Skies

The view from the porch

During this year long adventure in Hell weather, or really, even longer than that, one constant has been the drama of the skies.

Poplar tree or Ferris wheel?

Crazy clouds, wild winds whipping them around, rainbows, sun dogs, you name it, we look up a lot. These occurred last Friday in between sets of soggy storms. It looked a lot like this back on the tornado day, but I didn't get good pics then.

I'm not sure if you can see it but this little rainbow was caused by the sun shining through a gap in the clouds.

Running in Place

Amish horse looks a little short of groceries

Good weather. You gotta grab it. So the men are running in all directions at once trying to make up for our mostly lost summer. Building fences, mowing and chopping, cleaning pens, welding, patching tires that keep getting cut because the rushing water exposed sharp slate ledges and so on. Yowsa, it makes my head spin just keeping track of them.

The days sure have been pretty too. You just have to be outdoors all that you can. The air is so fresh and sweet it seems drinkable, the sun just warm enough to feel like a gentle blanket and the migrants are passing through, unwinding their coils in the north to thread south like fabric unwoven...

Song sparrows in flocks, cedar waxwings ditto, turkey vultures soaring past and one pair even seeming to play, drifting lazy over the river, then dive bombing one another over the barn. Ubiquitous little brownish warblers, calling from all over and flitting through the trees, plus the birds that will winter with us coming back from wherever they go.

I was picking tomatoes when I heard a creaky chickadee, calling half-heartedly from the mountain ash. I pished a little because I wasn't even sure that it was a chickadee and not a catbird or mocker. The thing bolted straight toward me like a bullet on a mission and barely swerved aside before it hit my head. Then it sat in the honey locust cussing me out in no uncertain terms. I ran into the house for seeds, but it had moved along when I came out. I am guessing that one of last winter's tame birds may just be back from its summer adventures.

I am not ready for winter, even though we are running in place getting ready for winter, but still....it is nice to see my friends again.

Holy C**p update! Liz just saw people throw two dogs out of a van, a little chihuahua and a lab. She got their license number and called the police on them....wonder if they will pursue it. I'll bet you can all think of some suitable punishments for such &^%%$^&*. Makes me sick. A dog is a commitment, a long commitment, but if you have to end it there are better ways. Geez.

The Bright Side

Of an impending first frost. You get to pick all the tiny little baby squashes with the flowers still unopened on the end and saute them with garlic...in butter of course. With home grown roast beef and the boss's signature Cole slaw it was quite a feast...all thanks to the weather.

Sunrise

We're having one!

Yesterday, not so much. This video shows one of the reasons Liz didn't make it home to milk last night. All the roads approaching the farm from the west, north and south were closed, so she just couldn't get here.

Beck, Alan and I did all the milking and Beck fed calves while the boss went out and churned up mud getting the cows fed. Took him all of chore time and then some and he cut a tire on the skid steer on the slate banks that were carved out by the water rushing down. There is a good eight inches of heavy gravel with rocks bigger than my fists piled up in front of the cow door. Guess when they get the skid steer tire fixed he can use it to fill those holes.

It was hard to even get to the barn last night, normally a five-minute or less walk. The mud was boot top deep, the creek under the culvert bridge, which normally holds barely enough water for a cow to get a careful drink sounded like Niagara and would have washed you away had you stepped into it.

It was spooky to even step out onto the darned bridge. It has washed out several times, once just as the milk truck was about to drive onto it, and it always makes me nervous to cross when we are getting a lot of rain.

Beck warned me not to step into the water rushing across the barnyard up on top too. However, I am a shorty and couldn't begin to step across, it so I waded right in. Sure enough it was racing fast enough to nearly pull my feet out from under me. Wow! The kids grabbed my hands because they are such nice folks, and, although I would have been fine without, I was thankful.

What a year!

Not Again

A huge thank you to friends, family members and caring neighbors who called us about the tornado warning. We had no idea....

We ended up spending around 45 minutes watching the skies to the west and south, ready to hit the cellar if we had to. We got an outrageous lot of rain and some pretty wild winds and rumor has it that something did some damage just a tiny bit to the south of us, but we are fine. Now it is raining hard and thundering wildly.

The boss just got the driveways half-way fixed up so the milk truck can get in all right and we can get the trucks and the Durango up and down. Guess he is looking at a couple more days on the skid steer. Guess I had better shut this down before the storm gets any closer.

Devil Tailed Toad Strangler

(When it's not raining, it is pretty)

Yeah. We were milking last night while the rain pounded down. Cows didn't want to go back out into it, let me tell you. Take a day of fixing and changing to keep them in and they are really much better off out, so we insisted. They protested, but went eventually out to their feed in the heifer pasture.

They weren't the only ones. The barn was full of teen aged toadlets too, little couple-inches -long fellas that came inside out of the rain. (It has rained enough to drown slugs all over the paths where we walk) We are big herptile fans here at Northview, so the toads all got escorted outside to safety too. Nothing good about the collision between half a ton of cow on the hoof and half an ounce of Bufo.

Then when we came in the house, we found that a friend had put up videos of a little sneaky snake of a tornado up around Glen somewhere and other folks were saying that they had seen two. Another video I found this morning showed it coming right at one of our friend's family's farms, but is was sucked up into the sky before it hit them.

Wow! We didn't even get any wind to mention for which I am grateful. I guess the twisters were both little devil tails, stirring things up but not doing much damage. Still, this is weird as heck. Not your grandma's upstate weather.

Alan and I ran errands and visited folks earlier yesterday and came home along the river. You would not believe how big a channel it cut during the Irene and Lee flooding. Another wow. It looks like a glacier came through at warp speed, cutting gouges and flinging rocks and mud behind it.

We have stayed away from Schoharie and Middleburg and the other really badly damaged areas, but I shudder to think what it is like down there. Poor folks.

Hey, if by chance you want to read this week's Farm Side, the paper put it up online. Usually it is only on the pay site, but here it is if you are interested. Just Look and Listen

Change 'O Plans

They happen to the best of us. Woke up full of hope for a harvest day. The guys got some sorghum chopped yesterday and changed fields to go after some better stuff. Were planning on more of the same for today. Walked out of the bedroom and heard rain thundering on the steel porch roof (for some reason you can rarely hear it rain in our room).

Well, dang, so much for sorghum. During drier years they might be able to chop the same day as rain if it cleared up by noon, but it is so soggy, it will be at least a day before they can move.

Normally this would plunge me into despair. Enough already, and I wish the forecasters would get it right once in a while. We were supposed to get one more nice day before the gunk set in.

However, today there is just going to be a change of plans. If I can pull it together the boy and I are going visiting and to the store. I am going to finally see folks who have been too long neglected, deliver some tomatoes and beef and books (of which we have a plethora) and then hit the store for dog food, DVDs and ammo. Getting to be that time of year and the big bucks and big Toms are making themselves known. And I am going to put a few thousand photos on DVDs and maybe speed up this tired old computer a bit. Maybe.

There. I am all cheered up at least for today. Hope you have a good one too.

Here are some links that may help.

I have been at meetings where this guy spoke and always thought he was pretty darned good for the community, but now I am downright proud of him. Man on a Mission

A small but interesting positive carved out when the flood waters revealed bits of history in Fort Hunter. Can you imagine the possibilities from this discovery? A church probably attended by Sir William Johnson before the Revolutionary War? Wow....

****Update, please go read this story about a modern day crime fighting hero. You simply can't make stuff like this up!

More on the Texas Drought

While working on the Farm Side yesterday I came upon this article.

Well worth your time to read this man's perspective on the drought and on mega-droughts in centuries gone by

He points out that one drought, documented through archaeological evidence, lasted nearly a hundred years and is thought to have contributed to the downfall of the Mayan civilization.

Times are hard in the West these days. As the author of the article states, about all that can be done is to pray for rain to fall in all the right places.

******Which means, NOT HERE please*******

Like Fire

The sun came up like fire today...I don't mean just red. I mean red like the heart of a dark blood orange. I mean trailing twisted veils of cloud like fingers of smoke reaching far across the sky. There were sirens.....

Always sirens. Seems as if our hearts know the call of every firehouse for miles around now. Maybe they are just pumping cellars...lots of cellars to pump these days. But the bridge went down in Rotterdam yesterday. And the power was out last night. I take the phone upstairs nights now...never know who might call or why. So I flipped it open, checked the time, and reset the clock there in the dark.

This is the river yesterday. Don't know about you, but I am getting tired of ropes of thick, brown water. Liz finally made it home...hadn't been here since the day before yesterday because the county was in a state of emergency and every single road was either under water or under rock and mud slides. The boss went up on the TOP of the heifer pasture hill to bring down cows yesterday and was sinking almost to his knees on the grass, on the highest part. Just nuts. Can't put a tire in a field. Harvest is halted halfway through and may never start again. Winter is too close by far for my taste.

I take a little heart though, here and there. Although there are few birds left around, a spotted sandpiper has moved in and hunts under the manure shed and on the bridge between the house and barn. It is loud and lovely and so exotic (not that we don't see them around but this one comes so close.) A great blue heron pulses ponderously by. A phoebe flicks its tail and cheeps at me from very near; must be one of the babies from the trees by the bridge, because it shows no fear..... (between the sandpiper and him there was a lot of tail flicking going on that day).

They are worth a smile among the grim I guess.

Enough Already

This is the river the other day,

untimely empty because the locks are all open or just plain gone.
See the channel marker aground on the side?

Today it is full again and over flowing.

I am sure you are sick of me talking about the weather. (I am sick of talking about it too, as far as that goes. In fact, frankly I am downright sick of the weather in general, in particular, and in any other way you can be sick of it.)

It just keeps raining and raining and raining. By mid-afternoon Wednesday Alan's friends were texting him from SUNY Cobleskill and putting up videos on Facebook because of the incredible flooding there. Water was racing down the stairways among the dorms, feet deep and chocolate brown. These were the dorms on higher ground too...I hate to think what was going on lower down. At least some dorm rooms were flooded and kids were moved to higher ground. It was pretty scary.

Meanwhile towns that were evacuated during the peak of the Irene flooding were once again emptied because of still more flooding. I don't know how much more people can take...

Here at the farm we still live on the hill and are still glad of it, although the driveways are taking an awful beating and the milk truck didn't get in on Monday. Water filled one shed so we had to turn Rio out with the big cows. She is a pregnant milking shorthorn heifer that we have actually wanted to add to the big herd, but we have been waiting because we have the cows spending their days in a temporary pasture. Temporary electric fence and un-fence-broke heifers are not a good mix.

Sure enough she got out twice (all I can say is ouch because that fence is HOT!) but the first time she put herself back in and the second time Liz was right there to chase her. Hopefully over the next few days she will figure out where she belongs and settle down.

Also had to liberate Wally, the blue heeler guardian of the cow barn gate. The rain washed the ground out from under his dog house so he is now enthroned in Nick's chain link kennel. Hopefully he will stay there because he is essentially a very bad dog. The cats and chickens don't need his help on their way to an untimely grave.

So there you have it. Most of the news that's fit to print. We can't chop. Can't work on the tractor. Can't do much of anything except divert water and hope for the best. Take care.

****Update, reliable source says all roads in county are closed. Good grief! Been reading FB, mud slides all over the place, the water is up in Liz and Jade's back yard. I called her and told her to forget coming to work.

Kansas, We Have Your Weather

And Florida, California and Alaska too. Earthquakes (which I suppose technically aren't weather, but they can go away just the same) a devastating hurricane, and now a tornado.

Enough already. You can all have your weather and your seismological events back any time you want them.

Here at Northview we were just getting started milking, early, trying to beat the storm, which looked like a big one, and its potential for power failure, when the lights went out.

Fun, fun, fun. Thankfully the power was restored fairly quickly, although a couple of hours were added to evening chores, which were not much enhanced by the rain either.

September in upstate NY is supposed to bring warm, bright days and cool pleasant nights. Sunshine. Calm. Fresh vegetables.

What the heck is up with this and who has OUR weather? That's what I want to know.

The Fog Comes In

And no little cat feet about it. More like a sensation of cold, wet, fish strapped all over your body...of breathing through a soggy, slightly moldy blanket. It seeps right into the house....Erk.

It rained hard again yesterday, not helpful in any way.

We turned the cows into a new field though, and of course they didn't really want to come back out. All that lush, delicious grass you know.

So the boss and I hiked up to call them....at least they didn't make us go into the field with them... Anyhow as we walked along, a great whirling flock of bobolinks rose up...the most I have ever seen in one place at one time. It was pretty cool.

They kept us company while we stood in the lane and hollered for cows and it was pretty nice. Even if is was a not so welcome harbinger of what is coming and soon......

Another Day, Another Detour

Katydid by Becky

Routing traffic away from flooded areas, un-inspected bridges, and such has snarled traffic like the wind will your hair when you ride in a convertible. It took Alan well over an hour to pick Becky up from work yesterday and she only works a mile from here. Worth every minute of it though, if keeps everyone safe from further disaster.

Folks are being so good about it too. If you need to pull onto what was once a thoroughfare, but is now a slow-moving parking lot, people let you in with a wave and wait as patiently as they can. As always there are a few bad actors and rude folks, but they are in the minority.

Most everyone from politicians to whom I never paid any attention before, news sources (can't say enough about the fantastic job media and ordinary people are doing at getting out information), volunteers and professional emergency folks, to the kids cleaning up the fair ground so the fair can go on albeit a bit late, are making me feel fortunate and proud to live here.

What a great region for neighbors and caring and community spirit!

I even talked to really, really nice people at the power company yesterday. The boss's elderly aunt is still without power and not getting her meals on wheels and such. (We packed a cooler and ran it up as soon as we knew, but she needs her fridge.) My first call about the power was routed to Boston for some reason, but the lady there was incredibly helpful and got me the numbers I needed for the local situation. The man I reached next was helpful too. Hopefully she will soon have power. Meanwhile Liz hit the grocery for imperishable edibles last night.

Anyhow, I really want to thank everyone who has worked and is working so hard to restore the upstate area. Great job! Great neighbors! Wonderful people, thank you, thank you, thank you.

***Update, amazingly 5 and the Thruway are open.

Irene

Peacock Cumulonimbus

Seems the Hurricane from Hell is on its way. Prayers for everyone and everything in its projected path...Upstate NY is expected to only get lots of rain...so far they are saying six inches.

That would be about par for the course this summer. I have dumped that much and more out of the wheelbarrow several times. It is still wet enough here...and has been almost all summer...that the tractor tires push water in front of them in the hay fields. Heck it rained its little heart out yesterday, so much so that the hummingbirds came and sat on the porch and shivered. A song sparrow found the little box of sunflower seeds I keep under the shelf and came in off and on all day, so bedraggled you barely tell what it was. I'm afraid the cardinals are going to damp off like tomato seedlings, they are so wet when they visit.

A good day for nagging I guess. Hopefully maybe convincing the guys to fill the wagons with extra feed for the cows, stock up on a few every day essentials (like dog and cat food!) Batten down the hatches and the horses and all.

And of course the fair starts Wednesday...our own fair, right across the river in Fonda...Frankly I am dreading it. Traffic has been hellacious all summer due to the construction. It plumb boggles the mind to add in the fair. Liz is taking Bling and hopefully it will actually be possible to get over there to take care of her. Incidentally some folks who saw Rosie at the other fair showed some interest in buying her, but not for what I want to get. I am not that interested in selling her anyhow, but we always get offers on her after a show for some reason.

Hang in there all!

Wet and Dark

The Fruit Salad Tree is Filling Up

On mornings like this the entire valley moans and grumbles, clasped damply against the soggy breast of a bad-tempered, slow-moving thunderstorm.

Pitch dark at six AM. We'll be milking wet cows this morning....when they deign to come down off the hill that is.

Sorry I missed you yesterday. Deadline was nigh, tomatoes were ripe, and the men could finally chop feed again, after a series of disasters so bizarre and unlikely that you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you about them. (Suffice to say a truckload of ticked off skunks would have been more welcome...what is it this year anyhow?)

The season of ripening maters has lead to BLTs bulging with bacon, slippery with tomato succulance, and so tasty they should be illegal, taco bowls (take everything that makes up your favorite taco and layer it into a bowl, replacing the taco shell with taco chips, with which to dip) fresh, homemade, vegetable-beef soup, afloat with rings of shimmering yellow summer squash, and pungent with fresh-dug garlic, and even plain old tomato sandwiches for breakfast. I suppose if we had fresh tomatoes from the garden year round they would be ho hum, but here in the Great Northeast, tomato time is something to write home about.

Sorry about going on and on about groceries like this, but when I was working on the Farm Side yesterday we got to talking about how the boss's mother used to feed us. She was an old-fashioned farm wife, who felt that staggering meals were an important component of the wage of her worker bees. Since she spent her formative years working in a well-known Boonville restaurant, she was more than qualified to provide the same. She used to even serve the author of Drums Along the Mohawk, Walter D. Edmonds ( a fan of strawberry shortcake in season.)

Not much to say about the earthquakes...none of us noticed any of them. Before we lived here the tiniest one centered in Blue Mountain lake, where ours usually begin, would wake me right up. Now, living so close to the constant stream of heavy freight trains, shaking the earth day and night...well, not so much.

Have a good one...I've got to go get wet.

Willow Flycatcher

I think. Though this has been just the worst summer for weather we have seen in decades, it sure has been a great one for birds. Sit for a few minutes on the sitting porch or listen to the fields and hedgerows around the house and you will see or hear something interesting every day.

Right now I am too lazy to get up, but something is singing right in front of the door....okay, I got up, it was a baby house finch singing, and very prettily too, for its breakfast right on the porch railing. The cardinals and house finches still come to eat in the cardboard box every day and the baby finches still beg for food even though they are weeks old.

And I think I finally got a shot...or two actually of the willow flycatcher ....I think....(we know we have one by the call..other than that it is an lbb).

I believe I have identified our other caller...the thing I thought was a crazed turkey. It sang right by the house yesterday and I am pretty sure it is a black-billed cuckoo. A few more listens and I will put it on the yearlong list of birds we see here at the farm that I am keeping.

Hope you are having a good weekend. We had another godawful gully washer last night, with lightning so bad I sat up and waited it out in case it hit one of the barns. It didn't and I am hoping the fencers are okay. Lost one a couple weeks ago. They don't like lightning much.

Pretty Morning

Here at Northview. The guys are finally getting some feed put up between the stormy days. Still getting plenty of those with wild downpours that are so loud they sound like the trains across the river.

I put a weather button over the sidebar there, (only to have the html image break every day). It is from Weather Underground and still works even if the image doesn't. They say that we may actually have a stretch of good weather coming so they can get some serious chopping done. They have been working out kinks in the chopper, which is way past its best use date, and pretty much a large chunk of scrap metal with a few moving parts left.

As Alan says, there isn't a piece of machinery on the place that doesn't show evidence of farmer ingenuity somewhere in its construction. I know the old chopper is full of sheets of Patz guard and all manner of other innovative (and desperate) repair materials. Oh, well.

Long as it gets the feed chopped up and in the wagons I am happy. Hope they can bale the field that they have mowed for that. Been rained on twice, but should still make reasonable feed. We mostly used the baled hay for fiber for the cows' tummies anyhow, although the boss put up some second cutting last year that really made milk this spring. Hope they can get some more like that this year.

Since we are having all these crazy storms I am trying to learn to photograph lightning. Not too successful yet, but eventually I will probably figure it out. Also trying to get pics of the cardinal in the box. He is such a bright and cheerful...and extremely wary...guy.

A Surfeit

The driveway from the front porch

Driveway in back

Center pic is not a creek...that is the driveway too.

So is the bottom one

Water, water everywhere. There is a water trough that was empty out back....it has like a foot in it now....or more than..... I need to measure it. It rains so hard, several times a day, that you can't see the road in front or town or anything more than a few feet away.

Barn was flooded, cows could barely get into their stalls. It rained so hard that it was flowing down the hill behind and coming in the windows of our old bank barn, plus coming UP out of the floor through the sump pump drains...way too fast for the pumps.

Can we build a pipeline to every place that needs this? Thank God at least we live on a hill, although it all passes through on its way to the river in a great big hurry. Men can't chop for the cows, because they can't even get the tractors out of the barnyard. Pastures are getting pretty chewed down too.

I had to go the barn without my cast because I can't get my rubber boots on over it and the water was way over my leather boots. Stomping around all night without it hurt. I am going to see if Alan will drive me over in the truck today. Not to be a wienie but.....

Okay, whine over. I know there are droughts and fires and worse flooding in plenty of places. I hope whomever arranges the weather gets it figured out so they can get some rain and we can get some non-rain. Soon would be good. Now would be better.

Excuse Me

A hawk blew some bird to bits out over the long lawn and driveway the other day.

I can't figure out what it is. Grey feathers with dark grey markings
and white ovals on the end. Buffy feathers.
Little iridescent feathers like this one that change from pink and purple to tan. Any ideas?

While I beat my head against the wall....just a little, maybe until I can get used to the weather.

Two days of torrential rains. Argghhh......

More to come.

Double argghhh.......

The good news is, all that bulldozing that Alan did held up under the onslaught, despite being just finished and not having time to settle.

Other than that, what can I say? Bookkeeping, day-long marathon sessions, writing chores, milking wet cows, fun and games. At least they aren't too muddy and they are back in the pasture behind the house. I love to see them out on the hill when I look out my window.

Stay dry and have a good one.

All Hail

Well, not all, but it sure was banging down the other day. I couldn't believe the weather man today. It is raining again.....rained all weekend with lots of serious gully washers. Then this morning, when announcing the latest go round of unneeded water works, the weather man said, "Oh, this will just green up the grass a little on the lawns. The grass needs water."

How green does he want it anyhow? And what the grass needs is a little sunshine.

Heart and prayers go out to the poor souls in the Midwest who are really experiencing too much water. This awful spring is changing their lives in horrible ways.