Sleepy Sunday

Summer skies

Last night the sky was actually this strange red.
I have never seen it this color before.
I didn't think the camera would catch it, but it did.

We are suddenly having a little spell of favorable weather. I saw more hay being rolled up and baled today while Beck and I were driving over to Cobleskill than I have seen so far all summer. I waved to all the farmers dragging rakes and balers and wagons around their fields because I wished them well with all my heart. This has been a horrible summer weatherwise and some clear skies and dry air are long over due. I felt like cheering them all on, especially the elder fellow with the brilliant red umbrella shading him as he tooled along raking up some nice first cutting. He waved back and grinned from ear to ear.

Last night

Anyhow, last night and this morning I took still more sky pictures. I'm sorry but I just can't resist the sky.

Sunrise today

Welcoming the birds

Robin at the bottom of the wren porch steps (through the screen door)

There was a wren here just a second ago!

This morning on the sitting porch

The boss's folks were farming one of these two farms when he was born just a couple months shy of sixty years ago. I have been helping him for well over a third of that. However, we have only lived here as a couple since his lovely mother passed away on my birthday seven years ago. We moved up from town then.

She always fed the birds and had a nice array, including red-bellied woodpeckers back before they were known to range here and a goshawk that liked to kill pigeons in the heifer barn yard.

However, I have never seen anything like the assortment we have begun to have in the last three or four years. There are probably a lot of factors in play. We have let some areas grow up to brush and wild plants, not so much to attract birds as because of lack of time and energy to keep it down. Alan has mowed out a number of paths that wind among mullberrries and old plantations of flowers. We have also planted some things for birds...lots of sunflowers, bee balm, rudbeckia (Peg had it, but we have encouraged it). We let the black caps flourish (mostly because WE like to eat them). We put in the garden pond, so there is the sound of splashing water....bird baths...feeders....

On the way over to Coby last week...our favorite swamp with pileated woodpecker holes

Anyhow, what a summer this has been for birds... If I was faster and he was slower, my early morning sitting porch photo would have included one of the mockingbirds. He wanted to get onto that porch for some reason this morning and gave an irritate chack!! whenever he tried to land on the railing and found me there first. Meanwhile the wren was singing his heart out on the other porch. A short list of what we have seen over the past week (not all of them right in the yard or very welcome either, but visible from the house or yard) pigeons, sassenachs (English *^&%$$ sparrows) starlings, mallard ducks, grackles, chickadees, gold finches, turkey vultures (sharing something nasty with a coyote out on the hill) red-tailed hawk, red-winged black birds, barn swallows, chimney swifts, kestrels, robins, savanna sparrows, song sparrows, chipping sparrows, several catbirds (the mockingbird is cussing on the wren's porch as I type this) indigo buntings, cedar waxwings, a mother Baltimore oriole and family, ruby-throated hummingbirds, blue jays, crows, killdeers, pileated woodpecker, cowbirds, phoebe, common yellow throat warblers, downy woodpecker family with lots of demanding kids, at least four families of cat birds, house wrens (two families), song sparrows, cardinals, great blue heron and more...these are just what I can think of off the top of my head, and just what we have seen in the past week.

It is unfailingly entertaining just to hang out in the yard. The birds figure that it belongs to them and make their feelings known. When they are not nesting, the chickadees come right to the back door to demand seeds. The mockers fly down at our feet for some reason known only to them and flash their wings at us. They are the most companionable of birds and seem to like us.

Taken a little while ago right next to the house

The wren sings to us every time we go to the front door to drive away the starlings and sassenachs that want to steal their nest.
The hummingbirds pitch a fit if the feeder gets empty.

I like having them around.
(It is part of why I never go anywhere if I don't have to.)

Lykers pond...see that thing swimming in the water? Liz and I think it was a young otter. It certainly swam like one. Some middle-aged idiot, during one of those miserable senior moments, forgot that there is a perfectly serviceable, if slightly battered, pair of Bushnell binoculars in the car. ...so we will never be sure...but it sure looked like an otter

Grey fox surprise

I was picking up the living room, not my favorite job, but necessary, when I glanced out those bullet pocked windows. There on the lawn was what I saw as the tom cat we successfully sloughed off on the neighbors. He isn't a favorite either and I started to go out to yell at him to take it on down the road.



I couldn't make him look right though. Then in an instant he resolved himself into this unexpected creature (actually it looked like a she). They have passed through before, but they are normally shy and not something you see every day.




We have been blaming the birds for the dearth of ripe black caps but this critter was hoovering them up at an amazing rate (sorry birds). While I took stills through the window, Liz crept out on the sitting porch to take some video. This bold little fox went right on sucking down berries while Mike blundered blindly by not forty feet away from her. I suspect like the deer, she lives out in the hedgerow and is used to our noise and dogs and commotion. Anyway it was pretty neat to be able to get pictures of her.







Video by Liz

Yesterday was just such a busy day

For birds and wild things. This little sparrow showed up on the sitting porch and obligingly sat for his portrait, while occasionally cheeping very musically for his folks.

When they refused to come in he flew away on his own.

I think he may be a savanna sparrow, .
I am not strong on juvenile sparrows.
Anybody?

Strawberry rhubarb 3.14159

Another good thing about June...
(It's Dairy Month, but it is also berry month)

And....does anyone have any idea what this flower is? Alan's best friend's mom gave me one years ago and I shared with my folks. Mine died a long time ago but I liberated this one from their lawn last fall. It is finally in bloom and I am hoping you can help me with an identification. Otherwise I am going to have to keep calling it **their last name** flower...which confuses folks mightily.
Thanks in advance.

Recipe for

Summer

Wish we were here...but we were just at the station pumping gas
when this pretty boat went by on the river

We were going here instead...the three Northview girls can pick like crazy. Eight quarts in under an hour.....just four miles down the road with three left turns . I was gonna make jam, but ran out of time, so I froze most of them.....except the ones for strawberry shortcake. We couldn't get any whipped cream over in town, they were out.
So we had Philadelphia vanilla ice cream instead....oh, and we didn't have the ingredients for the sweetened biscuits that go so well with the berries...so Becky made these little shortbread cookie things......wish you were here.

Oh, what a beautiful morning

Mackerel sky...not long wet, not long dry

Reed Canary grass, at least a foot taller than I am already.

Brome grass sporting beards of pollen

I think it must be almost summer

****And coming soon to a farm blog near you...what the heck is going on?



****This project is what the boss is looking so chirpy about in the above picture. It was HOT out here and he was getting a heck of a nasty sunburn.

Summer has come to Northview

If only in our dreams....meanwhile a short photographic reprise of other times, when the world was more welcoming.

This is the day to wish Alan's old show cow, Balsam, Happy Birthday. Balsam is indeed an old cow, but having been born on leap day, she has had very few birthdays. She was just turned dry yesterday and is expecting a calf by Silky Cousteau in a few weeks. (We would all love it if you would hold good thoughts for a heifer.)

It was weird having a leap day calf back in Balsie's show days. March first is the cut off for junior heifer calf so we entered her in Intermediate where she would have competed against all the calves born between December 1 and February 28. She would have had an uphill battle there, as they naturally would have been a lot bigger then she. However, (much to our delight), the show superintendent pointed out that the rule book actually read "Calves born before March 1" and moved her back to junior heifer calf (where in any other year she would have belonged). She went on to win her class for Alan, which is quite a feat as Junior heifer gets a lot of entries. She is retired now, but is a big, sweet, pet and one of my favorites.


****Update, several hours later.....the sad reality of sunrise this morning

The recipe

Italian Venison Vegetable Soup

The soup below really starts as just your basic meat and vegetable soup...I make 8 quarts at a time as there are a lot of us and I want it to go extra meals.

First slowly brown the meat, in this case venison, with garlic and onion...to your taste. I use two cloves and one small respectively. I substitute stew beef, ground beef, or regular or Italian sausage or any combination thereof for the venison in this brew. We just happen to be out of all those things right now and down to eating deer or buying meat.


When the meat is well cooked, I add such vegetables as are available..canned, frozen or right out of the garden. This particular batch contained carrots, green beans, lots of cut up grape tomatoes, and yellow and green zucchini, all from the garden plus some frozen cauliflower and broccoli.Also a large can of corn and a can of garbanzo beans.


I usually add a couple of the large cans of crushed tomatoes and as many cans of water as it takes to fill up the pot.

For seasoning...well it varies. This time I added garlic and onion as listed above, commercially prepared Italian seasoning, fresh parsley (but frozen or dried is fine), a dash of Mrs. Dash, a couple leaves of lovage, (but if you have celery, that is better) and half a leaf of sweet basil. I also often include spearmint leaves and orange mint leaves, but mine are all buggy right now. If is a little too tangy a teaspoon of sugar is a good addition. So is thyme if you have time, which I didn't this time, although there is plenty of it out in the herb garden.


When everything is boiling nicely I toss in some pasta. We are fond of weird pasta...strange shapes and colors seem to taste better. Or rice...brown, white, wild or all of them. (you could put potatoes in the vegetable section as well).


In order to call it Italian soup, this time I dumped in about a quarter cup of grated Parmesan cheese, which adds a nice flavor and texture.


Then I set my oven to between 285 and 325 and go to work....temperature depends on how long I am going to be gone. If you can't watch soup or stew it will cook itself very nicely in the oven. (I have yet to meet an 8-quart slow cooker I'm afraid.) Anyhow when I am done milking cows the soup is done becoming dinner.


I really like this recipe because it is very forgiving. You can put darned near anything in it...and I do.

There's nothin' I know of can make you fall in love

Like a night at the county fair.*

*Thanks to Chris LeDoux

The end of summer

Brings good things to eat.


Special friends stop by bringing gifts from the garden. (Thanks Gordie...we do love corn.)



We freeze all afternoon. (Not freeze as in being cool, freeze as in putting up.)
Husk the corn.
Stack the corn.
Boil the corn.
Cool the corn.
Cut the corn off the cob.
Bag the corn.
Put the corn in the freezer.
Do it again.
And again.
And again.




It is 96 and icky humid. Not a good day for freezing anything in a kitchen billowing with steam...water bubbling loudly...keeping the doors closed to keep the head-banging bane of the heat outside. No breeze. No breath. There are sticky bits of corn everywhere. Sticky corn on the table. Sticky corn on the floor. (Happy dogs, happy dogs. How they love that sticky corn.There is no need to sweep or mop.) The counters and table are another story. No dogs allowed there and it would make good glue, I'll tell you. Still, you make hay when the sun shines and you freeze corn when the corn comes.


Many hands make light work. (And many kids have many hands.) The kitchen is full of teens and twenty-somethings armed with knives and bowls and baggies. There is much silliness and sibling competition. Many insults and near passing of drinks through nasal passages with all the nonsense that is being bandied about. (It is one of my most cherished goals as a parent...to make my kids pass food through their noses at things I say..{ask them about summer vegetables}.....this time they do it to each other though. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I guess the corn doesn't either.) We finish in under two hours and save out a dozen ears so we can have fresh corn on the cob for supper. This winter corn that brings the taste of summer right back to us will be a special treat for chowder or just for dinner. It is always worth the effort.


We make apple snacks in late summer too. Ginger gold apples are in, the first of the really hard, crisp, good-eatin' apples...not soft and mushy like Macs. They are so tart and tangy and delightful, just like the great late-fall apples like Spies and Ida Reds. I salute whoever invented the variety.

To make your own apple snack, core and cut up the best apple you can find.
Cut up the sharpest cheese you can find...just a bit.
Add raisins
Granola
Cheerios
Eat
(We often bag this stuff for a quick rake along snack...it will keep a few hours and is full of autumn goodness)

Summertime news