Moooooony

***Top one is untouched...added light to the bottom two, to make the photo look like the sky actually did last night when Lizzy and I came home....

Just another day

Knot O' Snake
(He was all tied up...)
(He did this to himself and was soon undone before Becky let him go)

Mockery from the mockingbird

Spent some time this morning trying to get a photo of this mockingbird flaring his white wing patches to scare insects.




Close, but no cigar. I have been wanting to get some guinea hens to keep the tick population down. However, there is concern over how long birds as bereft of brainpower as guineas would survive with so many foxes and coyotes around. They are pretty expensive to buy just to put them on the menu for the local wildlife. With the mockers on duty maybe I won't have to get any.



And a foggy sunrise, which is about all we have been seeing lately. Word is that it may be going to dry out though. I am ready!



Guess who!

Red sky at morning

Farmer, get out of the house and go get your cows.....

Same sky, different day

Taken from the same porch as the photo in the last post but early this morning

Deadline Wednesday

I never joined Wordless Wednesday, although you sure can find a lot of fine photography from the bloggers who have on that day. However, I gotta come up with 1000 words for the Farm Side today, so here it is....Deadline Wednesday.

From evening into morning

Moon tangle

From the milkhouse door

Ditto

Good Saturday morning

Timberdoodle's return

The snow geese showed up today too! More on View at

We had to milk test today. Because of metering every cow's output it takes longer than just throwing the machines on and gittin' 'er done. Thus we started early and had to hustle. (Our sweet milk tester, who lives over by the college, took Beck to school so I am beyond grateful for that! She is much kinder to me than I am to her and I really should do better.)


Anyhow I was taking the dogs out in the still-freezing darkness when I first heard it for the year. Peeenttttt!!!! The delightful whiny, nasal call was coming from up by the horse pasture pond. Despite the impending pressure of yet another hectic, crazy day, I was thrilled. After being woodcock-less for a dozen years down here by the house, we had one dancing last year. Alan has been seeing them up in the field for a while but "mine" hadn't come back so I was concerned. Every night on the way in from the barn I have been standing in the driveway for a few minutes listening....hoping. And hearing nothing but killdeers and geese.


Then this morning, there he was. I stopped several times on my way over to work, to shut off the flashlight and just listen. Although he kept on peenting he didn't fly so I haven't heard the sky dance yet. Tonght if it isn't snowing or pouring I won't have to hurry so much and I will wait for the thrill. I spend a lot of time standing in the driveway during timberdoodle season.

I am SO glad that he is back!

****Update, Tom has video and sound that will let you enjoy just what we do...and lucky guy, he has five of them!

Guess who went out barefoot with the doggies this morning

To shoot pictures of the moon? (The rest of them were taken through the windows...I am only half way crazy).







Happy, happy morning...no school, no milk truck, Liz has the day off so I can let everyone else sleep in an extra hour while I play.

Yesterday hundreds of geese

Today thousands. This flock took long enough to fly past for Alan and me to stand discussing whether he had time to run inside for the camera. Enough to decide, well maybe. For him to run inside and get it. For me to take dozens of pictures. At least five or six minutes. At least a thousand geese. Probably many more than that.

Window on the (bird) World

The view from my Sunday chair

Sunday morning...I get to sit in my Sunday chair and read a Dean Koontz book, which gave me nightmares last night. (You can kill wild pigs with a Swiss Army knife you know...if you always carry one...if three of them have your husband down on the ground savaging him...if only in your dreams.) It is on the opposite side of the house from the bird feeders, but the birds are bringing all the drama of their lives right to me. First a phalanx of pigeons swoops by, blown sideways by the wind. They look anxiously in through the window, all facing me, all unable to fly forward as the wind tosses them around. I hate what they do to the roof of the steeple, but they sure are beautiful fliers.

Then a crow drives a red tailed hawk right past and down to the road, dive bombing his back, bringing him so near I can see the fluffy, white feathers around his tail. It seems strange that the much larger bird is so harried by the smaller, but that is always how it goes. If I were red tail I would just eat crow.

Next two chickadees bounce off the window fighting over a wasp's nest. If I didn't already love chickadees this wasp eating thing of theirs would endear them to me. Our monster huge wooden house is always festooned with all sorts of nests of stinging insects. This time of year the chickadees hunt them out and eat the larvae they contain. (Since Liz is allergic to stings I cheer them on.) In a few minutes one of the combatants is back picking off the next to last nest on the big living room windows. I hope he comes back for the other one.

East meets West

Or at least they holler howdy from the living room windows to the dining room windows.

If you don't like the weather in Upstate NY

Wait a minute....or maybe just a little more than that.....The first pictures, including the pink heifers, which is unedited except for cropping out the pink-for-minute heifer barn, were taken at 6 AM. At that time the sky was even pink in the west!

The last photo was taken just before ten AM. Same day. Almost the same spot as the first one.

Something's brewing

We crawled out of bed a little early this morning because Liz is going to help out on a Farm Bureau membership drive a little later in the day. We were nearly done milking when the sun came up. Its rising was at once ominous and glorious. At first there were bands of purple and sandy tan. Pretty enough, but in a Martian sort of way...the colors were simply not of this earth. Then the strange dullness slowly dissolved into a sea of red so bright that it shone right through the house from the living room to the rippled old glass in the dining room windows. There the red was exuberantly bubbled and wrinkled by the ancient panes until it looked like lava flowing down between the curtains.

The milkhouse wall was stained bright pink for a few seconds too, like a sunlit villa tucked against a hillside somewhere on the Mediterranean. I hurried back into the barn to call everybody out to see, but by the time I turned again the color was gone and the sky had faded all to grey. Because Liz was in a hurry to get Becky over to school (the latter is paying the former for chauffeur duties) the breakfast above is not what we are having today. However, a week ago Sunday was another story altogether. Anyhow, between the red sky at morning and the weather forecasts I guess we have a storm brewing. Sleet. Freezing rain. High wind watch. Bah humbug!

*****Visit Pure Florida today to see the kind of photos of Herkimer Diamonds that someone who knows what they are doing can produce. Mine are feeble by comparison.... even though the stones are just as bright and even somewhat larger.
It is kind of neat to walk outside with a flashlight here at night, as all the Herkimers and slabs of mica from Richter's Mountain sparkle like, well, like diamonds in the night....maybe someday I will get the knack of photographing them.

Red sky at morning farmers take....

Pictures

Odd sky

Daybreak

It happens quite often. (And usually I am there to see it.) Only during the longest days of June does the sun make it up before I do and even then it is still low in the sky. This has nothing to do with any particular virtue and everything to do with being a dairy farmer and morning person. Dawn is the finest time of day and I like to see what it brings.

This day brought an exceptional one. (Despite the fact that I only got quick peek out the barn door). When we went to work the sky was clear as mountain water. (The grass was about that wet too.) Orion was wheeling overhead, bright as winter and almost as cold. It was exceedingly dark except for the starlight and about as quiet as it ever gets.

Then, about the time I was taking the milker off Mango to switch it onto Bubbles, a sharp, clear, golden light appeared toward the east. It made a bright band across the tree-lined horizon and seemed to unlock the colors from the night. Black sky changed magically to a liquid midnight blue, edged with silver and turquoise. The stars were like holes in dark paper, letting bright light shine through like tiny spotlights. The dead elm in the creek stretched skeletal branches toward the sun, as if warming fingers that were ever cold. It was breathtaking, (could have just been the cold, but I thought it was the sky).

I watched for a second then turned back to my job. Milking machines wait for no man (or woman) and cows have little patience with dreamers. By the time I stopped to look out again, the sun was all the way up, the sky was a cold white-blue and it was time to turn the cows outside and feed the pigs. (Which is a whole 'nother story, which you can read in the Farm Side this Friday if you are so inclined. ...and have a buck as the paper is still a pay site.)

It was a beautiful daybreak though, a nice side benefit to working where there is little to block the sky and the air is clear enough to let it shine through.

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.

Frost in June

The sun looked brassy enough this morning.

Who would believe that Wednesday night it froze? The moon flowers and cardinal climber took a serious hit and a tomato got nipped pretty badly. This is the latest spring frost I have ever seen here. Two days later it is in the upper eighties. Weird weather!