling wing twitter over the din from the Thruway, but I could not be sure.It was really noisy last night with trucks and trains and tons of traffic. However, there was no doubt that the small dark thing that fluttered past my head and went whirling around the back lawn was the first flitter maus of the season.

A Fisher of Liz

Or was it a pekan? Anyhow she met one on the bridge between the house and barn yesterday when we were walking over to milk. She gasped, it snarled and the encounter was over just that quickly.

Personally I have never seen one, nor had she, but she described it perfectly. There were tracks....BIG tracks.....tracks at least four inches long from front to back. That is a big footprint!

Here is a story about how fishers are becoming quite common in the area.

And here is another story that makes me glad that this one snarled at Liz and then went on its way.

And here is a pretty good description of the critter and the lifestyle of the snarky and furry.

Wonder if this guy is behind the demise of our dear Lucy and the sudden absence of a favorite barn kitty, Calico Girl.....and the clawing of the ag bags. We were blaming coyotes and we certainly have those too. If you want to read the whole story check out Friday's Farm Side.

Sorta Back to Normal

Things are kinda, sorta, back to normal after a week when our youngest border collie, Nick, nearly died from eating an illicit chicken, and the cat, Elvis, nearly passed on from a hairball infestation. We also drove to Potsdam, had several inches of pounding rain, and went generally crazy every day....There were other stories too, harder and sadder than anything here, but not mine to tell.

The stupid chicken flew over a 6-foot chain link fence to offer herself up to Nick. How could he refuse? And of course, from the evidence left in the run, she was one of the ones that is laying eggs. I have no idea what eating raw, boneful, featherous chicken does to a nine year old dog who normally consumes only dog food, but I can tell you it isn't good. At one point he would only stand up to go outside if I begged him.

We nursed him tenderly, even went so far as to dose him with the cat's hairball medicine. Tablespoons full of raw beef. Rice and milk. Checking in the middle of the night. Beaucoup de petting. I am right fond of that dog. He is such a bad boy that he has to spend a lot of time in the kennel, because killing Mike his high on his agenda and all the cats are just a little lower on the list. On the other hand he is obedient and eager to please and sweet and great company when he isn't raising Hell.

At any rate he stood up from what looked like his last and ate a couple of bites of dog food Thursday. By Saturday he ASKED to go to his run to get some exercise and bark at cats. Today he seems completely normal and is eating ravenously to make up for lost time, snapping up bites from Mike's dish on his way out the door.

Please, chickens, you have hundreds of acres to scratch around on...stay OUT of the kennel.

Elvis is mending too.....despite my inept application of hairball medicine and several set backs.

Now we just have to get used to Becky being gone and Alan back to class

Oh, and the fair opens tomorrow too.

Welcome to the Northwest

Well, all right, it is really the Northeast.

But we have their rain.

You will have to ask the kids about trying to catch heifer number 241 AKA Egypt, who was in need of certain AI services last night. We have headlocks (self-locking stanchions) right in the pen where Egypt and seven others reside. Had a certain individual (who figured mightily in the drama but for fairness sake we will leave him out of the story), actually ever finished installing them, the heifers would have been used to using them, somebody would have set the control to catch them and this entire story would have been over yesterday morning when Liz noticed that Egypt was in heat. However, that person, who will not be mentioned, didn't finish the job.

He also hadn't exactly knocked himself out cleaning the pen either...there are issues here...we will ignore them.

Efforts to catch Egypt began at the beginning of milking at around 6PM. She was not used to the headlocks so although all the other heifers got caught in them, she didn't. Had we wanted to breed the others the story would have ended early. Alas.

She also quite effectively evaded the lasso we keep for catching heifers . And the efforts of several committees to snag her with a halter. Finally Liz and Alan went into the very not clean pen and just grabbed her. She probably weighs nine hundred pounds. There was skidding, falling and dragging. I am delighted to say I missed it as I had to milk on the other side of the barn. Suffice to say cleanliness went down but not without a fight.

At this point there are items in my washing machine that I am not going to touch until they have been run through at least five cycles. There was a long line for the shower. Liz finally bred Egypt AI in time to get in from the barn at nine fifteen PM. It was ugly and I am sure there is going to be some serious moaning and groaning from the individuals involved in the bovine reproductive drama. They were pretty lame last night and after having time to stiffen up.....Please God, I hope she caught. She is a daughter of England our surprise red carrier and we bred her to the milking shorthorn, Promise. Maybe we will get a red baby....

On the plus side I bought some of that fantastic bacon from the milk inspector (yeah, really, he sells the best bacon I ever ate) when he stopped yesterday, and we had a tomato, a great big, fat, red tomato I bought at a farm stand the other day....and a huge, leafy, ripply, light green and red speckled lettuce I grew in a barrel by the back door...and several kinds of nutty, crunchy whole grain bread...so guess what we had for dinner...yeah, big, thick BLTs. Bacon crunchy, tomato-juicy, lettuce-crispy BLTs.....It almost made up for the fun we had with chores.

Not Much Excitement

And I like it that way. The guys are starting a fourth ag bag today. Wish it were the fifth...or sixth...
Crops are sure short with the terrible weather this summer.

We are so glad we didn't plant a lot of corn as what we have is terrible and we still have to pay the cost of planting, fertilizing and applying weed control to it. Sweet corn doesn't look too bad...if the raccoons stay out of it we will have some to eat and freeze in just a few days.

The boss brought down a skid steer bucket load of chopped barley and new seeding for me to bed the babies with last night. It was kind of mungey and nasty, but I am cleaning them out, liming the beds and bedding them up twice a day for their comfort and for fly control. I was running out of stuff to put under them. Anyhow, he left the bucket down and we had to fight to get it away from the cows. Something about it must have tasted good to them. What we rescued was nice and fluffy for the babies though.

We counted the other day and we have THIRTY-THREE babies in the barn right now. Some of them are yearlings that really need to go to pasture, but mostly they are little calves. Liz has been feeding as many as 25 on a bucket, which is a bucket load of work I'll tell you.

I enjoy the task of keeping the tiny ones comfy though. They are so cute. Often after their beds are clean they will stick their noses down into the fresh bedding and then buck and jump like rodeo bulls just for the joy of playing in it. I have to be careful what order I bed them in because the feet fly right past my head sometimes. It is so satisfying though, when by the time we finish milking they are all lying down with their knees tucked up, chewing cud and watching me work.

All is good.

Cecropia Moth Caterpillar?

We think so.

Who Needs TV?

Or what I saw from the sitting porch yesterday as we waited out another rainy day...








On another note, Google is after me to upgrade how much storage I use here at Northview and on Garden Records and the View at Northview. Rather than send them twenty bucks I really can't afford to spend on playthings, I am going to go back and remove some of my less than stellar photos and not so interesting posts. Thus if you have any old favorites....now is the time, so to speak. Or let me know and I will leave 'em. Thanks for reading..

Are You Getting Tired of Frog Photos?

Sorry, I just can't resist them....however I am beginning to feel like I am in danger of becoming one....and getting awful tired of rain.

And I was saddened, although not surprised, to get the news release from Ag and Markets, that the Emerald Ash borer was recently found in NY. We love our ash trees, with their wonderful hard but light wood, their purple autumn leaves and the emphasis their very pale green leaves add to the spring canopy. I am afraid it won't be long before ours are affected.

I am old enough to remember when fountains of stately elms lined the streets of most towns offering towering arches of green beauty....and then they were gone. We have noticed though that a few juvenile elms are getting taller before they are infested and die.....there are a handful of almost full sized ones around the place now. Maybe they are developing a little resistance to Dutch Elm Disease. We can hope.

Moose on the Loose

At Saratoga Race Course!

Good Grief-Mother Nature is Getting Kinda Raw

We tried off and on all day yesterday to get a decent photograph of this turkey hen. She kept sneaking in and out of the bushes playing peek a boo. We never did get anything decent.
This pic is taken from the living room window from this morning and that is the lawn.
And that pile of feathers and stuff is what is left of her. I don't believe the grey fox did this. I am thinking coyote. I am also afraid she had a nest out there somewhere......

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.