A week on the farm

Here is a recap of news from the farm for this week.

About two weeks ago the stable cleaner chute split in half, rendering it impossible to remove cow manure from one large section of the barn except by shovel and wheelbarrow. What with the boss's cracked ribs from being slammed by cow number 96 and the chain still being in the gutter, having a clean barn has been fraught with misery. I guess the parts have finally been shipped and the final repair should be getting under way quite soon. Thank God.


The barn cat, Sausage, who was named for her globoid shape as a kitten, (having always been a bit greedy), now has a surname. She has recently become abusive of the horsebarn kittens, Blondie and Kashette, and is generally about as obnoxious as a cat can be. So we changed her name to Sausage Lo Mein....


Alan found a spot on the back of the farm where some folks, with whom we have had unpleasant contact before, have cleared a section of our land, well within the line fence. (That fence has probably been there since the farm existed.) There is litter and garbage (and a rather less pleasant byproduct of human occupation of the area, complete with the sort of paper that attends that use) all over. The grass is all stomped down and they put a posted sign ON OUR LAND facing US! Way on our land. Guess a letter from our lawyer is in order, since a certain sort of squatter's rights law holds sway in New York State. If you don't want to lose title to your land you cannot let people use it as if it were their own. Wish the city *&)&$$#'s would either stay where they came from or take a minute to understand the laws governing rural property. This is at least the third such incursion since last fall. The men keep putting up fence and signs and they keep going around them. Bah!

There has been quite a red-tailed hawk war going on all week in the field beside the house. There is a resident pair that nests just across the property line and another, lighter-colored bird has been hanging around in their territory. Don't know if it is their young one that they want to cut the apron strings or an outside bird, but they don't like him much. It makes for quite a show.

Poaching started yesterday (as usual) and instead of complaining about among ourselves it we called Encon. I heard shots from something really big when I was bringing the dogs in early in the morning. Probably a 10-gauge. Then Alan found a doe just on the other side of our back fence shot to pieces and left. I wasn't surprised as I knew the shots I heard were from something way too big to be shooting turkeys with. (Turkey season is open; deer doesn't open until next week.) Encon said the next time we hear shots to call right away and they will get a game warden here post haste. We havn't called them in before because they are understaffed and far away, thus unlikely to really be able to do anything. However, last year poachers spent the two weeks before season opened cleaning out ALL the deer on the farm. Thus our guys who wait to hunt legally and do it right (not leaving the carcass in the woods because they put about a dozen shells into it) didn't get one. Seems wrong somehow.