Spring is Sprung

A soggy snow robin

The grass is friz

And I know just where the boidies is.

Right on the feeder

It's sprung all right! in the wrong direction!

Killdeers and the Big Old Moon

Big moon

Killdeers lament across the heifer pasture, still snow, still snow, still snow. I want to tell them to come down on the lawn. Every footstep there crushes the rotten snow like a stomping Sasquatch and leaves a new bit of open ground behind.

The lawn at sunset

There are plenty of footsteps too. Cabin fever cure here I come. I am out making footsteps every chance I get.

The river thrusts itself east and south, bank to bank and bulging, crammed with authority granted by thousands of streams and rivulets, swollen far beyond capacity by a little rain and a lot of dying snow. Black birds, cardinals, grackles, geese, geese, geese, from before dawn to after dark, swirling, rising and falling, screaming to be heard over one another. And robins shuttling everywhere, busy, busy.

All the culverts along the highways are still chock full of ice and snow so there is road flooding everywhere. Just west of the farm a huge whirlpool churns busily over a clogged drain. I swear it would suck down a car if you drove in there. So we don't.

The boss and I undertake to get some calf medicine and shavings for their little beds and inflations for the milking machines. The things we see, the things we see.

Wouldn't you think at this budget-busting laying off of everybody season that the guys moving little teeny tiny crumbles of ice that is going to melt anyhow, would not have a pay loader and a bunch of trucks and a large crew of workers out doing a job that a farm kid with a shovel could cover in an hour? Or even better, it was almost sixty...the stuff woulda been gone by morning. And they wonder......why we wonder.....

Come almost-night a moon with a big reputation rises over the horse pasture. It doesn't look that big. Maybe tomorrow when it is full.....

Just as I have had enough out on the lawn as the sun is setting time thousands of geese fly over, yodeling the wishes of their hearts across the sky.

All during our trip I looked in vain for snow geese. Now this morning as I edit the photos from last night I find that the gigantic flock that stretches so far is in fact a flock of snows. Cool

See, they really are snows

Something About the Season

Common redpoll

He let me walk right up to him

while he stuffed his beak with sunflower seeds

It is grey, muddy, soggy, gloomy, a bit on the nippy side, and I don't care one bit.

First turkey vulture-last week

First Killdeer-about ten minutes ago

Robins-everywhere

Grandma Peggy's daffodils up by the corner of the house-check

Eggs-hens are laying them

Warm enough to toss the roosters outside-yes (three roosters to four hens is a terrible ratio.

Yep, technically it is still winter, but March is so much closer to spring than February

Better Days are Coming

Yeah, it is storming...again... For the most part for the past few weeks we have just caught the edges of the big storms that have pummeled the region. However it looks like this one is going to wallop us. Got up to hard, sleety stuff that nicely fits the old adage, "Snow like meal, snow a great deal." You can barely see that it is snowing, but you sure can hear it. I am sending Alan off to school early, as the Blue Bomber is having power issues and I imagine the roads are going to be a mess.

It is still pretty dark, but I hear cardinals chipping and chinking at the feeder, another indication that we have some real weather on the way. They are usually quite a bit later coming in....like about three hours. And the feeders are almost empty even though I filled them late yesterday afternoon.

We have to get out and get done what we can before it gets any worse. We feed from Ag bags, so the snow is an issue...The boss will be clearing driveways as it is tanker day too. Probably won't be much of a fun day for anybody.

So, let us think of spring.

In a few weeks the first crocuses will stick their pointy little purple and yellow noses out through the ice under the kitchen window. In a few weeks the first red-winged blackbirds will echo water whistle songs from the trees at the edge of the old horse pasture. Grackles will plunge stiletto beaks into the pile of lingering seed hulls under the feeder, rapacious raiders that they are. It is the only time all year that I am glad to see them. With them will come all the little not too far migrants, the birds you might see in winter or then again might not. Assorted sparrows mostly.

In a few weeks the bark on the willow trees will turn to greeny-gold and they will stand out like beacons in the woods across the river. Poplars will become pewter candlesticks and gleam gently in their groups. Maples will put on pink spring buds and show themselves among the inky evergreens as well.

The chickadees will change their songs to the spring version and the breathy whistles of the titmice will commence.

In between time, sometime, the maple syrup run will start. usually along about the time that you might see snow rollers and blue ice on the ledges by the sugar bush. Here's hoping for a good run this year, with lots of fine, sweet sap for boiling.

Am I ready for all that? You betcha. Alas those few weeks are usually very, very long ones. Winter trudges along on the slowest snow shoes in creation, flinging weather in every direction. I can't say that I like it much.

I have heard many times from many folks that if I don't like winter I shouldn't live in the Great Northeast. Unfortunately this is where I was born and raised and I lack the initiative or adventuresome spirit to move. (Although it is darned tempting sometimes.)

Thus until green time arrives I will whine and complain and post pictures from the archives of the good stuff...and visit all those great bloggers from the warm places in the world to revel in their beaches and waves and sunshine.

Stay warm!

Color My World

Red Cows

And Red Necks (Do I know these strange people?)

Yellow Ducks

Yellow Skies

And Shy Little Brown Birds

On Monday

The weather is as perfect as weather can be...cool mornings with clear, bright, peach gold sunlight. Blankets of silver dew shining on the hillsides. Webs of glistening fog floating in the hollows.





The hummers showed up at the feeder less than a day after I filled it. They are very tame and I am thinking probably the same ones as were here last year. I feel bad if I accidentally scare them away from the sitting porch....no wrens yet, but I heard a cat bird. Watched the kestrel hovering over the long lawn, Maltese cross in silhouette. It is so good to finally have them back.

Cows are content with the new green grass and long days of grazing on it. They come in with udders full of milk, then rush back outside to fill them up again.

It is the best time of year and I won't let it be spoiled for me....planting potatoes today if all goes well.

The Moon on One Coast

Sun on the other

Of our little hidden country

Moon dragging cloudwebs
white potato chip on the barn roof,

Sun waving ribbons bright as Saturn
weaving up the hedgerow

A present just for me.

River grinning through the cottonwoods,
toothy white smile peeking out
from under the Adirondacks, lying about how glad it is to see you

With oblivion on its breath
Treacherous shining snaking water, deadly under all the pretty.

Mountains rolling halfway south
fences, fields and polished cows

Like marble statues
standing in the moony sunlight

Secret deer and wild bird songs.

Waiting out there
for men on tractors and fencing families

Work first...play later...

Rain has Arrived

And it is cold. However, before it arrived yesterday, Alan got over twenty acres with the disks and the boss got half the field under the power lines done. It is still pretty wet, but they have to go if they can. Freeze warning for tomorrow night and everything is in riotous bloom. The pear blossoms are fulling open, the apples just beginning. I hope it doesn't get TOO cold.

The Song of Early

Border collie yawning that gap-jawed, noisy, whiny thing they do when they are all excited and eager and justcan'twait to go out doors. Hips swinging with pendulum of tail, ears drawn back in glee.

Border collie gleaming black-and-white against glowing electric greengreengreen grass. Border collie blowing a song sparrow off a swaying leftover dead weed stalk and up into the apple tree among the baby buds. It flies back down, he flies back through and sends it skying up again.

Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast time for doggies.

Grass jumping up tangle-foot tall, almost ready for cows to graze...today maybe? (Please let it be today...)

Dawn chorus. Last week a thin selection of early robins. Today almost a din. The little alarm clock bird is trilling its low key murmur.....softly...softly....day break whistle. (someday I will give it a true name...all I know is that it sounds exactly like Liz's alarm clock and fools me into morning every day)

White-throated sparrows conjuring up old Sam Peabody from every rose tangle and honeysuckle clump. Song sparrows seeking over the freshly turned earth of the gardens. Freshly turned garden...ain't THAT a fine thing!

Liz's boyfriend, who is pretty darned high on my list right now, brought down his grandpa's big ol' Troy Built yesterday, and spent all the middle of the day turning my bony weed patches into delightful swatches of smooth, crumbling, rich and ready to plant, dark black earth..... just begging for seeds. It is still too cold for tender hearted stuff, but radishes, peas and their ilk will be planted apace.

Yesterday the boss fixed the broken water pipe over #171 (who got an early vacation in the pasture, which she celebrated with much kicking up of heels and skirmishing with the handful of others who are out already) and the broken stable cleaner shaft, and brought home corn meal and soy meal and barn calcite to keep the barn floor from being slippery (in the house everyone spreads sand from their shoes, whether I like it or not...the floor is rarely clean, but it is never slippery).

Today the decks are clear. I should write, but I want to go out...fences, gardens, dirt or woodstove. I don't care what the job is....

If it is out...then I am in!

The Things You See

********Or love in the great outdoors....

It is spring.

Spring is a good time to make babies if you are a bird, an insect, mammal or herptile.....or plant, as far as that goes...you wouldn't believe the pollen.

Thus I end up feeling like a voyeur whenever I go outside. When I came in for breakfast, Mr. Fluff, the big white rooster, was cut-cut-cutting, over a pile of chicken feed, as he lured the little black hen, Michelle, in for a hot date. He looked like a Matre D, spreading his bright, white wings and bowing and sweeping before her. He also looked kind of silly, but I guess he can't help being a chicken.

There are millions of mosquito wigglers in the garden pond....evidence of an assignation I truly don't need to know about. I put the sunfish back out to take care of that situation...she will get fat and they will get gone.

The big flocks of geese are breaking up into twosomes now and making plenty of noise about it too. I was just finishing up prepping Pecan to be milked this morning when a pair flew right past the barn window behind her. They were lovely against the light of the rising sun and their calls were purely haunting.

I was even nearly an unwilling participant in some of the lusty spring activities this morning. I bent over to prep a little black Holstein named Magic and she threw her chin on my back and started to just hop right up. (It's nice to be loved, but dang.) She isn't a very big cow, but even a little bitty cow in the mood for love is more than I want to tangle with. I jumped right out of that stall in a heck of a hurry and let the boss finish prepping her. (AI service has been attended to. We bred her to a bull from the eighties, Woodbine Ellason. He throws nice big, framey daughters, so maybe if she has a calf from this service it will be a somewhat nicer-looking cow than she is.)

And yesterday morning...I was out in the barnyard just at the break of day, sending ETrain, Encore and Bayberry back up the hill after milking. The sky was bright orange, fading to clear ice blue; the air was as fresh as ice water melting off a glacier. I heard killy killy killeeeees call coming from right over my head. I looked up and there was the kestrel pair, performing their mating flight against the brilliant sky. They swooped and fluttered in huge circles and figure eights, chattering excitedly, then landed in the dead elm to actually mate. I was awed to be standing there in the swelling morning light and seeing their wonderful flight...and I am so happy to have them still nesting in the barn.

Yesterday it was Sunny

And I took a couple of pictures of the morning. Today the normal rainy chill of April is back, but we sure liked summer while it lasted. I tried to tell folks not to take the windows out of the barn last night, even though it was a bit hot in there...they are going to be plumb chilly this morning I'm afraid....

Spring Day

At daybreak a perfect half moon looks as if somebody chopped it off like a slice of silver cheese....A blazing sunrise, colors changing like a cinema, now peach, now tangerine, then cotton candy, clean bright white on to the blinding blue of noonday.

At sunset, pink sheep clouds nibbling their way across the heifer hill horizon, shepherded along towards evening by the tugging of the breeze. It snaps the laundry on the line and ruffles the border collie's fur as it passes. It is the kindest wind of the year, refreshing, sweet, and softly scented, with green earth and cow and clean, smooth water on its breath.

In between the day's bright ends, cleaning pens and moving heifers, fixing and filling and planning the planting. Heifers on Saturday, heifers on Monday. Salesmen and electric fences, shovels, wheelbarrows full of baleage (when is somebody going to straighten that bent axle and find some grease I want to know?) skirling skid steer, singing songbirds, snarling river, snaking brown Schoharie...it is spring in the valley, sit up and take notice.

Mud-lucious

And puddle-wonderful. The woodcock is back. I had been staying out after chores every night, leaning on the car hood and listening. It is so sweet out there when it finally warms up enough to BE out there...to listen, smell, savor the arrival of spring with all it brings. Ducks shuttle by unseen, but clearly heard, and geese are back on the river. No woodcock though.

No peent.

No wingy whistle turning the empty night into a whirl of wonderful music.

Then yesterday morning, just as I stepped onto the back porch in the still dark, not morning yet except by government time change standards , I heard him.....close too. I wonder if he moved his peenting grounds or if it was just so quiet that he sounded closer than other years.

He usually starts his sky dance up by the horse pasture pond. This year it sounds as if he is right down under the apple trees by the garden. He showed up on the 15th last year and the 27th in 08
March 29th in 07 but not until April in 06

Another waited for event had taken place as well. When I got to the barn in reindeer bathrobe, barn coat. and high rubber boots, Armada had finally had her first calf, another amazing red surprise, but, alas a bull. She was feeling sorry for herself and wouldn't even try to stand up so I came back to the house to get the boss to give her a bottle of calcium, which perked her right up. I CAN give bottles if I have to, but she was lying half under another heifer and I thought that someone bigger, stronger and with longer arms was called for. Both baby and mama are fine btw...

I am so grateful she finally got around to having him. She was due the 13th. We started doing barn checks a couple times a night about a week before she was due to calve....which adds up to a lot of 0-dark-thirty walks to the barn...in the mud...which is actually drying up just a tad.

Although E. E. Cummings found mud to to be a source of inspiration and delight, I personally find it to require me to sweep the kitchen floor about fifteen times a day in a cycle of endless futility, unquenched by ceaseless boot scraping..the outdoors just wants to come indoors during mud season.

**The photos above are an update of things at the pond in Lykers...still pretty frosty and not much around but a few chickadees. Just a few weeks and that will change.

Doing Instead of Writing

Waiting to be potted

All this nice weather, I just can't help myself. Moving wood...spring clean up...and repotting this absurd fox tail fern. I grew it from a seed of the plant we inherited from the boss's mom, who in turn grew it from a seed at least thirty years ago...probably much more.

RIP

It broke the clay pot it was growing in and for a long time I had nothing else to put it in. Then it got warm enough this week to take the plastic off the sitting porch door...and out there were empty flower pots and lots of earth....

The roots

So that job is done. I still need to plant some peppers, somehow find some patterns for painting wooden yard animals. I seem to have accidentally acquired a job painting them.....anybody know a website that has pictures of them....decorative chickens, bunnies, cows, ducks etc.?

First Killdeer

Was heard last night, just after dark, when I was dragging bedding over from this side of the creek to bed up for the night. I used to keep the round bales Matt gave me over by the barn, but now we have four cows going outside and they tear the bales all up...so I have to lug it a lot farther.

It was sweet to hear the cry of the killdeer while I was doing the lugging though. Seems as if it is early for them. I will have to check back and see.

It is amazing to me how migration, which had barely begun just three or four days ago, is in full swing now. I went with Alan to get a load of hay yesterday and the roadsides were black with assorted black birds....funny how the red winged black birds and grackles flock up with the local starlings to form massive mobs that set the air ringing with their calls. They were settling over the long-harvested corn fields and then swirling up in black clouds only to settle again a few yards away.

We also saw a neat thing, a pileated woodpecker clinging precariously to a spike of stag horn sumac, tearing it up with its big chisel beak. It looked at first like a plastic toy, stuck in the branches and I did a double take as we whizzed by on our way home with sustenance for the girls....speaking of which, I cannot wait for green grass, which is our only possible savior this year. You don't have to buy it and they can eat as much of it as they want to. Praying for an early spring here with great sincerity.

Finally Friday

Spring break just began so we have our boy home for a week...I am liking that.
The critters are liking the sunshine...

(Please don't mind Gael's semi-bareness. She is a very old lady and has become quite fur challenged these days.)

Rumors

About the demise of the snow here.....are a bit premature....alas


My favorite rose quartz, which now adorns Mike's final resting place


And my former favorite Herkimer diamond specimen, which a certain someone broke with the lawn mower.



But we do have pretty rocks....er.....mineral specimens.

Dawn Chorus

Kind of thin, but it is out there. Yesterday I heard the first tentative robin song from up behind the horse barn. (And my heart swelled to twice its normal size.) Around noon the first song sparrow tuned up (although there have been a few silent visitors at the feeder all winter).

This morning I went out at first-pink-dawn to attend to yet another barn check (no babies this time). There were at least four distinct robins caroling all up along the back of the yard. Two cardinals down by the neighbor's house. Song sparrows. First red-winged blackbird of the year singing down by the road. First grackle hiding among the starlings in the dead elm behind the heifer barn.

I know we still have winter left. Only one year since I have been at this farm (and so far there have been almost 28 of them) were we able to get out and build fence and get on the ground in March...and it is still EARLY March. However, the early bird gets the worm...or in this case the best nesting site...and it looks as if these guys are ready for spring....although probably not quite as ready as I am.

Springishnenss

Banks of ice pile up along fast-flowing freshets of frigid melt water. Early on they took the form of fancy fans, frozen flat above silently gushing streams, but with the sun comes strength. The water undermines and smashes them, then piles them up for later melting. By mid-afternoon all evidence of their existence will be gone, only to form flat fans again as night comes down.

This is a season for getting up early. In the almost-morning, before the sun began its carving and cutting of lingering snow, the moon tangled itself in the branches of a straggling spruce, pulled free then sailed off toward the silvery horizon.

As early as then the chickadees and cardinal were calling, and not long later the white-breasted nuthatch tuned up with a sound as jungle-like as Tarzan. It is teetering on the edge of migrant time;Alan saw a robin and a bluebird yesterday on Corbin Hill Road, and geese are gathering in dozens, hundreds, soon-to-be thousands. They stop in all the un-gathered corn fields to glean and gobble before heading on for the tundra...or for the banks of the Mohawk, depending. I can't wait until the river thaws enough for them to sleep in the cove across from the house at night. They giggle and whisper all night like a lullaby in wild-part time and my sleep is smoothed by dreams of flying.


And it is good to see the sun.

My favorite flower

Or at least in June it is. Doesn't look like much does it? However in this season the wild grape flowers perfume the whole valley. I can't describe the scent. It is sort of sweet like you might expect the air in a candy factory to be. Yet it doesn't just smell like hot sugar. It is...well.....flowery... too. I wait all year for the first breeze laden with it to come floating through the milk house window. We could be miserable with roaring heat, drowning in humidity, worried about fifteen different things and the wild grape flowers will wash it all away in an instant. Nice......