Yesterday

Cleaned the bull's water tub and refilled it. He seemed quite grateful to have clean fresh water. I didn't know what to tell him. He is the one who backs up and uses it for a potty. Who said bulls were smart?

Shoveled all the ashes out of the outdoor wood stove and started a new fire.

Weeded and staked tomatoes.

Spelunked for the second planting of green beans. Not a one to be found. Something is definitely eating them and I am thinking chickens.

Cut brush around the water faucet where you turn the hoses on to water stock. I hate ticks and being brushed by weeds like that makes me think they are crawling all over me.

Photographed yellow warblers (while trying to photograph indigo buntings who were hiding.)

Laundry, you can't beat days when it is dry enough to get several bunches dry on the line.

Meatloaf and gravy. An accidental recipe that everyone likes so I made it two nights in a row. (Got to enjoy Jade's "meatloaf face"...guess he liked it.)

Chores and milking both ends of day.

Wasted time on the computer. Playing Zuma Blitz on Facebook.

And at my worst moment felt way smarter than the guys in the photo above. I saw the two ultralights coming at me when I was on the porch with the camera, night before last. As I watched they came THAT close to one another. Yowsa!

****Update: also watched an incredible fireworks show. From bed. By merely turning my head toward the window. The race track next door held one for the holiday and it was a humdinger. I tried to get enough gumption to go down and get the camera and try for some pics for Sunday Stills. Nope...none there...gumption that is .

We did worry about what the cows' reaction to that fusillade over their heads might be...and of course they were in the pasture nearest the track and the show.

Hope they are still in the fence this morning.

****Update 2: half a herd of cows at the barn door this morning. The other half had gone walkabout. Fortunately they stayed on our land and just feasted on sorghum and grass. Notably all the cows that have been to the Fonda Fair and lived through the fireworks show right over the barn were among the ones at the door.

Cops Shoot Gator

Which turns out to be made of concrete. Nice shootin' Tex. (I want one of those!)

PS..link is now fixed

Stars

I pause on the stair landing every morning and evening to look west and mark in my mind the weather, the weather to be, the heifers social life and whatever birds may be whipping across the yard to hit the feeder or popping up the drive searching for bugs or singing on the phone wire.

Last night the sky above the barn was dotted with a handful of stars.

After a relentless month or more of grey and gloom and rain and rotten weather I was stunned. I hollered down the stairs to the guys, who were still up that there were stars. Stars! Can you believe it?

And we actually had a nice day yesterday. Field work was done. The first hay was chopped, just a pile on a bale wagon to feed the heifers in the barn, but actual 2011 grass was harvested. GFs and BFs visited. Liz did a mighty cook out for supper (which turned out to be a cook in as the grill suffered some sort of fatal set back) and all in all it was for the most part a normal day.

Normal...not something we have seen much of lately. I would not mind a little more of that.

Something's Gotta Give

(Rudeness is not confined to humankind.

Witness Baja shoving Broadway off a particularly tasty patch of grass)

If you smack yourself in the mouth with the claw end of a hammer.

Prolly a tooth.

Yeah, the stall-building fiasco project went south yesterday. Way south. I was just charging up my iPod and planning a productive day of cleaning and getting plants planted when Alan walked in all bloody and broken. He had struck at a stubborn staple, embedded in old, dry, oak, and the hammer rebounded and whacked him dead on, right in the mouth.

So we spent the day in a far away city waiting for an emergency dentist to tell him he needs a special filling which will cost a bunch and which also has to wait until they can fit him in for it. Not very dramatic.

However..... We were sitting in the treatment room awaiting the doc, when screaming erupted in the waiting room. And I don't mean just a gentle little shrieking. I mean full force, F-bomb spewing outrage. The upshot of the edited version is that some lady (and I use that term loosely) brought her sister who had had a "procedure" earlier in the week. The latter was now in a lot of pain, nobody would talk to her on the phone, she was going to *&**** sue, she was going back to find the (*^&&& doctor (insert shoving match with office staff here) etc. etc. heavily laced with profanity that would curl your hair. Yow

I was honestly afraid and thought about closing and trying to lock the door on the room we were in. I had visions of weaponry beyond bad language and felt captive there in the little room.

I also had visions of tattooed, dyed, spiked and pierced scary people out there in that resounding waiting room, forcing their way back to shoot or otherwise inconvenience us.

Imagine my amazement when the "girls" in question managed to shove their way into the passage outside our door. They were probably a few years older than I am, perfectly coiffed, dressed conservatively in expensive clothes, and looked like grandmas on their way to the grocery store.

Dang, they sure didn't sound like grandmas. Or at least not mine. I felt terrible for the office staff and the other patients, some of whom I guess were as scared as I was. This was not just rudeness. You see rudeness. This was craziness. I later overheard the staff saying that they had had no phone calls and would have gotten the women care if asked. Just craziness.

Oh, well, it wasn't your usual dull wait for a doctor.

Thinking and Planning

So Yesterday's Post is Gone

And Blogger is acting very weird. I am just grateful not to have lost the whole shooting match. It went away for a while once and I felt like I had lost all my friends.

That would hurt.

Ah, well, I still have the pics of the robin wars and if anyone wants to see them I can always put them back up.

Meanwhile the guys went to pick up a new shorthorn bull, the skid steer is back from its axle surgery, the 4490 has gone to have its injectors rejected or some such thing and me, I am just trying to get a fire going so we can have showers. Wet wood doesn't light too well.

Also potting off plantlings. And recycling an over grown flower bed.

Plus marveling at the spectacular array of arriving migrants and their frantic rush to nest, nest, nest. Yesterday I saw a fight among a robin, a blue jay, a grackle and a cardinal. Wow, that was some blaze of color and some racket too. I try to spend a little while every day sitting out on the sitting porch with the camera. Better than a National Geographic show on the television.

Flight Delay

Coltsfoot blossoms buttering up the ditches

Big old yeller moon out painting on the town.

Bright golden sun bursting down the hallway

Greeting me when I get up.

Dagnabbit...

I overslept!

Those night meetings are just a killer.

Hairy Butt

Hairy woodpecker that is. We have downies all the time, but this pair of hairies is the first in a long while. I heard them before I saw them..their chinking call is quite different, louder and more musical, than that of the downies. For some reason the female spent at least ten minutes guddling around under the stones in the herb garden the other day. Photo was taken through the window so it isn't the greatest, but I guess you can get the idea.

Things are in a sort of holding pattern here. Mud, sunken driveway, hard to get at the feed. Just waiting for better weather to bless us. It is always thus in early spring.....however, I visited the garden section while picking up a few things at Wally World yesterday.

What a sweet renewal! Red flower pots! Green flower pots! Dirt! Peat pellets! Seeds, seeds, seeds! Felt like a kid at a carnival.

Life was worth living again... I am going to save up and have me one of those glazed red flower pots with the nice water catchers, yes I am. Wouldn't it look nice with a bright, cardinal red geranium planted in it? And I just happen to have a baby one out on the kitchen window sill.

Snow over Mud

Stuck milk truck, gravel hauled in, feed hard to get out, but the sun rises are sure fancy...

Dad Says

We have to call him George now, even though that isn't his name

Here is an interview with the folks about the gun show this past weekend. Very nice....except that his name's not George.

And aren't George and Alice a fine looking pair...with nearly sixty years of marriage behind them!

Stale Peeps

An Easter tradition since the nineteen eighties.

Cats with Thumbs and Clever Little Border Collies

Da typist

You know I am an animal lover. Been that way since I was so small that I thought my grandma's little Spitz cross was the size of a Saint Bernard.... I can remember just nicely being able to hold on to his shoulders.

I couldn't believe it when I saw photos after I got tall* and found out that he was a little bitty thing that today I could scoop up under one arm and walk away with.

Anyhow, I have always shared a special connection with animals, especially dogs.

However, today provided the most amazing in a lifetime of uplifting interactions. I got up this morning, jet lagged and grumpy from the time change, to find that Nick had enlisted Elvis the cat, Wally the cow dog, and several of the more knowledgeable among the cattle, and written my newspaper column for me.

Yeah, turns out Elvis is a secret member of Cats with Thumbs and can keyboard. They did the research and the whole nine yards. Can you believe it?

They even copied and pasted in a couple of good quotes. And you wanna know what they wrote about?

Turns out the animals hate the time change too. So much that, according to Nick, Keebler the Shuttle Cat made 350 trips between the barn and the house forwarding (and backwarding) information.

Thanks, guys! You really made my day.

*Okay to head this off at the pass, all you wise guy family members can hold the smart remarks about just how tall I am not. I am at least tall-ER than then if not actually tall.

Atall.

Saturday Morning Cereal

Big doings in Alaska today. The Iditarod kicks off...and you can have a front row seat by visiting here.

Apple peels fight cancer (Me I just eat the whole apple)

More on honey laundering. NY is trying to do something about it.

Johanns is trying to get the EPA to commit to some common sense instead of treating milk as if it were crude oil.

Tuesday Edition

Cold again, or still, or whatever. Around zero I guess. I dragged myself out in the dark for morning barn check. Everyone but me has the dreaded cold/flu thing, so I could hardly expect anyone else to do it. Beautiful morning though. By the time I was done the sun was just rising like a peach and melon watercolor, washing the land with light. Old Mr. Fluff was crowing his heart out and ringing the morning in. The tracery of foot prints in the snow showed only cats and no foxes nudging around the hen house (unlike yesterday when some varmint was clearly looking for a free lunch right outside the windows.)

Everyone in the barn was fine. Heather was nice and warm and standing over her baby chewing her cud. Evidence and Lakota were not showing any sign of calving right away. I stopped to give Lakota a nice scratch on the poll, which she seemed to quite appreciate. It is getting to be an itchy time of year, with all of them shedding like crazy, and they love a good scratch. (You should see my dark blue work pullover...covered with enough hair to stuff a sofa.)

You would probably get a good laugh out of Bama Breeze and Carlene when I milk them. They stand side by side, so I go up between them to milk.

Bama is a real pet and always turns her head around toward me, soliciting a good neck rub. It only took a couple days before Carlene got the idea from watching her and decided to get in on the action. (Cows solicit each other to scratch their necks with their tongue, by stretching their neck toward the other cow and bunting and nudging...they groom each other quite a lot.) Now if I have time I can stand up between their heads, digging my fingers into their furry necks, as they turn this way and that to get the best angle.

Bama even licks my back when I milk her too, practically knocks me out in the aisle sometimes. (You would never guess that the same cows will stomp you flat if the mood takes them.)

Anyhow, the sun is up, it is time for chores....wonder when maple season is going to start.

PS, I think the peacocks started eating yesterday. They tipped their food table over twice, I believe getting up on it to eat. Guess I will have to make it more secure. Liz called the man who got them for me and it turns out that they have not been fed by hand, having lived free on the farm they came from. Thus they simply don't know what my food is for. I think I will go around the house and catch them a jar full of these darned box elder bugs that wake up whenever the house gets warm and crawl all over everything. That would make a nice treat, don't you think?

Been so Darned Fool Busy

Haven't even had time to get pics off the camera. This is a really awful shot of a common redpoll, only the second one I have seen this winter. It was about dusk and this was taken through the window so......I guess you'll have to trust me that it is actually a redpoll.

The weather is warm at least for today and there is much to do. We seem to be acquiring a pair of peacocks so I had to get the hen house that Alan and I built ready for them. That is kinda, sorta done, although there is more left to take care of.

Have much company coming in the next couple of weeks so cleaning is an ongoing, if largely futile, project. Doesn't matter what you do, they follow you around and mess it back up again. We did get the boss's newspapers picked up anyhow. Tied up three large bundles just from the landfill around his chair. Found my missing pot holders and several pairs of his dollar store glasses which was good.

Well, back to the salt mines. It won't clean itself. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!

Phil Says

An early spring. Thanks Phil!

**** And unfortunately Phil is probably full of......errrr......alfalfa!

Word For a Wintry Wednesday Redux

Thickory

Word For a Wintry Wednesday

Smorgasbird

Jury Duty

Well, my number didn't pop out of the selection thingie, so I only got to spend three hours warm, comfy, and fascinated by watching the jury selection process before I came back home to our cozy little iceberg on the hill (it was fifty-two indoors here yesterday). I was very well impressed with the way the whole affair was run, by the kindness and clarity of the court officials in caring for potential jurors and explaining what would happen, and by how very interesting it all was. If I was retired I would go watch the whole trial.

Happy New Year

(It is easy to see why, when we think of Heaven, we look up)

To all our good friends around the town and around the world. I hope that 2011 is better for you in every way than 2010.

I hope my job description doesn't change in the coming year. Yesterday was a typical day for requests..."Mom, do you know the vet's phone number?" (Just for some paper work).

"Hey, could you come out and hold the gate while I clean the pen? Those heifers keep running up the hill on me."

"Mom, can you get some sawdust out of my eye?"

"Where are your safety glasses?"

"Well, they were down at the house."

Yes to all. And yes, yes, yes to a life that leaves me with the kitchen counter next to the sink containing, at last count, 1 Bobcat oil filter, 1 chainsaw wrench, seven flashlights, a hole saw blade, shear bolts, lag screws, washers, 2 sets of side cutters, more screwdrivers than I care to count, the grain scale, rulers, shot gun shells, .22 shells, a basket (large) full of assorted parts that somebody might need someday, and some flower pots and matches. Just to name a few.....

There are easier ways, but I doubt that there are many that are more rewarding.

Hope yours is rich and full and fine.