Camp week

Last week was simply amazing. One of the nicest weeks we have ever spent at camp. There were birds and wild animals everywhere, the weather was stunning (except for one incredible downpour). We got to see any number of friends we don't get to spend time with very often. Caught a few fish. Took a lot of pictures...


194 in all plus one video. I only deleted a few when we got home where I could view them on the computer. I don't know what I am going to do with all those photos of ducks, geese kids and sunrises but I will think of something.

We puzzled for days over what these geese were grazing out of the trees until we started to find wild cherries floating on the water. If you click you can see the cherries, but we couldn't from where we were.

This beaver woke me up at 4:13 a couple of days ago, gnawing on a bass wood tree that hung out over the lake right under my bedroom window. It took me a long time to figure out what it was chewing and rolling rocks and splashing around just a few feet from where I was sleeping. I had thoughts of bears and other things more ominous than a beaver, until I heard it's signature somebody-throwing-a-bowling-ball-in-the-lake splash when I shined my flashlight out the window at it.

The Porch

Then yesterday morning as I was sitting on the porch sipping coffee, taking pictures of the sunrise and saying goodbye to the lake, it swam by about a foot from the porch. Then it disappeared in the trees overhanging the lake. For some reason it climbed up the hill to the outhouse, then thundered down, sounding like a whole herd of deer crashing through the bushes. It proceeded to swim aimlessly up and down the lake. Beavers are certainly interesting critters, but this one seemed to be operating on somewhat less than the prescribed number of cylinders so to speak. It certainly wasn't much afraid of me....or maybe it couldn't see me lurking up there on the porch. It just kept cruising past the porch...over and over again.





Until somebody said, BOO!

This is what happens when you say boo to a beaver

Who would ever believe that you would have geese eating cherries out of trees and beavers bowling under your bedroom window? Plumb amazing!

Wow

Had the morning off yesterday. Although Saturday isn't Sunday, it sure was nice. The guys went off for cow hay and to hit a machinery auction and to try to buy my Christmas present from the boss***, so we women had the day to ourselves. Liz kept the cows fed and I worked on the wood stove. There are times when that is a miserable and thankless task, but on a day like yesterday it beat housework all hollow.

Alan takes care of the stove for the most part, but he tends not to shovel out the ashes. Not something you need to do every day with an outdoor stove, but sooner or later it must be done. They were at least a foot deep.

These outdoor wood-burning critters are supposed to be inefficient, but if you burn them right when it is time to clean them out there is nothing left but incredibly heavy, dense, mealy powder. I swear every shovel full weighs twenty pounds. Yesterday there was a sluggish fire of gigantic maple blocks burning so I had to clean around that, and I was pretty pooped when I got done. However, the sun was hammering down hard enough that I soon shed my fleece vest. (You know you are a farmer when your vest says "Today" on it and rather than being a Zen statement it is an advertisement for mastitis medicine). It was actually warm enough for just a turtleneck and jeans, which is a mighty fine thing. After the shoveling I scavenged some apple up in the orchard and got that sullen fire fired up so to speak. (I didn't use any of my precious fat wood, as I didn't need to but last week I build a fire from scratch with it -just three little pieces that I broke off-and it was fantastic. I had a fire that was woofing and snarking up the logs in about five minutes! Thanks FC, again.)

It was a fantastic day to be out. Our resident mocking bird was hard at work teaching the cardinal how to sing his song. Clouds of blackbirds were nattering around in the box elders up by the old hop house. There were geese and killdeers and robins. Chickadees, titmice, and goldfinches. It was just warm enough to work hard, but cool enough to be comfy. The grass is actually turning GREEN! For the past two years spring has been so late that there has been no grass well into May. As we are buying feed seeing the land green up lifts my heart plumb up. No bugs yet either, although I slathered on plenty of OFF! to dissuade ticks from visiting my vulnerable ankles. I hope today is half as nice.




***The boss promised me one of those waffle deck plastic wagons for Christmas, but couldn't find one during the winter months. He is still looking, but they are just not in the stores yet. I love something like that for hauling wood and garden dirt and hay and all. Can't wait until he finds one!

Red sky at morning farmers take....

Pictures

Coincidence?

I think I will put the same post here today that I wrote for my garden blog (not much to post about there this time of year). Over on Garden Records, however, every now and then I copy an excerpt from the 1874 diary of Charles Thruwood, a farmer from Fort Plain NY (just a handful of miles up the road) . Charlie was 21 that year and had a grand time voting for the first time, breaking horses and doing a lot of hunting, besides working real hard on the farm with his family. It is interesting and informative to compare what happened on a family farm in his day to what happens on one in our time.


Perhaps not surprisingly, although the machines may be bigger and the animal numbers larger, there is no question that the cycles of life, the seasons, and the land have not changed. (No matter what hype you may hear on the topic.) For example, last night our maple syrup guy, who taps our sugar bush woods, (and gives us wonderful maple syrup), stopped by to negotiate for this season's tapping arrangements. I am sure in a few short weeks I will be reading of Charlie Thurwood's families doing their sugaring off as well. We will see when the time comes if the beginning of the maple sap run in 2008 coincides with that in 1874. (We have owned this diary for a good many years and it often has before.) I generally spot the beginning of the run by icicles hanging from maple branches that get broken off along the road. These are formed by sap and are tantalizingly sweet. Alan and I often break off a couple and melt them for coffee water...just for the fun of it.


Here is the copied post.

"From the Charles Thurwood diary

A very foggy day and in the morning it rained a little and I done nothing but the chores and went hunting and Henry Meyers was here and at night Til and Charley Bouman and Dunckel and Ezra Dillenbeck was all to our house. 4 eggs

Here at Northview we are also experiencing a January thaw, which is much appreciated. Had a little rainy sleet Friday into Saturday, which finally made the paths fit for walking again. Interesting that 134 years have passed between these two farmer diary postings and yet the weather is nearly identical."

Snow stories

This morning the boss and I got to regaling Alan with stories of winters we experienced as children and young adults. The years between the time I was about fifteen (and he nineteen) and the time I turned 28-ish included some staggering winters. There was a spell when I was living in one town and milking cows for a farm in another when the weather had to be experienced to be believed.

I had to be at work every day at five AM, so I left home around 4:30. That winter we had nearly a month when temps never got above twenty and at least a week of nights that reached thirty below. I drove a little Volkswagen station wagon sort of thing. It was an early example of front wheel drive and would go anywhere you pointed it. It was also a typical VW so the heater was dead. We used a little catalytic space heater to "warm" (warm being a relative term, resembling the comparison of scale of perhaps Vesuvius and a cigarette lighter, with "warm" being the lighter and comfortable being the volcano) it up and defrost the windows.


I would go out every morning at four or so and light the darned thing (with a match-it had an open, circular "wick" which was quite exposed), then go back inside for more coffee. If I propped it on the seat just so, it would sort of thaw a hole in the frost on the windshield so I could drive to work. It wasn't exactly ideal, but there isn't a lot of traffic at that time of day anyhow. I never missed a milking.

Then there was the blizzard that hit when I was living in the camp in Caroga Lake. (No insulation, one layer of simple board walls-it was a SUMMER camp after all). I don't remember exact weather statistics, but I probably was commuting to the same farm (I worked there a long time before I met the boss). During the night we got feet and feet and feet of snow, howling winds, temps way below zero...it was like living in Alaska. The little sheet steel wood stove in the living room (sole heat source) was a joke in the face of such weather. We didn't have running water though, so there was really nothing to freeze but us. Sometime during the maelstrom, while all occupants slumbered (including dogs) the front door of the cabin blew open. When we awoke in the morning we had to shovel two feet of snow out of the living room. (And you wonder why I refuse to get all excited about global warming.) At that point we accepted an invitation from some friends who had an apartment in the city and stayed with them for a few days.


The boss's stories of winter wildness included taking water upstairs at night so he could have a drink if he was thirsty and finding it frozen in the morning. Icy winds howling through the walls. Snow that the biggest tractor on the farm couldn't get into, let alone out of.


I have other memories of driving that same VW with that same stupid heater to that same job in an ice storm. There was simply no way the car could go on the roads themselves, which were like a long, black hockey rink. Still I had to go to work, as I loved my job and my employer's cows needed to be milked. So I put one tire on the snow bank and crept off to Johnstown where 150 Holsteins awaited. Never missed a milking then either.


We were nuts. We drove bad cars (I had one that you had to park on a hill to start and a truck with two leaky tires, which I swapped twice a day to get to and from work-I could change tires better then any girl I knew) and lived in frighteningly primative places. However, we were young, intrepid and didn't really know any better. And it was a real good preparation for marrying a dairy farmer. I fit right in from the day I got here.

Kegan's pickerel

My handsome nephew Kegan (that's him with the ruler) caught this 28 inch pickerel up at Peck's Saturday. That is one amazing fish and he didn't even have a steel leader. Photo credit goes to cousin Scott's weekly missive and I am thinking to one of my favorite aunts.

Wild Wednesday

Torrid Thursday...well, not really much more than just a touch torrid, but it alliterated nicely. Last night after a serious set of thunder storms, the sunset filtering through honey locust leaves was pretty and peaceful so I grabbed the camera. We lost power for a while, but it was back on before milking so we didn't have to fire up the generator. We bought that to be ready for the Y2K scare. Of course we didn't use it then, but since that time we would have been out of business without it half a dozen times. We once had no electricity for 16 days! The only damage this storm did to us that we have seen is to put a big box elder tree down on the cow lane fence. Of course one of the cows cut a teat climbing over it so she will be tough to milk for a while. A cow just won't go around if she can go through. Last week lightning took out one of the fence chargers despite lightning arresters on the fence. It is just an awful year for lightning.

One thing that amazes me is that even during the wildest storms birds fly back and forth past the living room windows like shuttles in a hurry. You would think they would huddle in a tree somewhere and wait it out, but they don't.

It is cooler today, a bit, though still soggy with humidity (see yesterday's comments for a definition of this arcane weather term). Up until yesterday it had been quite dry (and I am not complaining,) but the corn needed a drink pretty badly, so the rain was kinda/sorta welcome. I put the potted sago palms out for a drink and a bath, of which they were much in need. It is odd to see the puddles full though!

***I have been tagged by Mrs. Mecomber and will answer, as always on The View at Northview
****Oops, no, wait a minute...I did this one a while ago, only with six things.
Two more....let's see
7) I am phobic about ticks and call it tick terror. Keep them buggies away from me!
8) My father has been president of the local Audubon society, the mineral club, the carving club, plus collected archaeological relics at one time, and fossils, and always took us kids along when we were young, so we had a REAL interesting childhood....not to mention the antique store and the book store, which served as playgrounds to the young Montgomery clan.

Come on over and bring the kids

Here are some new kids on the block who came to visit yesterday while I was planting petunias. I was in the dabbling mallard pose under the honey locust, grubbing out fox tail grass and grubbing in fluffy-ruffled double pink petunias, when I heard urgent chink-chinking calls right above my head. A much harassed and nearly de-feathered mother downy woodpecker was feeding a pair of chicklings, (which were nearly as fluffy as the flowers,) suet and then sneaking away trying to get them to fend for themselves. She is already pretty tame and they don't know any better, so even with 3X zoom, I could get some fairly close shots. The big fluffy birds are the kids; the small scrawny one is the mama.

Mama is the little beleaguered bird on the bottom
Baby is the big one

Should I fly away from the fool shoving that little camera at me?
She looks sort of dangerous...

Na, this stuff is pretty good....
MAAAAAA...come over here and chip some more of this out for me, will ya?

Morning Glory

Well, really, it's a geranium, but you get the idea I think. There is nothing painful about early mornings this time of year.

On a good day

The sun comes up like a ball of fire (and I hope I feel the same way.)

The hummers hum and hover and buzz around our heads.

And the sitting porch beckons.......

First one up

I had to add some light to the hummingbird photo as fast shutter speed isn't so hot at dawn and hummers won't settle for anything less.

Yesterday's best

Herkimer diamonds

Herkimer Diamond mining

Was in the plans for today. However, we got up to pouring rain and February-like cold. It looks as if we will have to settle for taking pictures of some we collected other years. Some of these the kids and I dug up and the bigger ones were donated by my brother, who took his family digging a couple of weeks ago. Lousy day, lousy photos, sorry.

Brand new goslings

Liz took this out the car window when we driving over to the school today (she forgot to hand in a scholarship application and it was due today...since she bought me gold fish and a water lily and some hens and chicks for Mothers Day I am sure not complaining).
These babies just came off the nest, because the girls have been watching the parents setting. The silly things nest within yards of the road. Just a few yards from here Becky and I was an American bittern on Tuesday, a life bird for me....don't get too many of those any more.

**You may want to click to get a better view.

Before the Hell storm

May sunrise

The days are long this time of year, but they sure get off to a good start!

It isn't always arm and hammer

Sometimes it's arm and chickadee

On the way to a milk meeting last night

***HT ...this is the kind of land that is getting buried under houses.

Planting

Things are finally greening up around here. I actually walked through real, honest to gosh, genuine green grass on my way around the garden pond this morning. (I walk around it every morning just in case it has somehow gotten warm enough for the fish to swim around.) I am grateful for the green. I think I will go plant some lettuce and carrots to get my mind off all the ugly of the past couple of days.

Mike
*A border collie is never too old and never too tired to play ball*

Birds of the day

Robins, juncos, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, rock doves, English sparrows (lousy sassenachs), mourning doves, song sparrows, crows, fifty grackles in a small tree all facing in the same direction, all evenly spaced like some strange decoration in a macabre store window, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, gold finches, starlings, a fat tom turkey strutting right under the grackle tree, a couple of leftover Canadians winging it up the river, some small drab flycatcher that is not a phoebe, nattering from a bush by the barn, a phoebe snagging cluster flies by the big windows in the living room...all at the farm during this after storm day. Last week we saw our pair of purple finches, house finches, turkey vultures, assorted gulls, and a loon up on a little pond in Johnstown yesterday. (He was pretty big for such a small puddle.)

A great blue heron, pterodactyl ponderous, flapping over Randall, two horned larks showing their double collars perfectly as they flew in unison by Bellinger's apple orchard, a gaggle of mallards on the bike path, a kestrel lugging with no little difficulty a huge mouse or vole up where McClumpha's pile their straw....all seen on a trip to the FSA office today (and up around the "block" of course, to check out what was going on with farmer neighbors).

But my favorite is the woodcock, who is back at it in the horse pasture next to the house. I guess he is as glad as I am that it has stopped storming at least for the moment.