Summer of Storms

Liz and Peg 2015
In the Cellar

 I can't recall any recent years where every single ten-day forecast shows thunder storms every day but maybe one or two. Not that this isn't the time for thunderstorms, but five or six a week seems excessive. I don't know how the farmers are getting any dry hay. A single day without rain is rare, let alone three consecutive ones.

Last evening we were all in the house doing stuff and talking when my phone started screaming...a tornado warning.

The ominous edge of the front

We scurried around getting dogs in, moving the car away from trees, and getting ready to hit the cellar if we needed to. Liz and I spent the next hour checking the sky for the wrong kind of cloud formation. The cellar is not a place we want to go if we don't have to. The birds all went silent....

Storm bird

We got some vicious winds and green skies, a bit of the now all-too-familiar torrential rain, but not much that hasn't come with every storm since the beginning of June. I guess other places saw much worse with trees down and at least one house hit by lightning, probably two, but we were okay.

I know complaining about the weather is about as productive as trying to teach a chicken to line dance, but dang, it's getting ridiculous!

I don't LIKE the cellar and I don't want to go there!

On the other hand it is a lot cooler today.

A captive tornado at the Fonda Fair Model Railroad
Display

It is a Given

That if drought-breaking rain shall fall, it shall be on the Fonda Fair

Usually on tractor pull night.

The boss went over to enjoy said event last night, but I hear tell they got rained out....not for the first time, and probably not for the last. Last week in August, first week of September are notorious for chancy weather around here.

Sorry guys, I could not believe it when, shortly after I came indoors from a lovely walk under gorgeous skies, I looked out and it was pouring

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?  You cannot be serious.

He must have found something else to entertain him though, as I don't even know what time he got home. We introverts, Becky and I, stayed home and read books and reveled in the silence.

Anyhow, I wish that it had been otherwise for those who love the sport. (I actually really like seeing the big rigs go, all that thunderous power and smoke and glory. However, I also love peaceful, quiet and calm, and guess which is easier to come by....LOL...just call me lazy.)

Of course, it is lovely outside now, although still dripping. Pastel skies are turning bright and the Carolina Wrens are going nuts, singing and whirring their warning rattles.

 Perhaps I should go join them. Have a great day.

Here is a pony, hope it helps you feel better.

Storm!

Just before the screaming started

I was Peggy sitting so I didn't get any storm pictures, but there was wind and hail and there are tornadoes off to the east.

Gettin' ready to tune up

Dunno if it's over, but I sure hope so. Also hope you are all safe. 

Did you see that hail in Amsterdam?!? We had nickel-sized and a lot of it, but I saw pics on Facebook of lumps the size of small lemons! Yow!

And the wind... I was sitting in the chair with Peggy and the trees next to the driveway started to bend 1/4 of their height and to lash and whip, so I got up and took her to the center of the house away from all the windows. When you have four-by-eight foot windows you stay away from them during storms.

She never even woke up. Now her mommy and daddy are home so she is happy as a clam at high tide.

Gramma, you funny lookin'

And Now a Tornado Watch

Covering a large portion of the Northeast. So far the sun is still out in spots and just a little breeze is kicking up. 

We gave Broadway a subcu bottle of calcium this morning. Looks as if she may calve today. Of course it has been looking as if she may calve for several days.

I am being reminded daily why she has been my favorite cow for years. She has been kind of miserable all summer, really cranky, and not too nice to work around. We got to the point of letting her in to eat her grain and letting her right back outdoors without even fastening up her stall.

Now, as her calving grows near she is gentling down again. Even after we gave her the medicine, which no cow liked ever, when I went to turn her out in the barnyard for the day, she held her neck over for me to unsnap her chain.

I really like the cows who do that. It is not fun to try to unhook a bull snap from the collar of a thousand-pound-plus animal that is lunging and pulling to get outdoors. The smart ones figure out that they will get outside a lot quicker if they hold still for a second while you undo them.

Then I am happy and they are happy and everybody sings kumbaya. Or sorta. Anyhow, time to get at the vegetable preservation situation. Smile, it makes folks wonder what you've been up to.

Worried

About our good friends out in South Dakota. Weather is hideous out there. News stories abound with photos of deep snow and dead cattle.

Hard to imagine a blizzard, reputed to be of historical proportions, coming in early October, but it seems that it has. 



The Internet has given us a wealth of wonderful, if distant friends, and suddenly the world is small.

I guess we are in for it here, although no doubt not to the proportions of the western storms. High wind warnings and heavy rain threatened, starting pretty soon. We are going to try to get some corn and squash done up today and I have some writing chores to do. Right now, it's a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-its-mouth kind of morning, all misty yellows and pinks and the air as soft and sweet as cotton candy. Guess is isn't going to last. Broadway still has not calved....good grief....

Didn't get much of a leaf color show this fall and I expect this wind will clear them right off. It looks oddly like November already, except for the bright, green grass.

Dogs are restless and barky and the barn cats are hanging around the back porch and assaulting the screens.

About that tree question I posted the other day. How about this one? I did some serious searching and I believe I have finally found it. Thank you all for helping narrow it down.

According to this story, there are certain issues with growing the silver leaf poplar, or white poplar, but I think I want a couple anyhow. After all, if you have cows, a manicured lawn lasts only as long as it takes the first heifer or cow to find a hole in the fence and come down for a nice little graze....and we had three out yesterday.

Hang in there folks....better days are coming, it says here in fine print.....

Staying Afloat

Between the rain and the bad news it's a full time job. Weird, hot, humid weather, downright dank and nasty. Cows don't know what to make of it and have dropped some production, which we can ill afford. Rain has shut down hay harvest without doing a darned thing to take the moisture out of the air.

We keep hearing sad anecdotes of financial desperation from people whose jobs should be secure, whose lives should be simple. Like the cows, I am confused and disconcerted. 

To give you an idea of the signs of pending apocalypse, yesterday I made butterscotch cookies. Now, I admit, this was a particularly good batch. Fewer than half of them are left already.....

However, last night Becky was putting supper away and looked over to find a mosquito BITING a cookie. Yes, it had its nasty little proboscis buried in a cookie.

What the heck is up with that? Alas and woe betide it, that was the last cookie it will ever eat. I'll bet it died happy though.

Hmmmm

Liz and Becky with Richard in his later days. 

Although he was sweet to them,

 there was still a fire in that little furnace.

To say that the weather is disconcerting is an understatement. Years ago when I was showing my late pony, Deranged Richard, we had a fall like this....and I use the term advisedly...it may be August but the feeling of summer's end is strong. Nights are chilly and mornings pearly with cotton ball fog.

Richard was a hot little Shetland that a friend bought from the kill pen at an auction as a five-year old stallion that had never even looked through a halter. This friend is an incredibly talented horseman. He quickly broke Richard to drive and showed him extensively in the area, pointing him to year-end champion driving pony soon after.

That little chestnut was a pistol! He was tough as a walnut, strong as a bull,and pretty as a speckled pup. He had a gorgeous trot that just wouldn't quit. My friend gave him to me after a couple of years of campaigning and the little bugger taught me a whole lot about horsemanship that I had been missing out on with gentle old Magnum, my original horse. At first he had me buffaloed more often than not. After a while I learned how to handle him.

And after a bit I started trying to show him myself. One fall when I had him at the show, Fonda Fair week, we got a hard frost, after several chilly weeks like this.I can remember practically freezing and trying to keep him warm enough so his coat would lie flat and shine. He turned into a regular wooly bear in the fall and you could hardly tell there was a handsome pony under there.

Anyhow, actually this early cold weather isn't at all unprecedented as the first or second week of September used to be the first frost date most years when I was a kid. Even when the kids were big enough to show cows at Altamont, there were years when that mid-summer fair was a frigid affair and washing cows became problematic.

I am hoping that at least frost holds off for another month or two to save the corn and sorghum and other tender crops. The year so far has been bad enough, although crops here are much better than in the west.

The Drought

The grass in the shady, damp lane is much taller than it is up where the sun gets at it all day.

Is going to hurt pretty much everyone even if it starts raining all across the country within the next five minutes. Corn is already being imported from Brazil and our grain price is sky rocketing. I shudder to think what food prices will be this fall, winter, and next year.


Here in Upstate NY we saw a bit of what it has already done when Alan and I went out to walk and clear electric fence yesterday. We (really he...I carried tools, kept him company and took pictures) inspected and cut brush out of the wires, propped up a couple of tired posts and fixed this and that. We got over about half of it...it's a big field...before the old lady petered out from the hot sun and we came back down. It was time for him to go get Becky anyhow and the boss needed him to help unload hay that he had baled

Anyhow, the grass was as curly as the fur on Gil's back and not much longer. There were more wasps and bees than weeds and thistles.


This is not at all normal. The cows have been out of that field for weeks...maybe even a month. In an average year, even in the doldrums of summer, there would be grass at least up to the top of your ankle and weeds as high as your head anywhere the dirt was exposed by cows making paths and such. 


Nada.


We did see a nice selection of birds though. Lots of gold finches, indigo buntings, turkey vulture, red-tailed hawk, mourning doves, brown thrashers, song sparrows, some unidentifiable small warblers, crows, starlings, pigeons, cardinals and probably a couple of others I am forgetting. No good pics though. They weren't feeling friendly and the light was so bright...

We will try to finish up today. The cows will get a few days supplemental grazing while the other field recovers. It is just barely worth the effort though.....

Weather Hype

Everyone was all in a swivet yesterday over the potential for dangerous weather. Tornado watches, storm warnings and all sorts of frantic stuff. Big charts and maps all vivid reds and yellows and lotsa panic all over the teevee and Facebook. Even the governor was telling us to round up our lawn chairs and all. I meant to go out and lay the heavy metal one I have by the garden pond down on its side, but I forgot (it tends to get flopped over and slammed around when it's windy).


When it got right down to it we didn't get much more than an intermittent drizzle...... which was just fine with me. I dreamed of much worse though, trees tumbling and thunder grumbling; it was good to get up this morning and get away from all that. Guess some areas did get nailed, alas.


It is all too easy to remember this week last year when there were several tornadoes the week of the Boonville Fair. The fair is on now too and the guys and maybe Liz 'n' Jade are headed to the tractor pulls tonight. Last year we went up for the first time in ages and were just missed by those twirly storms all day. Last year the crops up that way were a lot better than down here because they didn't get the ridiculous amount of rain all summer that we did.


Don't know what they will find this year. Around here there is a little good corn and a lot of spotty corn where it was wet and cold when planted and then dry as popcorn for a couple of months. I think we will indeed see higher food prices this winter. I think I would like to read an explanation of why milk prices are going up in the store right now, while farm gate prices are stagnant and low. And I know a lot of beef has been liquidated lately due to the drought, but we sent a really nice, large, handsome healthy young heifer to the sale and got thirty bucks for her. Wish we'd kept her now.




Ah, well, have a good one. It's raining right now, but I guess it will be nicer later. Please hold good thoughts for my lovely sister-in-law today as she is facing surgery.

Hail to the Chief

Or would you believe, hail to the ground and everything else?

Yeah, it really came down today, rained like it meant it and hailed for a while. It put on quite a show.

Once Upon a Time

A little chunk of winter came in June. All the plants died and people were hungry. Folks were forced to sell or eat their livestock and nearly starved the following winter.


Yup, the Great June Frost occurred on this day in 1859. The night time temperature was 25 degrees from Iowa to New England, according to the National Weather Service.


Here is an interesting story about what it was like, from the point of view of a Civil War Veteran from Warren County. Do go read it if you have a minute. It is a chilling tale, no pun intended, of the frightening hardship caused by that freak of the weather. Here is a short excerpt:

"In the morning I was up at daylight and saw a sight such as I'd never seen before and I've never seen since. All the crops were gone. Everything was frozen stiff, corn, grass, things in the garden. I was a tough, rugged lad, I'd laid away my shoes early in May and wasn't going to bother looking them up again. So I went off down across the pastures to fetch the cows and the grass and weeds were crisp and crackly with the thick frost under my feet."


As of yesterday the high temperature was only one degree above the record lowest high for the date (if that makes any sense at all), but it was a lot warmer than that. In fact the Warren County story makes fifty-nine seem downright balmy.

Rain with Orioles

 Growing up and beginning to outgrow some of the helldogginess.

 He will now sit at the pointing of a finger..........sometimes.......

Kinda creepy out, low-hanging clouds leaking slowly, spreading gloom and mud in their wake....a plane is rumbling by, seems to be flying very slowly, or maybe just the sound is going slowly. The Orioles are stabbing the oranges, ripping out the red-gold hearts-how cool to so perfectly match the food....although I don't suppose that I would like to resemble either a steak or a potato...oh, wait.


We keep Velvet in the barnyard every night, so she stays out of the swamp in the night pasture. Thinking about running a temporary fence around that puppy. Never been a problem before, but years of rain seem to have changed that.

One of the reasons those robins get so emotional when I go out on the porch

At least it is green, an almost eye-searing green, I can't stop looking at it.


Stay dry!

Rain, Cows to Breed, Green and Growing

I hate to even think welcoming thoughts about rain, it scares me, but it was getting dry again. Heather and Pecan were playing merry-go-round last night and will need to be serviced this morning. 


Hoping Heather will have one more calf, but if she doesn't she has earned her retirement. Liz will take her up where Jade pastures his horse and she can live out her days there. The boss has decreed that Mandy can stay right here even though she will probably never milk again. 


As I write this I can look out the window over the sink to see the cows striding down to the gate to come in to be milked. They are slicking up quick on nice, green grass.


Anyhow, the rain is getting the grass bumped up to full speed, especially since it has warmed up a little....been pretty cold the past couple of weeks. Lilacs are coming into bloom, apples and pears look as if they survived the multiple frosts over the past few nights. I surely hope so.

Lesson Learned

Over the past few years I have learned not to wish for rain.....ever....

So I didn't wish for this rain, even though it got pretty darned dry over the past few weeks.

Everything is wet now and I am ready for it to move along. Rain scares me.

Last Year's Weather

Northstar, a name the calf graduate, all grown up

Is still hanging around biting everybody right...well you know where. Even though we are enjoying this long spell of warmer than normal weather, what happened last summer is having lasting ramifications for farmers and ranchers from the southern borderlands to the far, far north.


Nobody has feed...well, some folks do, but there are a lot of shortages and staggeringly high prices for what is out there. We are about out of haylage, maybe a couple of days worth left, and buying round bales...spring and green grass can't come soon enough for me!


The guy we buy our crop seeds from called the other night...talked to the boss for quite a while. He wanted to give us a heads up that the seed we buy from him will nearly double in price for this year...drought in Texas wiped out most of the seed crop. He is big, successful farmer but he will be out of feed soon and told of dozens of customers who are feeding out their last bits. He thinks a lot of folks who have bought from him for a long while won't be in business this summer.


And yet, the big players are still manipulating the CME, while the milk to feed ratio drops like a rock. I am sure somebody will still be making milk come spring...the Chinese are buying dairies in New Zealand so their farmers can be trained how to do it right (first clue...leave out the melamine...it tends to kill people.) 


China has also become the world's number one nation for feed grain and oil seed production and yet they are still huge importers of food products and feeds....and ammunition or so they say.....


***Dad update. It has been a really tough haul for Dad and for Mom, who has been an amazing trouper through it all, but yesterday she reported solid progress. He is in rehab now and is doing stairs and getting around without the walker. Your prayers have been appreciated more than you could possibly imagine...thank you!

Wild

The weather that is. One minute it's pouring rain, the wind howling like a whole tribe of banshees, and the heifers are running for the stable. Next minute the sun is blazing down, it's as warm as April and all the fields are draped with dazzling, dangling, dripping water crystals like a million, billion shining gems. 


The heifers come back out to bask against the side of the barn, soaking up rays like girls on the beach. You can almost see them reaching for their Oakleys and slathering on the sun screen.


I have been spending my time today (when not doing bookkeeping and chores and writing this week's Farm Side) checking on the pony, Jack. Becky thought he was a tiny bit off this morning and she asked me to keep a watch on him.


I could see what she meant...he sort of had a contemplative look and was flicking his ears back and forth for no apparent reason. I got an inkling that maybe he isn't drinking like he should so I took him up a handful of delicious kosher salt from the kitchen.


He sure liked it, and scoured up every crumb. 


He is such a cool little guy. I really liked having an excuse to fool with him. This afternoon he seems fine...if anything ailed him, whatever it was (or wasn't) it seems to have passed.


***PS the boss says that he saw two rainbows between the storms. 

Shivery Brr...

Howling wind today and all last night too.

I have a heavy metal lawn chair, the old fashioned, nice and sturdy sort, out in the yard. Guess it is time to bring it in as the wind picked it up and whirled it around and left it a good long way from where it belongs.

Winter Storm Watch

Classic example of red neck engine repair

Noon today, yep the global is definitely warming and fall is lasting longer and ending later......not.....I should have known when everybody got crazy wanting to bake that bad weather was sure to follow. We aren't much different than wild animals when it comes to that, gather in the nuts, fluff up the nest and get ready for the bad news.

And so the scurry to get the barn ready begins. Big job and it is about two weeks earlier than we like it to be. I watched a weather demon yesterday all wink, wink, nudge, nudge about the weather and wanted to take out the TV...(He couldn't say whether it would be mildly cloudy or we would get a foot of snow. Dang, talk about a job where you can be wrong every day and still get paid. They should all run for Congress.)

I didn't though because the guys enjoy it, although how they can is beyond me. I just asked the boss to bring me up a skid steer bucket of driveway sand to bed the stalls with. It is really comfy for the cows, stays where I put it and gives them good traction to get up and down.

At least yesterday was gorgeous. The cows dried out and were fluffy....or fluffy-ish at least. Brought in the last of the water cannas. I was going to let them freeze, and indeed the tops did freeze down to the roots, but when push came to frosting, I didn't have the heart. Thus my kitchen is awash in huge pots of cannas, water cannas and grown-from-seed amaryllis.

It is like a jungle in here....a particularly favorite old friend stopped by for a short chat the other day (is there anything on earth more enjoyable than one of those friends you can not see for months or even years and pick right up where you left off) and remarked at the amount of greenery.

I can't help it. I love plants...and animals....and rocks.....herptiles....birds...I think I would curl up and blow away if I had to live in a city separated from living and growing things. Spent fifteen years in a small town once and it about drove me crazy. And even there I had gardens and flowers and dogs and cats. I think maybe I was born to be a farmer....even though I was born in the city.

Snow Before Halloween

Becky won this yesterday.

To say she was happy is to seriously understate the situation.

So Alan and I saw to it that there was a balanced meal for a celebratory dinner. Above, see the fruit and grain serving, made by ma

The brother providing the vegetable

and dairy section of a good meal (pumpkin bars)

For Becky's big day. We also enjoyed hearty homemade beef stew....actually I will admit the truth here. We didn't even know that she had made employee of the month until evening, but it poured cold rain and then switched to snow all day. The kitchen with the oven going was the best place on the entire farm so everyone spent all the time that they could there. Baking and/or stirring a bubbling cauldron (no eye of newt or toe of dog though) provided a fine excuse to do so).

We kept the cows in the barn last night, so I spent most of last night's milking getting their automatic water bowls working. Some of the cows choose not to drink indoors all summer, so their bowls get pretty gritty. It is a nasty job but someone has to do it....someone is usually me.

The cows were confused at being in, oddly enough. Usually they are delighted to stay inside when the weather gets bad, but last night they were bawling to go back out. It was snowing hard, flakes the size of saucers and sticking to the ground. Dunno what was up with that, but they can go back outside for some exercise today. Maybe that will make them happy.

Time to go to the barn and see what mayhem they have gotten up to in the night. Have a good one.

What to Say on a Gloomy Day

One of our life goals, elusive, and hard to brew

Not much. Cold, damp, muddy. Cows ditto and not liking it much. Leaves left, or mostly. Trees black with the heaviest crop of riverbank grape I believe I have ever seen. You could make wine I'll bet, tasting of summer and bittersweet fall, sunshine versus moonshine, fine, dark, blackbird wine. They surely like them anyhow and set up a din as they pick and squabble.

One of these days the men are going to limb some branches off the Winesap tree so the repair truck can get in to deal with our non-functional furnace. Then maybe I will get the tame grapes for jelly, oh so far above my head even with our tallest ladder. I am thinking about maybe adding in some of those wild riverbank critters for just a spark of different.

Meanwhile, it is cold, indoors and outdoors. Alan is attempting to build an outdoor boiler contraption that will heat just a little water to send through the pipes to make just a little warm in here. I am eagerly cheering him on.

On the bright side, it is warm in the barn, thanks to the cows' hearty metabolism. Five minutes after they crowd through the door it is toasty, and by the time the grain is gobbled, we are shedding polar fleece and rolling up our sleeves.

Is it time to milk yet, I wonder?