April in Autumn

Just stepped outside for the second walking of the potato-bombing-floor-piddler. Found a wonder. First walkies involved dark, army-drab, lumbering clouds obscuring what should have been an incipient sunrise. It was drizzling. One of those hunch your shoulders and get on with it moments.

Now, the sun is up. The air is warm and moist and fragrant, redolent with earth, leaves, and green things....we still have not had a killing frost.

Sweet!

And the birds! Birds everywhere. Red-winged blackbirds hurrying urgently north or west, probably in hot pursuit of corn as yet unharvested. Starlings by the hundred hurtling toward a dead elm, the better to roost and chatter. Jays, gold finches, doves and crows.

Earnest little downy woodpeckers chipping away at seed pods and twigs. A robin chuck-chuck-chucking from the highest branch of the honey locust.

Yellow rumped warblers simply everywhere. Fighting, flighting, flourishing their tail patches. And lots and lots and lots of everything else you could imagine. 

The whole valley is seething with birds, hustling, bustling, chipping, cheeping and chortling. Like money in the bank that the government can't spend. I love it.

Nothing Runs Like a Deer(e)

The upper deer was truly fortuitous. I had the camera up to my eye and focused, in the act of taking a photo of some trees. Suddenly there was a crackling in the hedgerow, maybe twenty feet from me. Out popped this little spike buck and off he bounded. I would have never caught the shot if I hadn't already had the camera up in mid-click. Alan says he has been seeing him everywhere the past couple of weeks. Hope he has his syllabus with him and knows the season will be starting soon.

Then I came across this other Deere. It was sitting still while its appendage was greased and prepared for the afternoon.

Soon it too moseyed off, a bit slower than its furry counterpart, taking a couple of my dears along for the ride.

And over in some mud left over from the storm, I found more deer tracks, plus one from a coyote.....but what is that smaller track next to the coyote print?

I don't know. Do you?

Shining Flags of Glory

Everybody knows we are on the downhill side of the year. Although yesterday was warm enough for baling hay and drying laundry, the nights are cold and clammy. Mornings foggy and dew soaked. We haven't started the wood stove yet, but as soon as somebody drags the hose up there and tops up the water level....

Meanwhile, the crystalline beauty of darned near everything is breathtaking. 

All day.

Every day.

From the humblest spider web, flung hopefully in the tippy top of a box elder tree, to the Eastern Phoebe, wearing his yellow winter vest, to a lone crimson Virginia creeper, to the nodding goldenrod and bright purple rays of the asters, everything is poised to amaze.

Starling photo bomb

All you have to do is look.

Listen.

Take a deep breath of air that is cleaner and clearer than a perfect quartz crystal. Every day I have spent a few minutes in the chair by the garden pond...set there for summer, but I never seem to find time to use it...and soak up the good, free vitamin D, listen to the passing migrants and just exist. Just for a little while.

I think fall is a last reward before the abomination that is a northern winter when you work outdoors.

Hmmmm

Liz and Becky with Richard in his later days. 

Although he was sweet to them,

 there was still a fire in that little furnace.

To say that the weather is disconcerting is an understatement. Years ago when I was showing my late pony, Deranged Richard, we had a fall like this....and I use the term advisedly...it may be August but the feeling of summer's end is strong. Nights are chilly and mornings pearly with cotton ball fog.

Richard was a hot little Shetland that a friend bought from the kill pen at an auction as a five-year old stallion that had never even looked through a halter. This friend is an incredibly talented horseman. He quickly broke Richard to drive and showed him extensively in the area, pointing him to year-end champion driving pony soon after.

That little chestnut was a pistol! He was tough as a walnut, strong as a bull,and pretty as a speckled pup. He had a gorgeous trot that just wouldn't quit. My friend gave him to me after a couple of years of campaigning and the little bugger taught me a whole lot about horsemanship that I had been missing out on with gentle old Magnum, my original horse. At first he had me buffaloed more often than not. After a while I learned how to handle him.

And after a bit I started trying to show him myself. One fall when I had him at the show, Fonda Fair week, we got a hard frost, after several chilly weeks like this.I can remember practically freezing and trying to keep him warm enough so his coat would lie flat and shine. He turned into a regular wooly bear in the fall and you could hardly tell there was a handsome pony under there.

Anyhow, actually this early cold weather isn't at all unprecedented as the first or second week of September used to be the first frost date most years when I was a kid. Even when the kids were big enough to show cows at Altamont, there were years when that mid-summer fair was a frigid affair and washing cows became problematic.

I am hoping that at least frost holds off for another month or two to save the corn and sorghum and other tender crops. The year so far has been bad enough, although crops here are much better than in the west.

Shorter and more Southern

The days that is. Even if I oversleep the sun isn't up yet when I arise. And it is coming up halfway down the side of the old horse pasture instead of up behind the neighbor's house. It is shrouded in low clouds most days and dull, not bright with summer glee. 

I am very much not ready for any of this.

Birds are gone or at least on hiatus. Instead of a tangled macrame weaving of songs out in the front yard, hard to decipher, but as interesting as an ancient tapestry of sound, it is now easy to pick out three or four calls. Great crested fly catcher, gold finch, cat bird, blue jay....there isn't much to see or hear so I don't sit on the porch much now. Used to be more interesting than reality TV. Much more. Now....nada. Where is June when you need it?

An odd, thick, bluish mist is snaking down across the heifer pasture even now, obscuring cows and damping off what sun there is.

I am not ready for this.

Cider

Gallon of fresh-pressed in the fridge, new picked apples on the table and a jar of soft, sweet honey in the cupboard. The kids took a friend's toddler to the orchard to pick yesterday and brought us home some of their bounty.

What can I say but yay!!

Engulfed

Milkweed for Dani

In November. The air is like taffy, pull off a piece, crisp, bright, sharp, twist it up and enjoy....pumpkin pie flavored maybe. Just breathing is an adventure in brisk.

If I am slow to post it is the absence of usual help and the addition of feeding (and trying to figure out WHEN the boss is going to feed-the man is allergic to routine, won't tell me when he's ready and gets mad as a hornet if I don't show up on time...ten in the morning, four in the afternoon...arrggghhhhh) to my daily chores. I don't mind feeding, but it would be nice to be able to plan.

Most of the leaves are down, but the oaks across the river sport bright gold, and green and russet, layered like an expensive hair cut and shining in the angled sun.

Birds are bright too, hi chickadee from the clothesline, creaky, beaky, blue jays teetering on the tube feeder. Crows on high, very high this fall for some reason, and just a smattering of passing geese. Word is they are off to the west of here, scrounging through the harvested corn fields, gleaning up gold for winter.

Here and there a late monarch. Sometimes a few caterpillars.

Coyotes on the lawn, spooking the horses.

Yowsa! What!

Broad daylight, high noon. No wonder the cows have been acting strange and Wally the blue heeler has been barking all day. I don't like this.We have kitties and hens and beloved dogs, all just menu items to the grey and brown haunts of the hedgerows. They are welcome to around 300 of our acres, but they need to leave the vicinity of the house and buildings.

All week, I have been reading the comments of comfortably-insulated, non animal owning, smug urban folks on a friend's blog on this topic and seething. They know just how we should deal with the proximity of creatures that plot to eat our livestock.And their plans do not include lead projectiles. We should just find a way to get along with the cute little critters kumbaya....

I am not going to link and get into it, but damn Disney anyhow. They have a lot to answer for in my opinion. Once animals started walking on their hind feet, dressing in suits and talking and singing it was all over for common sense wildlife management.

Why would we not want a large predator in our back yard? Hmmmmm.....just can't imagine.

What to Say on a Gloomy Day

One of our life goals, elusive, and hard to brew

Not much. Cold, damp, muddy. Cows ditto and not liking it much. Leaves left, or mostly. Trees black with the heaviest crop of riverbank grape I believe I have ever seen. You could make wine I'll bet, tasting of summer and bittersweet fall, sunshine versus moonshine, fine, dark, blackbird wine. They surely like them anyhow and set up a din as they pick and squabble.

One of these days the men are going to limb some branches off the Winesap tree so the repair truck can get in to deal with our non-functional furnace. Then maybe I will get the tame grapes for jelly, oh so far above my head even with our tallest ladder. I am thinking about maybe adding in some of those wild riverbank critters for just a spark of different.

Meanwhile, it is cold, indoors and outdoors. Alan is attempting to build an outdoor boiler contraption that will heat just a little water to send through the pipes to make just a little warm in here. I am eagerly cheering him on.

On the bright side, it is warm in the barn, thanks to the cows' hearty metabolism. Five minutes after they crowd through the door it is toasty, and by the time the grain is gobbled, we are shedding polar fleece and rolling up our sleeves.

Is it time to milk yet, I wonder?

Running in Place

Amish horse looks a little short of groceries

Good weather. You gotta grab it. So the men are running in all directions at once trying to make up for our mostly lost summer. Building fences, mowing and chopping, cleaning pens, welding, patching tires that keep getting cut because the rushing water exposed sharp slate ledges and so on. Yowsa, it makes my head spin just keeping track of them.

The days sure have been pretty too. You just have to be outdoors all that you can. The air is so fresh and sweet it seems drinkable, the sun just warm enough to feel like a gentle blanket and the migrants are passing through, unwinding their coils in the north to thread south like fabric unwoven...

Song sparrows in flocks, cedar waxwings ditto, turkey vultures soaring past and one pair even seeming to play, drifting lazy over the river, then dive bombing one another over the barn. Ubiquitous little brownish warblers, calling from all over and flitting through the trees, plus the birds that will winter with us coming back from wherever they go.

I was picking tomatoes when I heard a creaky chickadee, calling half-heartedly from the mountain ash. I pished a little because I wasn't even sure that it was a chickadee and not a catbird or mocker. The thing bolted straight toward me like a bullet on a mission and barely swerved aside before it hit my head. Then it sat in the honey locust cussing me out in no uncertain terms. I ran into the house for seeds, but it had moved along when I came out. I am guessing that one of last winter's tame birds may just be back from its summer adventures.

I am not ready for winter, even though we are running in place getting ready for winter, but still....it is nice to see my friends again.

Holy C**p update! Liz just saw people throw two dogs out of a van, a little chihuahua and a lab. She got their license number and called the police on them....wonder if they will pursue it. I'll bet you can all think of some suitable punishments for such &^%%$^&*. Makes me sick. A dog is a commitment, a long commitment, but if you have to end it there are better ways. Geez.

Change 'O Plans

They happen to the best of us. Woke up full of hope for a harvest day. The guys got some sorghum chopped yesterday and changed fields to go after some better stuff. Were planning on more of the same for today. Walked out of the bedroom and heard rain thundering on the steel porch roof (for some reason you can rarely hear it rain in our room).

Well, dang, so much for sorghum. During drier years they might be able to chop the same day as rain if it cleared up by noon, but it is so soggy, it will be at least a day before they can move.

Normally this would plunge me into despair. Enough already, and I wish the forecasters would get it right once in a while. We were supposed to get one more nice day before the gunk set in.

However, today there is just going to be a change of plans. If I can pull it together the boy and I are going visiting and to the store. I am going to finally see folks who have been too long neglected, deliver some tomatoes and beef and books (of which we have a plethora) and then hit the store for dog food, DVDs and ammo. Getting to be that time of year and the big bucks and big Toms are making themselves known. And I am going to put a few thousand photos on DVDs and maybe speed up this tired old computer a bit. Maybe.

There. I am all cheered up at least for today. Hope you have a good one too.

Here are some links that may help.

I have been at meetings where this guy spoke and always thought he was pretty darned good for the community, but now I am downright proud of him. Man on a Mission

A small but interesting positive carved out when the flood waters revealed bits of history in Fort Hunter. Can you imagine the possibilities from this discovery? A church probably attended by Sir William Johnson before the Revolutionary War? Wow....

****Update, please go read this story about a modern day crime fighting hero. You simply can't make stuff like this up!

Not Helpful

As you can see the Sudex got away from us.

Supposed to cut it when it is as high as your wallet.

It would take a pretty tall guy for that to be the case

here, even if he carried his wallet in his hat. However, the weather is what it is and volume is good too. We will take all the feed of any description that we can get.

These pics belong to Alan, who took them with his cell phone and posted them on

Facebook where his low down,

thieving , conniving

mother could easily steal and repost them.

Thanks guy, for this pretty darned cool taste

of autumn field work on a hill farm in upstate NY

The Rubber band girls of summer seem to have left for warmer places already. I am keeping their feeder full, but there is no sign of their humming and buzzing around my head when I go out on the sitting porch. Not much reason to go out there now anyhow. All the house plants are inside; nothing left but the hummer feeder and the parsley and basil. I will let the basil freeze, as it is always full of bugs if I bring it in...and the parsley doesn't care about the weather....although it does seem perkier if I water it occasionally.

I miss the hummingbirds and the other summer birds, but the blue jays are bright and beautiful as they scream across the pasture, alarming all who will listen. We do have a few killdeers and those absurdly frustrating fall warblers. I had a pair literally three feet from me the other day and STILL couldn't identify them! They were pretty though.

The guys got some feed put in yesterday and a lot of mowing and such done on Sunday. It is not usual to work Sundays here, except for milking, feeding and chores, but with this awful weather you take the weather when you can get it. They got it so they took it.

Now it is raining again, so they won't be able to do much today. Guess it is going to warm up a bit though, which would be good. This taste of cool fall weather we have been having is very invigorating and we get a lot of work done, but it is plumb uncomfortable around the house.

Oh, well, better days are coming, it says here in fine print. And we still have grass, greenery, cows, buildings, and each other, a lot better than a lot of folks are dealing with. Take care out there.

Road Trip...Bellinger's Apple Orchard

The merchandise

Is all good for you

Or maybe just plain good.

Or even both

Actually we were out taking care of some Gubmint business and the visit to the farm at 685 Argersinger Road was impromptu so to speak. However, as always, we came away happy.

Even as I type I am nibbling some slices of a fresh, crisp, tangy Ginger Gold and contemplating the bag of Cortlands that abuts the bag of its cousins out on the kitchen table.

Winter may be on its way but apple time is the best time......Soon as the really good "keeping" apples like Pink Ladies, Spys and Ida Reds are ready we will make another visit to pick our winter supply, but for now we bought a few pounds of ready picked to keep us going.

****Update, one Ginger Gold, the first apple of the 2011 season, is not going to be enough. My mouth is telling me to go cut up another one.

The Fog Comes In

And no little cat feet about it. More like a sensation of cold, wet, fish strapped all over your body...of breathing through a soggy, slightly moldy blanket. It seeps right into the house....Erk.

It rained hard again yesterday, not helpful in any way.

We turned the cows into a new field though, and of course they didn't really want to come back out. All that lush, delicious grass you know.

So the boss and I hiked up to call them....at least they didn't make us go into the field with them... Anyhow as we walked along, a great whirling flock of bobolinks rose up...the most I have ever seen in one place at one time. It was pretty cool.

They kept us company while we stood in the lane and hollered for cows and it was pretty nice. Even if is was a not so welcome harbinger of what is coming and soon......

Cold Dawn

Bur cucumber skeleton....they are a nuisance like kudzu, but interesting just the same.

The colors are not so very unlike June...pink...gold...faded blue and a little green where the lawn grass grows or the pasture is nibbled short. All as if muted by distance, far away from the hot, red tongue of sun, which would light them up bright and strong if it was summer. Softened by frost, silenced by summer's end. Bird calls are thin but bright. No dawn chorus when I go out to the stove. Just the roosters crowing, a chickadee waking up in the hedgerow.....a far away cardinal chinking but not singing. Even the crows are absent, not a goose is stirring down on the river. It is about as peaceful as it ever gets during this soft prelude to the day time.

November has its moments.

The holiday has left us with a pile of bookwork and barn work and household choring for the day so here are some fine reads from my favorite bloggers.

First a happy birthday wish to one of my most favoritest blog friend....Cathy at Looking Up

My kind of poetry about winter, from Linda at Just Another Day on the Prairie.

More poetry about the season from my first ever blog friend, Rosemoon at Moonmeadow Farm

Because this is a dairy blog, a daily must read on dairy John Bunting's Dairy Journal

Just in case you think the weather is a challenge here, a bit about daily life in South Dakota. If you farm or ranch you have mornings like this....but that doesn't make them fun.

Plus a blimp

Your morning laughs, just to get your heart pumping.

Something different but beautiful.

And mice, but cute ones

And there you have it. Now off to the barn to see what mayhem the girls and boys have thought up for us in the night. (We hoped that when we shipped the steer from Hell that the whole broken water bowl/flooded mangers thing would be given a rest...not so much, alas.)

Black Friday...Rain Again

Just so you know...this is NOT today...I only wish it was

It is so gloomy that there really is no sunrise...just a sort of easing from glowing dark to dripping dawn. Dog and cat chores are done, barn awaits. Liz got her hand wrecked by a calf last night. Don't know how much she will be able to do today.... It was really black and blue and her knuckles were swelling pretty badly after chores.

Alan has a deer hunting thing going on here today...the boss decided to let some folks come hunt with him on our usually closed property. Hope that goes well and that they maybe get a deer or two. Hope also that the weather comes around a bit for him. At least it isn't freezing rain as was predicted.

Thanksgiving was great....a traditional feast in the manner of Grandma Lachmayer and the Allied Union (you who were members will understand.) Not quite as many folks around the table, but the spirit was there. Liz and I cooked for two days (while doing herd health and chores, which was an interesting feat) but now we won't have to cook for at least a couple more. I have to debate the whole turkey pot pie thing. I love to make it, but Alan doesn't like it....however, everyone else does....hmmm.....

Other than that, just a regular day here at Northview. The closest we will come to the shopping Juggernaut thundering across the rest of the world is me doing a little bookkeeping and paying a few bills. And that is plumb close enough. My mind simply boggles at the folks who have been standing in line...some for over a week...just to get stuff. And when they get done and they have the stuff, then what? I don't get it. I may not have all the latest, hottest stuff, but I do have a life.

Can't see wasting any of it in mindless pursuit of stuff like that.

***Jan at Poodle and Dog Blog has a dog story that will touch your heart....really worth a read.

Where the Air Smelled Like Snakes

Well, actually it smells like snow. The forecast isn't calling for much, but the wind yesterday blew in something different in the seasonal scheme of things.

It looks like November.

It feels like November.

And it smells like November.

Guess it must indeed be November. We are holding good thoughts for a safe opening day and the rest of the season, for good weather to the west of us so friends in other states can get their corn harvested, a good herd health next week, and a fulfilling and happy Thanksgiving for everyone.

What are you hoping for this fall?

Frosty Mornings on the Farm

Rainy Days 'n' Brantas

Canadensis that is....down on the Mohawk.

Fencing in the Rain

Drowned turkey feather, empty acorn cup. Last dandelion, crushed by passing hooves. Ten dozen hungry robins flying by from Canada, females pale as Creamsicles. Their calls ring oddly across the rolling grass, just a tad different from our New York version....enough to sound like non-robins though.

A mockingbird on top of the hill has no time for them and chivvies them mercilessly to and fro, proud of himself and telling us all about it. Cheek! Chinnnkk! His efforts are plumb futile; as one flock moves on to the neighbor's woods, another flows in from the old pasture lot behind him. There are hundreds of them and only one of him.

A flicker flicks from tree to tree, ruby rose hips hang, all crystal shiny, each with its own rain drop. (Love/hate going on with those darned multiflora roses. In June the whole valley smells like a shady lady's boudoir when they come in bloom. The rest of the year they drag down fences, tangle unwary feet and take over pastures like they owned them. I'll bet we cut a thousand of them today and there are a thousand more waiting for tomorrow.)

The rain was soft; the grass made me think of movies I have seen that featured Ireland...what was that four-hour-long job from years ago? Oh, yeah, Barry Lyndon. Saw that in a theater in 1975 and never forgot the lush, green, green, green of Ireland. The movie was kind of boring, but I just watched the sets and sighed at the beauty....That is how the fields looked today. The clouds were high, despite the rain, so you could see the mists rising from mountains that are usually hidden by them.

Asparagus berry, filling in for a rose hip...didn't take the camera out in all that rain

We spent several hours out there fixing up what the deer had done, cutting roses and raspberries and getting way past wet.

I was glad I went though.

There was a lot to see and hear and so much going on out back behind the hill.

Ran out of day before we ran out of fence though so the cows will have to stay in tonight.

They won't mind.

Around the Farm

Alan built us a huge wood shed all in a week, all by himself....cut the logs for the poles, set the poles, built the sides and roof and roofed it with used tin that blew off the barn roof before that big project. Must be seen to be believed, pics to come soon. Now we just have to get some wood in it.

Becky and I got the garlic planted yesterday, the latest yet, but more than double the usual size plot. We dug out the entire bean patch and put in garlic. Liz brought home a bunch of left-over bulbs from an Amishman she visited in her travels and I decided to plant them all, along with some of my own seed stock from this year. We love garlic and I always run out of home-grown long before I run out of winter. Hopefully next season will be different.

It was a great day for getting out and planting, colder than was comfortable, but you warm up quickly when digging. The ground was muddier than it should be, but it has been muddy all fall pretty much continuously so I am not going to worry about that.

On the phone half the day yesterday too, but with the owner of a bull we are trying to get bought rather than with politicians. (BTW, tried the Kim Komando pound sign thing...works on some calls, not on others). We looked at nice shorthorn bull a couple of months ago and then didn't hear anything for a while. Now we are back to negotiating. Hopefully we will wind up with him, as he is real nice. Alan and I fell in love with his dam from the moment we saw her out in the free stall at their farm. One of those cows that just jumps right out at you, all angular and sleek and correct.

Today, I figure if the phone rings it won't be a robocall. It is cold enough that it is probably clear out, so maybe we will get one more good day to get stuff done before the rain comes back.

Have a good one!