Comments

 

Will be moderated for a little while. Sorry about that.

A spammer nailed Northview last night with 15 useless comments spread back into last year. Past history tells me that they will be back until they get tired of being denied.

So....wish it didn't have to be that way, but I guess it does.

Oh, and it's raining again. I saw a post where a neighbor farm worked all night to beat it getting in their 4th cutting. Sure gets old.

Worth a Thousand Words

 

Old Timers Say

 

I love this shot from Alan's trail cam! Click for detail

...that winter can't come until the swamps are full.

In recent years this has not been notable. The swamps were full from the first day of the first month of Janus, until the day before New Year's Day.

However this year anyone who is out and about has noticed empty ponds, barren wastelands that were once wetlands, and low, low, lakes and rivers.

Personally I have been much enjoying the way the dry has been barring the gates to my least favorite season.

But then last night that fat, blowsy trollop, Nicole, blew in on a groaning, gusty, tropical wind, and did her level worst to change all that. I am sure folks whose wells were wanting and cows were getting a wee bit thirsty are more than glad.

However, on this dark and gloomy, rainy morning I wish she would just begone and take her shower curtains...or curtains of showers if you prefer...with her.

I'll bet this is under water now.
 I was way out on the dry bed of the Schoharie,
almost all the way to the confluence with the Mohawk,
and found this tree stump buried in a crust of zebra mussel shells

I'd Gladly Pay you Tuesday

 

For a hamburger today....

Seems that is the story around here, through no one's fault, but discouraging all the same.

The things we look forward to the most end up shuffled aside by unavoidable delays, until it feels like a never ending weather report.

You know how it is. You look at the forecast, and although today, tomorrow, and the next day will be cold with wind and gloom and doom, the prophets are promising a day in the 40s next Tuesday. You grimace and figure that, as miserable as today's weather is, you can soldier through til Tuesday and it will probably be worth it.

Then they change the forecast. The forties melt away like icicles in June, until just more cruddy winter weather looms as far as the eye can see.

Believe it or not, when I started this post, they actually were promising a day in the 40s next week, but by the time I had typed this it was already backed down into the 30s. I'll bet by the time Tuesday rolls around we will be looking at either another named winter storm or single digit temperatures again.

I feel like Charlie Brown out in the yard while Lucy holds his football, except that it is too cold for football or much of anything else out there right now.

Now I will stop whining and drag on another layer of insulation against the sunrise frost

Stay warm, dear friends, stay warm. And for the love of Pete, I wish everybody would stay well for a couple of weeks too.

Heads Up Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza

 

This  story has been making the rounds of the bird groups and listservs and I thought you might need to know about it too. 

HPAI has been detected in both wild and domestic birds in the USA and Canada and we need to treat injured or ill birds accordingly.

Ugh. https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2015/3059/

Check out

 

What my friend found hidden among the things they have planned for us.

Swinter

 

That's what I'm calling this new season we're having.

Wednesday it was nice enough that the boss and I took a five-mile hike up into Lost Valley State Forest.

It was beautiful, cool and brisk when we started out at shortly after seven, just starting to get a little overwarm when we hiked out. Along the way we were entertained by a sleepy mama porcupine snoozing in a tree, heard an etude of bird song, including first of the year Eastern Towhee and Ovenbird, and a probably Black-throated Green Warbler that only called once or twice, plus all the stunning beauty of early spring in the Adirondack foothills.

The boss kept pointing out evidence that the land was farmed some time long ago, foundations of old buildings, a filled in laid up stone well casing, and then a tiny cemetery he spotted.

I have hiked in alone and in a group several times before and never noticed it, even though it is right next to the road. We were able to decipher some of the names without getting down into the tangle of wild rose bushes that was slowly devouring it. Grabbed a few photos too.

Upon returning home I searched for the names on the stones, Rowland and Eleanor Bell, and to my astonishment, found them both on this page and in the 1885 NY Census.

How cool is that!

Which brings me to a bit of a conundrum. My mother was an avid and skilled genealogist. She gathered information on both hers and my father's families for most of her life. It is stuffed in folders and saved on CDs and probably stashed in the innards of their computers. It is a lot. Civil War records, cemetery records, census, immigrant records, records going back to Ireland, Scotland, France, and who knows where else!

 What on earth are we going to do about this? It would be a terrible shame to waste all that work. For now we are piling the stuff in one place and saving it. If I was 30 again and had time on my hands I would study it and continue with it. In fact back when I actually was in that age group we chased gravestones for Mom over much of Fulton County.

However, I am simply too darned old. And too darned busy. By the time I got up to speed on the material it would be time to hand it off again. What to do...what to do...any ideas friends?

Anyhow, I digress. We had a great day Wednesday and birding has been spectacular since, new arrivals every day. Making up for lost time due to the cruddy weather we have been having I guess. 

And now today. Wild, whipping, winds, snippy, cold, creeping, rain, making the boss move the car away from the trees. And snow in the forecast!

Three species of birds at the feeder this morning...three! Guess I will do housework and hope for Spring to leave Swinter behind....and soon!

NAY-pril

This is NOT April.

April is a month of new baby birds, fresh bright flowers, and balmy spring breezes.

At least in theory.

However, April was hijacked.

This is a stone b*tch of a month dug from some ancient calendar of horrors sent to make staying home more fun. Shudder.

Also the longest month in history. Usually first of the month bills race up to the checkbook finish line, out of breath and palms extended. This year they just keep moving the goal posts.

I suppose that is a good thing. Sorta.

That is all.

Thank you.

Is this some kind of Joke?

My sentiments exactly.....

The NY Plastic Bag Ban

Gonna be an endangered species now.

Went into effect a couple of days ago, but today was our first experience with it.

It went exactly as expected. 

It was hard to know how many bags to take into the store. We didn't think we wanted much stuff, so we took two. Of course once you are inside the store you see a dozen things you forgot you needed......

At the checkout there was no place to put items that had been scanned except on top of a tiny little paper bag holder.

Thus while the boss put up stuff I had to bag at full speed just to keep up. Neither of us was able to even glance at the readout to make sure the right price was charged for each item. 

We took the jacket we got for Peggy's upcoming birthday out without a bag...I will not give the state their 3 cents for a paper bag....because when all is said and done this is just a tax. (Somebody ran up a huge budget deficit so somebody else has to pay....)

It is also a massive, pointless, PIA. People behind us in line were grumbling furiously, faced with the same nuisance. It took significantly longer to get out of the store for each and every person in each and every line. There is just no way to do your own bagging in your random, squashy, tippy, kinda useless, politically correct, bags and do it quickly.

Surprise, surprise.

However, I see a great opportunity for some entrepreneur, (which, alas, I am not) to print  "reusable" bags with protest slogans, (The bag ban s**ks for example) political rhetoric, and/or anything that will help us all vent. It might cause rioting at the checkout, but I don't think so. So far Facebook is the only place I have seen or heard anyone happy with the deal. Checkers and shoppers sure aren't.

Personally, I would gladly buy bags that offered an opinion matching mine on our esteemed governor's rules and regulations, including this one. Or maybe they could mention bail reform.

 I've been thinking about this concept since the ban was proposed, and I did see some bags of that sort....may have been photo shopped, but maybe someone is already making them.

If so I would like to invest....

Here is a well-researched article on why the ban is ill-conceived and probably won't work anyhow.

Bag the Ban. 

Well worth a read....

Here's an excerpt, with numbers I have seen quoted in several other places. 

"According to Recyc- Québec, nearly 78% of people reuse their “single-use” plastic bags, most often as a small trash can liner or to pick up pet waste. Research from the University of Sydney found that after California’s plastic bag ban, the sales of thicker, more resource-intensive plastic trash bags skyrocketed.Once plastic bags were banned, Californians started buying trash bags for their everyday use instead of reusing the shopping bags that they were previously getting at no charge. Coupled with an increase in paper bag usage, the research found that California’s plastic bag ban increased in carbon emissions."

In other words, the ban is not just intrusive and annoying, it is counterproductive.

Which has been obvious to anyone who actually thought about it since it was proposed.

Adding Insult

Y'all know how I got fired....and they didn't even bother to tell me, just stopped publishing columns that I took the time to write and send....

Well, it appears that even though the Gazette ran two of my columns in the Recorder which they purchased....back the first two weeks in January...nobody is going to pay me.

Nobody is even going to answer my emails.

Am I ticked off? 

Why, yes, yes I am. Don't really need the stress, do really need the money.

That is all.

I know you Love

All those wonderful research links....or maybe not, but I do like to share them. This week's Farm Side is about farmers in several countries, including our own, getting irritated, and those silly "extinction rebellion" kiddies and their misguided protests.

Without further ado....

Dutch Tractor Protest and the worst rush hour ever.

Pics of thousands of tractors filling highways.

Angry Farmers

The French are flaming mad ticked off too.

Rally to Stop the Stealin'.

Even if you don't love research links, there is some interesting reading at these links as I can attest, having been perusing them since long before that faint light, now staining the eastern horizon, made its appearance. 

Zingers

This is a Winesap apple, but I don't think they meant it that way

Bumbling wasps stagger over fallen apples, drunk on the cold of the mornings and fermented apple juice.

But are they happy drunks? No they are not. 

There is no gratitude for the bounty left behind by gravity and moth grub.

Instead should a dog's paw or a human ankle inadvertently brush their personal cider spheres, they emerge from their stupor to zip to the offender and sting and sting and sting. 

So far this year we have been careful and unscathed, but last year one got poor Mack in the neighborhood of the nethers and made him more than a little miserable.

And speaking of miserable....

Here, for your personal misery....without the benefit of alcohol,...are a couple of zingers of the news story variety. These didn't make me terribly happy, but then what from the news media does these days....

Fifty Shades of Not so Green

The inmates are running.....but not the prison....

Thanks to a couple of friends, from both near and far, for finding these. 

Fruit 'o the vine
Just wait until frost.

Getcher Mad On

Been hearing about this for years, been victims of it in fact, but this is the most clear and concise rendition of the situation in the milk market I have read yet.

You would think farmers could rely on the cooperative to which they belong to act in their best interests....yeah, right....read the story and see what you think.

Low Life Still Life

At Beardsley Reservoir

Just a bad bird shot that turned out kinda cool

Another without the cormorant

1000 to 1

To be the title of this week's Farm Side. As in, one word could describe an entire thousand about the EAT-Lancet report.

Links to research:

Pork take

Psychology stand

Spectator

Drovers  (my favorite)

More stuff

Still more

Farming UK

Let's just say that it is pretty darned easy to find a plethora of material debunking the whole premise that we should give up meat and dairy for a vegan diet....even in the words of the study's main author. "In principle, the ideal study would take 100,000 people and randomly assign some to eating several servings of red meat a day and randomize the others to not consume red meat and then follow them for several decades."

But they didn't do that.

Bah humbug

Hiatus

Herring Gulls yesterday. Looks as if they're getting out of town
Do they know something we don't?

Or the calm between the storm....

We are under apocalypse warnings at this time, with a strong chance of zombies. It's already kinda ugly.

Snow, snow, and more snow. 

With wind. 

It is as if ma nature has dandruff and is flatulent. Guess she's getting old like the rest of us.

The ground was white this morning, and wires and twigs and limbs adorned with fluff aplenty. However, the sky was fairly bright by seven or so and you could even...faintly...see the sun.

Hmmm, didn't look too bad and I wondered about the Thruway being closed to trucks and schools letting out early. If this was all we were going to get.....

However, that lasted about and hour, and now the dandruff is coming down hard. Birds are plentiful at the feeders and restless, as am I....restless that is, not plentiful, being one of a kind and all.....so I guess we are in for it.

Again.

Even the birds are screaming, BAH HUMBUG

This Song

Because Yankee Hill Lock isn't supposed to look like this

Because it fits perfectly.

Especially the lyrics....."Canadian cold front movin' in....."

And staying, and staying, and staying and staying.....

Four-letter Words

There were at least three-hundred of these four-letter birds at Schoharie Xing yesterday
There was just enough ice to hold them and they must have enjoyed it as there were another two-hundred not far away. Ring-billed Gulls

Trying hard to wean myself off them....impressionable young person living here, and one who is bright enough to pick up innuendo, let alone outright cussing.

However, this morning, a little-known four-letter-word-type substance is fluttering merrily down to the ground.....the one that starts with S, you know what I mean if you live in the North Country.

Bah humbug.

Tax Time

Nuff said